Chapter 76: Health Inspection Team
The other addict saw Richard take down his accomplice with ease.
He clearly started to panic, pulling out a folding knife and brandishing it wildly.
There’s a world of difference between fighting unarmed and fighting someone with a weapon.
Richard almost instinctively plunged his hand into his coat’s side pocket, rubbing his thumb forcefully.
A faint CRACKLE sounded as the fibers broke, and the grass fragments scattered across his palm.
A long, steady breath blew across the fragments in his palm.
Ether surged from his palm.
In an enclosed space, the Fog Wall Technique’s interference field was like pouring water into a cup. The walls of the cup were the boundaries, and even when full, the water couldn’t spill out.
But releasing the Fog Wall Technique in an open area was like splashing water onto a tabletop.
The water would spread out quickly, growing thinner and thinner, but its coverage area would far exceed that of the cup.
The interference field spread outward from his palm at high speed.
The knife-wielder’s eyes rolled back in his head almost instantly, and he began to tremble where he stood.
Richard kicked the knife from his hand and took him down in a few moves.
The Ether continued to expand, covering a radius of about six or seven meters.
Every ordinary person within this range was affected to some degree.
A middle-aged man queuing at a pie stall suddenly felt the world spin. He stumbled and knocked over the iron pot on the stall.
Scalding oil splattered out. The man instinctively jumped back, stepping on the foot of a woman behind him.
The woman shrieked, and the two young children chasing each other beside her simultaneously lost their balance.
One fell to the ground, wailing, while the other ran into a lamppost, getting a red mark on his forehead.
A gentleman in a top hat had just stepped out of the adjacent tobacco shop.
The moment his right foot crossed the threshold, it was as if he had stepped on ice, and his entire body slid sideways.
His top hat flew three paces away, and the pipe in his hand was flung onto the road.
Within a radius of about six or seven meters, with Richard at the center, nearly everyone simultaneously experienced varying degrees of vertigo.
Those who were standing couldn’t stay steady; those who were walking couldn’t move. Several people staggered and collapsed onto the street.
Some were dry-heaving, some were clutching their heads, and others were flailing their limbs.
When Mr. Hutton had taught him the Fog Wall Technique, he had mentioned:
"Short-term perceptual confusion accompanied by mild memory blurring. Can be used to erase traces afterward."
Now, those words surfaced from his memory.
’That’s enough,’ he thought.
’Once these people leave the street, it’ll be enough for the memory of what just happened to become a vague "I think there was a fight."’
But pedestrians farther away had stopped in their tracks.
They were unaffected by the interference field, but they witnessed the extremely bizarre scene from a normal perspective.
There was no explosion, no gunshot, no visible external force.
Just that small area formed an absurd and clear dividing line with the surrounding crowd of normally walking people.
Inside the line, people were in disarray, their wails filling the air;
Outside the line, pedestrians stared, dumbfounded, some already beginning to retreat.
"What’s going on?"
"Oh god... someone collapsed! A lot of people collapsed!"
"Plague! Is it the plague?!"
The moment that last word was spoken, panic erupted like water splashing into a pot of hot oil.
The cholera outbreak twenty years ago had claimed several thousand lives in the North District, and the shadow of that disaster was still etched into the city’s collective memory.
Shouting the word "plague" on a major street was the equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
The crowd began to scatter in all directions.
Some ran while holding their children, some crouched by the roadside, too scared to move, and others rushed into nearby shops and shut the doors.
The pie stall owner abandoned his overturned pot and fled.
From a distance came the sharp, urgent sound of a patrolman’s whistle.
Richard stood at the center of the storm as people fled outwards from him in all directions.
He made a quick assessment.
He had achieved his goals: taking down his enemies and, in the process, erasing the memory of his actions.
For those closest to him who had seen everything, the chaos caused by the Fog Wall Technique had already overwritten their memories of the past ten seconds.
That was the good part.
