Invasion - Chapter 52

Chapter 52

Chapter 52

Ni Ji saw a large mushroom garden. The snow-white, giant mushroom caps and swaying hyphae, pure white and beautiful, standing in the distance.

The sky was gray, and flocculent spores fell from under the mushroom caps, drifting away with the wind.

In contaminated zones, the more beautiful something was, the more dangerous it usually was.

This scene evoked unpleasant memories for Ni Ji. He had lost everything he held dear in a contaminated zone like this, filled with spores.

Spores filling the sky, corpses covering the ground, himself unable to save anyone.

Ni Ji stared at the pure white mushrooms, silently and stealthily backing away, his back hitting the brick wall at the corner of the street, a chill spreading through him.

Only then did he realize that his back was drenched in cold sweat.

He had already run through many places, seen many people who had come in.

Even though everyone had come prepared, the situation in the contaminated zone was still very dire, the death rate unprecedentedly high.

Ni Ji ran very fast, almost at his limit. He had seen many dead people along the way, and had asked many of the living.

No one had seen that Guide.

At a turn, he saw a female corpse with long black hair lying at the corner of the street.

At that moment, his footsteps stopped, a surge of fear in his heart.

Even though he quickly realized it wasn't her, his heart was still filled with anxiety.

Like a fire burning in his chest, scorching his heart.

Ni Ji leaned his back against the cold wall, gasping for breath, sweat dripping down his cheeks.

Calm down, he told himself, she was actually a very powerful person, stronger than even him.

But she was also very fragile, her wrists so thin, her legs not very strong, she couldn’t run very fast, or jump very far.

Ni Ji looked down at his hands, remembering that slender hand that had once held his black gloves.

He now desperately hoped that a tentacle would emerge at this moment, pat the back of his hand, or even wrap around his ankle.

Why would Lin Yuan come here alone?

Golden Tree Contaminated Zone.

For so many years, those who entered never returned, no one had survived, it was one of the most dangerous contaminated zones in the world.

Those who chose to come here, regardless of their reason, were all desperate.

In Ni Ji’s heart, that beautiful girl, like the moon, should have a carefree life.

Drinking afternoon tea in a courtyard filled with flowers and desserts, surrounded by friends.

Yet he also vaguely knew that even though she looked delicate and soft on the outside, she was actually very similar to him. Beneath that beautiful shell, she was wounded, incomplete, having been hurt and corroded by something, unable to fully express her emotions like a normal person.

In that ocean, every time their mental bodies touched,

On that difficult night, when he was hugged,

She had read him, and he had also seen that distant and slightly lonely, beautiful sea creature.

Ni Ji thought, she often didn't take care of herself, she even had a bit of a self-destructive tendency. To achieve her goal, she wouldn't protect herself, she would burn herself out.

Ni Ji could burn out his own ocean, but he would never want to see that bright moon in the sky disappear.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead, suppressing all those messy thoughts, turning back into that calm and collected sentinel. He checked his firearms and weapons, and walked past the mushrooms.

Ni Ji ran into an acquaintance at the corner.

Big Sickle, the tall sentinel he had exchanged Guide pheromones and information with in the tavern last night.

Big Sickle was sitting on the ground by the roadside, leaning against the wall, smoking a Guide pheromone stick.

Ni Ji walked towards him, stopping a distance away.

He had known Big Sickle for many years. When he had first arrived at the northern border, Big Sickle was already a well-known sentinel captain at another outpost. His style cautious, his combat abilities strong, an experienced veteran.

At this moment, this captain was sitting carelessly by the dangerous road, casually smoking a thin Guide pheromone stick.

A snow-white mushroom was growing on his head, where he leaned against the wall.

Sticky, white hyphae drooped down, covering half of the man’s face. Those soft, net-like things swayed, slowly encroaching upon his shoulder and body.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" He saw Ni Ji, took the Guide pheromone stick from his mouth, and said, "You know, doing what we do, this is bound to happen sooner or later, I’ve lived long enough."

