Chapter 16 - The Deadline

“No.” The Erosion Marsh said.

Right now the two of them were staying in a cave where Zhu Yanchen had placed a simple purifier at the entrance. Shu Jun was negotiating with the small Erosion Marsh. The marsh still looked like a lump of coal but with an open mouth on the surface, which made quite a strange sight. 

A few hours ago, Zhu Yanchen went silent for a few minutes after hearing Shu Jun’s whimsical thought. When he spoke again, he sounded a little numb: “I have no relevant experience regarding this matter, perhaps you can try. If you can’t persuade this Erosion Marsh within a day, I’ll deal with it.”

So the moment they found a place to rest, Shu Jun tried to shake off the marsh on his arm.

But with all that shaking, he still didn’t let go of the marsh’s brain. He tried to explain the problem to it —  Regardless whether it was deliberate or accidental, this small Erosion Marsh had consumed humans before and thus must possess a certain amount of IQ. Therefore, it shouldn’t be too difficult for it to choose between ‘losing its precious brain’ and ‘losing freedom of movement but can still continue to evolve’.

But Shu Jun tried to convince it until his mouth went completely dry, yet the marsh still insisted on giving him a “No”.

Shu Jun was a little discouraged and decided to ask for help from his partner: “Does it actually understand what I’m trying to say?” 

There was very little water left in this Erosion Marsh, so it could no longer emit erosive substance into the air. After Zhu Yanchen finished installing the purifier, the air inside the cave became much cleaner. He took off his protective clothing and mask, then began to repair Shu Jun’s monitoring bracelet.

Shu Jun originally thought that Zhu Yanchen would think he was too noisy here, but Zhu Yanchen actually could stand such a close distance between them. His movement seemed rather relaxed and he didn’t even rush to restrain Shu Jun with the handcuffs.

“Its IQ is equivalent to that of a 6- or 7-year-old child.”

Zhu Yanchen was repeatedly adjusting a machine part that was the size of a rice grain, his hands as steady as a machine.

“Village of The Impaired never stays at the same place for long. This Erosion Marsh was raised to be their ‘mobile graveyard’. The dead people thrown into it have relatively strong resonance with the erosive substance inside it. This gradually allows the marsh to learn things and build its own brain.”

Although Shu Jun felt almost sleepy, just like when he listened to his teacher’s lectures back in his younger days, he could still react to this piece of information. Looking at this Erosion Marsh’s behaviour, the person whom it learnt from was likely the woman’s little girl.

The little girl looked about 6 or 7 years old. It was impossible for her to resonate 100% with the marsh, while some learning would also be prevented since her corpse would deteriorate and stop the transfer of information. Shu Jun pondered for a while and felt that Zhu Yanchen’s statement was a bit too optimistic — in his opinion, the intelligence of the marsh in front of him was at most equivalent to a 5-year-old child.

Not to mention, he just beat it to a pulp earlier…

…Can I even expect a positive response? Shu Jun felt a little embarrassed and decided to take a break.

The night was dark and there was only a little light in the cave. Shu Jun leaned on the rock wall and couldn’t help dozing off slightly: “If I died inside that big Erosion Marsh back in the final round, would that Erosion Marsh also obtain some intelligence?”

Zhu Yanchen’s voice became gloomy: “Your resonance with erosive substance is unprecedentedly high. When an Alpha giant Erosion Marsh merges with the intelligence of a top combatant, the consequences are obvious.”

Shu Jun’s sleepiness was instantly wiped off.

No one knew how many players had been swallowed by that big Erosion Marsh in the past ten years. It took many bloody battles just to deal with a brainless marsh, so if an Erosion Marsh had an intelligence comparable to that of a human…

“Each synthesised human has a different synthesis combination. To create a perfect clone isn’t feasible. It’s basically impossible to produce a second ‘you’.” As if seeing through Shu Jun’s mind, Zhu Yanchen added on.

Only then was Shu Jun able to breathe a sigh of relief, but the air was so stiff that it was suffocating. It would be unwise to continue this topic. He just went through a fierce battle and wouldn’t have much energy to listen to a few more lectures from Zhu Yanchen. But to switch to a lighter topic, he couldn’t think of anything to pick.

If in front of him was the A Yan of before, he could comfortably talk about the ups and downs of the past few days, then his heavy heart would land into soft cotton and be healed rapidly. But now that soft cotton had become steel, he had no mind to talk anymore.

