For safety, Li Cheng still took out the "Suicide Notebook" and distributed it to everyone to make another prediction.
The prediction results were slightly different from the last time; Li Cheng himself still died from an attack by others, the head of London girl Catherine exploded, Midnight Howl was electrocuted into charred remains, Zhao Zijing vomited her internal organs, and Bandaged Man was dismembered by an invisible force...
All the drawings had the backdrop of this grassland, except for two different ones.
One depicted Mendoza cut at the waist, his lower half falling onto the grassland while his upper half crawled towards the road, his eyes filled with regret and despair.
The other was Zhao Zijing’s prediction drawing; she knelt in a mud pit, facing a dried-up corpse with a Task Battery embedded in its chest. Her own head was pierced by her metal arrow.
"...these pictures, how come they all make no sense," said the Red Driver frowning, "It doesn’t reveal who the killer is at all, only that the death scenes occurred in the bushes."
Zhao Zijing silently stared at her own prediction drawing. Her metal arrows, crafted from Telekinesis-friendly materials, resembled the arrow used by Yongdu in the "Guardians of the Galaxy"; they can be directed at will and possess speed, agility, and destructive power, making them a divine weapon for overpowering the weak.
Only a Transcendent with the same Telekinesis system and far stronger than her could possibly seize the right to use the arrows.
Could it be that there are other people hidden in the bushes? And what about that dried-up corpse.
"If not necessary, do not add entities. There are too many potential possibilities, and without further clues, thinking more would only be wild guessing," casually remarked Li Cheng. Being the owner, he was all too aware of the misleading nature of the Suicide Notebook—it’s better not to fully trust it.
"The urgent matter is to first clarify where the task target location is."
Li Cheng asked the others to stay put and summoned a blue arrow using the radar device.
He then rode on the Bat Wing Motorcycle and drove two kilometers forward on the straight highway, also summoning an arrow using the radar device.
The angles of the two arrows were very close until Li Cheng drove another two kilometers, then a slight deviation appeared.
Li Cheng rode back and explained the situation to the others, "We can basically confirm that the task target location, where we are supposed to install the battery, is in this area, but it’s very far, about seventy to eighty kilometers away.
Does anyone have a means of flight, like summoning a bird-like Pocket Monster, to fly up and scout from a high vantage point?"
"Why don’t you just hand in my ID card," complained the Red Driver, but still honestly took out a Spirit Ball and called out a Pidgeotto to scout from the sky.
Later, the Pidgeotto dived back, calling twice, and the Driver translated, "My Pidgeotto says that this road extends forward without an end in sight. The grassland is also incredibly vast, with the same scenery everywhere, no special landmarks to be found."
Midnight Howl was stunned for a moment, "It just chirped twice, how did you hear so much from that?"
This question seemed to be asked many times to the Driver who reluctantly explained, "Firstly, trainers who have a tacit understanding can partly understand what the Pocket Monsters are saying, and secondly, I have my own unique technique."
The Driver had once drunk a bottle of fine-quality consumable potion called "Doolittle’s Trouble," replicating the classic fairytale [Doctor Doolittle]. After drinking it, he could understand the languages of animals and Pocket Monsters. For more chapters visit N0velFire.ɴet
(Limited to animals with the capacity for language and basic Intelligence; low Intelligence definitely wouldn’t work)
However, being able to understand language was not entirely a good thing.
His Pocket Monsters started demanding conditions upon discovering he could communicate, such as changing the feed every week, wanting to watch TV daily, and demanding a massage bathtub, among other things.
Li Cheng pondered for a moment and examined the tall grass beside the road seriously.
These herbaceous plants resembled Elephant grass originally from Africa, standing upright, about 3 to 4 meters tall, with linear and flat leaves.
Their root arrangement was irregular, not appearing to be artificially planted.
He decisively took out twenty large packages from his stereoscopic warehouse, each packaged in a black plastic bag, wrapped in hemp rope into varying human shapes. They even included children and wheelchair-bound elderly.
Li Cheng put on a raincoat, wore rubber gloves, poured gasoline over these human-shaped packages and then threw them all into the bushes.
He took a drag on his cigarette and casually threw it out; the flame followed the gasoline path and ignited, immediately rising into a towering pillar of fire.
