Have You Forgotten Your Dream?

The Suicide Squad might think that, but they simply couldn’t bring themselves to call Lake a profiteer to his face. These days, no matter what industry you were in, resources were king.

Without Lake as the middleman, the Suicide Squad wouldn’t have gotten this job.

And…

Lake had also shouldered all the risks. If Richard Crawford wasn’t on this island, or if he had already been reduced to a skeleton by the time they found him, Lake’s ten million pounds might mysteriously disappear, but the Suicide Squad’s ten million dollars certainly wouldn’t.

The Suicide Squad risked their lives, while Lake paid the expenses upfront. In that light, he couldn’t really be called a thoroughly unscrupulous profiteer.

After shaking Richard Crawford’s hand, Lake looked at Richard. "Once I’ve dealt with my business here, we’ll talk about this reunion nonsense on the plane."

After the joy of reuniting with his daughter had passed, Richard heard Lake’s words and instinctively looked at him. "You came for Himiko too?"

Lake nodded crisply. "Yes."

Richard’s expression changed at once.

It seemed…

Lake’s image had changed completely in Richard’s eyes. The way Richard looked at him was almost the same as the way he had looked at the Trinity mercenaries on the island.

In fact, Richard considered Lake even more dangerous than Trinity now. At least Trinity hadn’t thought of using his daughter to threaten him—he didn’t know what they were planning. But Lake had thought of it.

Sensing the hostility in Richard’s heart, Lake chuckled. "Mr. Crawford, it seems you’ve misunderstood me. I’ve spoken with your daughter Laura once, and now I’ll say the same thing to you. If Laura and I didn’t share a mutual friend, believe me, you wouldn’t be seeing Laura today."

Richard looked suspiciously at his daughter, Laura.

Laura said, "Daddy, do you remember Hermione from the Granger family?"

Richard nodded. "A very elegant young girl."

Laura shrugged. "Hermione has a boyfriend… No, he should be her fiancé by now. Professor Xavier knows Hermione’s fiancé, and I know him too. So when Professor Xavier was preparing to come here, he contacted me."

Seeing this, Lake looked at Richard. "So, I need to find Himiko, not you. I’m only helping you along the way out of friendship. If you don’t believe me, you can wait on the plane. Once I’m done, we’ll leave this place. How does that sound?"

Truth and lies.

Lies and truth.

A true lie meant stating your objective while filling in the process with whatever falsehoods you pleased.

Richard hesitated, then looked at Lake. "Professor Xavier, since you know about Himiko, you must also know the price of releasing her."

Lake kept his hands in his pockets. "Mr. Crawford, do you think I’m like those Trinity mercenaries on the island, trying to find Himiko and then obtain the power to control her?"

With that, before Richard could answer, Lake gave a disdainful laugh. "I do want to find Himiko, but not to rule the world or anything like that. Himiko herself can’t rule the world, so how can you be so certain?"

Could someone with the power to rule the world really have been betrayed by her own people?

Give me a break.

Himiko, the Creation Spirit of this fractured world, was at most equal to the power of a single nation. She hadn’t reached the level of being able to rule the entire planet.

Lake raised an eyebrow and looked toward a certain spot in the jungle.

There.

A strange fluctuation of power seemed to be there, passively detected by Lake’s Sixth Sense.

Excellent.

It seemed Himiko had already locked onto Laura’s location on the island. Unfortunately for her, Lake had also located her.

Lake took out a slip of paper with Himiko’s name written on it, clipped it onto the Dragon Seeking Ruler, and handed it to Laura. "I kept my promise. Now it’s your turn to help me."

Richard badly wanted to stop them.

But Laura had already taken it and silently recited Himiko’s name.

Here we go!

Lake directly spun the Dragon Seeking Ruler. After only one revolution, the dragon’s head immediately pointed toward a spot deep in the forest.

The Dragon Seeking Ruler had ultimately been developed for tomb raiding. Exploring tombs was its specialty, while finding people was merely a side function. In its own field of expertise, if the Dragon Seeking Ruler needed to spin a dozen times, that could only mean it was probably a fake.

Seeing this, Lake whistled toward the Suicide Squad he had hired.

Everyone set off.

Laura and Richard walked side by side. At this point, Laura hadn’t seen the recordings and notes Richard had left in the basement of her estate.

Besides, this had been agreed upon back at the restaurant.

Lake would help Laura find Richard Crawford, and in return, Laura would help Lake find Himiko.

The spirit of the contract mattered.

