Outside the boundary of the Pupilless Land, the red warning sign is weathered, rusty and very old.
It has obviously been here for a long time.
In the open space outside the warning sign, there was actually a small market where merchants stayed, trading materials and purchasing precious items brought out of the contaminated area by the sentinels.
There are even quite a few ordinary people coming in and out here.
The periphery of the contaminated area was originally a very dangerous area. But in the notoriously dangerous place of the Pupilless Land, people seemed to have forgotten that the dangerous contaminated area was just one step away.
"There are several types of contaminated areas," Ni Ji and Lin Yuan explained. "Some contaminated areas are very unstable and often spread at irregular intervals. When they spread, they will crazily devour nearby population and land.
But there are also some polluted areas that are dangerous inside but have stable borders and rarely spread. So some people gather at the borders to do business.”
Lin Yuan thought about it and realized that among all the polluted areas she had come into contact with, the spread of the Golden Tree Polluted Area seemed to be the most crazy.
She experienced the spread of golden trees while riding in a car. If the driver had not reacted quickly, the ordinary people in the car would have been trapped in the golden tree pollution area.
Is there any reason for this difference
A vague idea flashed through Lin Yuan's mind, but she had been to too few contaminated areas to grasp the core hidden in the dark.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Ni Ji said, "I have a feeling. The easier it is to get the key to the contaminated area, the less it will spread."
These words instantly made Lin Yuan's thoughts clear.
Walking in those polluted areas, she always had a strange feeling. She always felt that those strange worlds had a twisted desire for humans.
For sentinels, or guides like her, that intention was even more obvious. Whether in Area 5 or Area 77, the intention of the contaminated area to get them and keep them was very obvious.
In contaminated areas where keys are easily obtained, a large number of sentinels and ordinary people will be tempted to explore. As a result, a large number of humans are infected and distorted and remain in the contaminated areas. Such contaminated areas are relatively stable.
The pillar of the Golden Tree contaminated area is Xunhua, and he never gives out the key easily, so - Lin Yuan reacted and realized that because few humans entered, the contaminated area was like a hungry beast, spreading madly and trying every way to devour humans
Lin Yuan exclaimed, "Ah!" and looked up at Ni Ji. "Could it be that the polluted area needs humans to live in it? Do they want to keep getting humans?"
The sentry beside her looked serious and nodded slightly, agreeing with her guess.
"Many veterans feel this way. The contaminated areas crave humans, and they keep devouring humans to grow." Ni Ji's voice was calm, but what he described was the heaviest thing. "But we have no choice. We have to enter the contaminated areas again and again. Resources are too scarce, and the land is decreasing. If we want to survive, we can only risk entering the contaminated areas to search."
Lin Yuan thought for a moment and said, "But I have never heard anyone mention such an argument in Kyoto."
Ni Ji's eyes sank.
In the imperial capital where people revel every night, no one would mention these things.
No one cares about the cause of the contaminated area, no one cares about the purpose of the spread of the contaminated area. No one even knows how many lives are swallowed up every year and how many sentinels are sacrificed in it.
The royal family and nobles lived in the eternally safe Garden of Eden, leading a life of luxury and debauchery.
They can huddle around the White Tower forever, partying every night, numb themselves with alcohol and spices, and pretend that the world is still beautiful with false prosperity.
They could not see that beyond the White Tower, the land was stained with the blood of soldiers and children were starving to death in the streets.
Lin Yuan stepped into the pupilless land, and the scene before him changed instantly.
The earth was barren and no grass grew.
Looking into the distance, the boundless land is covered with cold gravel and stones, and the monotonous scene stretches all the way to the distant horizon.
There, a huge eye was hovering in the sky. The pupil of the eye was gray and dull, and red tears of blood flowed from the eye socket, falling like a waterfall to the sky and to the earth.
Lin Yuan looked at the eye in the sky.
The blind gray pupils and huge eyes shedding tears of blood were exactly the same as the scene shown on the wooden box of the shipwreck.
This is it, the Land of No Pupils, the place she is looking for.
In Lin Yuan's home, there is a string of old wind chimes from her childhood on her bedroom window. Every gem hanging on the wind chimes is fake. Only one azure square stone is a real Asscher sapphire.
Lin Yuan was too young when her parents died, and suffered such mental trauma that she no longer remembers most of what happened at that time.
The only memory she has is of her mother holding her and running through the fire.
