Seeing the charred and tattered wooden door slowly opening backwards, Lumian's scalp suddenly went numb, as if someone had poured ice water on him.
Can’t the door be opened
Is my guess wrong
If it could open the door, why would it knock for so long and say so many words
Just do it! Is there something wrong with your brain
Even though he had become an arsonist and had experienced some big scenes, facing the current situation, Lumian's heart couldn't help but beat faster.
Just like a steam train running wildly on the rails and sleepers, if he hadn't been worried about Gardner Martin or other members of the Iron Cross who were hiding nearby and observing closely, he would have wanted to set up an altar on the spot, summon the Magician's messenger, or pray directly to Mr. Fool.
Subconsciously, Lumian was about to condense the Fire Crows, create a cloak, and be ready for battle, but Thermiporos's reminder flashed through his mind again.
"Don't respond."
Lumian himself felt that the monster outside's behavior of knocking on the door first, then threatening, and finally opening the door himself was very problematic.
So he forced himself to restrain himself, remaining silent, staring at the door like a statue.
The shaky, charred wooden door continued to open backwards, and the dark gap gradually expanded from the thickness of a finger to enough for one person to enter and exit.
But there was nothing outside the door? The room far from the window was dark, and the crimson moonlight that penetrated through the broken glass of the small room barely revealed the outline of a broken wall.
Where is the guy knocking on the door? Lumian's first reaction was to open his psychic vision to see if there was a monster hiding that could not be seen by the naked eye.
But he finally controlled himself, fearing that this would be a response. The shaky wooden door stopped and did not move. In the deep darkness outside, there was no figure walking out, and no object moving. It was extremely quiet.
Lumian remained seated, staring at the place, thinking that this was really weird. Even if he wanted to set fire to the enemy, he couldn't find the target. Silence became the main theme at the moment, and time seemed to have stopped.
Suddenly, a drop of liquid fell from the ceiling and hit Lumian in front of him. Lumian's eyelids jumped, and in the crimson moonlight outside the window, he saw that the liquid was bright red and glaring, and looked like blood.
Tick, tick, drop after drop of blood fell, gradually dyeing a large area red. Just seeing such a scene made Lumian's heart filled with uneasiness.
Tick-tick, another drop of liquid left the ceiling and landed on the right side of Lumian's face, cold, sticky and silky.
This didn't look like the blood of a living person, but it wasn't stained with a dark color. The strong smell of blood pierced Lumian's nose, making him subconsciously want to roll to the side, turn over, stand up, and jump out of the window.
"Don't respond." Thermipolos' words flashed through his mind again.
Lumian adjusted his breathing slightly, allowing the drops of sticky liquid with a strong smell of blood to hit his face and head.
Gradually, he felt his body getting heavier and he examined his hands that were exposed outside his clothes.
There were also drops of cold and sticky blood, which expanded silently and merged into one, like a blood-colored glove on Lumian.
Lumian made this connection with other parts of his body and suspected that he was wrapped in a layer of blood and mucus, which was why he felt heavier.
As if by reflex, he wanted to put his hand, which was suspected to be slow, into his pocket, take out Mr. K's finger, and let the Aurora Society's envoy who was best at blood-related spells fight against this strange blood membrane.
“Don’t respond.” This time, it was not Lumian who remembered Thermipolos’ reminder, but the angel of fate who once again made a powerful voice.
Lumian controlled himself again, allowing his body to grow heavier little by little. His breathing began to become difficult, and soon he felt the strange blood seeping through his skin and trying to get into his body.
They seemed to have their own life force, slowly but firmly seeping into Lumian's body, submerging him little by little from the outside in.
Lumian felt that his brain had also been damaged accordingly. His thoughts became more vague and his various ideas inevitably showed violent tendencies.
He wanted to kill people, he wanted to burn the area, he wanted to set Trier on fire, he wanted to destroy the world.
"Fuck, Thermipolos is not going to take this opportunity to deceive me, and use the strange power here to control me and get rid of the seal, right?"
Lumian couldn't help but doubt the effectiveness of Thermiporos's words "don't respond" and the true purpose of the angel from the realm of fate.
He decided to stop suppressing himself, to resist quickly, and to look for a chance to escape from the burned building.
But he had suspected something was wrong before. The insistence on knocking on the door, speaking, and obtaining permission at the beginning seemed to have some mystical significance. If he had not had such doubts, how could he have completely believed in Thermopolus, the angel of fate who was neither an enemy nor a friend, and had endured until now
As his thoughts raced, Lumian remained calm, preparing to wait and see what would happen.
His head was becoming heavier and heavier, his thoughts were becoming more and more confused, a teeth-grinding cutting sound rang in his ears, and his body seemed to feel the pain coming from far away, as if someone had put him into a semi-comatose state and taken the opportunity to cut off his hands and feet and divide his body.
