Chapter 1368: The Call of the Stars (Part 11)

On the way to find a shelter, Jarvis's terrain scanning function was a huge help. They didn't have to check house by house to see if there were monsters inside; they only needed to stand on the street and let Jarvis scan, and they could find all the empty houses.

And before entering a certain room, Riley would use his spider-sense to judge whether the room was safe, but after a few times, everyone discovered that this trick wasn't that useful either.

"My spider-sense has been ringing. No matter which room you want to walk into, it's just ringing!" Riley frowned, looking very painful. He shook his head and said: "There's no safe place here at all!"

"Then is there any change in the intensity of the spider-sense?" Jarvis was more inclined to look for variables.

"I can't hear clearly." Riley clutched his head and said: "I can't even hear you talking clearly anymore. There must be something, there must be something constantly threatening it... Where? Where is it?"

By the end, Riley had turned into a painful groan. Xu Shangqi hurriedly went over to support him and said: "You'd better try to block out that keen feeling of yours."

"I can't, I can warn of danger in advance, I can..."

"You can my ass!" Xu Shangqi decisively interrupted him and said: "You've driven yourself crazy with your warnings, so what are we supposed to do? Hurry up! Shut down your brain! Immediately, right now!"

"Riley, my vital signs analysis equipment shows that your heartbeat and blood flow rate are abnormal, and I also think you should stop using your spider-sense ability."

"I can't stop it!" Riley gritted his teeth and said: "This is my instinct, just like you need to eat and drink water. I can't block it!"

Xu Shangqi supported him as they walked forward and said: "Then try not to think about it as much as possible. Don't think of it as a danger warning; just think of it as your ear having been punched, and now it's ringing."

Several people communicated while walking forward along the south side of the intersection. When they came to another street, Jarvis blinked and said: "This should be Warren Street in Brooklyn. There should be a bar ahead, and there is a cellar under the bar."

"This is New York???" Wanda said in surprise. She looked around, but didn't see those iconic tall buildings. Everywhere she looked was a scene of ruin.

"I'm afraid so." Jarvis nodded and said: "Although it's a pity, I'm afraid New York has already been destroyed."

And Riley, whose thoughts were chaotic, instinctively looked in one direction, wanting to see the iconic building that had always stood on the New York skyline, wanting to see that familiar name, but unfortunately, Stark Tower was gone too.

Several people walked to the entrance of the bar Jarvis mentioned. There were no monsters in the bar, but there were many human corpses, and they were all incomplete—either missing the upper body or the lower body, and some had been disemboweled, with their internal organs exposed.

"Judging from the time of death, the disaster may have lasted for at least three months." Jarvis still used a calm tone.

Riley turned his head away, not wanting to look at the corpses that had rotted beyond recognition. Wanda covered her mouth and nose in discomfort. Scarlet Witch could be considered well-informed, but she had really never seen this scene before.

"Judging from the monsters we saw earlier, it seems they were transformed from humans, but why didn't these people turn into monsters? Or have the monsters already detached from their bodies?" Xu Shangqi said to himself.

He keenly discovered some mucus on the ground that shouldn't belong to humans. Judging from the direction of the mucus, the monster with tentacles should have crawled out of the bar's front door. Where did they go?

Even if Xu Shangqi hadn't been in New York for long, he knew that after a disaster broke out, the population density of such a large city determined the number of victims, which was unimaginable. Therefore, although there were many corpses here in the bar, they seemed a bit too few.

Not to mention, they hadn't encountered many monsters along the way, and many were like the monster Xu Shangqi encountered—looking scary but without a strong desire to attack. After they bypassed them, they didn't catch up, which wasn't normal at all.

Thinking this way, the group walked to the back door of the bar, and sure enough, they saw a door leading to the cellar in the backyard.

And after opening the circular cellar door on the ground, Riley took a look inside, and then let out another painful scream. He clutched his head and said: "No! Don't go down! Can't go down, there will be danger!!"

"..."

Jarvis frowned slightly, tapped his temple again, confirmed the scene he saw in the scanning device, and then said: "There's nothing inside, just some goods piled up. It should be safe."

"Actually, I don't advocate taking refuge in a place with only one exit either." Jarvis continued to analyze: "Because once an accident occurs, we will lose the strategic space for avoiding danger, but guarding the exit isn't difficult for us, so I think this place can..."

"No!!" Riley raised his tone. He grabbed the area under his eyelids with his fingers and said in a sharp tone: "Can't go down!!"

"..."

"What exactly is wrong, Riley?" Xu Shangqi grabbed the waist of Riley, who was slowly kneeling down, and asked: "What did you see?"

"I can't see, I can't see anything, I can't see! I can only hear!" Riley just kept repeating this sentence. He shook his head vigorously and said: "Can't go into the darkness, can't go into the enclosed... can't stop..."

Xu Shangqi, who was holding Riley, could clearly feel Riley shivering all over. His dilated pupils and trembling lips also indicated that he was trapped in some kind of terrifying imagination.

And Wanda stared blankly at the pitch-black cellar entrance. The cellar entrance became more and more obvious in her field of vision, as if a hole had been branded into her eyes.

Her body felt a skewed pushing force, like a gust of swirling wind.

No, compared to wind, it was more like a water current. Wanda felt a kind of thick substance wrapping around her, wanting to make her toes leave the ground and drift with the current.