Surrounded by the terrible raging fire, she curled up in her mother's arms and felt very calm and peaceful.
At some point, her mother put a sapphire necklace around her neck.
Lin Yuan still remembers the feeling of the cold gem sticking to his skin, falling from his neck to his chest.
With her eyes closed, she heard her mother's voice.
"Xiao Yuan, hide it well and don't let anyone find it. When you grow up, if you want to know the truth about this world, go to Contaminated Area No. 5 and find the wooden box on the sunken ship Mary."
When Lin Yuan grew up, he once suspected that this was an illusion caused by his confused memory.
Obviously, her father had blocked her five senses at that time, so she should not have been able to hear or touch.
She passed the Mary shipwreck and the Golden Tree pollution area until she arrived here and saw the eye that was exactly the same as the one on the wooden box. She realized that it was not an illusion, but a clue left by her parents before they died. A key to open the secret door.
Now, having become as strong as her parents were, she realized that those sounds and feelings were not just what she heard with her ears or felt with her body.
Rather, it is the will of her parents that remains directly in her mental picture.
"If you don't have the ability or the idea, then don't touch it. Keep this secret in your heart forever."
"Yuanyuan, I'm sorry, mom and dad can't grow up with you."
When Lin Yuan was a child, she could not remember her mother's face or her father's appearance. The only thing she could remember were the three sentences her parents left in her memory.
She didn't tell anyone about it.
Since she was a child, she would listen to these words in her mind over and over again in the dead of night. From those few words, she could taste a little bit of her parents' personalities and their love for her.
Use that little bit of imagination to pretend that you are also an ordinary child who is cared for by your parents.
Because of this, she had been secretly collecting all the information about the Mary shipwreck since she was a child. Finally, she found the clues her parents left for her at the bottom of the No. 5 contaminated area.
The two men got closer to the huge eye.
The pale pupils and the blood-red tears that flowed like a waterfall were even more shocking when viewed from close up. The blood-red waterfall fell from the sky and landed in a deep chasm on the ground.
It was a long and narrow crack, splitting open in the barren land, with no bottom in sight.
Looking down from the edge, there are countless steel bars and pipes crisscrossing in the cracks, stairs climbing up and down, and densely packed houses.
Layer upon layer of human buildings extend infinitely underground, densely packed until they are swallowed up by the bottomless darkness.
This is a huge underground city, buried deep in the dark underground world.
This place may have once been prosperous. But now, deep in the abyss, darkness spreads, and not a single light can be seen in the silent underground city. Even the whistling sound of the wind seems to be black, like a man-eating hell that can devour everything.
In this dark dungeon, there are countless terrifying monsters lurking, as well as countless tempting treasures.
Lin Yuan and Ni Ji walked down from the edge of the crack.
There are no complete roads here, and the long pipes are covered with green moss.
There is more than one person coming down here.
There were many sentinels and even some civilians among the explorers. They carried baskets on their backs or carried cloth bags, and walked carefully on those dangerous suspended pipes to enter the deserted underground city to search for supplies.
"Be more careful, even if you can find a small piece of the Hades stone." A tired old father said to the child following behind him.
The thin young man following behind him walked carefully on the pipe with his head down, ready to reach out to help his elderly father at any time.
"The Pupilless Land is rich in Dark Stone, which is very valuable and is a must for making spices." Ni Ji told Lin Yuan, "So even though this place is very dangerous, many people keep coming here."
He reached out and supported Lin Yuan, and took her to jump from the slippery pipe to the next level.
Lin Yuan's boots landed on the iron roof, making a loud thud.
"Even ordinary people are coming in. It's too dangerous."
“But even so, most people here won’t be able to find the Underworld Stone. That kind of stone is in a very deep place.” Ni Ji said, “Ordinary people, even most of the sentinels, will hardly survive to reach there.”
A figure who had lost his footing suddenly fell from a great height in the distance.
The thin young body fell onto the pipe below and bounced up like a broken branch, falling into the bottomless abyss.
Lin Yuan was stunned. She stood there for a long time, but she never heard the sound of the life falling to the ground.
The darkness was so deep that it swallowed up a young life silently without even a sound.
Only a desperate cry came from above, which lasted for a long time in the dim ruins.
"What are those spices for?" Lin Yuan stared at the bottomless abyss and asked the sentry beside him, "Are they worth exchanging your life for?"
Ni Ji remained silent and did not answer.
