"A rose grows on thorns, and the stars flow through time. People always marvel at the infinite tenderness of the universe, which can allow two unrelated grains of dust to cross a distance of billions of light years and finally meet at the end of time..."
In the deep and dense forest, the branches and leaves trembled, and the pale moonlight poured down, causing the soil layer to refract a faint blue light.
Scarlet fire ants wander around the roots of trees, spitting out strands of corrosive mucus to mark their nests. Their bulging abdomens are as big as an adult human's fist, and their shells are covered with red and black stripes, looking extremely hard.
This place is sparsely populated, as if it were a place abandoned by the gods. However, if you listen carefully, you can hear many rustling sounds, as if countless wild beasts are hiding in the dark and lurking.
Lu Yuan had lived in this strange place for five days and had been walking for five days. During this time, he passed three lakes, two swamps, and a sea of roses, but still did not see any trace of human beings.
If he could choose again, he thought he would not sign up for that weird tour group again, so that he would not end up in this strange place by accident because of the bus overturning on the mountain road.
At one point Lu Yuan felt as if he was getting further and further away from home.
This "home" does not refer to a small house or three or two relatives, but the entire blue planet and tens of thousands of human beings.
Whether it is the dense forest that emits blue light at night, the unusually soft soil covered with transparent crystals, or the unknown bird with three heads that can breathe fire, none of them seem like something that can appear on Earth.
He didn't want to admit it, but he seemed to have fallen into a gap in time and space and traveled to another world.
A three-headed white crow suddenly flew and circled above for a while, and finally fluttered its wings and landed on the branch. It had three heads, one looking to the right, one looking to the left, and the head in the middle stared straight at Lu Yuan, who was dying under the tree, with eyes that glowed with a dark metallic color.
“Squeak—”
A search warship happened to fly over the dense forest. The pilot noticed something unusual through the porthole and exclaimed in confusion. He turned on the terrain detector and after accurately locating it, the scene of the ten-thousand-foot canyon below appeared on the display screen.
Lu Yuan drank the last bit of mineral water and then rested under a tree. His strength and food were exhausted. If he could not find help, he would probably die here.
When Lu Yuan fell into this place, he was accidentally bitten on his calf by a strange purple-striped belly snake. He had drained the blood to remove the poison and bandaged it with gauze from the medicine box to prevent the bloody smell from attracting wild animals. However, after a long journey, the wound not only did not recover, but it began to become inflamed and swollen, causing a high fever.
Humans are social animals, and even death requires a destination.
Little Yellow Duck Tour Group.
There are many animals hiding in this dense forest, which seem to be genetically mutated species.
Lu Yuan leaned against the tree with a pale face, his eyes went dark, and his consciousness began to blur. He frowned and wrapped his coat tightly around the gaping wound, but the sticky blood still flowed down his ankle and dripped into the soil.
"Yoriga, I think you really should go to the interstellar hospital to clean your eyes. The C3 restricted area has long been contaminated by energy stones and is not allowed to be entered. Who dares to go to the restricted area without fear of death?"
Before I knew it, the sky was getting brighter.
The dark sky was cut by the sharp blade, and a long light green line gradually appeared. The moon and the aurora coexisted rarely, and the soil on the ground turned blue again.
The three white crows on the tree also cried twice, flapped their wings and flew up into the sky, causing the leaves to tremble.
There were about a dozen "people" on the battleship. They were wearing combat uniforms, with guns on their waists and a golden badge with an ancient insect-shaped pattern on their left shoulders. They were obviously from the same army. Hearing the driver's words, they all raised their eyebrows at the same time, looking a little surprised.
A nest of fire ants was originally moving back and forth beside Lu Yuan, trying to eat his flesh and blood, but suddenly they smelled blood and immediately scattered and fled away, as if they had encountered a natural enemy.
There is a line of words printed on the sun hat:
Although the mountainous area where Luyuan traveled was not a popular tourist attraction, he vaguely remembered that there were more than just him on the tour bus at that time, and there were at least three or four tourists. Now he could only hope that he could find the route and meet up with them as soon as possible.
The pilot controlled the warship to stop above the dense forest and confirmed it again before looking back: "Report, traces of living creatures were found in the C3 restricted area. Should we go down to investigate?"
It was waiting for this human to die so that it could have a good meal. But it seemed to be afraid of something and did not dare to move forward.
Lu Yuan opened his black backpack, and there was only a lighter, half a bottle of mineral water, some spare clothes, and a yellow sun hat inside.
On the intricate road map, a red dot was flashing slightly, but it was getting fainter and fainter.
One of the silver-haired men picked up a high-powered telescope and looked outside, but the endless undulating dense forest was filled with gray polluted miasma. Apart from a few three-headed white crows, he found nothing.
The silver-haired man finally threw away the telescope and sat back in his original position. He had a pair of scarlet and gorgeous eyes that looked extremely dangerous. He lazily lifted his eyelids and said, "Only the Insect God would dare to come to such a ghost place."
Yoriga tried to lower the altitude of the battleship to facilitate detection of the situation in the dense forest, and said dissatisfiedly: "Justu, you can doubt my eyes, but you should not doubt my equipment. The body temperature of the mutants in the C3 restricted area is below 6 degrees. Now there is a red dot on the detector, which means that there is at least one living creature with a body temperature above 35 degrees."
