Chapter 377: See You Again (Ask for Monthly Tickets, Recommendation, and Subscription) 4700 Words. Please Give Me Monthly Tickets at the End of the Month!

SHIELD decided to clear Chicago, leaving only the Chicago police and demon hunters to fight against the vampires, so there was no rush. → Kai first asked Bobby and the Winchester brothers to contact all the demon hunters and tell them to be careful. It would be best if they all gathered around the various branches of the Chicago Police Department. In those places, vampires must also keep a low profile.

Then Kai asked Matthew to check those people from the Department of Homeland Security to see how the vampires made those DHS appear in Chicago and forcibly clean up the vampires. In fact, this is not important. Kai just wanted to see who actually worked for the vampires. Such people deserved to be raped and killed.

As for Kai himself, of course he went to the Art Institute of Chicago. When his old friend came, he had to go and see him. He hadn't done anything bad, so there was no reason to be afraid of seeing his old friend.

…

Because the Louvre will hold a joint exhibition at the Chicago Museum, the Chicago Art Institute has indeed become popular during this period. Taking advantage of this hot spot, many art exhibitions have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. For a time, the Chicago Art Institute made a lot of money just by renting the exhibition hall. You should know that it costs money to let the Louvre lend exhibits, otherwise how do you think the Louvre can survive?

Relying on tickets alone? Don't be funny, that little ticket money is just a drop in the bucket compared to the maintenance costs of those antique artworks. Lending exhibits like this is the big expense. Of course, cultural people can't say it so bluntly, which will hurt the self-esteem of the Gallic chickens. Now the Gallic chickens only have strong self-esteem. If it is called art exchange, it will be much better. The Gallic chickens can proudly say that this is the spread of French culture and cultural output.

Isn't it more high-end?

But it is undeniable that in terms of antique artworks, the United States can never lead the world, even if it is a superpower. Who says that the United States has only a history of more than 200 years? And from ancient times to the present, the United States has never surpassed Europe in art.

So the Art Institute of Chicago has indeed gained a lot of fame by being called the Louvre, and it also makes a lot of money by renting out the exhibition hall. Otherwise, do you think the Art Institute of Chicago is really willing to spend so much money to invite exhibits from the Louvre?

When Kai arrived at 111 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, an exhibition had already been prepared. This is an exhibition of modernist painters. Anyway, when Kai walked into the exhibition, those who were watching the exhibition were all well-dressed and focused on the paintings, and even pointed and made some inexplicable comments. Kai listened to them and was confused by all kinds of line tension, color application, and the author's expression. In short, it was very mysterious.

It reminded Kai of the scene when he was doing reading comprehension when he was a child.

"Why are the curtains blue?"

Answer: Blue represents melancholy. The curtains cover the sunlight and imply that people live in darkness under the rule of the feudal government. The author expressed his dissatisfaction with the society at that time in this way.

Author: The curtains are fucking blue.

This group of people is the same. They look at the things in the paintings and say that the author is silently accusing the world of injustice. Accuse your sister! Others may just have shaking hands!

Also, Kai still can't understand what these things are about... Some are just messy lines, some are just randomly painted with ink, and some paintings can still be seen to be what they want to draw, but they are all torn and distorted, which makes people's heads hurt... How can this be beautiful? And it's so damn expensive. → What do people who spend money to buy think?

Thinking of this, Kai suddenly remembered that he had heard before that many people like to use art to launder money, especially this kind of abstract and difficult to understand modern paintings, which are deeply loved by criminals. It's not that the current criminals have such high artistic accomplishments that they can appreciate this kind of messy paintings. It's really that this kind of painting is easy to fool people and easy to cash in.

In the art market, especially the modern painting market, hype is everywhere. As long as you are willing to spend money on it, it's easy to make a painter famous. The key is that it is easy to hype up. Find some art connoisseurs, spend money to buy reviews, and then spend money to buy paintings. As long as it is not too outrageous, it is easy to raise the price.

Paintings that originally only cost a few hundred dollars on the street, those speculators dare to raise the price to hundreds of thousands!

As long as the price goes up, the painter's paintings will not worry about sales. When the time comes, the goods in hand will be sold and the money will be washed out.

