hotmtlnovel Chapter 4231 Possession by Evil Spirits (1)
Chapter 4231 Possession by Evil Spirits (1)
Chapter 4231 Possession by an Evil Spirit (Part 11)
This was just a perfectly normal greeting, but the agent keenly noticed the difference: Aunt Kane said "hot water," not "hot tea" or "hot coffee." That was very strange.
Of course, in Eastern cultures, it's best for patients to avoid tea and coffee. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that tea can counteract the effects of medicine, and milk should also be avoided because it's considered a "trigger food." It's best to drink only hot water.
However, this is not the case in Western culture. Westerners do not have a tradition of drinking hot water. This is actually due to historical reasons: both Eastern and Western people have faced the problem of how to sterilize and disinfect water. They both knew that drinking raw water directly would cause problems, so they developed different methods to produce safe drinking water.
Easterners chose the simplest method: boiling water. However, this was also thanks to the earlier development of pottery and ironware in the East, which allowed them to cook more efficiently.
Westerners, on the other hand, brew water into pale beer. This fermentation process kills most harmful bacteria and viruses. Most people in the Middle Ages drank only pale beer, which contributed to their long-standing beer culture.
This is why they don't have the habit of only drinking hot water. In their view, boiling water is for brewing something, such as tea or coffee. And they believe that such stimulating substances are beneficial to health.
Therefore, when there is a sick person, people often greet each other with "a cup of hot tea" or "a cup of hot coffee," rather than saying "drink more hot water" as people in the East would.
The agents observed no other Eastern traits in Aunt Kane, not even a trace. Given the vast differences between Eastern and Western cultures, anyone who has had contact with the other is bound to be influenced by them. However, Aunt Kane showed no such signs, proving that her desire for hot water was not due to any understanding of Eastern culture.
So, could it be because of poverty? The detective thought that was unlikely. This brings us to another aspect of Western culture, specifically American culture. In layman's terms, it's about "sacrificing one's pride for the sake of saving face."
The two most common misconceptions are that "America has no culture of personal connections" and "America has no culture of saving face." In fact, quite the opposite is true; the United States is the region with the most pronounced culture of personal connections and saving face, bar none.
Due to class segregation policies, people of one class living in the same area had to maintain good relationships with everyone in that area, such as neighbors, the police station, and city officials, in order to ensure their continued survival in the community.
To build a good relationship with this group, you must make them feel that you are one of them. Your clothes, speech, behavior, house, car, and lifestyle must all be the same as everyone else's.
If you live in a middle-class neighborhood, you absolutely cannot be seen shopping in budget neighborhoods; if you live in an affluent area, you must drive a nice car. And this behavior needs to permeate every aspect of your life, including how you treat guests.
In middle-class communities, the tea and coffee served at banquets must be of high quality, and the wine must also be of a certain standard. If you are perceived as stingy, you're completely finished; you might even be kicked out of the community and sent to live in the slums.
Therefore, Americans have long developed a habit of spending large sums of money to maintain their social standing. Only in this way can they preserve their current social class; otherwise, they will inevitably face a terrible decline in social status.
In Eastern cultures, people are happy to buy things that are good quality, inexpensive, and practical; but this is not the case in American culture. At least on the surface, they cannot pursue good quality at a low price, but rather "not the best, but the most expensive." They must spend enough money, even if it's wasteful, to show that they deserve their current social class. This is also the main culprit for Americans having almost no savings, because the maintenance cost of these "face-saving" projects is too high, and it's a percentage-based damage; even Bill Gates would lose half his health from this.
What's even more frightening is that the standards for the middle class in the United States are shockingly low—yes, low, not high. As long as you have a fixed place to live, no matter how dilapidated or old the house is, you're considered middle class, and you have to spend a lot of money to maintain appearances.
Furthermore, although Aunt Kane's house was a bit old, it was clearly located in a good area; her own attire was also quite decent, further indicating that she came from a wealthy family. Such a person would be very familiar with American customs; her long-term experience would subconsciously lead her to conform to these rules, and she couldn't possibly be ignorant of hospitality. Therefore, she should understand that, under these rules, simply serving hot water to a guest would be extremely impolite.
Even without tea or coffee, a glass of milk shouldn't be too difficult, right? Dairy products are indeed relatively cheap in Europe and America, and if you're not looking for organic options, you can drink as much as you want. Hot milk is practically the bare minimum.
The agent suspected that Aunt Kane might have misspoke. But shortly after they went upstairs, Aunt Kane came up and knocked on the door, bringing in a cup of hot water. The agent was somewhat bewildered when he received the hot water; in all his years in America, this was truly the first time he had received hot water from a family, and it actually gave him a feeling of home.
He quickly shook his head, exchanged a few polite words with Aunt Kane, and closed the door. However, the agent noticed another detail: Aunt Kane didn't seem worried about her daughter at all.
