Invasion - Chapter 81
Chapter 81
Outside the boundary of the Land of No Eyes, the red warning sign was weathered, rusty, and very old, clearly having been there for a long time.
In the open space outside the warning sign, a small market had formed. Merchants gathered here, trading goods, buying precious items that sentinels brought out of the contaminated zone.
Even quite a few ordinary people came and went here.
The area outside a contaminated zone was usually very dangerous. But at the Land of No Eyes, this notoriously dangerous place, people seemed to forget that just a step away was a dangerous contaminated zone.
"Contaminated zones also have different situations," Ni Ji explained to Lin Yuan. "Some contaminated zones are very unstable, often expanding irregularly, and when they expand, they frantically devour the nearby population and land.
But there are also some contaminated zones that, although dangerous inside, have stable boundaries and rarely expand, so people gather at the boundary to do business."
Lin Yuan thought back. Of the contaminated zones she had been to, the Golden Tree Contaminated Zone seemed to be the one that expanded most frantically.
Even during her bus ride, she had experienced an expansion of the Golden Tree. At that time, if the driver hadn’t reacted quickly, all the ordinary people on the bus would have been trapped inside.
Was there any reason for this difference?
A vague thought flashed through Lin Yuan’s mind, but she had been to too few contaminated zones to grasp the core hidden beneath the surface.
As if knowing what she was thinking, Ni Ji said, “I have a feeling, the easier it is to get the key from a contaminated zone, the less it expands.”
These words instantly cleared Lin Yuan's thoughts.
When travelling in those contaminated zones, she had always had a strange feeling, as if those bizarre worlds had a twisted desire for humans.
Towards Sentinels, or towards Guides like her, this intention was even more obvious. Whether it was in the No. 5 Contaminated Zone or the No. 77 Contaminated Zone, the contaminated zone’s desire to have them, to keep them, was very clear.
From those contaminated zones where it was easy to obtain the key, a large number of sentinels and ordinary people couldn’t resist entering and exploring. So, a large number of humans were infected, mutated, and left in the contaminated zones, these contaminated zones then became relatively stable.
The Pillar of the Golden Tree Contaminated Zone was Xun Hua, who never gave out the key easily. So - Lin Yuan suddenly realized - because very few humans entered, that contaminated zone, like a hungry beast, frantically expanded, trying everything it could to devour humans?
Lin Yuan gasped, looking up at Ni Ji, "So contaminated zones, they need humans living inside? They want to continuously obtain humans?"
The sentinel beside her, his expression grim, nodded slightly, agreeing with her conjecture.
"Many veteran soldiers have this feeling, that contaminated zones desire humans, that they constantly devour humans to grow," Ni Ji's voice was calm, but what he described was very grim, "But we can’t do anything, we have to repeatedly enter contaminated zones, resources are too scarce, and land is constantly shrinking, if we want to survive, we can only risk our lives entering contaminated zones to find supplies."
Lin Yuan thought for a moment. "But I’ve never heard anyone mention this theory in the capital."
Ni Ji's gaze darkened.
In the imperial capital, with its nightly revelry, no one would mention this.
No one cared about the origins of contaminated zones, no one cared about the purpose of their expansion. No one even knew how many lives were swallowed, how many sentinels sacrificed, every year.
The royal family and nobles lived in an eternally safe Eden, leading extravagant, decadent lives.
They could forever huddle around the White Tower, enjoying nightly revelry, numbing themselves with alcohol and spices, using a false prosperity to pretend that the world was still beautiful.
They couldn't see the soldiers’ blood staining the earth, the children starving in the streets, outside the White Tower.
…
Lin Yuan stepped into the Land of No Eyes, and the scene before her eyes instantly changed.
The earth was desolate, not a single blade of grass growing.
Looking into the distance, the vast land was covered with cold gravel and stones, the monotonous scene stretching all the way to the horizon.
There, a giant eye hung in the sky, its pupil gray, lifeless, crimson tears flowing from its eyes like a waterfall, falling from the sky to the earth.
Lin Yuan looked at the eye in the sky.
The blind gray pupil, the giant eye with bloody tears, it was exactly the same as the image on the wooden box from the shipwreck.
This was it, the Land of No Eyes, the place she was looking for.
In Lin Yuan's home, by her bedroom window, hung an old wind chime from her childhood. All the gemstones on the wind chime were fake, only one aquamarine square stone was a real aquamarine.
Lin Yuan had been too young when her parents died, and had suffered a great mental trauma. She could no longer remember most of the things that had happened at the time.
