After staring at the spot where the woman had disappeared for a few seconds, Pacheco turned to Barton and said:
"Let's go back to the Foundation."
"Not going to the suburbs?" Barton asked instinctively.
Pacheco said with a smile:
"Didn't you already send the bottle out?"
There's no need to go to the suburbs anymore.
"Perhaps his real purpose was to get us to hand the bottle over to that lady from the Tamara Family, and everything he said before was Lies."
"Of course, none of this concerns us. From now on, who lives and who dies is not innocent; we just need to monitor them to prevent their fighting from affecting ordinary people. This will be handled by the police, not by the Foundation or the ' Compliance Department.'"
"Furnar doesn't seem capable of pulling off a trick of this magnitude..." Barton muttered to himself, then turned and headed for the door without asking any further questions.
Frankly, returning to the Foundation is the answer he wants most right now.
His earlier question about whether he wanted to go to the suburbs was just a momentary impulse, a long-standing problem he hasn't been able to overcome.
Back at the Foundation, Barton spent the day with a touch of trepidation, welcoming evening amidst the tedious and repetitive routine.
I used to think life was too monotonous, but now I realize how precious monotonous life is. Sigh, I just hope that everything will be like this afternoon, without any unexpected events... May God protect me... Barton stopped at his front door, stretched out his right hand, made a fist, and lightly tapped his left chest.
After finishing his prayer, he Door Opening the door, took off his hat and coat, and handed them to his wife who came to greet him.
"What's wrong with Furnar?" his wife asked cautiously.
Barton replied calmly and nonchalantly:
He has offended some people and is being tracked. The police have taken over the case.
"If Furnar visits again afterward, do not let him in, and remember to send someone to notify the police afterwards."
Barton's wife breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that the police had intervened.
"OK."
After dinner and playing with the children for a while, Barton made an excuse to go into the study and sat near the window.
He needed some alone time to allow his emotions to fully calm down and to recover from the panic caused by the Furnar incident.
So Barton took a cigarette from the drawer and put it in his mouth.
He wasn't a heavy smoker, but sometimes he needed to keep a pack of cigarettes at home and on his person for social occasions.
He struck a match, lit a cigarette, Barton took a deep drag.
He immediately leaned back in his chair, watching the smoke slowly billow out of his mouth and nose.
The pale white gas quickly spread outwards, reminding Barton of the mist that had been billowing from Furnar's mouth and nose.
He could faintly smell the scent of blood.
For Barton, this was not a particularly surprising discovery, since Furnar had once stayed in his study and must have left some traces that an ordinary person would not have noticed.
Barton hadn't smelled it before simply because he was too nervous and flustered; his attention was focused on Furnar's whereabouts and the writings he left behind.
Of course, the faint smell of blood in the study, compared to the hotel room and the previous ruins, was also one of the reasons.
As the cigarette smoke diffused freely, Barton's eyes suddenly narrowed.
He had a bad feeling about him!
In an instant, the pale white gas contracted in one direction, carrying a bloody smell, and formed a human figure.
The figure's upper body was normal, with a distinctive red nose; it was none other than the Archaeologist, Furnar.
His lower body was entirely composed of swirling gas, resembling Monster depicted by smoke.
"F, Furnar..." Barton cried out, almost suffocating.
His voice echoed in the study, but failed to penetrate the walls.
"Haha, I have gained immortality. As long as there is any mist left, I can come back to life!" Furnar laughed loudly.
Compared to before, his expression became increasingly manic, and his eyes even seemed to have taken on a pale white hue.
"He... he just died once?" This thought flashed through Barton's mind.
Immediately afterwards, he forced himself to remain calm and said:
Is there anything I can help you with?
As he spoke, Barton impulsively tried to stand up, only to find, to his dismay, that his body was covered by a cold, thin mist, and he had lost most of his senses.
Furnar stopped laughing, looked into Barton's eyes, and said, word by word:
"You didn't take that bottle to the countryside."
Although Barton was impulsive, he knew he couldn't answer the question directly, so he quickly racked his brains, looking for a better way to handle it.
A few seconds later, before Furnar could speak again, he changed the subject:
Why did you convert to that faith?
"Aren't you a faithful believer in the Lord?"
Furnar paused for a moment, then his expression gradually became fanatical:
I saw a wider, more vast world.
"Compared to that, the planet we live on now is like a grain of sand in the desert."
There are countless civilizations there, and ancient sites left over from hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of years ago.
"This is what the universe truly looks like!"
Seeing that his own words had caused a negative change in Furnar, Barton shut his mouth and began to think about topics that were neither sensitive nor offensive but would still interest the other person.
He took a slow breath and said:
"Besides the altar, what else did you find at that Quaternary site?"
How much do you know about the Tamara Family?
Furnar's eyes brightened slightly:
The Tamara Family has changed its coat of arms once.
"This means they encountered a rather significant event."
As he spoke, the Archaeologist, with the upper body of a human and the lower body of mist, stretched out his right hand and used the smoke to outline two symbols in mid-air.
The first symbol consists of a layer of thorns, a shield wall, and a longsword inserted vertically into them; the main body of the second symbol is a double door, with the vertical longsword acting as the gap between the doors.
As a professional historian who could barely be considered a minor figure, Barton immediately recalled the words of that Tamara Family member:
"They are them, and we are us."
" The Tamara Family has ever split?" Barton blurted out.
"That's what I think." Furnar smiled with satisfaction, then leaned closer to Barton, his expression fervent, and said, "Your mind is more alluring than I imagined, which is the best complement to me. Relax, your thoughts will merge with mine, witnessing together one great civilization after another."
He looked very weak and needed to recover.
Barton's heart pounded. He tried desperately to get away from the other man, but no matter how hard he struggled, his body felt frozen and he couldn't move at all.
Just as Furnar's face was close to his eyes, Barton suddenly felt a sharp pain in his right hand, and instantly regained consciousness.
The pale white mist and the Monster Furnar before him vanished as if they had never existed.
Barton looked down blankly and saw that the cigarette he was holding in his right hand had burned to the end, scorching his fingers.
"Was that just a dream? But it felt so real." Barton threw away his cigarette, followed his Spirituality instincts, stood up, and walked to the window.
His gaze drifted to the street outside, where he saw many pedestrians passing by in the deepening darkness under the lit gas streetlights, trying to get home as quickly as possible.
Among them, an ordinary golden retriever was strolling along casually.