Invasion - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Lin Yuan stood beneath the rack, looking up at the sentinel bound on top of it.

The man’s head was drooping, his face covered in blood. His hands were tightly bound and hoisted above his head, and his toes couldn’t touch the ground. The scorching sun hung high above the rack, making him look even worse, almost like a rag hanging on an iron frame, about to dry up.

Lin Yuan recalled the sentinel’s name at this moment. It was a little odd. His surname was Ni, with a given name of Ji.

Ni Ji, yes, that was the name.

At this moment, Ni Ji did not look at all like he used to.

Lin Yuan still remembered a few years ago when this sentinel wore a special forces uniform from the sentinel academy, with a clean face.

The black tight-fitting uniform outlined his lean physique, with a strong waist and long legs.

His black military boots stepped on the snow, splashing snow everywhere.

At that time, that young sentinel was like an unsheathed blade, its sharpness fully exposed.

Now, if it wasn't for that unique sound of the tide, Lin Yuan would not have associated the two at all.

For some unknown reason, that sound of the sea always gave Lin Yuan a sense of familiarity. Every time she heard this sound, her tentacles would become extremely excited. They would wriggle, rise up, open their small suckers, and eagerly want to explore.

When Lin Yuan appeared at the execution ground, the sentinels gathered beneath the screen were extremely surprised.

They all gave way to her, watching with curiosity and whispering excitedly. They called out to their companions, and more people gathered around.

No one had expected the higher-ups to send a guide to serve as the interrogator.

After all, interrogations were common in a military camp like this, but the appearance of a guide was a rare event.

Ni Ji, on the rack, heard the murmuring around him grow louder. He opened his eyes and saw a young girl walking through the crowd towards him.

She was a guide, wearing an ivory dress. Her figure was slender, her features gentle, and even her walk was graceful, seemingly non-threatening.

But the moment he saw her, Ni Ji's heart sank.

Why did it have to be this person?

Ni Ji was not too afraid of the guides that those people sent.

During his childhood, he had lived in the capital city and seen many guides from the White Tower. Those guides were all carefully raised in the White Tower since they were young. They wore beautiful clothes, lived a comfortable and refined life, living luxuriously and soft like flowers in a greenhouse.

Even though guides were born with powerful mental strength that could affect sentinels, he never thought that a guy who grew up in that environment could easily pry open his mental barrier and infiltrate his mental world.

Even now when he was so weak after being tortured for many days.

It was just that the people in the military supply office were too dirty.

He had seen what a sentinel looked like when he had been tortured to the point of mental collapse. He had originally been a man as strong as steel.

First, they would torture the body, eroding your will. When a person was at their weakest, they would use humiliating methods to crush their spirit.

And now, they just had to pick that girl.

If there was any guide in the White Tower that he was wary of, it would be that girl he had met several years ago.

Back then, that still very young girl possessed mental strength that was so powerful, that it had even alarmed him.

And it was her, who had come. Back then, he had deeply offended her in order to carry out orders.

Ni Ji smiled bitterly, tasting a trace of blood from his dry, cracked lips.

He suddenly felt extremely thirsty.

Those people had left him hanging there for four or five days without letting him have even a sip of water.

His throat felt as dry as if it was burning.

Was he going to fail? He couldn't even do the first step of his plan.

Ni Ji felt the sun above him was too dazzling, and the light was starting to blur his consciousness.

So many people had died, so much blood had been shed. Yet the god of fate was still unwilling to give them even a sliver of good fortune.

He should have known that destiny only smiled on those living at the top of the White Tower.

If only he could have a sip of water.

He knew that he shouldn't be thinking about such unrealistic things at this time.

But the thirst was screaming from deep within his body. The more he tried to not think about it, the more he kept circling back to that thought.

If only I could have a sip of water right now, he thought.

Perhaps, I would be able to pull through if I could drink some water right now.

The officer in charge of the interrogation was very happy to see Lin Yuan arrive. The guide's participation meant that his seemingly impossible task might finally come to an end.

He diligently brought Lin Yuan tea and water, moved a comfortable chair, and picked the thickest whip from the table full of torture devices, holding it in his hand with excitement.

“You can sit down and rest. Let me give him another round of torture first. It'll be easier for you to work later.”

The guide took the tea he offered, took a sip slowly, and then her pale, slender hand blocked his sight, waving him away with a cold dismissal.

“No need, you can leave.” Her tone was very impolite.

The torturer was of a low rank and had to rely on her. Although he was angry, he dared not say anything. He suppressed his displeasure and withdrew.

He thought, young girl, so arrogant. This hard bone isn’t so easy to crack, let’s see if you can handle it.

In the second-floor office, several officers and Roy moved their chairs and sat side by side by the window to watch the show.

