eurekapd Chapter 346 Mother
Chapter 346 Mother
Music was playing from the car's stereo, and Yan Xun's fingers tapped on the steering wheel.
The closer he got to the city where the Church of Angels was located, the more uneasy he felt.
He had a feeling that something was about to happen, but Ellie beside him was calm and even dozed off for a while because of the similar scenery around them.
The Church of Angels is on the other side of the desert city.
They only need to cross this highway through the desert to reach the city.
Along the way, Yan Xun passed several gas stations. He was worried that he might encounter Levi or other pursuers, but everything was peaceful.
He was so calm that he thought everything was alright.
However, the fact that Task 3 had not been completed yet made Yan Xun feel something was wrong—if it was just a simple delivery task, it seemed unnecessary to make it a special task for him to complete.
Moreover, apart from the slightly troublesome task of finding Liam, there weren't many twists and turns in this instance, which made Yan Xun feel even more that the main system had dug a big pit for him.
After Ellie woke up, she just stared blankly.
After a while, he suddenly said to Yan Xun, "I feel a little uneasy."
"Uneasy?" Yan Xun glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Uneasy about what?"
Can the dead feel uneasy? The thought popped into his head, but when he thought about how this dead person could talk, jump, and eat, he could only explain it as a medical miracle.
“I don’t know.” Airi shook her head. “I have a feeling that something bad is about to happen.”
"Just like when I left Conrad's house."
This was the first time Yan Xun had heard of the past. He had asked Ellie about it before, but Ellie's answer was very vague, only saying that he had forgotten.
"Why are you in the forest outside the farm?"
Airi gave him a strange look. "I want to go to the Angel Church."
Are you with Neil? Or are there other people with you?
"You two agreed to meet in that forest?"
After thinking for a while, Ai Li understood what Yan Xun meant. "No."
“I can feel that my companions are there,” he told Yan Xun.
"Companion?" Yan Xun looked at him.
“A voice told me I should go there.” Ellie spoke with a somewhat confused look on her face, as if she didn’t understand why she felt that way, but she still said it.
Yan Xun couldn't help but think of the "mind control" tactics employed by the Meatball Society.
He suddenly thought of a possibility that made him uncomfortable.
Did those fleshy spheres burst out of their hosts' bodies, causing their deaths, or... were those people already dead, with the fleshy spheres inside their bellies controlling their bodily functions?
But he soon remembered his landlady's Milo and Coy.
They are all still alive and look perfectly normal.
Perhaps he was just overthinking it, Yan Xun thought, and that Ai Li was just an exception.
“I’ve met Neil,” Ellie said.
"When?"
“At the hospital,” Eli said.
He looked down at his stomach, "when I felt something was wrong."
I went to the hospital.
"He appears to be seriously ill and looks very bad."
As if remembering something, Ellie said, "He seemed to be talking to himself, saying that Charlene wanted to kill him."
"I saw him again in the forest."
“He said he was going to the Angel Church, that he had received a revelation, and that only by reaching the Angel Church could his illness be cured.”
Yan Xun listened to Ai Li's narration.
"So, Conrad kept you in that manor just so you could be that...sculpture?" Yan Xun recalled the image that appeared in the newspaper.
Airi nodded.
He said he saw the future in his dream, and that this was the vessel of God.
"I want to finish this before the end of the world."
Yan Xun thought for a moment and then told him about the dreams of his artist friends.
Airi was somewhat confused upon hearing this.
“I don’t have that ability.” He told Yan Xun, “I probably can’t control my dreams and ask them for help.”
Yan Xun knew, of course, that Ai Li couldn't control her dreams and was asking those people for help.
He didn't even control one person's dream; rather, he made them all dream the same thing.
It was noon, and the sunlight streamed through the car window onto Yan Xun, yet he inexplicably felt a chill.
If it wasn't Ellie who created this dream of seeking help...?
He glanced at Ellie's stomach out of the corner of his eye, and his unease grew stronger.
Ai Li noticed Yan Xun's gaze. He touched his stomach, as if to protect or comfort him.
"It'll be alright," he told Yan Xun.
