Chapter 158 Painted Body Swallowing Charcoal (7)
"Hmm." Lucico rested his hands on the armrests of his chair, his fingers tapping absently. "You don't seem very satisfied with my way of communicating."
But she remained clear-headed and unwavering: "I believe that keeping some secrets between people makes communication more interesting."
You have a point.
His tone became objective again, and he changed the subject: "Let's not talk about this anymore. It's rare to catch such a big fish, let's have a picnic here this afternoon. You can come too, Director Sun won't miss you. Everyone needs some time to rest, feel the breeze, have a drink, it's the perfect thing to do this season. When I was studying abroad, I often had picnics with my classmates in the park, there were many oak trees there, but they are not common in Pinheis. I really miss it."
He rambled on and on, saying things without really getting to the point, before finally asking her, "How was it?"
"certainly."
Shu Ningmiao's attention was no longer sufficient to examine his words in detail. The thoughts that had just surfaced in her mind were immediately extinguished by herself. She would rather give up thinking than let Lucicolai hear a single word.
Lucico had a grill brought in and a fire started. Picnic tables were set up on the flat grass. They were all excited to hear about the picnic; there was nothing more enjoyable than having a meal together during working hours.
Besides the staff who had gathered around, there were also many people waiting in place, probably his personal bodyguards.
She made up a random excuse to help, but actually just wanted to blend into the crowd and get away from Lucico.
The more people there are, the harder it is to use the ability to read minds; she has just tested it.
Lucico is, after all, still human and unable to process an overload of information. Using mind reading in a crowd would likely overwhelm his brain, so he had no reason to risk the backlash by reading her mind.
These people brought out fruit and bread from somewhere, and Shu Ningmiao followed suit, grabbing a picnic basket as a formality and standing by the table dawdling.
As she turned the fruit, she lazily thought that if Lucicolei revealed that she was a superhuman, she might not get as much support from ordinary people.
He's not afraid she'll tell anyone; he definitely has other plans. How will she deal with it after that?
A round-faced girl with pigtails, about sixteen or seventeen years old, emerged from the woods and reached out to grab a piece of bread from the picnic basket in her hand.
The girl was young and didn't seem like a staff member. Shu Ningmiao's gaze lingered on her for a moment before the girl looked up and glared at her fiercely.
Shu Ningmiao casually withdrew her gaze, lowered her head to cut fruit, and glanced at the girl's movements out of the corner of her eye.
The girl grabbed the bread and ran towards the lake, her ponytails swaying on either side. She then squatted down next to Lucico, tore off a piece of bread, and threw it into the water to feed the fish.
Lucico leaned back in his folding chair, his eyes slightly closed, exuding tranquility.
The staff member next to her talked excitedly about everything from the charred power lines on the mountain that morning to the late-night snack, from the children's grades to the war in Intori, gesturing wildly as if they were on the battlefield themselves. After a long chat, one of them noticed that the meat on the stove was not yet cooked, and the conversation came to an abrupt end.
The man squatted in front of the stove and poked at the charcoal fire with tongs: "It's burning so brightly, how come there's not a trace of smoke?"
"You're ignorant. Good charcoal doesn't produce smoke."
He tentatively stuck his hand into the stove: "Strange, it's not hot at all, it's like an illusion."
The fresh meat on the grill seemed still alive, pulsating and dripping blood. The fire inside the oven was blazing. Shu Ningmiao hadn't paid attention to their conversation, but when she was illuminated by the red light, her eyelids suddenly twitched.
The word "hallucination" was like a key that twisted her nerves for no reason. Shu Ningmiao suddenly realized that the figure she saw in the train window did indeed have the ability to remain immortal by attaching itself to the outside of the high-speed train.
—It can be an "illusion" without any physical form.
She had witnessed this trick before.
Achini's humanoid phantoms formed from flames could even communicate and converse with others without any obstacles.
Anyone who controls fire can do it.
Whether she was overly sensitive or suspicious, Shu Ningmiao followed her subconscious intuition and pulled the man's arm away: "Put out the fire!"
