Chapter 76 The Man in Brown Clothes (2)
The area where she lay was splattered with blood. The glass of the training field was clear, and you could see that her fatal wound was in her throat, and blood was flowing continuously from her neck, spilling all over the ground.
Weston stood with his arms crossed in the shadows of the sunlight, his face expressionless.
Through the glass, a pair of turquoise eyes stared at her indifferently.
That's terrible.
Going too far is foolish, Weston thought.
This is Cornunos, and even if he thinks Shu Ningmiao is reckless, she wouldn't be this reckless.
—In the training grounds of Cornunos, would anyone believe that a student would be pierced by a humanoid machine without any protective mechanism while training alone?
He came into contact with many people who were on the verge of death while studying at the research center.
The blood plasma was lighter in color than real blood and flowed too smoothly. He could give more than a dozen reasons not to believe it after just one glance, but after a long while, he still couldn't walk away as if it were none of his business.
He blinked slowly. The girl's body was slightly curled up, lying motionless in the white sand.
He felt obligated to ensure the students' safety—a thought that made him pause, a subtle feeling stirring within him.
What puzzled him was that Shu Ningmiao had already noticed his mindset.
At first, she was quite respectful, but as long as she was given any leeway, her demands became more and more outrageous.
Shu Ningmiao has this talent for perceiving other people's emotions. Even if she doesn't understand what others are thinking, as long as she notices a trace, she will seize it without hesitation to test and exploit it.
Weston took a deep breath, stepped into the training field, and looked at Shu Ningmiao's face with an indescribable emotion.
There were no visible wounds on her body; her neck was covered in blood, making it impossible to see where the wound was.
He should have just turned around and left.
But the blood on the ground seemed to twist into a rope, hindering his steps back.
The monocle that Weston wore was a superpowered item, a superpowered item that could magnify vision; when activated, it could even reveal the veins under her skin.
He didn't activate his supernatural abilities to scan her; instead, he bent down and knelt down, placing his hand on the girl's neck.
The soft skin burned his palms.
His cool fingertips brushed against her throat, and a soft green light emanated from them, sliding into her skin, but there was no reaction.
He knew it.
Weston sneered, "The training ground is so dangerous, I'll write you an application so you won't be coming to physical education classes anymore."
Shu Ningmiao was already trying to ignore the lingering touch and cold air on his fingertips. Her neck was the most vulnerable part, and it was inevitably a little itchy. Hearing this, she couldn't help but smile and chuckle.
She grasped Weston's drooping wrist, slowly opened her eyes, and when she opened her mouth, her lips and tongue were stained with bright red blood.
His blood-covered face instantly came to life, his indifferent expression reflected in his reddish-brown pupils.
Shu Ningmiao spoke slowly, blood gushing from her mouth like a little fish blowing bubbles: "It tastes a little sweet."
"What are you doing?" Weston tried to pull his hand away, but she grabbed his wrist and dragged him down as if by a thousand pounds. He couldn't break free. Weston frowned: "Boring."
"It's a simulation function built into the training ground." Shu Ningmiao sat up with a push: "Can't you tell?"
“I’m asking you—why are you going to use it?” Weston said impatiently. “Are you planning to try and see if this thing can actually kill you?”
"I want to see how you react."
That was just a prank on him. As Shu Ningmiao said this, he couldn't help but see the pale red blood on the tip of her tongue, and for some reason, he couldn't look away.
The outer wall of the training ground can be made completely transparent at the internal control panel. She spends every day at the training ground studying it and has long since figured it out.
Seeing Weston pass by, after being so closely guarded by him for so many days, she really just wanted to scare him on a whim and see how he would react.
If Weston notifies the police and then abandons her, she immediately gets up and goes back to her dorm so he can make a false police report.
After that, all his actions were beyond Shu Ningmiao's expectations.
What surprised her most was that Weston's ability was likely healing—otherwise he wouldn't have tried to heal her.
