Men's Mouths Are Lying Devils

The "relaxation" activity The Venerable One had arranged for Salomon was, in essence, also a way to strengthen his mental resilience.

Baron Mordo and Cassilius were somewhat dissatisfied, however. In their eyes, Salomon was far too young. A child his age should not have blood all over his hands.

"Before Salomon was even born, I said that everyone starts from a different point. He was destined never to be immersed in an ordinary life.

Though that is not a good thing, he can only accept it passively. This is a hardship he must endure." The Venerable One pushed the tea toward her two disciples. "To Salomon, nothing is more relaxing than staying in his room and playing games. That is why I indulged him in pursuing his hobbies. Why don't you guess how long he will stay in his room this time after returning from Colins Town?"

Mordo and Cassilius exchanged speechless glances. Hunting Vampires and Werewolves should have been their responsibility, or that of the stewards at the New York Sanctum, yet the Sorcerer Supreme had placed those duties upon Salomon.

They had applied several times, only to be rejected by The Venerable One each time. That inevitably worried them. Especially because every day upon returning, Salomon would bring a pile of seafood back to Kamar-Taj. It made Mordo feel that Salomon was being far too frivolous and underestimated his opponents.

"Relax." The Venerable One saw what they were thinking. "Do not assume that Salomon's performance in the self-defense classes shows his true strength. He was going easy on you. If Salomon removed his Holy Marks and fought you hand-to-hand, neither of you would be his match."

"The Venerable One, what exactly are the Holy Marks?" After thinking for a while, Cassilius raised his question. "I feel that the Holy Marks on Salomon are completely different from Holy Marks in the usual sense. Combined with the anomaly at his birth, I think..."

"Your guess is correct, Cassilius," The Venerable One said. "That is why I appeared there. We absolutely cannot allow any force from the Outer Dimensions to interfere with Earth."

"But could Salomon betray humanity?" Mordo asked with a frown. "The one in the Bible was like that as well. I am worried..."

"No, he will not. Salomon is a genuine human, merely somewhat special." The Sorcerer Supreme said, "Salomon is a nonbeliever. That is important, and I am very satisfied that he holds such a conviction. It is something most people do not possess. They always believe that powerful beings are gods, that worshipping those Extra-dimensional Beings can grant them salvation. Even now, this foolish notion is accepted by most people.

That includes you, Mordo, Cassilius. Even after learning that God is also an Extra-dimensional Being and ceasing to worship him, you are still the same. Faith has carved a hollow into your hearts, and that hollow needs to be filled. The craving will only grow more urgent. There has never been an omnipotent god in this world. If there were, it would certainly be a lie."

The Venerable One's tone gradually became stern. "Furthermore, our relationship with the Vishanti is merely transactional. The Vishanti are only our patrons. Even they are not worthy of worship."

The driver took Salomon cruising through the streets. He switched on the radio, held a beer in one hand, and drove crookedly along. After a while, he turned his head and asked Salomon, who was gazing out the window, "Brother, are you leaving?"

"Yes, I am." Salomon seemed very relaxed, because he had finished everything in Colins Town. All the Werewolves he could find had long since been eliminated, though many people had been implicated.

A Werewolf's child could not possibly be an ordinary human. He did not believe a single word that the Werewolf named Wood had said, nor could Salomon allow any young Werewolf who might bite someone in the future to survive. The town was not large. The driver had already taken him around it several times, and he had downed several cans of beer. The same scenery passed before Salomon again and again. Yet Salomon did not feel impatient. He liked that kind of utterly uninteresting life. Aside from Kamar-Taj, he had no other attachments in this world. The only thing that interested him was magic.

"Are you going back to New York?" he asked.

"No. London's weather suits me better—lazy and gentle. Though it rains often, that is not much of a problem." Salomon unfastened his seat belt and stretched. "Just take me up ahead."