And…

Laura held a small grudge against Richard. After all, Richard had left for nine years in pursuit of Himiko. On top of that, Himiko was a woman. Good grief—if this had happened in the outside world, Richard’s actions would have amounted to abandoning his daughter and eloping with his lover.

So…

Laura simply ignored Richard’s quiet murmurs. She also wanted to see what kind of person this Himiko was—the woman who had bewitched her father for nine years.

The journey went smoothly.

Just as when they had searched for Richard before, Lake served as the radar while Yin Yang performed his flying-dagger act. When they reached a mountainside, Barney Ross and his Suicide Squad also got what they wanted.

Matthias Vogel had been captured by Barney and the others.

Lake was also happy to fulfill everyone’s wishes. He looked at Barney. "If you need time to get this prize somewhere safe, I can wait. After all, I know you’ve wanted to get your hands on him for a long time."

Barney looked at Matthias Vogel, whose knees had been shattered, and revealed a cruel smile. He turned directly to the temporarily hired soldiers. "Take him to the plane. Once we get back, I’m throwing a barbecue party!"

Matthias Vogel remained cruel and truly calm. Even with his knees shattered, he still spat at Barney.

"Smack!"

Barney slapped him hard, knocking out two of Matthias Vogel’s teeth. "Take him away."

He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control himself. He had said he would capture Matthias Vogel and avenge his fallen comrades. Even if Matthias Vogel was willing to die, Barney wasn’t willing to let him die so easily.

After speaking with Barney, Lake shifted his gaze to a mechanism wall that seemed to have been there from the very beginning.

Although this place was deep within the island, Trinity had been here for nine years. If they had discovered it from the start, nine years would have been more than enough time to haul explosives over from the Federation on foot and blast the door open.

So…

It was obvious that before today, this mechanism door leading to the location of Himiko’s great tomb hadn’t existed. It had appeared now because Himiko had sensed the presence of a woman of the appropriate age.

Lake turned and looked at Richard. "Mr. Crawford, would you be willing to help me open this door?"

Laura had opened this door in the movie, but that had happened after she obtained the beginner’s items from the basement. Here, Laura hadn’t even heard of Trinity or Himiko until after setting foot on Hong Kong Island.

Richard tried once again to dissuade Lake. "If you open the way to Himiko, she will return to the human world."

Lake shook his head, somewhat speechless. "Mr. Crawford, as far as I know, your obsession with supernatural power was originally because you wanted to resurrect your wife, wasn’t it?"

To Lake, Richard’s change in attitude was just as incomprehensible as the change in Peter Parker’s parents’ attitude.

Why?

At first, Parker’s parents had been employed by Osborn, taken Osborn’s salary, used Osborn’s funding, and conducted their research in Osborn Industry’s laboratory.

But after succeeding, they had inexplicably decided that they couldn’t give the results to Osborn and had chosen to flee with the money?

Jesus Christ.

If you thought Osborn was untrustworthy, then why the hell had you taken his salary, funding, and experimental equipment? Don’t say they had only found out in the end. Osborn Industry wasn’t so stupid that it would approve Parker’s parents’ research without even looking at the experimental application report.

The deaths of Parker’s parents and Tony Stark’s parents were equally suspicious. But unlike Tony Stark, even if someone placed new clues about the deaths of Parker’s parents on his desk, Lake wouldn’t reopen the case.

There was no possibility of that.

Lake felt not the slightest bit of sympathy for Parker’s parents’ death in the plane crash. "Biting the hand that fed you" described them perfectly.

At the very least, if someone used Lake’s money, people, and equipment to create the successful experiment described in his original report, then suddenly said they didn’t want to give it to him, Lake guaranteed that not only would the people involved die—neither would their entire family survive.

Richard Crawford was the same.

At first, Richard Crawford had been utterly obsessed with finding supernatural power, all so he could resurrect his wife. Even after seeing the information about the Parasitic Demon that Hermione had secretly given him, he hadn’t wavered in the slightest and had continued his search.

But now?

He had suddenly changed his position?

Or was it…

In some people’s hearts, the safety of the world—even a world whose safety they merely suspected—ranked far above everything else? For the sake of this Schrödinger’s world security, Parker’s parents had abandoned Peter and turned themselves into corporate spies, while Richard Crawford had similarly abandoned his daughter for a possibility, spending nine years on this island.

What was wrong with them?

Had they all been bewitched by some kind of sorcery?

Lake looked thoughtfully at Richard. "Mr. Crawford, tell me why. I’m curious. Weren’t you searching desperately for Himiko in order to resurrect your wife? What happened? Have you forgotten your original dream?"

Richard: "…"