Shen Fei and a group of sentinels led Lin Yuan to the treatment room, a room specially prepared for injured sentinels.
In order to prevent the mentally fragile wounded from being affected during treatment, all the walls of the treatment room are covered with thick sound-proof materials to ensure that the mental world of the wounded in the room will no longer be affected by external noise.
Lin Yuan stood in front of the multi-layered laminated glass window outside the house, looking at the treatment room.
The treatment room was lit with soft lights, and a pile of medical equipment was arranged in a messy line. On the only bed, a sentry was tied tightly.
The sentry looked very quiet at the moment, with long golden hair and handsome features, his eyes open blankly, staring at the rooftop silently and empty.
His hands were crossed and folded on his shoulders, tied tightly from top to bottom with thick restraints. There were also heavy iron locks on his neck and feet, and a cylindrical gag was tied in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue.
I don’t know what kind of violent struggle has taken place here that has necessitated such strict surveillance of the patient.
"How about it?"
Shen Fei and the sentries outside the house looked at Lin Yuan nervously, as if Lin Yuan could decide someone's life or death with just one look through the glass, and could immediately give them a reassurance or a death notice.
"I want to know some details, what his spiritual body is and what his current state is. It would be best if I could know what he encountered in the contaminated area." Lin Yuan said.
Shen Fei's face turned ugly.
"You know, right? The contaminated areas are like strange nightmares. Each contaminated area is completely different. The mutants inside are also different." He explained, "Some of them crave human flesh and blood, while some like to pollute the human spiritual world. There are also some that can even live in peace with humans as long as you don't touch their boundaries. The mutant who captured Rachel wanted to turn him into his own kind."
Lin Yuan said she didn't know much about it. When she was studying in the White Tower, she had seen many propaganda videos of humans fighting against mutants. The monsters in the videos were all ferocious and bloodthirsty. Killing was their instinct. They fought fiercely with the heroes and had no reason at all.
In the contaminated area that she had just passed through, human-headed monsters were chasing after human blood, and their sharp mouthparts took away many lives.
Of course, if we talk about unique mutants, Lin Yuan does know one, and that guy has been hiding secretly in her home.
"The ones you mentioned are the lowest level mutants," Shen Fei said. "They mostly appear in the newly formed contaminated areas. In fact, in the contaminated areas, the powerful mutants are not just simple beasts. They are cunning, have different personalities, and each has its own quirks and habits."
"There is a mutant in Contaminated Area No. 5. It particularly likes powerful Sentinels. It never kills any Sentinel that falls into its hands. It only imprisons them and tortures them repeatedly. Until it breaks through the Sentinel's barrier and pollutes the spiritual world. Until the person completely collapses, goes berserk, and becomes a mutant like them, and stays in the world of monsters forever."
"I've always had a feeling..." Shen Fei pondered for a while, "It just likes to keep people in it, turn them into monsters, and live in the polluted area from then on."
"What happened in the contaminated area..." Shen Fei showed a painful expression, as if he remembered something he didn't want to recall. He wiped his face and continued to talk.
"When we arrived, the monster had put Xiao Lei on a high platform and was torturing him. The most hateful thing was that its spores created a lot of dummies, the kind that looked very much like real people. Among those people were me, these brothers, and some of Xiao Lei's relatives. In short, they were the people closest to him in his memory. They gathered together with those people with our faces on their backs, watching him being tortured bit by bit, and still laughing beside him."
He pounded his fist against the wall. "When I arrived, I beat the guy with my face to pieces. But it was no use. Rachel was tortured there for three days. When we picked him up, he didn't recognize anyone."
The atmosphere outside the treatment room was solemn. The sentinels all had red eyes and gritted their teeth in silence. It was obvious that each of them had participated in the rescue and had left behind an unforgettable anger in their hearts.
Lin Yuan was probably the only one in the whole audience who could still maintain her iconic, expressionless face.
She touched her chin, hummed, and said, "Okay, I'll go in and try."
After saying this, she turned around, pushed the door and went in.
The sentries crowded around the glass observation window outside the house, looking nervously at the inside of the house.
They held their breath and watched the young female guide enter the house.
The guide calmly washed his hands in the sink, folded his sleeves, and found a chair next to the bed to sit down.
Rachel, who was tied to the bed, showed no reaction, staring blankly at the ceiling. He didn't seem to care who sat next to him or what was going to happen to him.