So he began to stare at Zhu Yanchen deeply, hoping that this wooden fish could make a sound on its own without waiting for him to knock1.

Previously, Haze used to be very active in chatting. When they first met here, he didn’t know Zhu Yanchen’s real identity as Haze, but could Zhu Yanchen not know his identity? It might be possible that Zhu Yanchen was actually cold outside and warm inside. Up till this point, Shu Jun only constantly asked questions and they never talked much on other topics. So far, their relationship was okay. Although their romantic seedlings were dead, they could at least be friends, right?

Zhu Yanchen was clearly aware of Shu Jun’s gaze. He raised his head and looked at Shu Jun quietly.

One minute, two minutes.

After three minutes of staring at each other in utter silence, Shu Jun couldn’t bear it anymore and said sincerely: “…I’ll sleep for a bit. Wake me up after midnight, and we’ll take turns to watch the night.”

Indeed, apart from lecturing Shu Jun on all the problems surrounding this world and Shu Jun’s situation, Zhu Yanchen had no other thing he wanted to say.

Shu Jun sighed and squeezed the small Erosion Marsh’s brain. Fearing that he would let go in his sleep, he specially folded his arms. Erosion Marsh was forced to stick to his side, not daring to move.

“Bah.” It said.

This Erosion Marsh seems to have even more emotions than Marshal Zhu, Shu Jun thought helplessly. 

As he closed his eyes, the small Erosion Marsh by his side spit out more clear liquid in dissatisfaction, making a chirping noise. Earlier, he couldn’t yet adapt to his new condition and his body was weak, so he always woke up looking like he was beaten really badly. But now that he had gradually adapted, he returned to the alert state of a veteran combatant —

In a daze, Shu Jun heard a soft noise, like a feather brushing on a rock. He didn’t move immediately but quietly opened his eyes.

Zhu Yanchen once again opened his briefcase that was seemingly bottomless. This time, he took out a palm-sized cage, then quietly walked to the cave entrance. Shu Jun stood up in complete silence and followed behind like a shadow.

As a precaution, he even covered the Erosion Marsh’s mouth.

Zhu Yanchen didn’t seem to suspect anything, perhaps because he had seen Shu Jun sleep very deeply for the past few days. He walked past the purifier, placed the cage on the ground and slowly took off his gloves.

Shu Jun breathed in coarsely.

His hands were beautiful with such slender fingers, but they were both densely covered with grey wounds. Shu Jun felt so painful just by looking at it. This person’s hands had never trembled during shooting or repairing things. Even his expression didn’t even flinch.

Those were quite serious traces of being eroded. Shu Jun had only seen such wounds on dead people.

He held his breath, pressed down the Erosion Marsh and continued to peek.

Zhu Yanchen took out a pen-sized device, scanned his hands carefully with it and drew some blood from his fingertips. Then he looked at the readings on the device for a moment and imported the data into a chip.

Shu Jun recognised this thing, because Zhu Yanchen had been using it to take his blood samples. His fingers had to be poked a few times a day to collect several cylinders of blood each time — But he was a special case, so his blood samples were needed for research. Zhu Yanchen was just a normal person, so what might be the cause?

Next came the cage.

A mutated monster was sleeping in the cage, its appearance and size a bit like a dragonfly with two burly wings. Zhu Yanchen put on his gloves, placed the chip under its abdomen and released it from the cage.

“Go back.” He whispered.

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Thereafter, he neatly put the cage away and walked back to the depths of the cave, at which point he ran into the frowning Shu Jun.

“What happened to your hands?” Shu Jun went straight to the point.

Zhu Yanchen didn’t answer, rather, he just stared at Shu Jun intensely. No one knew if he didn’t want to say it or he was simply organising his words.

“I won’t ask who you are passing the data to. You only need to answer this question: What happened to your hands?”

“This is not something you need to care about —” 

Before Zhu Yanchen could finish speaking, Shu Jun dragged him into the cave. The air in the cave had been purified and Zhu Yanchen wasn’t wearing any protective clothing, which made it even more easier for Shu Jun. With a wave of Shu Jun’s claws, half of Zhu Yanchen’s shirt was torn away, exposing both his shoulders and arms.

He has a good physique and has definitely gone through training. This was Shu Jun’s first impression.

Then he saw those fine and dense scars layered on top of each other, some looking old while some looking new. Compared with scars behind left by battles, these scars were too regular, and the latest ones still had stitches on them.