This is truly the most incredible thing in the world. She had considered many possibilities regarding Weston's abilities, but she never imagined that Weston would be a healing-type ability user.
Is there anything about him that aligns with the qualities of "healing"?
Most people's impression of healing-type superpowered individuals is positive, such as gentle, kind, and sunny.
Although Erice's superpower [Light] only has a tiny bit of healing effect, it can also reveal her overall personality traits.
Only those who have the desire to help and heal others and who are kind to others can become healing-type ability users, and Weston is the biggest antonym of this kind of impression.
Shu Ningmiao hugged her knees and kept glancing at him.
No wonder he only uses Pandora's basic control and attack abilities and never reveals his special powers.
She suddenly thought of a perfect reason to convince Weston: "Teacher, you can't find the Crimson Stone on your own."
He wasn't simply held accountable for losing the stone—Weston himself knew that someone was pulling strings behind the scenes.
If this is a setup, the stone is very likely still in the hands of someone at the National Research Center.
"Then what can you do to help me?" Weston asked coldly, his words carrying a genuine sense of sarcasm.
"If that Crimson Palace Stone is still in the National Research Center, how do you plan to get in? Will you use your Pandora skills to deal with the guards... or will you use your superpowers to persuade others to help you?" Shu Ningmiao stared straight at him: "I can be your tool to help you get that stone and help you get back to the National Research Center."
All she wanted was that stone for archiving; they could easily cooperate.
Weston looked at her with a half-smile, his expression more relaxed than usual, though clearly sarcastic: "I can take you to the infirmary. Do you need to see a psychiatrist?"
He didn't believe her, and Shu Ningmiao let go of his hand, seemingly out of helplessness.
Weston glanced at her expression, his voice pausing for a moment, and the next second he saw her suddenly make her move.
She moved too quickly, and his expression darkened slightly. He waved his hand, which was hanging by his side, and the white sand around them flew up out of thin air, forming a solid wall about an inch wide between him and the girl.
Shu Ningmiao swiftly shattered the solid barrier he controlled without the slightest pause.
The wall, so thick, was practically as thin as paper when she deliberately maintained her angry superpower state.
With a dull thud, the shattered white sand exploded between them, scattering down in a flurry, some landing on Weston's shoulders like tiny snowflakes.
Shu Ningmiao's fingertips hovered in front of him, her fingertips almost touching his long eyelashes.
She chuckled, released her grip, and gently brushed the white sand off his shoulder with her fingertips.
Weston brushed her hand away, staring at her coldly, his face like a boiling volcano about to erupt.
He turned and left with a dark expression. Shu Ningmiao wisely refrained from saying anything that might anger him and silently followed behind him.
The machine handed her a wet towel to wipe the artificial blood plasma off her body.
Although Weston always seemed like he was on fire, Shu Ningmiao could tell that he was truly angry this time. Shu Ningmiao followed behind him, almost shivering from the cold air emanating from him.
They walked one after the other for a good ten minutes before Weston stopped in front of the faculty dormitory.
The teachers' dormitory is a detached building with a biometric lock on the door. It automatically unlocks when the owner is identified. He turned his head and glanced at her, his face expressionless.
His expressionless face was even more intimidating than usual. He said coldly, "Don't argue, don't ask questions. If you can't do that, get out of here right now."
Even though she was the only one there, he deliberately avoided looking her in the eye when he spoke.
Shu Ningmiao knew that he had tacitly agreed, so she immediately nodded and, as if afraid that he would change his mind, slipped into the door ahead of him.
"..." Weston closed the door behind her and heard her strained voice: "You live in here?"
It wasn't exactly dirty. Shu Ningmiao looked around and didn't see any trash, not even a glass of water.
Within sight of the naked eye, there were piles of all kinds of books and incomprehensible tools, making it more like a warehouse than a place for people to live. On the table in the very center of the room, there was a huge planetarium, emitting a faint glow.
The glowing planetarium cast a clear shadow of a map on the table, showing the distribution of land on the planet.