“Xiao Yuan is so young, but her academic performance is pretty high. She seems very capable,” Officer Wu said, flipping through Lin Yuan’s file with a pleased look.

Roy thought, you don’t know, do you, that she only had one ridiculously high grade and that she’s failed nearly every other subject? This girl is a weirdo, but how many of those who can apply to the Special Research Department aren't monsters?

Of course, he would not say these words to the officer next to him.

Roy stretched his neck to look out the window.

Everyone held their breath, waiting to see what methods the new guide would use to torture the stubborn prisoner.

They wanted to see whether the man, who wouldn’t yield to torture, would break down mentally and confess under the gentle hands of the guide.

They watched as the guide raised her hand.

Her delicate white fingers pinched the sentinel's chin on the rack,

Forcing his face up.

Then, her other hand picked up a cup of water on the table and fed it to the sentinel.

In full view of everyone, as if performing a normal, unproblematic process.

“What, what is she doing?” Officer Wu was so surprised that she almost jumped up. She pointed out the window and asked Roy.

Roy, who was sitting next to her, leisurely crossed his legs, and gave her an impatient look, as if she was an idiot.

As if that was how things were supposed to be done, and only the country bumpkins of their office would make such a fuss...

Officer Wu didn't like losing face in front of Roy, who was at the same level as her. She suppressed the words she wanted to say, moved her shoulders and forced herself to sit still.

It was not a big deal, she told herself, I'll just keep watching. Maybe this really is some special method. Anyway, those who can get into the Special Research Department are all weird. That department is neither here nor there, has no proper person in charge, just raises freaks. Ah, she still couldn’t understand.

She peeked at Roy, but Roy was leisurely crossing his legs, looking like he couldn’t be bothered to explain.

What she didn’t know was that Roy’s mind was completely blank.

What the hell was this young girl doing?

He had no idea, but he didn't care. The young girl was one of his, and he couldn’t care less about those idiots in the military administration office.

Lin Yuan pinched the man’s chin and fed him the entire cup of water.

She watched as he drank the last drop of water, his cracked lips parted, and he took a couple of breaths.

After drinking the water from her hand, he shook his head to free himself from her grasp and looked up at her.

His face was covered in blood and his dirty hair hung over his eyes. His appearance was utterly pathetic.

But when he raised his eyelids, the gaze he gave her from behind his filthy bangs was exactly the same as the young man she had seen in the snow that day.

Cold and aloof, fierce but unwilling to yield, like a cold blade reflecting the snow.

Lin Yuan rubbed her fingers, wiping away the bloodstains on her white fingertips.

Then she opened her palm and covered the man's eyes, pressing her hand on his forehead.

...

Lin Yuan found herself on a vast ocean. The seawater was boundless, with a clear blue in the distance and an emerald green in the near.

Without hesitation, she dove into the sea.

The waves surged around her, the sunlight passing through the surface, gilding each wave with a golden edge.

Submerged in this sea, it was as if she was in a huge and pure emerald, beautiful like a dream.

That boundless beauty was both mysterious and frightening.

This was Ni Ji's mental barrier. His mental barrier was actually an ocean.

Sentinels all had their own mental landscapes, a place that was fragile and private.

It materialized their moods and emotions, storing their unknown private memories.

Therefore, they built high walls to protect this private garden of their souls.

The mental barrier was the firm wall every sentinel used to protect their mental landscape.

Lin Yuan had seen many sentinels' mental barriers.

Most of them manifested as something solid and bounded. For example, metal walls, huge stone walls, and sharp thorns.

This was the first time she had seen someone whose mental barrier was a boundless sea.

The sea was the softest, but also the most turbulent and powerful.

Lin Yuan thought that if it hadn’t been her, perhaps no guide would dare to jump into this deep sea so carelessly.

She kept descending in the water. The sunlight filtering into the sea became weak, falling on her in strands like golden threads.

The seawater surrounding her looked calm and gentle. It made no reaction to Lin Yuan's intrusion.

It looked like a real ocean.

But Lin Yuan knew that this was Ni Ji’s mental world. Huge waves and whirlpools could appear in the sea at any time, attacking intruders without mercy.

She did not feel fear. She calmly waited for the moment of battle to arrive.

She swam into the depths of the sea.

Layers of ruffles on her skirt fluttered behind her as she descended. She moved in the sea as freely as a creature that had lived in the deep sea since ancient times.

There were some huge, invisible shadows that extended from under the seaweed-like ruffles of her skirt, happily reaching out in all directions.

Lin Yuan felt good. Even though she was doing something dangerous, she felt happy.

It had been a long time since she had experienced such an emotional fluctuation.

At this moment, she remembered that Jiang Yangshuo always said that she lacked emotion and didn't seem like a normal guide.

