Chapter 860: Chapter 860

The radiance filling this room and the Blood Sun’s radiance revealed by the Eye of Truth showed different "black lines."

Although most of its composition seemed to be black spots extended from the "black lines," there were also a few faint, "green" dots among these spots.

In fact, as the Blood Sun’s radiance swept across, the entire area engulfed by the Blood Sun was almost entirely covered in these black spots.

If He Ao hadn’t slightly activated the power of the Eye of Truth when he entered the room just now, He Ao wouldn’t have seen these green dots hidden within the black spots.

These dots were concentrated on the computer desk and on the bed—places where the person who had lived in this room seemed to have moved about frequently.

And as He Ao’s "gaze" swept over them, these green dots rapidly shattered and instantly vanished into the void.

Clearly, these green dots weren’t sufficient to maintain their existence on their own; they collapsed when subjected to slightly stronger external "force."

They could persist this long mainly because they were entangled with those black spots and, of course, because this room had not been disturbed by any outsiders.

Even the presence of a sentient living person passing by could disrupt their balance and cause them to fracture.

This was the reason why He Ao had requested a well-preserved "scene."

Of course, he could easily discover these "dots" also because of the strong "Deciphering" ability and high Positional Grade of the Eye of Truth.

Even borrowing a bit of its power expanded He Ao’s field of view to extents untouchable by ordinary B-level beings.

He Ao gave up on stimulating the Eye of Truth further and withdrew his gaze, looking toward the gendarmerie captain who had unknowingly moved some distance away.

After several uses of the Eye of Truth, he had gradually mastered the extent to which it could be triggered.

Under the slight stimulation just now, he could control the contamination well within his own body. As long as no one approached within fifty centimeters of him or used any supernatural peeking ability at that time, they were unlikely to be affected by the contamination.

He had naturally distanced himself from the people around him soon after entering the room.

Of course, the higher the level of activation of the Eye of Truth, the weaker his control over the contamination. If he were to fully activate the Eye of Truth here, every ordinary person in this room would die instantly or mutate into monsters, potentially affecting even those on the floors above and below.

He had chosen a hotel in Enke City for peeking at the Blood Sun before because everyone in the hotel had been evacuated then.

"Mister He Ao, is there a problem?"

The gendarmerie captain seemed to notice He Ao’s gaze, turned his head, and looked at He Ao.

"Just a minor issue,"

He Ao walked to the computer desk and looked at the shut down computer, "Did that missing boy use this computer to post?"

The gendarmerie captain nodded. He looked up at the woman by the door, "Can we turn on this computer?"

The woman quickly came forward and turned on the computer.

The computer screen slowly lit up, then stalled at the boot screen.

"It’s an old computer,"

The woman seemed slightly embarrassed, explaining softly, "It was a birthday gift from his father when he was still alive, almost ten years old now. It has always been used by the boy."

He Ao nodded gently, "We can wait for a while."

His voice seemed to have a magical charm that eased the slightly tense expression on the woman’s face.

After waiting for about a few minutes, the computer fully booted up and displayed the password screen.

The woman turned towards the door and gestured slightly, "Girl, come input your brother’s password."

The gendarmes blocking the door made way.

Half of her body emerged from behind the couch, the little girl’s figure exposed.

The little girl glanced at everyone and carefully touched the wrinkled synthetic leather exterior of the couch.

Eventually, under the woman’s slightly expectant gaze, she ran over, stood in front of the computer desk, stood on tiptoe, and quickly and skillfully entered a string of password.

As the computer slowly unlocked, the little girl withdrew her hand, looked up at He Ao standing beside her, then dashed away like a streak of smoke and hid behind the couch again.

"My daughter is a bit shy,"

the woman explained softly, "She only used to play with her brother."

Then she turned her head, looked at the computer monitor as it entered the main interface, folded her arms and stepped back, "All set."

