Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics-Chapter 4394 - 3487: Midnight Sons (49)

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The night in the hospital was very quiet. Shiller gently closed the door of the ward and walked into the corridor. He waved at the duty nurse who was peeking her head out from the nurse's station and stood alone by the window in the corridor, opening his cell phone.

The state of the public opinion battlefield was still not optimistic. Under many news articles related to Roxon Corporation, the discussion was a mess. The accounts of those comments Shiller had browsed earlier were all banned, likely due to measures taken by Nick.

But this was clearly not a clever method. These people switched platforms and posted their banned account pages, with a slew of conspiracy theories in the comments below, as if the whole world was persecuting Roxon Corporation.

Shiller knew Nick had the goods. If he chose to report it now, he should be able to turn the tide, but he chose not to, probably still wanting to see Roxon Corporation's reaction.

A day and night passed, and Dalio Ag should be awake. Faced with the current situation, he would definitely take measures. From the measures he takes, one can see what kind of preparations he has made for his subsequent plans. Nick intends to wait for him to act, then strike a decisive blow.

Just as Shiller was browsing news platforms for movements, he saw a trending search term climbing rapidly to the top of the news search list — "Doctor Shiller seen entering Roxsen Energy Industry Building."

Shiller's fingers paused for a moment. He clicked on the news and found it was a video capturing him entering the Roxsen Energy Industry Building.

He recalled the scene at the time, it must have been taken by the person standing to his right back during the security check. At that moment, he happened to turn his head slightly, so his profile was captured in the video.

The informant claimed to be an employee of the Roxsen Energy Industry Building and a fan of Shiller, and said that when they happened to see Shiller at work, they casually filmed it.

However, the author of this news revealed that Shiller's entry into the Roxsen Energy Industry Building coincided with the time of the building fire. Although it wasn't explicitly stated, there was a subtle implication.

Shiller knew that the fire incident involving Dalio Ag would certainly implicate him, he just didn't expect Dalio to choose this angle to attack.

This wasn't a clever angle. Using the revealed video to imply Shiller was involved in the building fire, but Shiller had no motive to do so. Moreover, it was well known that he was a psychiatrist, lacking such strength.

Sure enough, many of Shiller's fans were clarifying below the news, saying that this message was sheer nonsense. Even if Doctor Shiller did visit the Roxsen Energy Industry Building a few hours before the incident, it was just a coincidence and cannot link the doctor to the incident.

Although there were conspiracies speculated below, they were all refuted by fans with logic and evidence. Plus, Shiller's previous good impression on the public didn't lead to wide debate despite this trending at a high position.

Until a renowned news commentator published a blog post on their personal account — "Is an Ordinary Psychiatrist Really Ordinary?"

It was a fan's private message that alerted Shiller to this article. When he clicked in, the article had already had hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of comments.

The article basically stated, how could a psychiatrist who mingles so well with superheroes be an ordinary person?

From various angles, this news commentator analyzed the details of Shiller's interactions with superheroes, showing that superheroes didn't merely see Shiller as an ordinary psychiatrist. Their relationship was completely like a "superhuman gathering."

His argument was also interesting. Generally speaking, when a superpower user interacts with an ordinary person, there's a sense of cautiousness. Just like an elephant playing with a mongoose, they must control their strength to avoid harming their buddy.

He brought up traces left by many superheroes in the media and analyzed their detailed actions to corroborate this situation genuinely existed.

For example, Captain America would try to avoid physical contact when taking pictures with fans; when holding a child, his arm muscles were very tense, clearly controlling his strength.

From this point of view, there's some truth in what he's saying. Superheroes indeed are more restrained when interacting with ordinary people, even more cautious and careful with those whose physical strength is not as high.

For instance, in the small clinic, if Peter wanted to play games with Steve, he would directly pull Steve over. But if it were Matt, he wouldn't do that.

Because their physical condition disparity is too large. If Peter exerted a little force, Matt's arm might get dislocated, so he generally wouldn't do that, and would just use words to invite. If physical contact was necessary, they would exert as little force as possible.

There was no such awareness when superheroes interacted with Shiller. Peter often burst into the clinic like a cannonball, running around the kitchen looking for snacks, or squeezing past Shiller to rummage in the refrigerator's cold section when Shiller was checking the freezer, or reaching for the seasoning bottle when Shiller was frying eggs.