At the same time, a hissing sound came from inside the furnace, and flames instantly filled the entire furnace chamber. Shu Ningmiao let go of her hand, and the man let out a heart-wrenching scream. Half of his forearm was roasted into a blackened piece without even seeing blood, and it was shattered on the grass.
The exclamation stunned everyone present. Shu Ningmiao gritted her teeth and repeated, "Put out the fire!"
At this moment, the man's stunned colleague finally came to his senses and hurriedly picked up the beverage bucket on the table and poured it into the stove.
The bald, burly man who was the first to rush out of the woods couldn't stop him in time and yelled, "Idiot, this is a cocktail!"
The person who poured the wine was completely terrified and stood frozen in place.
The fire erupted instantly, igniting the lawn along with the spilled liquid. Shu Ningmiao pulled up the man with the severed hand and threw him far away. The flames, mixed with the sweet smell of alcohol, broke free from the furnace and instantly shot up more than two meters high.
"Protect the representative!" The bald, burly man moved in front of Lucico in the blink of an eye and stomped his foot on the ground.
With a loud bang, the ground seemed to tremble, and an invisible shockwave spread out from him, forcefully extinguishing a patch of flames and shaking up the surrounding grass.
Shu Ningmiao raised her arm to shield herself from the smoke and dust, hiding among the chaotic fleeing crowd to observe the situation.
The fastest-moving bald, muscular man was clearly the leader, likely the captain of Lucico's bodyguard team, and appeared to be a strength-enhanced superhuman.
Besides them, there were seven other people who remained where they were, all of whom were superhumans. She had seen many people like Lucicolai who craved power, but none of them seemed as afraid of death as Lucicolai.
Within the golden-red flames at the very center of the fire, a phantom black figure gradually appeared. The bald, burly man sneered and charged forward recklessly, heading straight for the figure in the heart of the flames.
He reached out with his large hand, making a hissing sound in the air, as if he could crush the air itself.
However, the figure moved like a ghost in the flames. Just as the bald, muscular man was about to touch it, it seemed weightless, drifting back several meters along the air currents it created. At the same time, the nimble tongues of fire hissed and lashed at the man's skin.
In the brief moment after the flames were stripped away, Shu Ningmiao saw the black figure in the flames clearly. It was not an illusion created by the flames, but a real entity!
"A mere trick." The bald, burly man sneered, neither dodging nor avoiding the flames. The flames left only two charred marks on his skin, but they quickly spread, heading straight towards Lucico.
The burly man turned around and roared, "What are you waiting for?"
In the chaos, Shu Ningmiao followed the burly man's gaze and saw the round-faced girl with pigtails standing in front of Lucico Lai, holding half a piece of bread.
Faced with the surging flames, she did not retreat. Instead, she stretched out her hands, spread her fingers, and made an upward flipping gesture towards the flames.
"Turn it upside down!"
She called out in a clear, crisp voice.
Centered on her hands, invisible ripples instantly covered the burning flames and the ground within several meters, forming a huge sphere. Within the sphere, it was as if an invisible hand had turned the entire sphere—along with everything within it—upside down.
The flames that were originally shooting upwards now crashed down from the sky like a meteor shower.
Shu Ningmiao immediately reached out to support herself on the ground, but in the upside-down world she instantly lost weight. She looked down and saw the sky floating beneath her feet, while the grass that had been under her feet was now above her head.
Countless burning charcoal pieces detached from the furnace and fell downwards, cascading down with the lake water and extinguishing the flames.
A hissing sound—the piercing sound of rising steam accompanied by the loud splashing of water—turned into billowing smoke, covering the entire space with thick white fog.
Without the cover of flames, the figure in the black cloak shot out like an arrow, incredibly fast, as if there was no one else in his sight except Lucico.
He condensed a ball of blazing white fire in his palm. The extremely compressed fireball distorted the surrounding airflow, but Lucicolai still showed no fear. He just stared sharply at the figure rushing towards him.