"We had already copied the browsing history of this computer before,"

the gendarmerie captain walked up to the computer, opened the browser, and then clicked on the history tab, where the first thing that caught everyone’s eye was a long string of URLs requiring censoring,

"Besides visiting some sites that a pubescent boy might browse, he mainly spent his time posting on that forum,"

the gendarie captain scrolled, found a web page with an old-fashioned icon and clicked on it, "This is a forum for custom-built computer enthusiasts, and he was a moderator of one of the sections here,"

he searched around, clicked on the personal center, and scrolled down, "Here you can see his posting records, that strange tale was ’posted’ by him about two and a half months ago."

Saying that, he clicked on the post.

The content of the post was simple, just retelling that ’phoning a relative’ ghost story and stating it was ’heard from someone.’

Below it were some forum users’ responses, most of which mocked the poster’s lack of understanding of science, but there were also a few who were eager to try it themselves.

This post had been seen before, in the chronological summary of all the weird tales posted by Yan Yue and others, it was not among the earliest, seeming to be the eleventh post made.

"This post has been shielded by the forum at our request, but we did not ask them to delete it to preserve the evidence,"

the gendarie captain turned his head to He Ao, "We have investigated everyone who replied to this post, and several of them are also missing."

The gendarie captain immediately made way.

He Ao moved the mouse, swiftly browsing through all the responses.

Clearly, the missing teenager had quite a ’reputation’ in this section, so there were many who responded to his posts.

Soon, He Ao’s actions halted, and he maneuvered the mouse between two responses, "The sequence of these two responses is wrong, this one is 21, the one below has turned to 23, was there a post deleted in-between?"

the gendarie captain nodded gently, "It might have been deleted by the person who answered, or by the poster. We contacted the forum to try to recover these deleted posts, but by then it was too late; the data had already been erased."

He Ao looked at these posts.

In fact, there were many deleted responses; evidently, someone was manipulating these posts on a large scale.

He lifted his gaze to the top-left corner of the personal center interface, where a small red dot appeared, which seemed to be the entrance to the ’message alert’ interface.

He Ao opened the message alert interface, and a large number of responses filled his field of view.

The missing teenager seemed to have posted many topics, many of which were featured on the forum, so there were numerous replies, with several responses even from today.

He Ao scrolled the mouse, quickly scrolling down the interface.

The forum preserved messages quite well, apparently keeping them for quite a long time.

Soon, he scrolled to the ’messages’ received about two and a half months ago, many of which were responses to that ’ghost story’ post.

He Ao continued scrolling down until he came upon posts from about three months earlier, and at that point, a message appeared in his field of view.

"You have deleted the post ’A strange tale heard by the roadside about late-night calls.’"

He Ao released the mouse he had been holding.

Two and a half months earlier, it wasn’t the first time the missing boy had posted that strange tale. The post he had just scrolled past was sent even earlier than any others they had found so far.

Those "replies" in the posts made after the boy had disappeared were very likely referring to the fact that someone had posted it before.

Moreover, this post might not even be the earliest.

The person spreading this strange tale was deliberately deleting posts to hide the initial composition of the posts.

That’s why among the ten earliest remaining strange tale posts, only two were from Mote City.

Looking at it from this perspective, perhaps a large portion of the initial posts originated from "Mote City."

While pondering, He Ao quickly searched through his browsing history and found that the missing boy hadn’t viewed any other posts related to this strange tale aside from his own.

The computer was virus-free, and it appeared that the missing boy himself had made all the posts about the strange tales.

And he had clearly stated in his posts that he had heard the strange tale "offline."

Assuming this "source of the strange tale" was accurate.

The person spreading the strange tales seemed to be forcefully reducing the proportion of "Mote City" in the sources of the tales.

The connections in He Ao’s mind swiftly linked together.

So, could Mote City be the origin of this "strange tale"?

Could the missing boy possibly be one of the earliest spreaders of the strange tale?

If his source was "offline," could it directly be from that very first spreader?

But if that were the case, why would the missing boy help the spreader circulate the strange tale and even engage in complex deletion maneuvers?

He Ao lifted his head and looked towards the gaunt woman standing next to him, asking softly,

"Did the boy have any unusual behaviors before his disappearance, especially half a month before?"