Her only memory was of her mother carrying her, running through the fire.
Surrounded by terrifying flames, she was in her mother’s arms, yet she felt calm and peaceful.
Her mother, at some point, had put an aquamarine necklace around her neck.
Lin Yuan still remembered the feeling of the cold gemstone against her skin, sliding from her neck to her chest.
She, with her eyes closed, had heard her mother's voice.
“Xiao Yuan, hide it, don’t let anyone find out, when you grow up, if you want to know the truth of this world, go to the No. 5 Contaminated Zone, and find the wooden box on the Mary shipwreck.”
When Lin Yuan grew up, she had once suspected that this was a distorted memory from her confused mind.
Her father had sealed her five senses at that time, so she shouldn’t have been able to hear or feel anything.
After going through the Mary shipwreck, the Golden Tree Contaminated Zone, until reaching here, seeing this eye identical to the one on the box, she knew it hadn’t been an illusion, it was a clue left to her by her parents before they died, a key to open a secret door.
Now, having become as strong as her parents had once been, she knew that those voices and feelings hadn't been something she had heard with her ears or felt with her body.
But the will left by her parents, directly in her mindscape.
“If you don’t have this ability, this desire, then don’t touch it, forever bury this secret in your heart.”
“Yuan Yuan, we’re sorry, Mommy and Daddy can’t be with you as you grow up.”
Lin Yuan couldn’t remember her mother's or her father’s face when she was little, the only thing she could remember was these three sentences left by her parents in her memory.
She hadn’t told anyone about this.
Since she was young, late at night, she would listen to these few words in her mind again and again, trying to discern her parents’ personalities, and their love for her, from these few words.
Using those little pieces to imagine that she was also an ordinary child, loved and protected by her parents.
And because of this, she had always been quietly collecting all information about the Mary shipwreck. Finally, she had found the clue left to her by her parents at the bottom of the sea in the No. 5 Contaminated Zone.
The two approached the giant eye.
The pale pupil, the blood tears like a waterfall, looked even more terrifying up close, the crimson waterfall falling from the sky into a deep chasm in the ground.
It was a narrow crack, splitting the barren land, bottomless.
Looking down from the edge, countless steel bars and pipes crisscrossed the chasm, stairs and dense houses extending upwards and downwards.
Layer upon layer of human structures, extending infinitely into the earth, densely packed, until swallowed by the bottomless darkness.
It was a giant underground city, buried deep in the darkness.
Perhaps it had once been incredibly prosperous. But now, beneath the abyss, darkness spread, not a single light visible in the silent underground city, even the whistling wind seemed black, like a man-eating hell that could devour everything.
Countless terrifying monsters lurked in this dark underground city, and also countless tempting treasures.
Lin Yuan and Ni Ji walked down along the edge of the crack.
There were no proper roads here, the long pipes covered with green moss.
Sometimes, they had to walk along these slippery pipes to reach the next location. The metal pipes, suspended above the abyss, made a teeth-grinding creak with every step.
More than one person came down here.
Among the explorers, there were quite a few Sentinels, even some civilians, carrying baskets on their backs, or cloth bags in their hands, carefully walking on those dangerous, suspended pipes, entering the abandoned underground city to search for supplies.
“Be careful, even a small piece of Nether Stone is worth it,” a tired old father said to the child following behind him.
The thin young man behind him carefully walked on the pipes, his head lowered, always ready to reach out and help his elderly father.
"The Land of No Eyes has a lot of Nether Stones, those things are very valuable, they’re essential ingredients for making incense," Ni Ji explained to Lin Yuan, "So even though this place is very dangerous, there are still many people who come in."
He reached out, held Lin Yuan, and helped her jump from the very slippery pipe to the next level.
Lin Yuan's boots landed on the metal roof with a loud thud.
"Even ordinary people are coming in here, it's too dangerous."
"But even so, most of the people here, in the end, can't find Nether Stones, those stones, they’re in a very deep place," Ni Ji said, "Ordinary people, even most Sentinels, don't have the life to reach there."
A figure, losing his footing, suddenly fell from a high place in the distance.
The young, thin body landed on the pipes below, bouncing off, like a broken branch, falling all the way into the bottomless abyss.
Lin Yuan froze. She stood there for a long time, not hearing the sound of that life landing.
Such deep darkness silently swallowing a young life, not even an echo.
Only a desperate cry came from above, echoing for a long time in the dim ruins.
"What are those incenses used for?" Lin Yuan, staring at the bottomless darkness below, asked the sentinel beside her, "Are they worth exchanging a life like this for?"