"How much longer can you hold on?" Ni Ji, standing there, asked him.

No special concern or pity, just these five words.

Big Sickle looked at Ni Ji carefully for a while, then suddenly let out a bitter laugh. "You…"

Their relationship was very shallow, they had only met a few times.

But he instantly understood the meaning behind Ni Ji's short question.

These sentinels who lived on the edge of death every day often had many similarities.

They could even understand each other's thoughts without any real interaction.

Ni Ji wanted him to hold on a little longer, wait for him to open that escape door. As long as they could get out, there was still a chance to live.

"It's symbiosis," Big Sickle, looking at the sentinel much younger than himself, said. "It won’t kill me that easily, I still have a lot of time."

The Golden Tree Contaminated Zone was like a terrifying nightmare, it almost captured all intruders, not killing them immediately, but reversing the roles between humans and beasts, subjecting them to long and humiliating torture.

Those who stayed here for too long, almost all went mad.

If someone said he would open the contaminated zone's door, it might not comfort a veteran like Big Sickle.

But Ni Ji might be an exception. 381 trips in and out of contaminated zones, the strongest warrior to escape unscathed. In the entire northern sentinel outpost, no one didn’t admire him in their heart.

If he could really open this contaminated zone’s "door," many of the people trapped here, as long as their minds hadn’t completely collapsed, would still have a chance to get out alive.

"Don’t rush," Big Sickle, sitting there, said to the younger sentinel. "You have to be careful, extremely careful. As long as you’re still alive, I feel like everyone still has a little bit of hope."

Ni Ji nodded, didn't say anything more, and turned to leave.

"Wait," Big Sickle called out to him.

He sat on the ground, with the mushroom growing on his head, using his body as its host.

When this thing invaded his body, he also vaguely saw some truths about the inside of this contaminated zone.

"I understand a little now," Big Sickle pointed at his head. "Everything here is someone’s dream. You have to find the person hiding, he’s the Pillar here, that Golden Tree."

"Go to the Rose Camp, Ni Ji."


"Go to the rose garden."

Lin Yuan looked at the map in her hand. Before parting ways, that sentinel had told her to go to the rose garden, the rose garden at night.

"There's a person there, if you find him, perhaps you can unravel all of this," the sentinel had closed his eyes, a little sadly. "At my most painful moments, I saw a person several times, a tree, golden roots like spiderwebs, controlling everything in this world."

Lin Yuan looked and looked, it seemed like there was only one place on the map related to roses.

She carefully moved towards that place.

The Golden Tree Contaminated Zone, for Lin Yuan, was more difficult than any other contaminated zone she had been to before.

Many strange creatures roamed here. Those creatures, their power defying common sense, their purpose capturing and torturing humans.

The most troublesome thing was that they weren’t human, and they weren’t real animals either.

At least Lin Yuan’s tentacles couldn't detect any emotions of living creatures from them.

Walking in a world without emotions, for Lin Yuan, was like walking in darkness.

Unable to “see”, “sense”, or “touch” beforehand, it was like her eyes had been covered, her weapons confiscated.

Dangerous monsters might pounce on her from the darkness at any time. Her only luck was that she couldn’t see them, and most of the time, those monsters couldn't see her either.

Lin Yuan walked very carefully, but still inevitably got injured. She stopped to wrap bandages around the cuts on her face and arms, bandaging the wounds, taking a break, and looked up at the "rose garden" that was right in front of her.

Originally, Lin Yuan had thought that the so-called rose garden would be a garden, or a plantation.

When she got closer, she realized she had completely misunderstood.

The “rose” here had another, less savory meaning in the common vernacular.

The dilapidated steel gate, the high walls surrounding it, the long street inside littered with scraps of paper, the messy lanterns hanging in front of the houses on both sides…

This was not a good place.

