Mr. Melancholy Wants To Live A Peaceful Life

CHAPTER 38

Everyone put on the Protectors' specialized masks for going out and hurried to the park. When they was the verdant woods, their faces all filled with disbelief. The woods that two hours before had been in total disarray were now more even lush than in the past. 

The remains of the scorched vegetation had been absorbed by the soil, providing enough nutrients for the grass to grow some centimeters taller than before. They didn't know whether this was returning energy or new energy. Lian Yufan pressed his palm to a tree and quietly felt the energy flow.

"It's not a restorative energy," Lian Yufan said. 

"The nature of restorative energy is to look back, to regress, a sort of energy that goes against the current. The energy remaining in these trees is full of vitality. It's life energy."

"So who did this?" Luo Huai said in wonder.

Luo Huai went up to the old tree and poked the trunk with a finger. A white light appeared in his palm. Luo Huai pressed the white light to the center of his forehead and quietly read the tree's memory.

He "saw" a black-cloaked man standing in the woods, putting his hand on the old tree's age rings. Through the old tree's "memory," Luo Huai felt the power of the life force surging through it. When the woods had come back to life, Luo Huai wanted to continue watching, but he felt a mighty force of refusal. It was the tree instinctively forbidding him to read. If he pried and collected the memory by force, his mind would be injured. 

Luo Huai placed the white light back in the tree, returning the memory, and said to everyone, "A black-cloaked man restored this place. That's all I saw. The tree won't let me see the rest."

"There are memories that you can't collect?" Lian Yufan asked in a not very pleasant voice. Luo Huai quietly looked at Lian Yufan and gave no explanation.

It was Director Xiao who said, "Luo Huai can in fact read and collect the memories of others, but if a person doesn't want to forget a segment of memory no matter what, if the intensity of their wish reaches a certain level, then Luo Huai can't collect it. If he collects a memory by force, Luo Huai's own mind will be controlled by that consciousness."

"So if a person's memory has been collected, they didn't resist very hard?" Lian Yufan whispered. Director Xiao didn't want to get too involved with this topic. 

He said, "If this was done by the black-cloaked man, then that's good news for us. If the target of the Destroyers' mission really is what he says, someone who cherishes life and is willing to respect the social order, then at present we only need to concentrate on dealing with Destroyer 192.

"The most pressing matter is to locate Destroyer 192's whereabouts. Captain Lian, you're an expert in investigation. What ideas do you have?"

Lian Yufan forced his train of thought aside. He considered and said, "I've already seen everyone who approached the manmade lake and the little boy Junjun during the day. The flow of people through the Xuyang District Park is very large. It's hard to fix on one particular person out of over a thousand. We have no time—the fastest way to investigate now is to lure the snake out of its hole."

"What are you planning to do?" You Zhengping asked.

"We have Yuan Luori and Zhen Li in our hands. Arrange for them to make it appear as though they've contacted the black-cloaked man, with one of our people disguised as the black-cloaked man. Destroyer 192's character is aggressive and extreme. He believes he won't lose to anyone in a one-on-one fight. He's too self-confident. So when the black-cloaked man appears, he's likely to be present," Lian Yufan said.

"That makes sense. We can chose a remote place, where people are as scattered as at the amusement park. That amusement park is a good place." You Zhengping thought that the amusement park had been through it before and would be good to offer up again.