The personal terminal worn on Lin Yuan's left wrist lit up, and several virtual screens popped up, connecting to the sentinel's life monitor on the bed.
She looked at the various physical data for a while, stretched out her right hand, and firmly pressed the sentinel's eyebrows to cover his blue eyes.
"She, she, she got it right away!" Da Hu outside the window almost jumped up. After being glared at by seven or eight people, he quickly covered his mouth with his hands as big as a palm fan.
Although the soundproofing here was very good and no noise from outside could be heard, they were still very careful, fearing that they would disturb Lin Yuan's treatment.
"It's starting now?" He covered his mouth and whispered to the short-haired female sentry beside him, gesturing with his hands, "Little Bird, why did I hear that we need to change clothes, burn incense, and play music before the counseling?"
The female sentry nicknamed Little Bird stared at the house nervously and shook her head.
She didn't understand either. This was her first time seeing a guide's psychiatric treatment, and it was really different from the fancy scenes she saw on TV dramas.
"She rushed all the way in without even a sip of water. No matter what the result is, we should thank her." Xiaoniao said, "After all, Captain Lei has already..."
She swallowed the unlucky second half of her sentence and said, "No matter what, once the counseling begins, it cannot be interrupted. What we have to do now is to keep quiet and guard this door to prevent anyone from disturbing those inside."
Through the glass, the girl sitting beside the bed closed her eyes. The faint light of the virtual screen shone on her calm and indifferent face, inexplicably giving people a little sense of security.
Lin Yuan opened his eyes and found himself standing in a room that was mostly collapsed.
Is this Rachel's mental picture
She looked up and looked around. The small room should have been a warm place. There were striped wallpaper, beautiful wall lamps, and a small wooden bed. There was a pot of green plants and several photo frames on the bedside table.
Lin Yuan took a look at the photos, most of which were group photos. The sentries in the photos were arm in arm with each other, with bright smiles on their faces.
Looking closely, there are several faces whose owners Lin Yuan recognizes, Xu Fei, Da Hu, Xiao Niao... The ones who are guarding outside the treatment room basically all appear in the photos.
This is the warmest and safest place in Rachel's heart, where the images of the people he cares about most remain.
The cozy house was now mostly collapsed, with most of the walls and roof collapsed, leaving only this small corner. The gap in the floor was very uneven, and a bituminous black solution was constantly oozing out, and the thick black liquid was dripping down.
Lin Yuan walked to the edge of the broken floor and looked down. Downstairs were layers of broken rooms and houses, so deep that it seemed bottomless.
This may have been a huge and solid castle. Now there are only countless incomplete houses floating in the air.
Looking up, you can see the blood-red sky, and huge eyes hanging above the red sky, weird and disgusting. Those eyes stare coldly at the collapsing world.
Looking down, there was no end in sight. Broken walls, floors, stairs and various furniture were floating around sporadically. Fragments kept falling, and black liquid was flowing everywhere, like endless black blood.
In the real world, beside the bed, a red alarm symbol appeared on the virtual screen of Lin Yuan’s personal terminal.
"Alarm, alarm, the patient's mental picture is collapsing, please withdraw from treatment immediately."
"Danger, danger, please withdraw from treatment immediately."
Looking out the window, the female sentry Xiaoniao jumped up and said, "What happened? Why is there a red exclamation mark?"
The tiger who was cowering on the side tried his best to pull her, making a gesture to keep quiet, and tried to persuade her in a low voice, "Calm down, little bird, calm down, it was you who said that you should trust the guide and guard this door well."
They all looked at Lin Yuan eagerly.
Lin Yuan, who was lying beside the bed, had his eyes closed and his brows motionless.
Let the red light of the virtual screen alarm flash on that handsome face.
At this moment, in Rachel's mental picture,
Lin Yuan was standing on the edge of the broken house, looking at the piles of messy floating debris beneath his feet.
Below, about four or five floors away from her, a young boy was peeking at her from behind a broken wall, half of his face showing.
The boy had the same blond hair and blue eyes as Rachel on the hospital bed.
"Warning, warning, it is recommended to terminate treatment immediately." The warning sound from the terminal rang in Lin Yuan's ears.
Lin Yuan ignored him and jumped directly down.