The bad part was that the panic had spread too far, and the patrolmen were about to arrive.
If he stayed and waited for the patrol, what he’d have to explain would change from "Why did you attack those men?" to "Why did a whole section of the street faint?"
He could justify the former with confidence.
It was self-defense. The two were con artists, and one had even pulled a knife. The pie stall owner could testify, as could the woman with the pushcart.
As for the latter, he had no explanation.
’Leave.’
Richard turned and blended into the scattering pedestrians on the edge of the crowd, keeping his head down and moving with the flow.
Central Avenue was always crowded, and with the panic, there were several times more people running through the street than usual.
A lone teenager mixed in among them was nothing special.
He kept pace with a woman carrying a child beside him, following her as she turned at the next intersection.
The sound of the patrolman’s whistle was blocked by a building behind them.
Richard walked two more blocks, rounded the northern entrance of Grafton Street, and returned home, maintaining a normal, brisk pace.
"You’re back?" his mother called, poking her head out of the kitchen. "Lunch is almost ready. Go wash your hands."
"Okay."
Richard washed his hands several times at the sink. The water was cold, washing away the residual fragments of Ashen Grass from between his fingers.
Evelyn was setting the table. "You left early today."
"Had to run an errand at the bank."
"Oh."
Lunch was a thick potato soup and bread. His mother added an extra egg for him.
Richard put the food in his mouth, bite by bite, but didn’t taste a thing.
His mind was racing, replaying the morning’s events over and over.
The two con artists weren’t a big problem.
He had been rough with them; he estimated they’d at least have mild concussions.
When they woke up, they might not even be sure what had happened to them.
The real problem was the innocent bystanders and the witness testimonies from all over Central Avenue.
If someone investigated further, the direction of the inquiry would sooner or later deviate from the conventional.
And an unconventional investigation would touch upon the world behind the Curtain.
That kind of investigation wouldn’t be handled by regular patrolmen.
He quickly finished his meal and helped his mother carry the dishes back to the kitchen.
"I have to go out for something else. I might be back a little late."
"Don’t be too late. Be back before dark."
"Okay."
He pushed the door open and stepped out. Waste Rock Lane was quiet. Two children were crouched at the base of a wall, poking at an anthill.
Richard had taken less than thirty steps toward Grafton Street.
A black van drove in from the end of the lane.
The vehicle’s timing was perfect. It must have been waiting for him to come out.
Painted in white on the side of the van was: [BRIGHTON MUNICIPAL HEALTH INSPECTION TEAM]
Below it, in smaller letters: [Disease Control · Environmental Sanitization · Public Health Patrol]
Richard’s steps faltered.
He had thought someone from an official body might come, but he never expected them to be so fast.
It had been just over two hours since the incident on Central Avenue.
He had taken a roundabout route through several streets to get home from Central Avenue and hadn’t told anyone his name or address along the way.
’To trace my path back... to find my doorstep within two hours... that would require more than just the regular police system.’
The van stopped in front of him.
The man who stepped out of the back door made Richard’s heart sink.
He could sense the man’s Ether through the flow within his own body.
It wasn’t particularly powerful, but it was far more stable than his own, and had been in operation for much longer.
The man’s hair was mostly gray, plastered sparsely to his scalp.
His cheekbones stretched a thin layer of skin, and his eye sockets were so deep that his eyeballs seemed embedded within them, giving him the look of a living skeleton.
His build was extremely gaunt, with narrow shoulders, long arms, and prominent wrist bones.
This was a physique Richard was familiar with.
His maternal grandfather, Gerald, had this build, as did his cousin, Vincent.
Hunters of the Path of Burning Blood constantly consumed their own nutritional reserves over long years.
In a non-combative state, they maintained a minimum-consumption mode, the outward manifestation of which was that they all appeared exceptionally gaunt.
’This man is a Practitioner, and a Hunter at that—the most powerful combatant among the Low Tiers!’