Li Cheng turned around and found everyone’s expressions quite strange. He reassured with a smile, "Don’t worry, they are just dead people."
"What else did you think we were suspecting?!"
Red Driver couldn’t help but complain, if it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t defeat the Ant, he would have thought about reporting this person to the Special Affairs Bureau.
Actually, what’s packed in these plastic bags isn’t corpses, but solid alcohol specifically for igniting fires. Burning dead bodies not only produces a noticeable barbecue smell but also oozes fats that lower the burning efficiency, really not qualified as fuel.
The fire burned for a while, but only cleared a small area.
The water content in this area’s herbaceous plants is high, making it difficult to catch fire. This means that one cannot use gasoline to ignite and destroy a large patch of grass in one go.
"Tsk, thankfully there’s still plenty of time..."
Li Cheng clicked his tongue annoyed, opened the three-dimensional warehouse, and took out polyester fabric, helium gas tanks, aluminum materials, welding tools, etc. He then suited up in a personal Mechanical Exoskeleton and started welding on the spot.
The Mechanical Exoskeleton’s arms each held a welding gun, quickly welding the aluminum into a frame shape; then, scissors were used to cut and sew the polyester fabric, forming a bag with a wider top and narrower bottom.
Lastly equipped with a Propane Burner, in less than fifteen minutes, a crude hot-air balloon was assembled.
Even among a player community brimming with talents from various professions, few are as deft, skilled, and versatile as Li Cheng.
Red Driver marveled, unable to help himself asking, "Where did you learn all this?"
"When I was young, I watched a show from the UK called ’Art Creation’ introduced by the Little Dragon Club, learned from Uncle Neil."
Li Cheng said casually, adjusting the burning rate of the Propane Burner, inadvertently dropping a paper crane on the ground.
This action was very discreet; Midnight Howl didn’t notice it. Zhao Zijing, who usually uses Telekinesis for basic surveillance, did notice but didn’t call attention to it.
British girl Catherine asked, "’Art Creation’? What’s that?"
"Huh?" Li Cheng stopped his work, indignantly said, "You’re from the UK and you haven’t seen ’Art Creation’? That just means you have poor taste, destined to lead a failed life."
Having witnessed Li Cheng’s skills, Catherine didn’t dare to argue, embarrassingly explained, "Maybe it was because my parents were strict when I was young, didn’t let me watch TV too much..."
After this interruption, Li Cheng adjusted the burner properly, but didn’t rush to get everyone onto the hot-air balloon and instead kept busy.
First, he let go of three large hydrogen balloons, their tails tied together with a line hundreds of meters long, the end connected to an aluminum plate deeply inserted into the roadside mud, to anchor it.
This way, a coordinate was established, no matter how far away, one would know where the road is.
Moreover, Li Cheng also hung a mirror on each hydrogen balloon to reflect light.
After all preparations, he gathered everyone to board the hot-air balloon. A Pidgey fanned air beside them (as hot-air balloons have no directional control and require external wind), and they floated towards their target location.
Reaching above the grasslands, the term "endless" suddenly became convincing. The scenery was all the same as far as the eye could see.
The surrounding environment silent and still, the moon in the night sky wasn’t the real Moon but a very distant source of light (Li Cheng had looked with a telescope; it lacked Moon’s craters).
The atmosphere grew more oppressive; Li Cheng took out a laser rangefinder telescope, looking towards the distant hydrogen balloons, calculating the relative distance.
Suddenly, a high-frequency vibration started; Zhao Zijing’s metallic arrows in her boots flew up on their own, vibrating intensely as they changed direction, pointing at the group.
The driver nervously said, "Miss Zhao?!"
Zhao Zijing’s forehead was throbbing with veins, clearly straining.
That metal arrow suddenly escaped her control, shot out, first piercing through a Pidgey, then swiftly flying back, piercing through the hot-air balloon, tearing a large hole.
All this happened in the blink of an eye; Li Cheng just put down the telescope when the hot-air balloon was already losing lift, slowly then rapidly falling towards the grass below.
Mendoza and other ordinary people let out frightened screams, and Li Cheng, who had not worn his Rocket Backpack Exoskeleton to save weight, also fell straight down.
His first thought wasn’t that this was an attack from a Transcendent, but—
Damn, always joking about crash landings, now it’s happening to me.