…All of them were surgical scars.

The closer it was to his hands, the denser the scars the became. It could be seen that Zhu Yanchen had been eroded from below the wrists. Without any clothing to cover up, an eroded person’s unique smell was quite obvious. To make sure he wasn’t making any wrong judgement, Shu Jun leaned closer, and this time he sniffed Zhu Yanchen while being completely conscious.

“You are dying.” Shu Jun spit out an affirmative sentence in shock.

“Are you dying?” Then he followed with a question, still in shock.

Zhu Yanchen tightened his lips. While Shu Jun was still shaken, he twisted Shu Jun’s wrist, flicked his hands with a great force and reversed their positions — This time, Shu Jun was pressed against the cave wall. As if sensing the tension between the two of them, the Erosion Marsh stuck itself on the cave wall without making a sound.

“Yes.”

Zhu Yanchen pressed down Shu Jun with one hand and placed the other hand to his mouth, neatly taking out the glove he had just put on.

“I can still live for 63 days and 7 hours. Just now, I was giving data to my subordinate for her to know when my body would be completely eroded.”

The severely eroded hand stretched out before Shu Jun’s eyes.

Zhu Yanchen was so close and his breathing was icy cold. Against the background of a white shirt, the scars were so glaring that they could make anyone’s heart ache.

Shu Jun narrowed his eyes.

Everything had been answered. For example, as a marshal, why did Zhu Yanchen have to fake his own death and go into the eroded zones alone? For example, knowing that there was a risk of being eroded, why wasn’t he concerned about being bitten by a mutated monster?

For another example, after their encounter, why did Zhu Yanchen’s attitude remain indifferent? — Shu Jun’s condition was unstable and he could even be considered as a dangerous enemy against humans. Putting himself in Zhu Yanchen’s shoes, Shu Jun could imagine that Zhu Yanchen probably wouldn’t want to become a close friend then end up dying before Shu Jun’s eyes.

It was indeed a reasonable decision, but…

“Now you understand.” Seeing Shu Jun’s expression change, Zhu Yanchen retracted his hand. “With regard to our partnership, this information only gives harm and no benefit.”

Shu Jun: “It’s not too bad, 90% harm and 10% benefit.” 

Zhu Yanchen didn’t expect that Shu Jun would show such an attitude and was stunned for a moment.

“Before, I did feel that your condition didn’t seem right, but I never thought that it would be so serious.” Shu Jun simply didn’t move and just let Zhu Yanchen continue pressing on him. “But you see, there happens to be a guy beside you who has survived after being completely soaked in a marsh, so don’t say it too pessimistically.”

“You…”

Shu Jun withdrew his claws and covered the scars on Zhu Yanchen’s hands with his own hands.

“Now that you’ve said it, maybe I can help you a bit more. Anyway, nothing will change, we’ll try to go as far as we can. Even if I can only help you live an extra second, it can also count.”

Shu Jun’s mouth could still run so smoothly, but inside, his heart was in chaos. He wasn’t a cold-blooded man. Regardless of whatever was happening right now, he and Haze had been happily talking for several years. To say that he didn’t care was a lie. But as a person who lived on the battlefield, Shu Jun was especially calm in this regard —

Whether he collapsed, got angry or wanted to curse the whole world, death wasn’t something that could be stopped. Whether it was for the stability of their partnership or because of his feelings towards Haze in the past few years, he shouldn’t show an overly negative attitude.

“Our fate is our own effort… Do you still want my blood for testing? Do you want to take some more? I have a hunch we can turn your problem around. My intuition has always been correct.”

Zhu Yanchen slowly let go and lowered his head to put the gloves back on: “Uhm.”

“I have only one opinion on this matter.”

“……?”

“Even this thing is learning to say more words.” Shu Jun shook the marsh on his arm: “You should speak a little more.”

The Erosion Marsh said in cooperation: “Bah.” 

No one knew if it was an illusion, but Zhu Yanchen’s lips seemed to raise slightly.

“No.” He said, his tone a little more deliberate than normal.

“No.” The Erosion Marsh immediately imitated him.

“All right, at least we should find a sword first. Originally, I wanted to take it slowly, but it seems that our time is very tight.” Shu Jun sighed helplessly. “You… hey, change your clothes first, Marshal.”

“A Yan.” Zhu Yanchen said.

“What?”

“Just like before, just call me A Yan.”

Shu Jun smiled: “No.”

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