The spices were of no use other than to make the nobles in the White Tower fall into an intoxicated fantasy and become more corrupted. It was certainly not worth so many people risking their lives to get them.
This is unreasonable, unfair and abnormal.
But this is not a normal world, they live in a distorted era. Personal anger can hardly change all this unreasonableness.
The sentry looked up at the sky. The crack above his head was very narrow, with only a thin strip of sky left. A little sunlight refracted through the edge of the crack.
They had already descended several floors, the light here became very dim, and the vision was no longer clear.
The howling wind blew up from underground, like countless ghosts crying in the dark.
Going further down, the last bit of light above my head disappeared.
The world fell into complete darkness, and eyes seemed to have lost their function in such a world.
Ni Ji turned on a small flashlight on his left shoulder, the light was very weak. They might have to stay in such a dark world for a long time, so they had to save electricity and could not afford powerful lighting equipment.
A dim light flickered, illuminating only a small space at the feet.
Ni Ji extended his hand toward the guide beside him.
The hand reached out, much smaller than his and very soft, and it responded with strength and held his.
The underground world is particularly dark, and all the light here seems to be swallowed up by the darkness.
The pale circle of light from the flashlight illuminated the dim and messy ground. The winding corridors were full of shadows, as if monsters could pounce at any time.
With such light, Lin Yuan could hardly see much. However, the sentinel's eyesight was much better than hers, and he only needed weak light to see in the dark.
Lin Yuan held Ni Ji's hand and groped his way step by step in the dark corridor.
Suddenly she stopped and pulled Ni Ji. Ni Ji followed her gaze into the darkness.
The dim light of the flashlight illuminated a pale face on the roof.
It was a strange creature that had been lurking on the dark roof at some point, quietly poking its pale head out.
The head looked like a human's, but it had no eyes. Instead, a thin layer of skin covered the eyes. A pair of triangular ears stood out on both sides of the head. The skin was frighteningly pale from not seeing the sun for years.
It has eight arms with fingers shaped like human fingers, yet it can crawl across rooftops silently.
Even a sentinel like Ni Ji couldn't hear any movement from it.
But it has emotions and is a living creature. Its whereabouts were captured by Lin Yuan's tentacles and it was exposed in advance.
The dim light of the flashlight seemed to frighten it. On its eyeless face, a big mouth full of sharp teeth opened and it let out a strange scream.
The mutant suddenly pounced out from the darkness, so fast that only a gray afterimage was left in the light of the flashlight.
Ni Ji swung his sword and killed it halfway, cutting it in half.
The humanoid creature was cut off at the waist, and its smelly internal organs fell to the ground, but it was not dead. Half of its body still bounced up from the ground, and its limbs and arms hugged Ni Ji's legs, opening its mouth to bite.
A little yellow light appeared in Lin Yuan's eyes as he stared at the twisting body in the darkness.
The terrifyingly agile mutant froze for a moment in her sight.
Ni Ji's gun flashed in the darkness and he fired several shots at the two bouncing halves of the body.
The development of the battle could not be seen in the darkness. All that could be seen was the continuous flickering of the muzzle fire, the twisting body of the monster, and the screaming bloody mouth, which appeared frame by frame, accompanied by the flickering firelight.
The shaking images and gunshots ended, the monster's sharp gasps quieted down, and everything returned to silence.
A hand wearing a black glove stretched out from the darkness and held Lin Yuan's hand again.
There is no light in the underground world, and all the deformed species that appear here have no eyes.
Living in perpetual night, they have adapted to the darkness, possessing acute hearing and the ability to move noiselessly in the dark.
It has strong vitality, moves as fast as lightning, and hates all flesh and blood that enter here. It is an extremely terrifying monster.
Ni Ji and Lin Yuan went all the way down, walked down the broken stairs, climbed through the shaky metal pipes, and walked through the complex terrain of the underground city.
At any time along the way, strange creatures with twisted shapes would jump out from the darkness. They killed countless deformed creatures that attacked them with bared teeth.
If it weren't for the high-intensity special training before the war, they would have had a hard time surviving in such a dark world.
But now, at least the two of them are still holding each other's hands firmly.
The magic sword in Ni Ji's hand had not even cut his skin and was stained with his own blood.
In the dark world, a glimmer of light shows the way, and the two hands are clasped together as they move forward slowly.
In this pupilless place, they serve as each other's ears and eyes, heading towards a deeper underground world.
(End of this chapter)