"There didn’t seem to be any?"

The gaunt woman shook her head slightly and sighed gently, "I’m very busy with work and hardly have time to take care of the home; it’s mostly my son who takes care of it,"

She paused, and then recalled, "If there really was something, he seemed absent-minded before he disappeared, often lost in thought."

"Did he ever tell you that he had a way to ’contact his father’ or ’see his father’ or anything like that?"

He Ao continued to ask.

The woman was stunned for a moment, seemingly unable to grasp what He Ao was asking about immediately; after a while, she slowly said, "His father passed away several years ago, and he has always been sensible and seldom talked about this."

"Sometimes my brother would be like a different person,"

At this moment, a child’s voice came from under the living room light, "He won’t play with me, he’s extremely mean, not at all like my brother, and even tries to hit me."

He Ao lifted his head to look towards the source of the voice.

The little girl who had just been speaking immediately withdrew, completely hiding herself behind the couch.

He Ao withdrew his gaze, his eyes sweeping over the area where there had just been a green light.

What method would a powerful, law-defying Transcendent use to ’persuade’ a normal person to help him?

Would he appeal to their emotions, convince them logically, committing substantial effort to make them follow him?

Was it direct violence and coercion, or the more convenient option of using extraordinary power to outright control and create a "servant"?

Clearly, the orchestrator of this incident seemed to have chosen the latter.

He must have possessed some form of extraordinary ability or an extraordinary item that allowed him to command ordinary people directly.

The almost undetectable green glow left in this room could likely be the residual energy from his extraordinary power used to control the missing boy.

If all these conjectures were correct, Mote City was indeed where everything began.

Numerous thoughts flashed through He Ao’s mind as he gathered his thoughts and spoke softly, "I’ve gathered the information we need for the investigation; let’s step outside."

The gendarmerie captain glanced around, nodded quickly, and turned to the exhausted woman, "Sorry for the trouble."

The woman looked at him, her mouth slightly open, then after a brief pause, she slowly closed it and finally said, "It’s okay, you guys have worked hard too."

She followed behind He Ao and the gendarmerie captain, reaching out to close the bedroom door.

The group quickly passed through the living room towards the narrow door.

The small figure that had been hiding behind the sofa peeked out halfway, watching the crowd.

With a series of soft footsteps, as He Ao was about to leave through the door, he felt the hem of his clothing tugged by a faint force.

The surroundings instantly quieted down.

He stopped, turned his head, and looked behind.

The little girl with pigtails was now holding onto his hem, looking up with her beautiful brown eyes reflecting the glow of the corridor light from the door frame, mirroring He Ao’s face.

He Ao crouched down to level his gaze with the little girl and asked softly, "What is it?"

The girl looked at He Ao’s face, and after a brief pause, she asked timidly, "Will the warm sun rise again?"

"We don’t know if the sun will rise as usual,"

He Ao gently reached out to touch her head, smiling, "but if possible, we’ll make it rise again."

The bright corridor light passed through the narrow door, outlining the silhouettes of the young man and the girl in the dim room.

The glow fell on the young man’s side face and also in the girl’s eyes.

She gently nodded, seemingly understanding, yet somewhat perplexed.

In those clear brown eyes reflecting his image, He Ao slowly stood up, nodded gently to those inside the room, then turned and walked into the light outside the door.

Standing before the corridor light, the worn-out mother held the little girl’s hand, watching as the figures disappeared into the distance.

"Mr. He Ao, I’ll leave you here then."

The gendarmerie captain looked up at the helicopter that had once again arrived and spoke.

"Come with me; I’m short of hands."

The wind from the helicopter’s rotors whipped through He Ao’s hair as he turned to look at the gendarmerie captain, and before the captain could speak, He Ao said softly, "This city needs you."

With that, he walked towards the helicopter.

The gendarmerie captain watched He Ao’s retreating figure, slowly closing his initially opened mouth.

Sett had actually recruited him once, even promising to somehow get him an extraordinary item for protection, but he had ultimately declined.

After a brief pause, he lifted his foot and followed the figure in the wind.