Within a small radius around Wen Wen, all the mist dispersed, leaving only a thin layer.
The grotesque monsters, all remaining in the vicinity, lowered their bodies and heads, showing their submission to Wen Wen!
The word Wen Wen uttered carried no supernatural power, yet the mist obediently followed.
"This... Hahahaha."
Wen Wen suddenly burst into laughter, collapsing onto the ground.
"Interesting, truly interesting. Perhaps Bai Du once retained some lingering aura of the facility, and like me, actively initiated an attack, which is why he believed this mist was hostile to the facility's aura."
"But he failed to realize that it was actually showing affection towards the facility."
"Even if he had realized it, it would have been useless. By the time he discovered this thing, his permissions for the facility had already been revoked, making it impossible for him to command the mist like I can."
Wen Wen's interest piqued, he said to the monsters, "Line up properly."
The monsters immediately obeyed Wen Wen's will, lining up neatly according to their size.
"Attention forward, turn left, march..."
No matter how demanding Wen Wen's requests were, the monsters could satisfy them all. If the monsters imprisoned in the facility were as obedient as these, Wen Wen wouldn't need to study any beast tamer manuals.
However, even though they were very obedient, Wen Wen eventually grew tired of playing after a while.
This was because these monsters lacked intelligence; they were merely like puppets, only able to blindly follow Wen Wen's commands.
"Disperse, all of you. You, and the mist and monsters in this city..."
To Wen Wen's surprise, upon hearing his command, the monsters merely retreated back into the mist, not vanishing as Wen Wen had expected.
"Decompose, dissipate, perish on the spot!"
Wen Wen tried several other phrases, but none achieved the desired effect. He beckoned to the mist outside, and it all returned.
After attempting for a while, Wen Wen realized that he could only control the mist and the monsters within a certain range.
He could neither completely dissipate the mist in an area, always leaving a thin layer, nor could he compel the monsters to fight amongst themselves.
This meant he only possessed certain permissions within the mist, but could not act with complete impunity. It was like using a keyboard to control a character in a game, but being unable to use that character to destroy the game itself.
This implied that once the mist thickened to a certain extent, it would still bring a great disaster to Neim City, which was not what Wen Wen wanted to see.
"So, the only way to stop this mist now is to transfer the Mist Box and Stein into the facility. Since the Mist Box can obey the facility's commands, it should undergo new changes after entering the facility."
"Tell me, where is the main body of the Mist Box?"
The pure white mist, like clouds, simply formed the shape of Neim City. Then, a cloud shaped like a box began to move, and judging by its trajectory, it was heading towards Wen Wen.
Wen Wen's lips curled, and he sat directly on the ground, saying, "It seems I don't need to go looking for it."
...
As soon as Stein pushed open the inn door, he frowned. The outside was a blinding white, making it difficult for him to see anything.
After obtaining the Mist Box, he had immediately come to the inn. He had been preoccupied with the matter of the box and hadn't noticed how the outside had changed.
He wasn't afraid of the mist itself, but with the mist having thickened to this extent, it would be difficult for him to find Wen Wen.
That's right, he had decided to go to Wen Wen and walk into a trap, as it was his only possible way to survive.
Although he could deceive the Hound of Tings using a secret technique, it was merely a deception, and it was nearing its limit.
Initially, the Hound attacked only once every few days. Now, it attacked every two to three hours. According to family records, when the interval shortened to within an hour, the Hound would no longer be deceived, and he would surely die.
Through experiments conducted by his ancestors, the Markle family had discovered that using deception could at best extend one's life by two months, but the entire process would result in the deaths of at least dozens of people.
Therefore, their family heirloom stipulated that this method should not be used to evade the Hound, and the method for deceiving the Hound was not passed down.
But just because they didn't pass down this secret technique didn't mean other surviving clans hadn't. Thus, Stein had eventually learned this method.
If Stein wanted to find Wen Wen, his only option now was to find Wen Wen before the mist completely enveloped everything.
Unfortunately, in Stein's current state, any time travel exceeding five minutes would inevitably lead to him encountering the Hound again. If he could barely handle one, two would surely kill him.
As Stein stood at the doorway, hesitating, on a rooftop a hundred meters away, a woman with golden hair adorned with a flower crown raised a longbow and aimed at Stein.
This woman was one of the ten ranked superhumans participating in the exchange meeting from the Golden Eagle Grand Region. Her ability allowed her to hit any target from any distance, and even this mist could not prevent her from locking onto her target.
Relying on this skill, she was the first to locate Stein amidst the vast fog.
She drew her bow,蓄力 (xù lì - gather strength), and then released her fingers. An arrow, glowing with emerald light, shot towards Stein like a green meteor.
Apart from his time-traveling ability, Stein possessed no other superpowers. Faced with this long-range shot, he didn't even have time to react.
Just as Stein was about to die from the arrow, a kangaroo-like monster leaped high into the air and took the arrow for him!
"Where did that monster come from?"
The woman's brows furrowed. Her arrow was not something that just anyone could block. The monster had already been killed by the shot, but she distinctly saw more monsters gathering around Stein.
If each monster were to block an arrow like the previous one, she wouldn't be able to kill Stein in a short period.
And for Stein, a time traveler pursued by the Hound, failing to kill him quickly meant he could kill her without any ability to resist!
The woman had actually overthought things. Although the Hound was monstrous, Stein himself wasn't that formidable and couldn't pinpoint a superhuman so far away.
Stein didn't even know he had just narrowly escaped death. He was still contemplating how to find Wen Wen and turn himself in.
Suddenly, the mist in front of Stein parted, and a horse-like monster emerged, prostrating itself on the ground, as if intending to lead Stein somewhere.