The little boy was a little panicked when he saw Lin Yuan jumping down towards him. He quickly retracted his face, and his small figure flashed away, and no one knew where he had hidden.
Lin Yuan stepped on the pedal where the boy had just appeared and looked up. The boy was gone, and only a golden, furry little thing flashed by in the distance.
"What is his spiritual body?"
"Rachel's spirit form is a majestic golden lion, very handsome. Unfortunately, after he was rescued, his spirit form has never appeared again."
Lin Yuan recalled the conversation he had with Shen Fei before he came in.
A majestic golden lion? Isn't this still a kitten
Lin Yuan thought about it and chased after the little lion with sparse hair.
Every piece of floor beneath her feet collapsed as soon as she stepped on it. There was no turning back.
Without even looking back, she ran after the little spirit that had already turned into an infant.
Huge pieces of debris fell around her from time to time, and thick black liquid hung from all directions like a waterfall, flowing everywhere.
The tentacles appeared one by one behind Lin Yuan, floating with her in the shadows.
[a bit dangerious.]
[The space ahead is distorted]
[It’s too dirty, there’s black mud everywhere]
[It stinks, I don’t like this place]
Lin Yuan missed a step and suddenly fell from mid-air.
As she continued to fall, she vaguely saw a blond sentinel standing on the edge of the empty building, holding a sword, his face covered in blood, looking at her with a sad face.
I don’t know how many floors I fell, but the tentacles touched a piece of ruins, and Lin Yuan reached out and climbed up.
I raised my hands and saw that they were covered with thick, sticky black mud. The soles of my feet were also extremely sticky, and every step I took was very difficult.
I looked up and could no longer see the sky.
The little lion appeared on a high platform. Its sparse hair was stained by the black mud. It raised its little legs to try to shake off the black mud. But a slender and strange black hand stretched out from the sticky mud. The hand grabbed the lion's limbs and body and dragged it into the mud.
Lin Yuan ran towards the platform. When he got closer, the skinny lion cub on the platform disappeared. There was only a sentinel with golden hair and blue eyes lying there. It was the owner of this mental picture, Rachel.
The sentry's limbs were locked by inky black hands, his abdomen was cut open, blood was all over the ground, but he was still alive, and red blood flowed down all sides of the platform.
There were countless people surrounding the platform on all sides. Those people had exaggeratedly long necks and their faces were full of smiles, as if they were watching something very happy. They twisted their necks to stare at the tortured sentry on the platform and talked a lot.
Lin Yuan stood up straight, raised one hand, and said, "Expel."
Huge tentacles broke through the mud and emerged from the ground, rushing forward and clearing out the strange onlookers in an instant.
One by one, the heads fell off the long necks, losing their vivid expressions as if they were living people, and turned into dummies made of white sticky threads, rolling into the mud and sinking.
Lin Yuan approached the platform, and the white dummy and the black hand were gone. The sentry lying on the platform had his eyes open, but his gaze was bleak, and he looked like he had been dead for a long time.
This is originally a spiritual world, and all of this is an illusion created by the sentinel's memory.
Lin Yuan looked into the distance and saw countless such platforms floating in the void.
On each platform, a golden-haired Rachel was repeatedly dragged up and tied to it, enduring a long period of torture.
His most trusted relatives and comrades-in-arms surrounded him, craning their necks and watching his humiliation and pain with smiles on their faces.
This is the depth of Rachel's spiritual landscape.
His body has been recovered from the contaminated area.
But the spirit is still trapped in such extreme pain, still repeatedly enduring inhuman abuse in its own picture, and dying over and over again.
Is it too late
Lin Yuan stood beside the sentry's horrific body.
The cozy castle in the Sentinel’s spiritual vision has become a ruin, with thick silt deposited everywhere like a quagmire, and black waterfalls of black water seem to be falling continuously from the sky.
The Sentinel himself was immersed in nightmares of being repeatedly abused.
How much meticulous guidance would be needed, and how much time would be spent, to clean up such a world and restore it to its original state
And there is no time left.
The world has begun to collapse, and the beasts transformed by the spirit bodies have become juvenile, which is a sign of extinction.
At this moment of helplessness, Lin Yuan suddenly thought of the blue sea.
Thinking of the waves gently soothing everything, as if sooner or later they would be able to melt away all the pain in the world.
Lin Yuan thought for a moment, then stretched out his hand.