Yan Xun only managed a forced smile; he wasn't as optimistic as Ellie.
This scene, which resembled both an escape and a road trip, always reminded him of certain movies... especially this open desert area, where he looked at the narrow valley ahead.
To reach the city where the Church of Angels is located, you have to cross a slightly narrow valley. The road is fairly wide, but if someone blocks the exit...
Yan Xun tapped the steering wheel with his finger in frustration. So far, they hadn't encountered any of Levi's men.
However, during a recent brief stay in some cities, everyone started to pay attention to men who were inexplicably pregnant. It was as if, all of a sudden, everyone knew that these men were dangerous individuals, monsters that could suddenly erupt.
As a result, Yan Xun had to hide with Ai Li, sometimes only able to rest briefly near gas stations.
This kept him in a state of constant tension, as if he were no longer Yan Xun, the player who entered the instance, but Ryan, the private detective who was actually living in this world.
Soon, the road leading into the canyon came into view, and Yan Xun had to brace himself.
"Wake up," he said to Ellie beside him, telling her not to doze off.
Aili sat in the passenger seat. He didn't quite understand what Yan Xun meant, but he still forced himself to stay alert.
“I suspect Levy will ambush us here,” he told Airi, “at the exit.”
The road through the canyon area wasn't long, and soon Yan Xun could vaguely see the canyon exit—but what he noticed even earlier than the exit was the cars stuck at it.
He didn't see Levi, and he guessed that the other party wouldn't come in person for this kind of occasion.
Yan Xun slowed down and saw Koy, as well as the horn in his hand.
Koy yelled at Yan Xun, "Stop!"
"Otherwise, they really will take action."
Yan Xun certainly saw the weapons—he felt that even if he chose to stop the car and get down with his hands raised, Levi and his men would not let him go.
Just like the movies he watched when he was a child.
The moment the male and female protagonists got out of the car, they were riddled with bullet holes by machine guns, with hundreds of bullet holes in the car door.
"Hold on tight," Yan Xun said.
"I hope we can survive."
He didn't know if the main system knew this would happen, or why it arranged it this way. He could only pray in his heart that the car was of good quality.
Koy was standing in front of the car, shouting at Yan Xun through a megaphone, as if they were on the side of justice and Yan Xun was a fugitive bandit.
Once he realized that Yan Xun had no intention of stopping, he immediately moved aside.
He instinctively looked in the direction where Levi was.
The other party was in another car outside the encirclement.
He couldn't actually see the other person's expression through the glass, but he still saw a finger sticking out from the crack in the car window—a hand wearing the ring that represented the organization's heritage, making a gesture—and Koy understood what he meant.
He also made a gesture.
In an instant, the windshield shattered into pieces.
But the car still broke through their encirclement... Koy looked at the dilapidated car, then looked in Levi's direction.
This time, however, Levy did not give the order to pursue them immediately.
Coy stared blankly at the battered car, put down his weapon, and prayed in his heart that the detective would survive.
……
The windshield was almost completely shattered.
Yan Xun thought he was going to die soon, that the bullets would riddle him with holes, but unexpectedly, at the critical moment, the system seemed to have given him a protective shield.
"After all, it's not a police thriller," the main system said in his head.
Yan Xun: "..."
He reached out and brushed the glass shards off his clothes, then looked at Ellie beside him, who was now completely riddled with holes.
The other person was practically covered in blood.
He curled up like a boiled shrimp, protecting the child in his belly. After Yan Xun was sure that Levi and his men hadn't caught up, he parked the car in a secluded spot and reached out to lift Ai Li's drooping head.
“Dead,” he told the system.
The person who had died and been resurrected died again just one week later.
Ellie died too quickly, without even having time to say goodbye to Yan Xun. He was just curled up in the car, strapped in by the seatbelt.
Yan Xun glanced at his mission and found that mission 3 was neither completed nor failed.
The process is still ongoing.
"...Is that what I think it means?" Yan Xun asked.
The system's silence was tantamount to acknowledging Yan Xun's inquiry.
Perhaps in response to Yan Xun's idea, Ai Li's belly began to writhe violently again, as if the holy fetus inside was struggling to come out.