"How are you getting back?" The driver took another swig of beer. The taxi suddenly accelerated, then slowed again. Clearly, he had drunk a little too much and could no longer tell the accelerator from the brake. Salomon was not hurt by this. He remained seated, completely still.

"A secret, brother." Salomon stuffed several more bills into the driver's chest pocket. "You've had too much. Pull over."

"Wait, wait!" Even after stopping the car, the driver kept waving his hands. Salomon watched curiously as he tore a sheet of paper from the compartment, then hurriedly rummaged through his phone before scribbling on it.

After a while, he handed over a small note with a name and a phone number written on it. "I know someone in London. I hear he is pretty capable. You can contact him the next time you take on this kind of job."

Salomon looked at the name on the note and opened his mouth in shock.

Recently, fires had been breaking out frequently in Colins Town. Salomon had burned most of the bodies, while the few Werewolves he had tracked into the wilderness were dumped into the sea. Salomon's hunting spree had also left the local police scrambling. After all, they still had years' worth of unsolved cases piled up, and now entire families in town were being slaughtered one after another without a single survivor.

The media repeatedly played up the local police department's incompetence, making the atmosphere in town somewhat tense.

Yet it had not ultimately affected the residents' lives. It merely added a little conversation to their after-dinner chatter. After all, this was the United States. You could get shot even while walking down the street.

And the driver, the only person who knew the truth... Well, some people simply loved to brag after drinking. The more they drank, the bigger their boasts became.

Now, not only did most of the middle-aged and elderly men in town know that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had visited, even a ninety-year-old fisherman bedridden with paralysis knew all about it. After all, a man who had sailed the seas could not live without alcohol. Even in a wheelchair, he still needed a drink.

Now, everyone in the bars could vividly describe the appearances of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as if they had seen them with their own eyes.

There was a half-bald middle-aged white man with an extremely high hairline, dressed in a suit and wearing a kindly smile; there was also a completely bald Black man, blind in one eye, wearing an eyepatch and a leather jacket.

Others claimed that those people had actually been killed by foreign spies. After a few more glasses of whiskey, the killers would become aliens. In any case, the more outrageous, the better. The quality of the stories varied wildly according to the price of the alcohol.

Naturally, this group of middle-aged and elderly men also made up the core of the local police force. This left the Colins Town police deeply confused and indignant, and they had no choice but to send a letter protesting S.H.I.E.L.D.'s unlawful enforcement actions.

The methods used in these murders were very similar, suggesting that they had been committed by the same person. In fact, this sort of serial murder case should have been reported to the FBI, but the Colins Town police had neither reported what was happening in their jurisdiction to the federal government nor informed S.H.I.E.L.D.

Over the past thirty-one years, murders had occurred in the town every year, yet not a single case had ever been solved.

For that very reason, the police decided to suppress every case—if the media learned that all those incidents had happened before, and people discovered that taxpayer money had been wasted, would the mayor still get any votes? Would the police department still get any funding?

Deceiving those above while concealing matters from those below was a universal practice. Any politician could learn it without being taught. No one wanted the town packed with FBI agents, tabloid reporters, fraudulent psychics, and half-dead television crews.

Bad things had always happened in Maine. Colins Town was not particularly conspicuous.

But the Colins Town police's protest was useless, because S.H.I.E.L.D.'s superiors were not the federal government, but the World Security Council. After receiving the letter from the Colins Town police, S.H.I.E.L.D. was equally bewildered. They had not dispatched any agents to Colins Town—which could only mean someone had impersonated them.

Therefore, an agent who had just finished a mission was sent to Colins Town to investigate.

"Yes, yes, that was exactly the man I saw! A kindly old fellow in a suit with a very high hairline!" an elderly man with white hair, sunglasses, and a cane shouted.

"Dad! You stood up!"

"Huh?"

Please vote! Please invest!

The moral lecture in the previous chapter was practically a reader purge, though the animal protection association definitely fled.