Thanks to the existence of the gray mist, few people could bump into Shiller, so they naturally didn't have such concerns.

This habit, when magnified by camera lenses, indeed appeared different from how superheroes treated other ordinary people, seeming overly relaxed.

The analysis up to now was reasonable and well-grounded. Shiller also acknowledged that it was indeed a loophole when they were exposed to the camera. Ordinary people wouldn't feel anything peculiar without scrutinizing, but a behavior analysis expert might still spot some issues by watching frame by frame.

Now that it's been exposed, it only shows that Dalio Ag indeed has some skills, or perhaps he had long prepared and thought he had a handle on things.

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However, the latter half of the article was somewhat unbelievable. The commentator concluded through the above analysis that — Shiller might be a mutant.

His reasoning went like this: If Shiller is a genetically modified person like Captain America, or someone whose life is changed by technology like Iron Man, then there's no need for him to appear under the guise of an ordinary person. After all, he's surrounded by superpower users, there's no need to keep it hidden.

So since he appears as an ordinary person, it indicates he does not want to expose that he has superpowers. But if acquiring superpowers through normal means isn't disgraceful, then his choice to hide must be because the way he obtained the superpowers or the superpowers themselves need to be hidden.

The identity worth concealing may only be a mutant.

Due to the long-standing discrimination issues, the societal majority of mutants without apparent abnormal appearances choose to conceal their mutant identity. Those who cause commotion online are the minority; most still seek a stable life.

The vast majority of mutants are like, "if you don't ask, I won't tell." Even if one day it's discovered, it's because you didn't ask, so they can't be blamed for hiding it.

Even nearly perfect mutants like the Scarlet Witch, who have virtually no weaknesses, hold a reserved attitude towards their identity issues. Unless asked directly, they won't answer explicitly or will respond vaguely.

So if someone has superpowers but is unwilling to display them, then it is very likely that they are a mutant.

Thereafter, the commentator treated Shiller being a mutant as an established fact to proceed with further speculation, chiefly projecting what superpowers he might possess.

The subsequent inference was quite straightforward. Since he is a psychiatrist, he must have used his superpowers to gain his current professional standing, so his superpowers certainly relate to psychological treatment, possibly the Mind Reading Technique.

Then this commentator, at the end of the article, made a few irresponsible speculations, basically suggesting Shiller might have been using his Mind Reading Technique to extract secrets from many patients for profit or similar purposes.

As Shiller continued to scroll down, the comment section was in an uproar. But unlike before when things were going smoothly for Shiller, this time his fans seemed outnumbered, losing ground steadily.

This was because the commentator's behavior analysis in the first half was quite reasonable, with ample evidence, essentially convincing most people who clicked in.

While his latter irresponsible speculations lacked any evidence, they aligned perfectly with the public's stereotypes. Such articles easily get heralded as reasonable professional speculation, then spread widely and ultimately become gospel for a particular community.

The spread speed of this article indeed exceeded Shiller's expectations. In less than half an hour after Shiller read the article, the hashtag "#Shiller#Mutant" was topping the trending charts.

Moreover, it wasn't just the first on one platform. Major media, news platforms, and short video platforms all crowned it as the number one.

As soon as Shiller opened his chat apps, he saw messages popping up incessantly in the filming group chat created for a documentary shoot.

Steve was the first to share the original link to the article, followed by Peter sharing a video. Natasha sent a puzzled emoji, capturing the trending discussion on whether Shiller was a mutant.

Afterward were all ravaging laughing emojis.

Shiller opened the chat bar and sent a series of angry red-faced emojis. Not only did the others not stop, but they sent even more emojis.

Shiller set the group message notifications to "do not disturb", and as he was about to exit the chat software, a group invitation message came through. The inviter had a profile picture of Professor X.

Thinking he had something to discuss, Shiller clicked agree. As soon as he joined, everyone was sending welcome emojis. Upon a closer look, the group name was "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters Alumni Group."

Well, well, now he had joined the mutant family. Shiller sighed helplessly.

He spotted an old acquaintance among these people exchanging memes — the one truly impersonating a mutant, Harley, who was laughing more wildly than the actual Harley Quinn.

Shiller recalled having pretended to be a mutant for real in the past. He could only sigh, "It's not that there won't be repercussions; it's just that the time has not yet come."

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