Tao Qingqing sorted out her thoughts and said to Wen Wen:
"Although the murders that have occurred here seem reasonable, there are still many inexplicable aspects."
"The first is that even in a place with such an absurdly high incidence of cases, it still hasn't attracted the attention of local officials. Everyone just thinks it's an accident."
"The second point of suspicion is that all cases share a commonality: the victims' families are all from out of town. I suspect the killer's intention was to kill people, thus making their out-of-town families return to the small town for mourning, and then round them all up."
"The third is the timing. Everything started when the endless staircase appeared. I suspect the root of everything lies in that endless staircase!"
Tao Qingqing cleared her throat and looked at Wen Wen with a hint of anticipation, saying:
"If all my assumptions are correct, then the killer's target should be all the townspeople, even those who no longer live in this town."
"Why target all the townspeople? The first possibility is a sacrifice for a special bloodline, but the population of Tianshi Town is actually quite mixed. The second is that this is a revenge, revenge against all the people in the entire town!"
A strange light flashed in Wen Wen's eyes, and then he said to Tao Qingqing, "Everything you've said is just your speculation. Come and tell me your deductions after you find some evidence."
With that, he lay down on the bed and turned on the TV to watch a boring soap opera.
Tao Qingqing felt a little wronged. She had thought about these things for a long time. She thought she would receive praise from Wen Wen, but she was dismissed with just a sentence.
Then Tao Qingqing looked at San Zai Er, who was lying on the table. Normally, San Zai Er would climb onto Wen Wen as soon as Wen Wen returned. But today, it had been lying on the table.
...
To verify her ideas, after leaving the vicinity of the church, Wen Wen thoroughly searched the entire town.
He finally discovered that in the entire town, he was indeed the only living creature. The place was so clean that even the small insects hibernating underground had disappeared.
Then Wen Wen returned to the containment facility and conducted multiple tests, finally confirming that he was not affected by any illusions, and that the town he saw was indeed real.
By inferring from the residual feces in the residents' toilets and the leftover food on the dining tables, it was determined that the town's residents had disappeared for at least ten days.
So, Wen Wen had already fallen into an illusion when he first entered the town!
"No... this shouldn't be a simple illusion. At least the people I saw at that time should have been real, and that one hundred catties of roasted melon seeds are still in my spatial ring."
Wen Wen ruffled his hair frantically. He couldn't understand how all this had been accomplished. Illusions didn't make sense, and if it wasn't an illusion, it made even less sense.
"Truth and falsehood, reality and illusion. I should find a professional. I'm afraid it will be difficult to handle this on my own."
Wen Wen opened the Hunter Terminal and reported everything that had happened here to the association. It wouldn't be long before a meta-human specializing in illusions arrived.
While waiting for assistance, Wen Wen withdrew from the town and observed it.
After waiting for a while, Wen Wen's gaze sharpened, as he saw a bird abruptly fly out from the entrance of the town.
Before this bird flew out, Wen Wen hadn't seen any sign of it. It was only when it flew out that Wen Wen noticed its presence.
"So that's how it is... Perhaps in front of me, there is a false town that I cannot reach, and everything in this town remains normal."
"All the life in the town lives within that false town, unable to perceive any abnormality. Outsiders like me will immediately enter that false town, and upon leaving the false town, they will enter the real space."
"And the real town, on the other hand, is only visible to me, the expelled one... To others, this real town is nonexistent."
"But this means that the entire town is within the control range of that thing!"
"It can cast illusions on the entire town that I can't even see through, and it can perfectly superimpose the false town onto the real town within the same space, making people or animals entering and exiting unable to detect any flaws."
If the main body of this containment item was the church containing the endless staircase, then it was not surprising that it could do all this within the church's range.
But the coverage of the entire town was so vast. Even a meta-human at the True Order realm could not construct such a large-scale and high-quality illusion!
After thinking for a moment, Wen Wen began to observe Tao Qingqing through the chain implanted in her body.
No matter how powerful the illusion was, the containment facility's status was ultimately higher than the illusion, so Wen Wen easily saw the situation around Tao Qingqing.
She was indeed still in the hotel, and on the big bed in the hotel lay a familiar figure, which was none other than Wen Wen himself.
"I really hate people impersonating me... but this person should also be part of the illusion, intended to prevent Tao Qingqing from discovering the anomaly here."
"I'd better not tell her for now. That way, I can still use her to observe the situation in the environment. Perhaps if she breaks through the illusion, she will be expelled from the illusion just like me..."
After waiting for an afternoon, Wen Wen received a phone call. The voice on the phone was speaking in a accented federal common tongue, and Wen Wen immediately recognized it as the accent of the Indian subcontinent region.
"Respected Ghost Detective, I am the Hunter 'Mirage,' and I will be outside Tianshi Town shortly."
"How many people are you bringing?"
Mirage was silent for a moment and said, "Well... one motorcycle."
Wen Wen didn't quite understand the meaning of this statement. How many people could be on one motorcycle? Did the Hunter Association only send two people?
Soon, Wen Wen realized he was being a bit naive. One motorcycle from the Indian subcontinent region could not be judged by common sense.
A motorcycle seven to eight meters high was swaying its way over. The motorcycle itself was only a little over a meter high; the remaining six to seven meters were all people...
Wen Wen stared dumbfounded as the motorcycle drove up to him and stopped. He stood there, petrified, watching more than forty people disembark one after another from the motorcycle.
Among these forty-odd people were five meta-humans, a complete support team, and various kinds of equipment.
"You... you all came like this?" Wen Wen asked, his mouth twitching.
A man with a scarf wrapped around his head and slightly darker skin than normal said, "That's right, this is how we came."
"Don't mind our strange posture; it's actually very comfortable because this motorcycle is a containment item."
"Once you get on this motorcycle, your weight will temporarily disappear, and no matter what posture you adopt, you won't feel uncomfortable, nor will it affect the motorcycle's operation..."
Wen Wen swallowed his saliva and said, "The problem is, how do ordinary people perceive you arriving like this?"
Mirage laughed and said, "To ordinary people, this is just a normal motorcycle. Let me reintroduce myself. My name is Mo Ya Di, codenamed Mirage, and I am an illusion master!"