The United States is not a very open country, especially in these inland states. Some places are even more conservative than those in the East. They're not exactly strict about gender segregation, but they're pretty much the same. That stereotypical image of openness is basically limited to a few coastal cities; conservatism is the norm.
Linda, a young woman, went out with the agent all day, and Aunt Kane didn't even ask her a single question. That could be explained as Aunt Kane trying to set them up; but now, the agent and the hunter, two grown men, are alone with him in a room, a lone man and woman, and Aunt Kane doesn't even ask a question. That doesn't seem normal at all, does it?
Moreover, the agent had a vague feeling that Aunt Kane seemed quite pleased with the situation; there's no way to matchmake someone like this, is there?
As his doubts deepened, the detective had a growing feeling that he was about to find the thread leading to the truth. However, his main task at the moment was to appease Linda.
Perhaps there's a strange attraction between the morbid and the morbid, because Linda seemed genuinely more interested in the hunt. She walked to the chair by the window, sat down, and stared intently at the hunt.
Hunter slowly sat up in bed. He sat on the edge of the bed, lowered his head slightly, looked up at Linda, sniffed softly, and then said, "You went fishing?"
Linda nodded. She pursed her lips tightly and kept fidgeting with her clothes, looking both nervous and angry.
Are the fish alright?
“No,” Linda said suddenly, coldly. “They’re not good at all.”
“No, I think they’re fine.” The Hunter’s tone was slow, and the pauses between each sentence were long, as if he were a little out of breath.
“What’s so good about them?” Linda raised her voice. “They can only stay in the water; they can’t get out at all. I even killed one today—I speared it! And I stomped on all the fish eggs!”
“You’ve become very much like them,” the hunter said, catching his breath. “Does it make you happy to do to fish what they did to you back then?”
Linda seemed to freeze in place. The agents could see her soul begin to leave her body, as if she were trapped in some terrible nightmare. After a while, she awoke, seemingly having lost a portion of her memory.
"I should have brought that fish back so we could have fish soup."
“You know you can’t,” the hunter said again. “Your mother won’t agree. You know why.”
Linda started to drift away again, then after a long pause she came back to her senses, and just as she was about to say something more, the Hunter continued, "You know it wasn't a dream, it wasn't fake, it really happened. His body and tombstone are still there..."
"No!!!" Linda screamed. She was like a machine that had been suddenly activated but malfunctioned, and began to operate in a chaotic manner.
She suddenly stood up, then reached out and smashed the candlestick on the table next to her, and was about to rush up and beat the hunter.
The detective was stunned; he had never seen anyone so brave. But of course, he couldn't let Linda do this. Even if the hunter was injured, this girl couldn't just stage an accident for him. If the characters in this story died, they wouldn't be far from dying either.
He rushed over and grabbed Linda, only to find that she was stronger than he had imagined, and he couldn't quite hold her down.
The agent cursed inwardly: "You won't let me remove the muscle restriction, but you let the characters in the story remove it! So it's okay for characters to be mentally ill, but not for me? Is this restriction system crazy?!"
After much effort, they finally subdued her. Linda was like a corpse again. But then the hunter turned back to look at him and said, "Can you tell the difference between a human and a fish?"
Linda turned her head stiffly to look at him, like a robot. The Hunter turned back and said, "There are always people in this world who can't tell the difference, aren't there?"
In those few seconds, the girl suddenly went from being a furious berserker to being filled with sadness. As the agent got up, Linda rolled over, lay on her back on the other side of the bed, and began to weep silently.
She kept wiping her tears with her hands, but she couldn't wipe them away. She seemed very angry about it, so she sat up and started wiping her face haphazardly with the skirt of her pinafore dress until her face was a mess. Then she sat down silently and let the tears flow.
“Yeah…why can’t they tell the difference?” Linda moved her head stiffly, shaking it after each word, but her neck was very stiff, making her look more and more like a broken robot.
"Why can't they tell the difference? Why?!" The initial muttering turned into a roar, "How can they not tell the difference between a person and a fish?! How can they..."
“You can too,” the hunter suddenly said.
Linda's roar stopped abruptly. He was stunned, as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head.
"I……"
"You did a great job today, didn't you?"
Linda was even more confused.
“Your mother won’t let you kill fish, so you go and kill fish, as if you’re getting revenge on her, as if you’re getting revenge on them. But you know that’s not a good way to do it.”
“Yes, this isn’t a good solution,” Linda suddenly chimed in. “It’s no use, my mom still wants to hit me. It’s no use… What should I do?”
She rushed forward again like a madwoman, yelling at the hunter, "What should I do? Tell me, what should I do!!!"
"I told you, you did a great job today."
Linda slowly straightened up. After a long silence, she looked up and stared straight up at the sky. There was nothing there, but she seemed to see something as well. Then, she revealed that chilling smile.