Justu sat on a chair with his legs crossed, his black knee-high combat boots shining brightly. In his hand, he held a loaded silver light energy gun, which he was tossing lightly in the air. "Perhaps the pollution level has increased, and those mutants have undergone secondary mutations."
Yoriga was very excited: "Then we should go down and take a look at the situation. The secondary mutation must be reported to the military. It would be even better if we can capture a C3 mutant and bring it back."
Another companion said, "Come on, I'm not interested in those weird mutants. If you said there was a male insect down there, I might consider it."
"Male insect? You won't get such a rare and precious thing. It's better to think about how to become the empire marshal as soon as possible."
"So we can't go down or not? There might be male insects at the military party tonight, so you better not make me late." Just as they were talking, Yustu, who had been sitting on a chair to rest, finally stood up. He walked straight to the hatch, refilled his gun with energy bullets, and said to his companion, "Compared to the stupid and brainless male insects, I think the C3 mutants are more interesting to me."
"Hey, Justu, they're stupid, but they're tempting, aren't they?"
"Of course a piece of bug poop that emits pheromones is very attractive."
Justu said so.
The warship finally landed on the nearby plain. Justu and his men put on white protective clothing, put on goggles, and walked into the restricted area cautiously with guns in hand in the lingering miasma.
A broken boundary marker stood nearby, long since weathered and decayed by time. It had stood there silently for who knows how many hundreds of years, but one could still vaguely discern the ancient Zerg characters engraved on it:
I have been to the land of gunpowder, I have seen white crows fall and die,
I have chased the setting sun, turned the wheel of fate in the temple,
But now I will sleep here and listen to the whispers of the gods.
In a rotten place, no life can enter.
A gust of wind blew by, and the branches and leaves rustled. The depths of the dense forest were dark and endless, as if a pair of empty old eyes were silently watching them. The smell of death and decay enveloped the whole body.
Justu slowly brushed the dusty boundary monument with his white-gloved fingertips, and then rubbed the dirt on his fingertips, which was as dark as black ink. "Pollution index C3 and above. Didn't those guys in the research institute say that they have been purifying Originium? Is this their result?"
"That's not our business," Yoriga kicked the boundary marker, and a piece of gravel rolled down. The sound was particularly clear in the silent forest. "Oh, this stone looks older than my grandfather."
Justu frowned slightly and looked back at him: "Damn it, don't alert the enemy."
Yoriga shrugged, expressing helplessness.
They maintained their formation and moved forward slowly, carefully pushing aside the grass with their gun barrels, and the scenery inside became clearer and clearer.
Although Lu Yuan, who was sitting under the tree, was half conscious, he still keenly heard an unusual sound. He opened his eyes alertly, a little worried that a large beast was approaching, and immediately stood up with the help of the tree trunk, and took out a folding knife from his backpack, and hid behind the tree.
If you encounter a wild animal in the forest, the best way is to hide. Of course, if you can run fast enough, that is also a solution.
But unfortunately, Lu Yuan is now dragging a half-disabled leg, which is no different from a disabled person. There is no other way except to hide.
He leaned against the tree trunk and exhaled slowly, trying to calm the sharp pain from the wound, and his cold brows were furrowed tightly.
Damn...
Lu Yuan heard the rustling sound getting closer and closer, and he clenched the folding knife in his hand expressionlessly, thinking that at worst he would fight to the death. He had been out in the society since he was a child. When he was a child, he was the bully of the whole school. When he grew up, he was a cancer of society. He had never lost a fight in all these years.
Just as Lu Yuan entered a state of alert, Justu's team was slowly approaching. The detection instrument clearly showed that there was a red dot 50 meters away from them, and it was flashing more and more frequently.
The C3 variant is extremely dangerous, especially the red dot, which is likely the product of a secondary mutation.
Justu made a gesture to his teammates behind him, and they slowly approached Luyuan in a semi-encircled area, ready to kill him at any time. However, when the bushes were pushed aside, they were surprised to find that the person hiding behind the tree was not the secondary mutant they imagined, but a wounded man in black.
"Who are you?!"
Justu was shocked. He didn't expect there would be a living creature here. He immediately pointed the gun at Lu Yuan. However, at the moment he lost consciousness, he felt a sharp pain in his wrist. The gun slipped out of his hand and went off target.
"boom-"
The sound of a gunshot shook the forest, hitting a white crow and startling countless birds.
Lu Yuan forgot that he had an injury on his leg. When he turned around reflexively and kicked away Justu's gun, he was forced to kneel on the ground the next second because of the pain in his leg. Then, more than a dozen warning sounds of different tones rang out above his head.
“Don’t move!!”
"Don't move!"
Lu Yuan subconsciously raised his head, and suddenly a dozen black guns appeared in front of him, pointing at him: "..."
Lu Yuan's body froze: "..."
One of the men noticed the knife in his hand and said in a serious voice: "Put down your weapon!"
Lu Yuan looked at the dozen guns in front of him, hesitated for a moment, and decisively threw the apple peeling knife not far away: "..."
Damn, I can’t beat him.
(End of this chapter)