Smallville.
Under a gloomy sky, rain began to fall.
The fine, continuous rain brought an bone-chilling cold.
The rain, falling in a steady stream, brought a layer of chill to the entire land in the cold weather. As the raindrops neared the ground, each drop splashed up tiny water droplets upon impact.
The parched ground of Kent Farm, long-suffering from drought, was now being nourished by the rain, and the earth exuded a unique damp scent.
Martha, wrapped in a coat, stood in the outdoor corridor, quietly watching the rain fall from the sky to the ground.
The splashing droplets appeared in her eyes, then vanished into nothingness.
"Creak!"
Jonathan pushed open the door and came out, placing a coat over her shoulders.
"How is it? Any news from the police station?"
Martha, as if oblivious, looked at the splashes on the ground and asked her husband.
"Not yet, but there's no need to worry. We'll find a way."
Jonathan looked at the long-awaited rain, without a hint of joy, his heart instead filled with gloom, much like the dark clouds in the sky.
"The police station has concluded it was a gas explosion caused by a fire. No one was injured, but Niel and Lana are both missing."
Jonathan said to his wife, "Although what's happening now is a string of bad news, there's one piece of news that's not so bad."
"We haven't received any bad news about Eric and Clark yet, which means we can still hope for a better outcome, right?"
"Mm."
Martha nodded worriedly, the sorrow on her face not diminishing much.
"Do you remember, Martha? Around Halloween one year, when Eric and Clark were in elementary school, they didn't come home after midnight, so we went out to look for them. We didn't find them until the latter half of the night. Do you remember that Halloween?"
"Mm, of course I do."
Martha also recalled the old amusing incident, a slight smile on her lips dispelling some of her worries. ♦ ♦ ☞ ♦
"Clark discovered an abandoned amusement park in a nearby town. Their talents were already evident back then; they always ran very far. Clark, who loved amusement parks, kept playing there, and Eric, though not interested, stayed there with him. Although Eric can be very calm at times, sometimes, especially when facing Clark, perhaps that calmness is diluted somewhat."
Jonathan put his arm around his wife's shoulder and said, "I believe Clark will be the same."
"They're always growing, Martha. Before it was an amusement park, now it might be a larger, more complex place. These places might restrict or trap them, preventing Eric and Clark from leaving for a while, but we must always have faith in them."
"Mm, I understand, Jonathan, it's just…"
Tears welled up in Martha's eyes, "I'm scared. I've always been scared. That Halloween, I even hid in the kitchen and cried secretly. If someone told me: My future son will fly in the sky like a bird. Then I would be even more scared. Birds always fly away in the end, don't they?"
"Beep beep!"
As they stood outside talking, a car drove up from outside the farm.
The rain curtain of the rainy day obscured the car's figure, making it difficult for the couple to see inside the car.
The car stopped by the road, and a figure got out, walked with an umbrella through the muddy ground, and approached the couple.
"Father?"
Martha wiped away her tears, looking at the old man holding an umbrella in front of her with surprise.
She hadn't expected her father to come at this time.
"It's been raining a lot lately, and my knees haven't been good, otherwise I would have driven over earlier."
The old man closed his umbrella and smiled faintly at Martha.
Father and daughter shared a warm embrace, "Father, it's really good to see you."
"Me too. I'd be even happier if you had stayed a few more days to keep me company last time."
The old man teased his daughter.
Seeing his father-in-law visit for the first time, Jonathan felt no joy. After giving his wife an apologetic look, he turned and walked into the house.
He knew his father-in-law's attitude towards him.
Since their marriage, in over twenty years, he had never visited the farm and had never spoken a word to him.
Presumably, in his father-in-law's mind, he was always an unpromising farmer.
There was a huge status gap between him and these so-called elite upper-class individuals.
Since they disliked each other, there was no need for them to interact.
Jonathan knew his bad temper, but he had no intention of changing it.
"Father, I'm sorry, Jonathan he…"
Watching her husband walk away directly, Martha apologized to her father awkwardly.
"I know, and I understand now."
The old man smiled faintly at Martha, "He's just that Kansas boy who can't leave his farm. No matter how many years pass, I believe it will always be like that."
"If you're here to criticize Jonathan, Father, I believe today isn't an appropriate day."
Hearing her father criticize her husband, Martha frowned.