What followed was a dizzying sensation of weightlessness. She felt as if she was being sucked into that pitch-black hole, like dregs being flushed down the drain of a washbasin.

"Wanda! Wanda!! Wake up!!!!"

Wanda woke up abruptly, and then found that the few people around were all lying on the ground. Xu Shangqi was grabbing a protruding floor tile on the ground, his other hand pulling Riley, and Jarvis was supporting himself at the corner of the building, the veins on his arms bulging.

"Wanda, what's wrong with you?! Why did the Chaos power get out of control?!"

"I, I don't know..." Wanda blinked. She looked down and saw the sand and soil on the ground under her feet piling up into a vortex pattern, and the very center of the vortex was the pitch-black cellar entrance.

The violent Chaos power hadn't completely calmed down. Apparently, Wanda had just used her magic to create a storm here, almost sucking everyone into the cellar entrance.

Wanda kept panting and said: "I have no memory, I just, I just saw some hallucinations... the water current sucked us all in."

"Calm down, Wanda, you must not lose control." Xu Shangqi bent over and walked over, grabbed the cellar cover that had just been blown open, and said: "This cellar definitely has a problem. We'd better not go down."

"Then where are we going?" Jarvis frowned and asked.

"The roof." Xu Shangqi looked into Jarvis's eyes and said: "We have to go against the premonition of danger. The more peculiar and attractive a place is, the more we should go in the opposite direction."

Before Jarvis could speak, Xu Shangqi said in a somewhat irritable tone, speaking very fast: "Whatever these superheroes do when they encounter certain things, we have to do the opposite."

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"Now, whether it's the cellar entrance that will trigger loss of control, or the room that makes Riley's spider-sense ring non-stop, I have no curiosity about it at all, I just want to stay as far away from them as possible."

"So now, let's find an open roof and wait until dawn. From now on, my brain is shut down. Before seeing the sun, no matter what I hear, see, or encounter, my brain will not work! I advise you to do the same!"

Wanda looked at Xu Shangqi's somewhat neurotic reaction and pursed her lips. When several people were heading to the roof of the bar via the iron stairs outside the building, Wanda turned back and asked Xu Shangqi: "I remember you said you came from S. H. I. E. L. D., right?"

Xu Shangqi nodded, and then Wanda asked again: "You are an Oriental, and you went to the S. H. I. E. L. D. Spear Bureau for intensive training, which means you also have a relationship with the S. H. I. E. L. D. Spear Bureau?"

Xu Shangqi nodded again. Wanda's eyes changed a bit. She deliberately fell behind a bit, then patted Xu Shangqi on the shoulder with her hand and said: "No matter what you have been through before, that's all in the past. You have to believe that we all have the ability to protect ourselves, and we will definitely return safely."

Xu Shangqi looked at Wanda. He knew that this young witch had probably misunderstood something, but it was quite good to let her misunderstand like this.

Although Xu Shangqi didn't know if he could play the role of a bitter and experienced agent, he knew that if he didn't have the leadership of this team, then this group of super-huskies would definitely rush into the cesspit headlong, without looking back, at 100 kilometers per hour.

Xu Shangqi knew that he actually didn't have any experience in dealing with danger, but his greatest advantage was that he used to be an ordinary person.

And judging from the current situation where Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man were almost losing control, this world simply couldn't be played in "no-hit" mode. Only by being cowardly enough, cautious enough, and having a strong desire to survive, was it possible to survive, which was exactly what Xu Shangqi was good at.

The thing ordinary people are best at is living, and living by any means necessary.

The bar wasn't high, only three floors, but because the first floor had a high ceiling, it was equivalent to the fourth floor of a residential building. There were railings around, but more than half of the railings were damaged. Except for some cigarette butts, wine bottles, and tree branches and dead leaves, there was nothing else.

Several people climbed onto the roof. Jarvis looked around at the tall buildings and said: "I think we should go to a higher place. This is conducive to us observing the surrounding terrain and deciding the action route for tomorrow."

"That will cause us to fall." Xu Shangqi said very seriously. Just as Jarvis was about to open his mouth to refute, Xu Shangqi increased his tone and repeated it again: "As long as we climb a tall building, someone will definitely fall for various reasons, so we'll just stay here and go nowhere."

Jarvis opened his mouth. He had no idea where Xu Shangqi's very firm and certain attitude came from.

But soon, he discovered that Xu Shangqi was right, because Wanda seemed to have been bewitched again and started walking toward the edge of the damaged railing.

"Hey, Wanda, where are you going?" Jarvis rushed over and grabbed the young witch's arm, but Wanda flicked her tongue vaguely and said: "I'm going, I'm going to patrol, downstairs, downstairs maybe there is..."

Another hand grabbed Wanda's arm faster, then directly hugged her waist, gave her a back-body throw, threw Wanda back to the center of the roof, and Xu Shangqi clapped his hands and said.

"There's nothing downstairs..."

"But..."

"No!" ===== CHAPTER 1369 =====

"Hey, Wanda, where are you going?" Jarvis rushed over and grabbed the arm of the young lady witch, but Wanda flicked her tongue somewhat vaguely and said: "I'm going, I'm going to patrol, downstairs, downstairs there might be..."

Another hand grabbed Wanda's arm faster, then directly hugged her waist, and with a backward throw, tossed Wanda back to the center of the rooftop. Xu Shangqi clapped his hands and said.

"There is nothing downstairs..."

"But..."

"Nothing!"