Besides this huge planetarium, there were many sophisticated-looking instruments and tools on the table. One of them had a familiar fragment clamped on a fixed platform, with a spotlight underneath pointing directly at the center of the fragment, illuminating it with a murky color.
As a studio, the problem can be barely ignored, but there isn't even a bed in here. Is this really a place where a person can live?
Shu Ningmiao couldn't find any other chairs, and there was nowhere to put her feet around. Weston sat back down at the table and turned the spotlight by pressing the knob with his fingertips.
"Where do you usually sleep, on the floor?" Shu Ningmiao was standing in front of the bookshelf when she felt a book fly up and hit her on the back of the head.
Weston spoke up behind her, his gaze still fixed on the shards in front of him: "I already said..."
"—You're not allowed to ask questions, right?" Shu Ningmiao stepped over the pile of books on the ground. "May I ask if I have the right to sit down?"
Weston didn't even look up: "If you can find a chair, please."
Shu Ningmiao turned around and saw a small single bed at the very back, barely big enough for one adult to sleep on. Weston really made himself miserable.
A simple clothes rack sat next to the bed, holding frequently worn clothes. Apart from the bathroom, Weston's personal belongings occupied only this corner of the entire house.
There was a staircase leading up next to her, but Weston was too busy studying the fragments to pay attention to her. She walked up the handrail, noticed a thin layer of dust on it, and withdrew her hand in disgust.
There was nothing up there except for a few pieces of furniture. It was clearly the original furnishings of the teachers' dormitory. It was so empty that you could almost hear the echo. Weston probably hadn't been up there since he moved in.
The kitchen was spotless, but there was no food at all. Weston's material desires were almost inhumanly low. If Cornunos hadn't provided him with accommodation, Shu Ningmiao suspected he might be living in a cave right now.
Shu Ningmiao carried a chair down from the second floor and sat down in front of him. Weston looked up, took the fragments off the mounting table, and put them into a spherical container: "I can only determine the general direction."
The spherical container is filled with a pale blue liquid, and the fragments sink into the liquid, slowly rotating.
Calmly facing Shu Ningmiao, the floating end pointed in a certain direction.
"Is that accurate?" Shu Ningmiao frowned. "If I put ordinary fragments in water, they will float."
“The Crimson Stone is the heart of Pandora. Just as your organs are connected to each other, so too are Pandora’s. The Pandora floating in the air is their blood, and through this—” Weston placed the sealed spherical container on the table, twisted it lightly with two fingers, and made the container rotate on the table. No matter how it rotated, the end of the fragment that was raised always pointed in the same direction: “They will always be drawn to each other.”
Shu Ningmiao opened the map, drew a red line in the direction the fragment pointed, and observed all the buildings on the red line.
Her gaze lingered on a point exactly covered by the red line. She flipped the terminal over and pointed to the point under Weston's gaze: "I told you so, didn't I?"
This red line leads directly to the National Research Center.
Weston frowned. The National Research Center was arguably one of the most heavily guarded places in Pieters, second only to the National Union Building.
Shu Ningmiao pressed down on the spherical container on the table: "I have a way to get in."
She realized another possibility, but Weston didn't seem to notice, so she didn't say anything.
There are three Crimson Palace Stones in total. 01 was lost during the Congressional purge three hundred years ago, and it is very likely that it was the one that was smashed by Erice; 02 was used as the core of a large-scale combat simulation system; and 03 was lost during Weston's tenure.
The fact that the fragments point in the direction of the National Research Center does not necessarily mean that they point to the lost No. 03 Crimson Palace Stone.
The combat simulation system inlaid with the No. 02 Crimson Palace Stone has been recovered by the National Research Center.
She researched all the news about Weston before deliberately making suggestive remarks to him, such as "You might have been framed" and "Jiang Gongshi might be at the National Research Center," though most of it was actually just her making things up.
She asked Weston for clues.
Whether it was Stone No. 02 or Stone No. 02 at the National Research Center made no difference to her.
Because all she needed was the Crimson Palace Stone.
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