Anyway, they are united to deceive people. In fact, the deceived people are not really ignorant. The key is that this kind of thing is difficult to explain. Do you say to others that you don’t understand it at all? In fact, there are not many people who can really understand those modern abstract painting styles. This business is the kind of "the truth is in the hands of a few people". Whether the painting is good or not is determined by a small group of people. Other people don’t know shit and can’t overturn their definition at all, so this kind of business is enduring.

Thinking of this, Kai curled his lips and wondered whether he should ask the bureau to check the organizers and sponsors of this exhibition. See if there is any trick.

Fortunately, Kai still remembered his main purpose. Kai had contacted the security director of the Louvre before. The person in charge of the French side of this art exchange exhibition was Diana, Diana Prince, which was Diana's pseudonym during World War I.

When Kai asked to talk to the person in charge of this art exhibition, the other party told Kai that Diana was visiting this exhibition.

After looking around, he finally found Diana in front of a statue.

It's called a statue, but it's actually a square thing made of a bunch of scrap iron wires, and then put together to become a work of art. This bunch of gangsters is also called the best artwork of this exhibition, and it's an artwork that reminds people to be environmentally friendly. Well, they say it is. Anyway, Kai thinks it's dirty even if he gives it to him.

Kai is not sure if Diana really understands this thing, but seeing her concentrating on looking at these scrap irons, Kai thinks...she should understand.

Diana is wearing a very neat OL outfit, fashionable and steady. She really looks like a strong urban woman.

Diana seems to be immersed in the artistic atmosphere, and she doesn't feel that anyone is approaching at all. Maybe she knows, but she thinks she is a boring chat-up person, so she doesn't want to pay attention. Kai waited patiently, but ten minutes later, Diana still didn't move.

This is a bit embarrassing.

"Ahem... Well, is this thing really that good?"

Diana didn't turn her head, but said coldly: "If you hadn't disturbed me, it might be better."

"Uh..." Kai looked at the thing carefully, and really couldn't see that it was good. Then he said helplessly: "Diana, there's no need to be so cold. After all, we haven't seen each other for decades."

Diana's body shook suddenly, turned her head and finally looked at Kai, and found that this person was very familiar, but felt very strange. She was sure that she had never seen him, and she was extremely confident in her memory.

Seeing Diana's blank expression, Kai suddenly thought it was very interesting, and felt like a prank.

"Who are you?" Diana asked with a gloomy face.

Kai saw a golden light suddenly flash on Diana's wrist. He knew that thing, the Truth Lasso. Seeing Diana was about to take action, Kai immediately revealed his identity. I saw a trace of fire in his eyes-the flame of the desert!

Seeing this familiar flame, Diana was immediately stunned.

"You... you are..."

"Yes, long time no see, little girl from Amazon." To Kai, Diana is indeed just a little girl. When Kai was active, her mother's presence and absence were another matter.

"It's really you! Kai!" Diana really rushed to Kai and hugged Kai like a little girl. Fortunately, this girl was wearing a one-step skirt, otherwise she could have clung to Kai like a koala.

This startled everyone else. Art exhibitions, of course, must be well-behaved, so no noise was allowed. Diana's actions caused many people to frown, but seeing a handsome man and a beautiful woman hugging, many people showed a smile that everyone understood, and then looked away very gracefully.

People with good looks always have some privileges. If you see two ugly men and women hugging here, someone would have called the security guard long ago, because it was unsightly.

...

After a long time, Diana calmed down and came to her temporary office with Kai.

Her office is inside the museum. When the staff saw Diana pulling a handsome guy into her office, they all cast envious and jealous eyes. With Diana's appearance and figure, she naturally has no shortage of suitors during this period. In fact, when she was in France, she had many suitors. After all, she is a Gallic rooster. Like Italy, she regards handsome gangsters as romance.

When she came to Chicago, Tony Stark asked her out for dinner some time ago. Unfortunately, this iceberg beauty was extremely disgusted with Tony's playboy style.

There was no way. As an Amazon woman, she could not accept Tony's arrogance. After all, in Diana's education, they were the strong party. Even if they had to spend, she would spend Tony, not the other way around.

Because it was a temporary office, the conditions were limited and simple. So there was nothing to entertain, but Diana was still very happy.

Diana had a good impression of Kai, which she had never denied, but it was just a good impression. What really made Diana happy was that there were still friends in this world.