The scarlet sky suddenly disappeared, thousands of stars appeared in the sky, and a huge bright moon slowly rose and hung high in the sky.
The moonlight shone down from the sky, penetrating all the thick darkness and illuminating Lin Yuan.
Lin Yuan, standing in the moonlight, spoke up and said, "The wind is rising."
The breeze started to blow around. The gentle breeze blew away the thick and stinking smell in the air, bringing a soothing fragrance.
Lin Yuan said again: "It's raining."
Then it began to rain, heavy rain falling from the sky, hitting the stubborn silt that clung to every corner of the world.
Finally, Lin Yuan closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, with light in them, and said, "Flood."
The sound of waves came from all directions, and sea water coming from nowhere surged onto the earth.
Wherever the sea water surged, it flooded the mud and washed away the filth and decadence.
The gentlest and most powerful water floods everything and everything.
Ruins, execution platforms, corpses, dummies... everything was submerged by the overwhelming flood.
The huge castle with thousands of towers and pavilions, carrying those strange, painful and unbearable memories, sank in the surging waves that swept across the earth.
In the real treatment room, the sentry lying quietly on the bed suddenly opened his eyes wide and tensed his body.
Red fluorescence appeared in his wide-open eyes, and a heavy roar came from his sealed throat.
The sentry's strong body struggled desperately on the bed, and the layers of restraints wrapped around him made cracking sounds, and the iron chains locking his neck and legs were shaken and made ping-pong noises. It was frightening, and I even began to doubt that such a strong bondage might not be able to hold him.
"What's wrong?"
"Rachel!"
"It's frenzy. Rachel is going frenzy."
"No, it's impossible."
"No, Captain Lei. Just hold on."
The soldiers outside the window stood up one by one.
They pressed against the glass, clenched their fists, and wanted to rush forward, but were afraid of missing out at the most critical moment.
They could only grit their teeth and endure it.
In the treatment room, the guide sitting beside the bed was still as calm as ever, with her eyes closed and her face peaceful.
No matter how the man on the sickbed struggled, her hand that was pressing the sentry's eyebrows remained steady and unmoved.
In such an agonizing moment, her always calm and peaceful face actually makes people feel a little bit at ease.
It seemed that no matter what kind of dangerous difficulties she encountered, she was in control and could solve them, making people want to trust her.
Gradually, the turbulent sea water in Rachel's mental picture began to recede.
The remnants of the ruins were floating on the vast ocean.
A small wooden bed floated from a distance. Lin Yuan stood on the bed and looked around. Occasionally, he would pick up a photo frame, a table lamp, or a pot of green plants from the objects floating on the water...
Until she saw the little lion.
The lonely lion cub was wet all over, with its eyes closed, clinging to a broken wooden board and floating on the water.
A tentacle emerged from the water, grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and handed it to Lin Yuan.
The sea water finally receded completely, and the gentle moonlight shone on the devastated land after the water receded.
A small green sprout emerged from the moist soil and opened two fresh green leaves in the moonlight.
Lin Yuan held the wet lion cub in his arms, standing in a wet wilderness. Everything was washed away by the flood. The painful memories and the warm house were now gone.
Lin Yuan thought about it, dismantled the wooden beds they had been riding on along the way, pieced them together, and used the wood to build a small wooden house.
Come and help, Lin Yuan said to the tentacles.
[We can’t do this]
[Lots of burrs, hurts hands]
[Can you bear to use such delicate arms and legs for carpentry work? ]
[You should just do it yourself]
Why are there no fish in the sea
[There is only a dirty kitten, a little disgusted]
I still want that little fish
Lin Yuan had no choice but to do it herself, because she was a human being living in the real world, not a spirit being that could act arbitrarily.
She pieced together a small wooden house in her imaginary world, which was barely big enough for a little boy to hide in.
"It's all we can do for now," Lin Yuan said. "Just squeeze in here for now, and then you can slowly build your own big castle later."
She stuffed the little lion, who was soaked by the sea water and shivering with cold, into the dry wooden house.
I left the lamp and the photo frame to him, and planted the pot of green plant I had found at the door of the house.
Lin Yuan stood up and prepared to leave.
A hand reached out from the small house.
A human, young boy's thin arm.
The hand reached out and quietly grasped the corner of Lin Yuan's clothes without saying anything. He couldn't speak yet.