The girl with pigtails grabbed Lucico's hand and flipped the sphere covering the space again, causing the space to become chaotic and upside down once more. In an instant, the dramatic change sent her and the fireball flying.
Seizing the opportunity, the bald, burly man unleashed a terrifying speed with his massive body, leaping up and rushing towards the shadowy figure, rapidly closing the distance. His fingers were about to reach the weightless cloak fabric.
At that moment, a faster and lighter gust of air swept over his head, making his scalp tingle.
The burly man frowned and quickly looked up. He caught a glimpse of a nimble figure leaping across the sky. In the instant the figure passed him, the power of the waist and abdomen exploded, and the figure twisted in mid-air, using the momentum to land in the gap between him and the shadowy figure, which was less than half a meter apart.
"You—" The bald, burly man grabbed at empty air, his eyes wide with rage. Upon seeing the black-haired girl's face, he roared in fury, "Do you want to die?"
Shu Ningmiao glanced at him with her eyes down, twisted her body, clenched her fists, and threw a straight punch with no fancy superpowers, just the most primitive and direct punch, which made the air explode with a dull thud.
The fist struck the shadowy figure solidly, the force of which instantly shattered the fireball the figure had just gathered. The figure's entire body was sent flying like a spinning top, as if it had been hit by a speeding truck.
The dark figure crashed into several tree trunks, tumbled several times, and disappeared into the depths of the dark forest.
The bald, burly man couldn't even catch the afterimage left by her punch. His words went back and forth, from "This person is an accomplice" to shock and choking.
Finally, he blurted out, "Trying to steal the credit?"
The girl with pigtails glanced at them curiously, then clasped her hands together. The surrounding space folded for a moment before returning to its original state.
The bald, burly man clicked his tongue and squinted as he looked into the distance: "Why are we shooting so far? How are we supposed to find this vast forest?"
Shu Ningmiao stood still and gently flicked her wrist. Without looking at him, she bowed to Lucico from a distance and said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't control myself. I'll go check it now."
"Who do you think you are?" the burly man sneered. "You only kicked me when I was about to finish. You didn't really think you could beat me by yourself, did you?"
Shu Ningmiao ignored him, her expression unmoved.
The bald, burly man gritted his teeth. This black-haired girl's smug look, as if she was just trying to impress the representative, was really annoying.
The girl with pigtails tugged at Lucico's sleeve: "They're already corpses, so is there any need to confirm it?"
The bald, burly man's eyebrows shot up; he couldn't understand why she was speaking to the girl.
Under the scrutiny of various eyes, Lucico calmly nodded to Shu Ningmiao, tacitly approving her volunteering.
Shu Ningmiao glanced calmly at the direction where the dark figure had just been knocked away, then rubbed her knuckles and walked towards the edge of the forest, her figure quickly swallowed up by the dense shade of the trees.
Staring at her retreating figure, the bald, burly man couldn't help but take a step forward: "Representative, are we really going to let her go? She might not be able to handle it."
Lucico stood with his hands behind his back, his smile growing even deeper.
"Let her go."
Once out of sight of others, Shu Ningmiao immediately dropped all pretense and quickened her pace. The other party's tracks were too easy to follow—the strong smell of blood was like an invisible thread, directly pulling at her sense of smell.
The crooked, uneven footprints, showing signs of dragging, staggered deeper into the quiet mountain.
She moved nimbly through the trees, following the footprints, trying to be as light as possible without making any unnecessary noise. Suppressed breathing came from ahead, accompanied by the rustling of branches being plucked.
Pushing aside a small patch of bushes, a figure shrouded in a black cloak huddled beside a tree root, struggling to prop himself up with his arms. The cloak was stained with mud and dark blood. Shu Ningmiao emerged from the bushes and instantly closed in on him before he could struggle to his feet.
She grabbed the collar of his cloak with one hand and pulled him to eye level.
The sound of the fabric being clenched and rubbed could be clearly heard, and the person under the cloak trembled slightly as they breathed heavily.
"How dare you?" She didn't even lift his hood, her words like knives: "You An, how dare you show up here?"
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