Lin Yuan remembered that time at the Military Administration Office, when Ni Ji, wrongly accused, was tied to the torture rack for trial.

The judge at the time had said, with a malicious laugh, "With a face like that, he should be sent to the Rose Camp to serve, let him die for his country."

The sentinels in the audience had roared with laughter, excited and twisted, saying insulting words, clamoring to patronize him.

Every major outpost had a sentinel unit, the empire had many military camps.

The First Military Camp, the Second Military Camp, the Royal Guard… A military unit had once been stationed in this town.

But no real military camp would be named after a flower.

Rose Camp.

Before standing before this steel gate, Lin Yuan hadn’t had a real understanding of this kind of place.

It wasn’t until she came here, looked up and saw those mottled words on the steel gate, that she suddenly understood how deep and how obscene the malice those people had held towards Ni Ji had been.

Human malice was sometimes no less severe than that of monsters.

When Lin Yuan entered the contaminated zone, it was still "daytime."

There were no clouds or sun in the sky, the light came from who knew where, a hazy white, like a fake screen.

Hiding and dodging, going around in circles for a long time, all she saw were empty streets, a deserted “rose garden.”

When Lin Yuan stood before the gate of the Rose Camp, the sky, as if someone had pulled a curtain, suddenly darkened, and a huge crescent moon rose in the night sky.

The incomplete silver crescent was incredibly huge,

Silver, cold, only a hook-shaped arc remaining, yet so large that it almost cut through the entire dark night sky.

“Nighttime” arrived with the rising of the silver moon.

Streetlights lit up the empty streets, and one after another, lights came on in the dark houses along the road.

Voices came from the houses that had been silent during the day.

Countless human shadows appeared in the lit windows. Someone reading in the attic, a family of three eating dinner by the window, an old person holding a cat and watching TV, a young man brushing his teeth by the window…

As if it had never been contaminated, this town’s bustling liveliness, laughter, and warmth, were still the same as before.

Of course, those pains and filth also remained.

Colorful lights came on at the steel gate of the Rose Camp, and rows of red lanterns lit up in front of the houses inside.

Happy laughter, music, and soft singing came from within. The sounds gradually became noisy, and the figures of people coming and going inside the dilapidated steel gate gradually became clearer.

Those people moved in the bustling lights and shadows.

Everyone who came here was smiling. This was a place of pleasure, a place to forget one’s worries.

In the brightly lit world, other than this Rose Camp, which had become strangely lively, the road outside the gate remained deserted.

Every house on both sides of the street had its doors and windows tightly shut. Lights were on inside those windows, the shadows continuing their lives. It was as if no one dared to open the door and look at the world outside.

A long line of bull-headed creatures, holding long blades, appeared at the end of the street. Compared to "daytime," at night, they wore neat uniforms, their eyes glowing red, holding their shiny blades like ceremonial weapons, walking over from the corner of the street.

At night, they were actually able to ignore the tentacles’ shielding. The bull head leading the group only paused slightly before seeing Lin Yuan, who was standing alone in the middle of the street. It let out an angry bellow and charged towards Lin Yuan with its team.

Lin Yuan immediately made a decision, squeezing into the brightly lit Rose Camp, into the bustling crowd.

She squeezed through the crowded people, brushing against their bodies, touching all sorts of human emotions.

She didn't know whether these "guests" coming and going were humans or mutated creatures. But at least for now, their emotions and behavior, their clothes and appearance, were all similar to hers.

Like guests who had always lived here, visiting this place every night.

She might as well just treat them as people.

Lin Yuan blended into the “crowd” of the Rose Camp.

Those bull-headed monsters also squeezed in. Holding their long blades, pushing through the bustling crowd, their eyes red, searching for Lin Yuan, the outsider.

As Lin Yuan ran further inside, some of them started to confuse Lin Yuan with the other people, their movements slowing down, the distance between them and Lin Yuan gradually widening.

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