She loved her father, but she also had some complaints about him never having visited the farm for over twenty years.
Now seeing her father criticize Jonathan again, her tone carried a hint of dissatisfaction.
"Then I won't say anything."
The old man smiled at Martha, "I'm not here to vent my dissatisfaction with your husband, but for Eric and Clark. From the moment you called me, I had some old friends in Metropolis help me investigate. You know, even though I've retired from Metropolis, I still know some people."
He said, pulling out a stack of documents from his pocket and handing them to Martha.
"This is the information you wanted on the Lana Blue family, with a commercial life insurance policy included."
"Commercial life insurance?"
Martha took the file bag from her father's hand with some surprise.
She had only mentioned her suspicions to her father, including Clark's recent obsession with Lana's witch culture.
She hadn't expected her father to not only thoroughly investigate the Lana family but also prepare commercial life insurance.
"Mm, regarding Eric and Clark's life insurance, I've been arranging life insurance for them every year since they were five years old."
The old man explained with a calm expression.
"But why didn't we know?"
Martha asked, shocked.
If Eric and Clark had life insurance, shouldn't she and Jonathan, as their guardians, have been informed?
"Don't forget your father's profession. He's someone who deals with legal clauses and conventional written rules. Bypassing these things is very simple."
The old man put on his hat, opened his umbrella, and prepared to leave.
"Eric and Clark will be fine. They're not ordinary people, are they? Even if something unexpected happens, my daughter, you still have to endure, for this family and for the child in your belly."
Did her father know about Eric and Clark's talents?
When?
Martha's heart was filled with immense shock.
Looking up at her father, Martha asked, "You love Eric and Clark, and you're not clueless about them. Why didn't you tell them? Why didn't you tell Jonathan?"
The old man, walking through the muddy road with an umbrella, smiled. After opening the car door, he turned around and said to Martha, "You are my daughter. Clark, Eric, they are my grandsons. I don't do these things to gain anything."
After closing his umbrella and getting into the car, the old man started the car and quickly disappeared into the rain.
Martha stared blankly at her father driving away.
A sudden realization dawned on her deep inside: why she had fallen for Jonathan in the first place.
Because Jonathan, like her father, was stubbornly unwilling to shed his pride, but deep down, both harbored an unchanging affection for their family that would never be altered by worldly concerns.
"It's raining?"
Eric stood in the lightless hell, looking up, and saw dense raindrops falling from above.
The ghostly hell, permeated with rain vapor, began to change.
The pitch-black region, reeking of sulfur and Death, began to transform. The gloomy black sky started to dissipate, revealing a black sky covered by dark clouds.
The desolate, towering mountains became buildings characteristic of ancient Greece.
The underworld, originally filled with desolation and deathly silence, instantly transformed into a magnificent city.
Eric stood on the city street, frowning.
"Did you save me?"
The Amazon runaway princess, whom Eric had placed on the ground, held her head and stood up, asking Eric with caution and suspicion in her voice.
She had just had a nightmare.
She was back in that Moon Hunt night from her childhood.
Under the moonlit night, bathed in clear moonlight, she secretly followed the witch's tracks, hiding in a tree, secretly observing the witch's ritual dance.
A terrifying and dreadful entity emerged from the barrel, and the sharp gaze of the Witch Mother named Hecate seized her.
Unbearable pain assaulted her mind.
Her forehead felt as if it had been scorched by some entity, leaving an invisible mark.
Struggling to pull herself out of the emotional torment of the nightmare, Wonder Woman pressed one hand to her forehead and asked Eric.
Eric turned his head and looked at the slightly younger Wonder Woman.
"It seems so for now. You have a gunshot wound, though I find it hard to believe any gun could wound an Amazon princess."
Wonder Woman touched her chest, where a bullet hole mark had formed above her chest, looking somewhat unsightly.
"That wasn't an ordinary gun. Those were Eros's golden twin pistols."
Wonder Woman said bitterly.
"Eros?"
Eric nodded, "Eros, the God of Love?"
"Yes, son of Aphrodite."
"Then you weren't wronged to be shot."
-------------------------------
I've already uploaded over 40 chapters of this story on Patreon.
If you're enjoying it and want to read ahead, feel free to check them out here:
[patreon.com/TripleCrown07]
Thanks a lot for your support, it really helps me keep going.