Chapter 447 The Mystery of Dreams
Brown with green, it can't be some radioactive mineral...
This was Angel's first reaction, but she quickly remembered that this was the color of a certain copper ore. Unlike chalcopyrite, which is called "fool's gold", this ore can be distinguished from gold at a glance.
She walked closer, trying to confirm, but it aroused Leighton's vigilance. He took two steps back, put the "gold mine" back into the bucket, held it to his chest, and asked in a low voice:
"What's up?"
As he spoke, the busy temporary miners around him glanced at him, with undisguised vigilance in their eyes, keeping him at a distance.
Angel shook his head and stopped trying to argue with these guys who were obviously not okay.
"No, I'm just curious, is this the first piece of 'gold' you've dug up?"
"Of course not. With this kind of harvest, we can get several pieces every day. I estimate that after finding someone to separate and purify it, the daily harvest will exceed one hundred pounds. If we divide it equally, we can already earn thirty pounds a week. This is a good job with an annual salary of over a thousand pounds!"
Really? I don't think that copper ore can be exchanged for even a few soli...
Angel looked at the small bucket of ore and didn't know what to say.
No wonder they came so excitedly and dug so enthusiastically. It turned out they mistook the scrap copper for gold, thinking they could get rich overnight. It would be fine if they could actually dig up gold, but the problem was...
She sighed, forced a smile and said:
"Then I hope you can dig up a few more pieces today."
Looking at the mine that they had dug into a deep pit, Angel slowly turned around and left in the direction she came from. It was not until she turned a corner that her vigilant sight was blocked by the thick stone wall behind her.
After returning to the mine entrance and taking a few breaths of the salty air blowing in from the sea, Angel looked back at the deep cave, as if he could hear the clanging sound of pickaxes hitting rocks from inside.
"Hypnosis, hallucination, or some kind of paranoia?"
Several possibilities flashed through her mind.
As a former "instigator", she might be able to use the power of language to temporarily trick some innocent tourists into digging mines, but she definitely cannot mistake copper for gold. However, these excited and somewhat fanatical "miners" have completely fallen into such fantasies and cannot extricate themselves. Obviously, it is a deeper force that is interfering with them.
Could it be related to the gazer she is looking for?
After thinking about it, Angel decided to go back to the town first and look for more clues through other means.
Anyway, these tourists have been digging for a full week, so one more day shouldn't be dangerous. Well, unless there's a lopsided division of the spoils and they start a fight over a few pieces of copper worth less than a soli, and someone gets killed...
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Back in the port town, Angel took advantage of the time when she took off the "hypocrisy" ring and waited for the negative effects to disappear, and made a new "disaster" spell. This time, she tried to perform a magic mirror divination on the spell itself, but not surprisingly, she got nothing. Obviously, the power from the mysterious rune was so much greater than hers that even if she used her own blood to make it, the divination did not get any useful information.
After regaining her spirit and having dinner, she put on the ring again, changed into a male appearance, put on a more neutral vest and windbreaker, and went to the Spice Street, which was also very noisy at night. She pretended to be a businessman who came to inquire about the ore business and chatted with several unemployed miners.
"That gold mine outside the city? It was developed by an investment company from Bayam. It's been around for almost five years. It used to be Pala Island's third mainstay, besides spices and fruit. Almost every household had someone working in the mine, and the docks there were bustling. But unfortunately, six months ago..."
After a few glasses of fermented fruit wine offered by Angel, these drinkers immediately became good friends with her and with a little guidance, they told her the truth from half a year ago.
It turned out that half a year ago, when they were digging deeper into the mine, they discovered a natural deep pit. They thought there would be more mineral deposits, but they didn't expect that the inside was hollow. A collapse occurred during mining, and many people were injured. More than 20 people even fell into a coma.
The miners suspected that it was a gas leak and quickly carried the victims out of the mine and reported it. However, they did not expect to receive compensation and repairs, but a notice of emergency closure of the mine.
After that, the government office and miners of Pala Island requested many times to reopen the mine and resume work, but their requests were not accepted by the investment company. As a result, the gold mine and the supporting dock have been abandoned until now. Hundreds of miners have lost their jobs, which were hard but paid reasonably. Most of them have switched to becoming plantation workers. The few who have no skills and techniques can only sell their labor at the town’s dock, and their income is much lower than before.
The former miners in front of him clearly belonged to the latter. While drinking, they cursed the investment company far away. In the words of Emperor Roselle: they were occupying the toilet but not using it.
Listening to the angry curses, Angel thought of another possibility.
This solution, which seems very strange to outsiders, is very similar to the requirements that official extraordinary people impose on those involved after their intervention. Take the process of the Night Watchmen as an example. If an extraordinary event occurs in a mine, they will immediately ask the mine to stop working, and then eliminate all threats. Only after multiple assessments that there is no risk will they allow the mine to resume work, and that is often half a year or even a year later.
