He picked up the teacup again, and after taking a sip of tea, lowered his eyes and said, "I think you're right. The wisdom and reason of humans indeed give them the power to choose and decide. We are a species capable of making choices and taking responsibility for them, not blind lambs kneeling on the ground waiting for someone to bless us."
Strange leaned in another direction on the armrest, saying, "Shiller and I hold the view that the dark side of human nature is the driving force behind the development of civilization."
"I think if God himself were to descend now and decree that humans must do as he says, and his command genuinely touches the interests of some people, they would dare to pick up a gun and kill God."
"We admire what we lack. Humans are Judah, that's why they dreamt up Jesus."
Strange also picked up his teacup, took a sip of tea, and said in a slightly cold and ruthless tone, "I'm sorry about what's happening to the humans in this world, but since they didn't even notice the impending disaster and had no chance to resist, nor could they have success in their resistance, then their ultimate destruction is their just desserts."
"Don't talk about their ability to maintain a normal societal life. Lambs also believe they own the entire pasture before they are slaughtered. If a civilization has no opportunity to assert its independence, it might as well sleep eternally."
"Death before dishonor?"
"Death before dishonor."
"How are you feeling?" Jarvis draped a blanket he had found downstairs over Wanda, then asked.
As the night grew darker, everyone became increasingly terrified. The experiences of the last two nights had dealt them a severe blow.
The youth are never lacking in courage. Even temporary failures will not make them too discouraged. They can quickly adjust their state and re-enter the battlefield. But what made them feel the most powerless and frightened was that they had not seen the enemy. They did not know how they were attacked, and they had already failed.
An injury on the back is a warrior's disgrace. These terrified lambs don't even know where their backs are and have been ruthlessly slashed. And if they were slashed again, perhaps the slaughterhouse wouldn't even want them.
The night finally fell.
The group curled up on the sofa, waiting for a judgment that might come at any time. Jarvis made some coffee for everyone that he had found downstairs, but no one was in the mood to drink it. Their faces were pale, and their expressions blank.
Suddenly an hour passed, and nothing happened. The eerie silence was the only thing in the room.
Another hour passed, and the night turned pitch black. If Jarvis remembered correctly, it was at this time on the first night that Riley lost control.
"Riley, how do you feel?" Jarvis asked.
Riley was clearly a little startled; he nearly jumped up from the sofa, then quickly shook his head and said, "I don't feel anything."
"Are your ears okay?"
"I…" Riley paused for a moment, then looked at Jarvis somewhat unhappily and said, "I know you want us to feel better, but you really don't need to speak so loudly."
Suddenly, everyone stared wide-eyed at Riley, who blinked in confusion, unsure why they were doing this, but everyone quickly gathered around Riley, and Wanda asked in a raised voice, "Can you hear us?!"
"Of course, I can't..."
Riley suddenly froze, then he touched his ears, shook his head vehemently, but then nodded. He stood up from the sofa in a panic and said, "I can hear your voices, but not with my ears."
"My ears are still hurting because my eardrums are broken, and I might have damaged my auditory nerves when I tried too hard earlier. I couldn't hear anything before, the world was as quiet as death."
"But, just now Jarvis's voice appeared inside my brain, I didn't hear them with my ears."
So, Jarvis turned his back so that Riley couldn't see his lip movements, and lowered his voice to say, "Can you hear what I'm saying now? Would you like a cup of coffee?"
"Of course I can hear, though I don't like coffee very much." Riley instinctively replied.
He stood in place, astonished, looking unbelievingly at himself. Jarvis motioned him to sit down and started questioning:
"The voice appeared directly inside your head?"
"Yes, it sounds a bit like when I hear my own voice inside my head when I'm talking to myself. It's like I hear my own voice, and the tone and attitude of your talk is something I imagine."
"What about that song you mentioned?" Wanda leaned over to ask.
"I'm not sure if it's still resounding." Riley frowned and said, "There are too many voices in my head, my Spider-sense has reconnected, and it's a bit different. I don't know how to describe it."
Suddenly, Riley turned to look at Jarvis and said, "Jarvis, your water is boiled."
Jarvis was stunned. He didn't understand why Riley suddenly said this. A few seconds later, the sound of boiling water spread from downstairs. He had indeed just boiled a pot of water.
As everyone walked downstairs together, Jarvis asked, "Did you hear the sound of the water starting to boil?"
"Perhaps, but the way it happened is a little different to what you think." Riley replied.
Jarvis stopped in his tracks, while Riley excitedly explained, "I saw an image—a silver coffee pot was hung on a makeshift stand, while there was a pile of fire underneath. The lid was jostled by the boiling water and fell to the right side of the ground."
Wanda impulsively rushed past the two and hurried downstairs, then turned to look at Jarvis as he walked over, silently asking whether the scene was like that. When Jarvis held her hand, Wanda understood that everything Riley had said was true.
"Incredible." Jarvis commented: "Is this a manifestation of Spider-sense? Predicting the future?"
"I don't know." Riley shook his head: "All I can tell you is that I heard all of this. The sounds I heard formed an image in my brain, which I voiced out."
They tested it a few more times, and then found that Riley's lost hearing and his Spider-sense seemed to have merged. He can hear everything in his surroundings, even a few seconds into the future. It was simply unbelievable.
"Ah!"
Wanda suddenly screamed.