Ni Ji remained silent, not answering.
Those incenses, other than letting those high-ranking officials in the White Tower lose themselves in intoxicating illusions, making them even more corrupt and depraved, served no purpose at all. They were, of course, not worth so many people risking their lives for.
This wasn’t reasonable, it wasn't fair, it wasn't normal.
But this wasn’t a normal world, they were living in a twisted era, and individual anger could not change this unreasonable reality.
The sentinel looked up at the sky, the crack above them was very narrow, only a thin sliver of sky remaining, a little bit of daylight refracting from the edges of the crack.
They had already descended several levels, the light here had become very dim, their vision no longer clear.
The whistling wind from underground, like the cries of countless ghosts.
Further down, even that last bit of light above them disappeared.
The world was plunged into complete darkness, eyes seemingly useless in a world like this.
Ni Ji turned on a small flashlight on his left shoulder, the light very weak, they might have to stay in this dark world for a long time, they had to conserve electricity, they couldn't afford to use powerful lighting equipment.
The faint light flickered, only illuminating a small area around their feet.
Ni Ji reached out to the guide beside him.
That hand, much smaller than his, very soft, returned his grip, holding his hand.
The world underground was exceptionally dark. Here, all light seemed to be swallowed by darkness.
The pale circle of light from the flashlight illuminated the dim, messy ground, the winding corridors faintly visible, as if monsters might jump out at any time.
With light this dim, Lin Yuan, with her eyesight, could barely see anything, a sentinel’s vision was much better than hers, they could see in the dark with only a faint light.
Lin Yuan, holding Ni Ji's hand, carefully walked through the dark corridor, step by step.
Suddenly, she stopped and pulled Ni Ji, Ni Ji followed her gaze into the darkness.
The flashlight’s faint light illuminated a pale face on the ceiling.
It was a strange creature, clinging to the dark ceiling, its pale head peeking out.
The head looked very human-like, but it had no eyes, the place where its eyes should have been was covered with a thin layer of skin, and a pair of triangular ears on the sides of its head were unusually prominent, its skin, from years of not seeing sunlight, was frighteningly pale.
It had eight arms, its fingers human-shaped, but it could silently crawl on the ceiling.
Even a sentinel like Ni Ji couldn’t hear its movements.
But it had emotions, it was a living being, its location captured by Lin Yuan’s tentacles, exposed in advance.
The flashlight’s faint light seemed to startle it, a large mouth full of sharp teeth opening on its eyeless face, it let out a strange scream.
The Deviant suddenly pounced down from the darkness, its speed so fast that it only left a pale afterimage in the flashlight’s beam.
Ni Ji swung his blade, intercepting it midway, cutting it in half.
The human-like creature was severed at the waist, its foul-smelling innards spilling out, but it wasn't dead, its severed body still violently bouncing up from the ground, its arms and legs wrapping around Ni Ji's legs, its mouth open, trying to bite him.
A yellow light appeared in Lin Yuan's eyes, staring at the writhing body in the darkness.
The Deviant, its speed frighteningly fast, slightly froze under her gaze.
Ni Ji's gun fired in the darkness, several shots at the two bouncing halves of the body.
They couldn't clearly see what was happening in the darkness, only the muzzle flashes flickering continuously, the monster's writhing body, its screaming mouth, flashing frame by frame with the flickering light.
The shaking images and gunshots ended, the monster's sharp gasps quieted down, and everything returned to silence.
A hand, wearing a black glove, emerged from the darkness, once again holding Lin Yuan's hand.
There was no light in this underground world, and none of the mutated creatures here had eyes.
They lived in eternal darkness, adapted to the darkness, they had sharp hearing and the ability to move silently in the night, their vitality strong, their movements as fast as lightning, they hated all flesh and blood that entered this place, they were terrifying monsters.
Ni Ji and Lin Yuan continued downwards, walking down the broken stairs, crawling through the shaky metal pipes, moving through the complex terrain of the underground city.
Grotesquely shaped creatures would pounce on them from the darkness at any time, they killed countless Deviants that tried to ambush them.
If it weren’t for those high-intensity training sessions before the mission, it would have been very difficult for them to travel in such a pitch-black world.
But now, at least, the two were still steadily holding hands.
Ni Ji’s demon blade hadn't even cut his own skin, hadn’t tasted his blood.
In the dark world, a faint light guiding the way, their hands clasped, they slowly moved forward.
In this Land of No Eyes, they were each other's eyes and ears, walking towards the even deeper depths.
so cute
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