Some companies, fearing further trouble, simply abandoned the mine and closed it permanently.
"After the mine accident, did the Storm Church or the garrison on Mid-Range Island come?"
Angel interrupted the miners' complaints and asked, she knew there was no Storm Church church on this island, so she was asking about the nearest mid-range island.
"The army? Of course not. They wouldn't come to this desolate little place once a year. It seems a few priests from the church came to help treat the poisoned miners, and then left after they woke up."
It seems this was the action of the Mandated Punishers. Did they leave immediately because they didn't find any problems, or did they leave after clearing up the anomaly at the time? But now...
After some inquiries, Angel had even more doubts in his mind.
After bidding farewell to these drunken miners, she continued to wander around the town for a while. In the dead of night, she sneaked into the town's government office and used her skilled lock-picking skills to pry open the door of the document room.
This small port town has only more than a thousand permanent residents, so there are not many documents. Angel quickly found the dusty mine information among the materials of various plantations. There was no detailed record of the collapse accident half a year ago, or specifically at the end of June 1349. The accident site and the number of victims were only roughly marked on the internal map.
It's obvious that the "Manufactured Punishers" have already processed it and deleted the relevant content... In this case, the only thing left to do is to target the most abnormal person...
She restored the document, left the dark government hall, took out the magic mirror, and quickly confirmed the residence of Leighton, the leader of today's group of temporary miners, through divination.
As a foreign tourist, he also lived in a hotel in the town. Angel walked invisible past the sleepy front desk waiter, went upstairs to the door of Leighton's room, opened the door through the silk thread cut through the door crack, and walked in swaggeringly.
The "miner leader" who had been overworked during the day had fallen into a deep sleep. Angel found a chair to sit on, cast a "dream" spell, and entered his sweet dream...
...entered into a dream in which he was working hard.
Unexpectedly, Leighton was also working hard to mine the brown and green copper ore in his dream. His mining partners were the young male and female tourists whom Angel had met during the day. They divided the work and cooperated with each other in the dream, regardless of fatigue. Their efficiency was even several percent higher than during the day.
Of course, this all came from Leighton's imagination. Apparently, he was not very satisfied with his work during the day, so he dreamed of more efficient night work.
Angel did not disturb Layton in his dream, but wandered around in this wonderful dream. Dreams usually reflect the dreamer's subconscious desires or fears, and perhaps some important clues can be found in them.
Soon, she discovered that this mine was just a closed scene, and the roads around it were blocked by endless darkness. As an invader of the dream, she could not control the dream to make corresponding changes, so she had to return the same way.
But when Angel returned to Leighton, he was surprised to find a short man in the crowd wearing a black windbreaker, a half-high silk hat, and a somewhat blurry face. He did not belong to any of the people during the day, and Angel did not even notice his existence before leaving the cave.
Another dream invader?
Angel raised her eyebrows. She used a dream spell to enter a dream and could leave at any time through her thoughts. Therefore, she did not do anything extreme immediately, but wanted to see what the other party would do.
"Hello, young Nighthawk," the man in the windbreaker took off his hat and placed it on his chest, bowing politely. "I'm glad you were able to grasp the clues and come to Mr. Leighton's dream."
Me, the Nighthawk? In a sense, that was true, but how did he know that... because he mistook the "Dream" spell for a nightmare ability?
Angel held his breath and said nothing, his expression calm, as if he accepted his identity.
"I'm sorry. I was supposed to communicate with you privately in your dream, but unfortunately your vigilance prevented me from doing so. I can only resort to this last resort and wait for your visit in the dreams of these people."
The man pointed at Leighton and the others who were still swinging their pickaxes with complete ignorance.
I'm on guard... but I slept well last night. It must be the effect of the "Secret Holy Symbol"... Angel almost couldn't hold back his expression, so he nodded to hide it and asked:
"So, who are you?"
"Me? Just a poor soul waiting for salvation. Didn't you come to Pala Island because..."
The man in the windbreaker spoke doubtfully, and his hazy face began to gradually reveal his facial features. But just when Angel was about to see him clearly, the gas lamps placed by Leighton and others next to him suddenly went out, and the entire mine was suddenly plunged into darkness that even Angel's dark vision could not see through.
Without hesitation, she severed the connection with the dream, opened her eyes, and stood up from the wooden chair.
On the single bed in front of her, Leighton's limbs suddenly twitched, his eyelids raised, and only the white of his eyes was left below, as if he were having an epileptic seizure.
"Night."
After reciting the opening spell, Angel threw out a "sleeping" talisman in his hand. The silver piece exploded with a dark red light in the air, and invisible waves spread out. Leighton, who seemed to be on the verge of madness, immediately stopped struggling and lay back in his warm bed.
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