Yan Xun pulled out the exorcism pistol and aimed it at the writhing belly.
But in the end, he put away the pistol... He watched as the thing crawled out of Ellie's stomach.
Strangely, what emerged was not the fleshy ball he had seen before, but a real baby.
The baby had only one wing on its back. When it crawled out of Ai Li's belly, it didn't cry, but just stared straight at Yan Xun.
'Mother.'
He suddenly called out to Yan Xun.
Yan Xun found it both funny and absurd. He looked at the fetus and said, "Your mother is over there."
He pointed to the dead Ellie.
The one-winged angel glanced at Airi, then turned to look at Yan Xun, "Mom."
He was like a fledgling bird, only recognizing Yan Xun at first glance, as if the dead Ai Li was nothing more than an eggshell for him to live in.
After calling out "Yan Xun's mother," he suddenly looked at Ai Li.
As if he needed to devour eggshells to replenish his energy, his head suddenly moved closer to Ellie's body—
Yan Xun grabbed his arm and lifted him up.
The baby had already opened his mouth, and his oral cavity was full of fine teeth.
"I'm just saying, don't let me see this," Yan Xun said, unable to bear it any longer.
He had visited many different instances and seen some bizarre scenes, but none of them had ever made him feel so uncomfortable.
The world's background is so normal, yet every scene is related to flesh and blood.
"Hungry." The angel couldn't say much yet, so he could only repeat this one word.
Yan Xun really didn't have much experience raising children, especially children with mouths full of sharp teeth.
Until the main system said in his head, "He needs flesh and blood to grow."
Yan Xun glanced at the little angel he was holding and said to the newborn angel, "Open your mouth."
The angel opened its mouth, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth that looked extremely razor-sharp.
Yan Xun extended his index finger and made a cut on the angel's fangs, blood flowing out of the wound... He squeezed his fingertip and dripped the blood droplets into the angel's mouth.
After dripping four or five drops, he withdrew his finger.
The angel's mouth was wide open, as if it hadn't eaten enough.
“That’s all,” Yan Xun said.
Angels can only keep quiet.
The car couldn't be driven, so Yan Xun opened the car door, got out, and took out his backpack from the back seat.
Perhaps because the angel drank his blood, it suddenly appeared to grow larger—from a newborn to the size of a two or three-year-old.
Yan Xun found his naked appearance an eyesore, so he took a T-shirt out of his bag and put it on him.
Yan Xun took all the clothes out of the bag, threw them aside, then opened the backpack and said to the angel, "Go in."
The angel glanced at the backpack, then at Yan Xun, and finally crawled into the bag, resting its head outside.
"I don't feel well," he told Yan Xun.
"Bear with it," Yan Xun said.
He glanced at the road sign and realized they weren't too far from the city.
Yan Xun decided to walk over.
He glanced back at the battered car and Ellie inside, then left without looking back.
……
When Koy and the others arrived, they only saw flames shooting into the sky.
The car was on fire; Koy guessed it was an explosion caused by a leaking fuel tank.
They couldn't see clearly what was inside. After watching for a while, Koy said to the others, "I think we can go and report this now."
"The target is dead."
……
On the way to the Angel Church, Yan Xun fed the angels blood three more times.
At this moment, the angel looked to be about 7 or 8 years old. Even though Yan Xun's backpack was extra large, it couldn't fit a 7 or 8-year-old child.
The single wing was rather eye-catching, so Yan Xun had to stuff another piece of his own clothing under the angel's coat, making the angel look as if it had a bulge in its back due to some kind of illness.
When Yan Xun and his companion entered the city where the Angel Church was located, they attracted the attention of some people.
The reason was simple: they looked so disheveled, as if they had just fled.
Soon, kind-hearted people in the city came forward to ask if they needed help.
Yan Xun wasn't sure about the status of the Angel Church in the city... He could only say that their car had broken down not far outside the city, and they had to walk into the city.
He saw the tallest building in the city, which had a white angel decoration on it, and he asked the other party what the building was.
The kind person said that it was the sanctuary of the Angel Church.