In fact, she had tried very hard these past few years. She had tried to be like a normal person, tried to maintain the look of a normal guide. She tried to live the normal life that everyone thought she should live.

All her efforts were in vain.

The seabed was very quiet, so quiet that she felt comfortable. From the deeper parts, some distant and illusory sounds came, like the calls of some kind of whale, fish, or some ancient marine life, beckoning her to swim there.

Lin Yuan saw the seabed and the garden hidden deep beneath it.

There were soft seaweeds and magnificent corals. They were like a vast forest, swaying rhythmically with the movement of the seawater. Schools of small fish swam among them, and lovely conches and shells lay on the sandy seabed.

The huge coral reefs, with their varying heights, shone with colorful glows. They were deep and secluded, and one could not see to the end of the space.

This was actually a sentinel's mental world.

So rich, diverse, mysterious, gentle, and enticing.

The tentacles had an even stronger desire than Lin Yuan. Every one of them wanted to rush into the seabed, roll around, damage something, and explore the coral reefs.

Lin Yuan suppressed the terrible impulse.

A guide should be gentle and calm, full of love and pity for beautiful things.

Not like her.

Lin Yuan heard a clear whale call from the depths of the seaweed forest.

In the dark seaweed forest, a giant whale appeared.

The whale's skin was ink-black on its back, pure white on its abdomen. It had a large, powerful tail, a high, fin-like dorsal fin on its back, and white eye patches under each eye.

It was an orca, a fierce beast of the deep sea.

Strong, powerful, and huge, a true hunter of the ocean.

This was the mental body of the prisoner, a manifestation of the sentinel’s mental strength, like a split personality.

Lin Yuan had not expected that this sentinel would not block her at all, letting her roam around. Was it so that he could choose to fight her at the edge of his mental landscape?

He was a madman, Lin Yuan thought.

A powerful person who dared to lick the blood from the edge of a knife.

She suddenly felt a little excited. She wanted to bite her own fingers.

Deep inside, the thick layer of soil that she had carefully built up over the years suddenly cracked open. A sprout peeked out from the crack, only to be quickly pushed down by Lin Yuan’s hands.

A guide shouldn't be like this, a guide should be gentle. A guide should not get excited by fighting.

The battle began in an instant.

Terrifying and thick tentacles suddenly burst through the seabed soil. In an instant, they wrapped around the orca's tail.

The suckers on the tentacles locked tightly onto the orca’s smooth skin, dragging the huge orca into the depths of the seabed.

Another tentacle quickly coiled up, wrapping along the long tail fin, bypassing the smooth abdomen and dorsal fin, and went upward.

Suddenly, that tentacle was grabbed by a strong and powerful arm. It was a human male arm, with a purplish bruise on the wrist, but it was clamped around the smooth and flexible tentacle like a vise.

Then, a sharp blade pressed against the skin of the tentacle.

In the seaweed forest that had been disturbed, the murky seawater gradually cleared.

Everything was visible.

The black tail fin of the male orca was entangled by thick tentacles, but its upper body had transformed into the appearance of a human male, revealing the face of the sentinel Lin Yuan had seen. That man stretched out his powerful arm, grabbed the tentacle, and pressed a sharp blade against it.

Turbulent currents surged around them, and the seaweeds and corals destroyed by the tentacles in the battle turned into bubbles of memories, floating upward.

In those floating fragments of memory, Lin Yuan could catch glimpses of the young sentinel’s face.

Sometimes he was laughing, sometimes he was drinking with his comrades, and sometimes he was fighting on the battlefield.

This was, after all, a world made up of his memories. Every excessive act of destruction would cause the sentinel’s body to destabilize and feel pain.

But at this moment, the half-human half-orca sentinel floated in the scattered bubbles, facing Lin Yuan calmly and silently.

One of his hands was holding onto a tentacle, while the other held a sharp short knife. The muscles in his arm were taut and powerful. No one would doubt his ability to cut off an entire tentacle with one strike.

“It’ll hurt,” his eyes fixed on Lin Yuan, “being injured in the mental landscape is worse than being hurt in reality.”

This was his mental sea. As long as he thought he had a knife, he could have a knife. As long as he thought that the knife could hurt, that knife could cut off Lin Yuan’s mental tentacles.

The feeling of the sharp blade against her skin was clearly transmitted into Lin Yuan’s mind, bringing a slight pain.

The scene seemed to overlap with that snowy night.

It was dangerous and deadly, making the blood in her heart boil.

A normal guide shouldn’t be like this, a guide should…

Screw what a guide should be.

Screw calm and gentleness.

Lin Yuan told herself that she actually liked it, that she actually had this desire deep inside.

She didn't like waiting calmly and gently. She liked to attack, to be proactive and destructive. She liked to control everything.

She liked to do things that a "guide shouldn't" do without any restraint.

She was never a normal guide.

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