All the comrades and friends who had fought together before died one by one with the passage of time, and the new century, which was changing with each passing day, made her feel extremely unfamiliar with this society. Now she could understand why Kai and her family repeatedly warned her not to have feelings with mortals. But she was too young at that time and could not understand it at all. After knowing Steve's death, she realized that those were all good advice.

Steve did not die in the war, but he still died of illness, cancer. This may be the sequelae of exposure to German poison gas. Well, a good woman is afraid of a man's entanglement. In the end, Steve and Diana were still together, but it was a pity that they were together for too short a time.

Don't say that love is the greatest. When those people you love, one by one, can't withstand the ravages of time and die, and you can't do anything, Diana understands that she is always different from humans.

If you don't have it, you won't lose it.

So Diana returned to Paradise Island. She chose to stay away from human society and repair her trauma. But humans once again disappointed her. The outbreak of World War II left her with no excuse for humans. She used to regard the killing of humans as the work of Ares, the god of war, even though Kai kept telling her that Ares could not control people's hearts. But she still didn't believe it. But what about World War II?

Ares, the god of war, has been sealed, but the killing of humans is even more tragic.

If Diana wasn't kind-hearted, she might have turned evil as Ares expected. There's no way. Even Kai, a human, couldn't wash it off.

Because of this, Diana has been hiding in Paradise Island and never came out again. If the Amazon priest hadn't told her that the world would be tested, she probably wouldn't have appeared in the human world.

Diana didn't know much about the prophecy. After all, it was too abstract. The world would be tested, but whose test?

Diana immediately thought of Ares. After all, Ares was not killed, but sealed. So Diana came to the human world to look for the statue of Ares, and then there was Diana Prince, who worked in the Louvre in France.

Although Diana saw the coming and going of people in this world, it was extremely prosperous, but when it came to her, she still felt lonely.

This is why Diana was so happy to see Kai.

"You suddenly disappeared, which scared me. I went to the South American rainforest with Captain Cotman and Nemo to look for you, but we found nothing. Where did you go?" Diana asked impatiently as soon as she sat down.

Kai felt as if he had been away for a lifetime. Captain Cotman and Nemo were really familiar names. From Kai's perspective, they had been drinking and chatting with him a few years ago, but in the blink of an eye, they were all gone.

Nothing is more impermanent than this.

Kai briefly talked about his experience, the lost world, the power of creation, etc.

Even Diana was fascinated by it. She never thought that the world was so wonderful.

As they talked, they turned the topic to Diana again.

"Wait a minute? Ares is missing?" Kai didn't know about it from the beginning to the end. In his opinion, the matter of Ares was originally known to only a few people present at the time, and even among the Atlanteans, only their king and princess knew about it. So he had always thought that no one would know that Ares was sealed, but now someone told him that Ares was missing!

Kai certainly would not think that someone stole the statue simply for the artistic value of the statue!

That was ridiculous.

The statue is indeed an antique now, but how antique can a sculpture from the First World War be? And the sculpture is not a work of a famous artist, and its value is not high at all. Who would steal it if they were too hungry?

Then those who stole the sculpture must know the true value of the sculpture!

This is a bit fatal. Is this the rhythm of releasing Ares?

They spent a lot of effort to seal Ares back then, but they didn't expect that less than a hundred years later, someone would release him? And it is very likely that humans released him themselves!

Even as a human, Kai also gnashed his teeth at the human's character of liking to die.

...

Just when Kai was worried that Ares would come back, a group of researchers were testing a statue in a secret base of S.H.I.E.L.D. It was the statue of Ares!

One-eyed Director Nick Fury was also there.

"This is the 101st experiment. You must produce results, otherwise your funding will inevitably be cut. Dr. Edgar Sisko."

Nick Fury said coldly to a born dwarf with an ugly appearance.

Dwarf Edgar Sisko wiped the sweat from his head. He said a little embarrassedly: "This is not our fault. You gave us too little information. You only let us study the special features of this statue, but never told us what this statue is. You also don't let us destroy the statue. What do you want us to do?"

Edgar Sisko is a top scientist with a double degree in physics and medicine. But he didn't know what SHIELD was going to do. They just asked him to study this broken statue, but didn't give him any information, and forced him to study it hard...

"Your job is to tell me what is so special about this statue!" The origin of the statue is one of SHIELD's top secrets. Naturally, it is impossible to let others know. Besides, they don't want to release Ares, but want to study the ancient gods through the statue.