Suddenly, Lumian's mind was pulled away, and he seemed to be a spirit out of his body. He saw himself sitting by the window, covered in blood, with unusually empty eyes, and a charred figure squatting in front of him.
He was holding a bloody axe and hacking at his thigh, splitting the white bone in two.
Uh, Lumian gradually realized that something was wrong. He looked down and saw that his body was still there.
He was still sitting next to the broken window, but what he saw was no longer the crumbling, charred wooden door, but the reflection of the surrounding area and his own body being dismembered by the burnt figure.
Rather than his severed legs and shattered bones, what impressed Lumian the most were his own lifeless eyes.
After a brief moment of confusion, the horrific and bloody scene disappeared, and the open, dilapidated wooden door once again appeared in Lumian's eyes.
He knew clearly that what happened just now was not an illusion, because he now felt as if he was free from the water film and all the pores on his body became comfortable.
What would happen if I couldn't help but respond? The horrific scenes I saw would become reality. Response was a mystical connection that made those almost hallucinatory horrible experiences really happen.
Lumián exhaled slowly and contentedly. He raised his hand and pressed his left chest. He lowered his voice and laughed softly, "Thermiporos, you are quite amazing. As expected of an angel, even though you are sealed, you can easily see the nature of the current anomaly."
Thermipoulos' voice sounded, layer upon layer: "The abnormality here is minor."
"You still call this mild?" Lumian disagreed. "If you hadn't reminded me not to respond, and I was determined enough, something would have happened just now. Gardner Martin, the sow, really wanted to kill me."
Thermipoulos responded in a majestic voice: "You won't die. The abnormality just now will only change you. Your personality traits, way of thinking, and self-awareness will remain unchanged, but your ideas will shift. You will become fanatical about certain things and reject some ideas."
Lumian pondered over this sentence, finding it a little hard to understand.
At this time, Thermopylaeus added: "It is equivalent to you being conquered, both physically and mentally."
Lumian suddenly realized and lowered his voice and said, "Gardner Martin asked me to stay here for one night. He wanted to use the abnormality here to control me? To eliminate possible hidden dangers, no wonder he came to Breeze Ballroom so late at night and didn't give me more time to think."
"Have you only now realized your own shallowness?" Thermipolus confirmed Lumian's guess with these words.
Lumian cursed and muttered to himself, "Even if I succeed, I am controlled by the anomaly here, not by Gardner Martin. Isn't he afraid of problems? The anomaly here is related to the Iron Cross, so he is not worried."
Thinking of this, Lumian frowned and asked Thermipoulos, "Since I am not affected by the anomaly and have not been transformed, will Gardner Martin find out something is wrong when I go out tomorrow morning?"
Thermipoulos said in a powerful voice, "If this level of contamination was so easy to detect, Gardner Martin and his friends would have been cleared out by official Beyonders long ago. Unless the source of the contamination directly provides information, they won't be able to tell that you are not contaminated."
Well, as Lumian was pondering, he suddenly discovered that there was a fact hidden in Thermipolos's two sentences.
Gardner Martin and the Iron Cross members around him had already suffered similar contamination and were all controlled by someone.
Hiss, the more Lumian thought about it, the more terrifying it seemed.
After a few seconds, he asked Thermopolos again, with the mentality of trying to get as much as possible while he could: "After meeting Gardner Martin, where should I show my enthusiasm and what ideas should I reject?"
"Fanatical about war and unrest, and intolerant of belief in other gods." Thermipolus actually gave the answer.
Lumian nodded, and thought of another question: "Based on the intensity of the abnormality just now, everyone who has stayed here for a period of time should be contaminated."
"Only two special paths will inevitably trigger the anomaly here. For the others, you must do specific things at a specific time to encounter it. The authorities are only aware of the latter situation and only secretly prevent others from entering this building at a specific time."
Thermiporos replied in an unchanged voice: "Two special paths: hunter and witch." Lumian could probably guess.
Thermopoulos did not deny it. Lumian went over the whole thing in his mind again and said with a smile, "Thermopoulos, it seems that you have truly recognized your situation and put yourself in the right position."
This time, there was no response from Thermiporos and it fell completely silent.
In the next few hours, Lumian encountered two more abnormalities. Once his neck was broken, and once his body imploded, with his internal organs thrown everywhere.
Relying on the words "don't respond", he managed to hold on, and his thoughts returned to his real body, unharmed. Finally, a reddish gold color appeared on the horizon, and the sun gradually rose.
Lumian slowly stood up, bathed in the morning light for several seconds, and walked out of No. 13 Market Avenue step by step.
Then he saw Gardner Martin sitting in the carriage opposite, and their eyes met.
The next second, Gardner Martin smiled, and Lumian also smiled.