Lin Yuan sighed, took off his coat and handed it to him. In the small room, the boy huddled in a corner, hugging the coat tightly.
Lin Yuan in the treatment room opened his eyes and felt tired.
It is not easy to sort out the spiritual world of the sentinels. It is even more tiring than fighting monsters.
Lin Yuan withdrew his hand from the sentry's forehead and looked at Rachel lying on the hospital bed.
The sentry with long golden hair closed his eyes. A few strands of golden hair stuck to his sweaty cheeks. His long eyelashes trembled occasionally and the corners of his eyes were slightly moist.
As if falling into a peaceful sleep.
The data from various instruments connected to his body returned to normal.
The glaring red exclamation mark on the virtual screen of Lin Yuan's personal terminal finally disappeared.
A wet little lion appeared at Lin Yuan's feet at some point.
It was abnormally small, like a newborn lion cub, with sparse hair, soaking wet, shivering, and curled up tightly there.
Lin Yuan picked it up with a bit of disdain, thought about it, and finally took off his real coat and wrapped the little lion, which was not much bigger than a kitten, with the clothes that carried his body temperature.
When the sentries who had been waiting outside the window for a long time saw this scene, they jumped up, cheered and hugged each other tightly.
There were even several people who couldn't help but transform into half-beasts.
The appearance of Rachel's spirit body shows that the Sentinel has passed the most dangerous moment.
Although his spirit body degenerated to a very weak state and lost its powerful fighting ability in a short period of time, nothing is more important than a person's survival, right
When Lin Yuan, wearing a short base layer and holding the young lion cub, opened the door and came out, the sentries outside the house surrounded him. They were so excited that they didn't know what to say.
"He is still very fragile now. Take good care of him and his spirit. Don't stop the white noise in the room for a moment." Lin Yuan instructed, and then she handed the little lion in her hand over, "To whom..."
Seven or eight hands stretched out at the same time, and many of them were in the form of wild animals, with tiger claws, gull wings, wolf claws...
Shen Fei, who was standing behind Lin Yuan, coughed loudly. Only then did the sentries react and hid their hairy arms behind their backs.
The last guide who came to them was scared away by the sentinels' half-beast forms.
"It's okay." Lin Yuan said, handing the little lion wrapped in clothes to the female sentry with short hair, "I'll give it to you."
The female sentinel nicknamed Little Bird showed a look of surprise, stretched out her arms covered with large pure white feathers, took the lion, who was as soft as a kitten, and held it carefully in her hands, protecting it carefully with her white wings.
Judging from her appearance, the spirit of Little Bird should be a raptor, the pure white overlord of the sky. However, her friends nicknamed her Little Bird.
Lin Yuan found it somewhat interesting.
"When Captain Lei wakes up and finds out his spirit body has become so small, we will laugh at him to death." Xiao Niao said this, but tears fell. Four or five tall and strong sentinels surrounded her, their eyes all red.
"Don't pay attention to them, they're a bunch of Lu Bing idiots with no manners at all." Shen Fei's eyes were red, but his face was full of smiles. He happily invited Lin Yuan to see the room prepared for her.
Lin Yuan didn't have her coat anymore and was only wearing a short undershirt, revealing her slender neck and white arms. She sneezed as she reached the door.
A sentry came out and called out to her.
It was the sentry with a burly build, thick eyebrows and round eyes.
Da Hu was holding a uniform for female sentries. He touched his head with one hand and handed the clothes over with the other hand. He said very embarrassedly, "Your clothes are wet. This is Xiao Niao's clothes. Do you want to put it on first?"
Afraid that Lin Yuan would be unhappy, he added, "Don't be disgusted, it's clean and I haven't worn it since I washed it."
Lin Yuan didn't say anything. He took the clothes calmly, didn't refuse it, shook it out and put it on his shoulders.
[Actually, this place is pretty good]
[There are big cats and kittens]
[There are also birds and other things]
[They all seem to like us]
[I like it here]
[It would be nice if that fish was there too]
[The world is so big, why do you only talk about that fish?]
Lin Yuan looked back as the tentacles continued to chatter away.
The tall and strong sentry was still standing at the door. He bowed to Lin Yuan, bending his waist to the standard 90 degrees and not raising it up yet.
Lin Yuan touched the clothes on his shoulders.
It seems like I feel a little happy.
(End of this chapter)