Chapter 22 - “There’s Something In That Place”

Zhu Yanchen said that the Erosion Marshes could be compared to a wolf pack, where one particular marsh would be considered the Alpha. The ‘leader’ that this creature kept asking about must be referring to an Alpha-level marsh.

The creature in front of them didn’t seem like it was much more powerful than Monday, but its intelligence was obviously of a higher level. Shu Jun was never afraid of fighting, nor was he afraid of such a peculiar presence. However, ‘reckless’ and ‘brave’ weren’t synonymous after all. In this situation where his eyes could barely see, a rash attack would only have him suffer.

‘Of all Thirty-Six Stratagems, retreating is best’1. Shu Jun stretched out his hand to pull Zhu Yanchen, but the latter seemed to be nailed to the ground and remained completely motionless.

Zhu Yanchen was okay to fight with mutated monsters, but unfortunately, he indeed lacked experience at the frontline, so it was understandable that he was shocked. Shu Jun rubbed his hand and was just about to carry the man away, but Zhu Yanchen beautifully put back his gun and turned on the torchlight with a flip of hand.

…Okay I’m wrong, Marshal Zhu probably had ten times the courage of a layman.

The beam of light passed through the thin fog and shined on the creature standing opposite them.

Shu Jun might have seen lots of monsters before, but he still shuddered. At this moment, he really understood what Zhu Yanchen said before — “Humans haven’t set foot in those ruins for two hundred years, so anything can appear.”

That thing’s skin texture was quite similar to that of humans, carrying a deep shade of greyish-black. Although its four limbs were bent and twisted, a certain structure could still be seen. The head and torso couldn’t be distinguished on its droplet-shaped body, while a black flesh membrane covered its rib-like frame. Various features of a human face scattered randomly all over the skin, like a jigsaw puzzle that had been entirely messed up.

One of the human eyes saw the light beam and slightly squinted.

Shu Jun swallowed so hard the sound echoed in the air. Compared with this thing, the mutated monsters before were still very much in line with human aesthetics, even considered beautiful. A Corpse Parasite that had everyone scream in fear now seemed as docile and as adorable as a kitten.

Even Monday promptly expressed his emotion: “Wa.”

Only Zhu Yanchen hummed calmly and continued to observe very meticulously, as though the creature opposite them was a newborn pony. He even opened the briefcase on the spot and dug out more stuff, like a zoologist who just discovered a new species. Shu Jun could feel the suspicion coming from the monster on the other side, and for a moment, he understood its mood.

The monster hesitated for a while, then moved closer, lowered his body slightly and trembled ominously. Zhu Yanchen glanced at it and clutched the gun in his hand. He started to set up his device faster but still didn’t intend to leave.

“Let’s retreat first.” Shu Jun bellowed.

The always-clear-headed Marshal Zhu shook his head. He stared intently at the monster while his movements seemed to radiate a rarely seen excitement: “Wait a bit. It’ll be fine, this isn’t an Alpha-level Erosion Marsh.” 

After a long while, he seemed to think of something, and added another sentence with a serious tone: “I won’t die.” 

The monster moved closer and stopped about ten steps away from Zhu Yanchen. Its human-like eyes opened wide and blinked at Zhu Yanchen. Shu Jun recognised these fluctuations: It was how a predator focused right before attacking its prey!

Shu Jun took a slow and deep breath, then smoothly made his move —

He had seen the handcuffs in the briefcase before. Right now, Shu Jun pulled the handcuffs and neatly whizzed it over Zhu Yanchen’s wrist. Caught utterly off guard, Zhu Yanchen was picked up by Shu Jun in the next second and thrown onto their luggage carrier.

“Three days have passed.” Zhu Yanchen shook his handcuffs and looked at Shu Jun pulling the sail into the wind.

“Not according to the hours we’ve actually been locked together.” As Shu Jun’s face turned black, his skills were fully activated — They really didn’t need Uncle Xiong’s dog. As the sail unfolded, the wind rolled over and pushed their mud sled so fast they almost shot into the sky. The creature was quickly left far behind.

“What were you doing just now? Are you looking for death?”

“An Alpha-level Erosion Marsh won’t be the first one to greet us. That was a low-level Erosion Marsh. It can’t hurt you, and it won’t kill me either.” Zhu Yanchen solemnly defended himself.

“Yes, it can’t hurt me, but only ghost knows what it can do. I may not be able to protect you. Even if we have time to escape, you may be injured — Your last injury hasn’t even healed, yet you still have the guts to tell me ‘I won’t die’? Is this a question of whether you’ll die a violent death or not?”

He then threw the briefcase to Zhu Yanchen in a rather crude manner.

Shu Jun raised his head and lowered his voice to imitate Zhu Yanchen’s tone: “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking, Marshal Zhu. It must be like: ‘This is just a low-level marsh. It doesn’t matter if I get injured a bit. Anyway, I’m going to die soon, so I don’t have to worry about any consequence of my wounds being contaminated.’” He continued: “…Why are you turning away? Look at me!”

Zhu Yanchen turned his head away, his lips twitching slightly. In the end, he just sighed and fixed his eyes on Shu Jun.

“If you’re still my friend for the time being, don’t perform any fancy show of getting injured in front of me. Thanks to the blessings from you all, I‘ve bidden farewell to a lot of people for ten years. I’ve seen enough.” Shu Jun said with a rarely-heard cold tone: “I don’t know why you can’t tell me your reason, but at least treat yourself like a human, okay? Did you think that I was just being polite when I said ‘I want to help you live longer’?”

After ascertaining that the distance was far enough, Shu Jun found a huge boulder as their shelter and halted the mud sled.

“If you want to investigate, you can. I’ll volunteer to look around, at worst, I’ll just drag one of them back to you. If you insist on facing them by yourself, I’ll tie you up.”

“Our relationship is just to be partners, don’t forget your position.” Zhu Yanchen clenched the chain of the handcuffs.

Shu Jun said without even needing to think about it: “My position? If you really were trying to trick me from the beginning, letting you die so easily would just be my loss.”

Zhu Yanchen: “…I understand.” Shu Jun’s words made total sense, even though they bordered on being abominable. Zhu Yanchen wanted to smile. The shell that had been wrapping around him for more than ten years was pried apart by this guy’s anger, and the pain that followed also carried with it some bitterness that he couldn’t seem to describe.

After going round and round, it’s still this person in the end.

He pondered for a moment, stretched out his hand to catch Shu Jun’s wrist and said solemnly: “I’ll pay attention next time.”

“Now that’s better.”

Shu Jun patted away the mud on his body and made a casual gesture, then the wind began to blow in the opposite direction. The mud sled moved rapidly and steadily, making them both feel much better than when they were retreating just now.

“Now we’re heading back. Let’s talk a bit, what’s going on in X City? Don’t fool me with ‘I don’t know’ this time — You went so deep into an eroded zone without a care, and you weren’t even surprised to see that ‘thing’ just now. This is obviously not a fun-filled, full-of-danger expedition for you at all, you definitely know something about X City.”

“I really don’t know about the specific situation in the city. I just guessed that there’s something in that place.” Zhu Yanchen thought for a moment before continuing: “I didn’t expect the Erosion Marsh in X City to appear so early.”

“Hm hm.” Shu Jun rested half of his face on his palm, his elbow leaning on the guardrail of the mud sledge.

“Two hundred years ago, Zhu Rong completed the Player system in X City. As the capital city at that time, X City was the first city in human history to put synthesised humans into use. However, the Player system at the time wasn’t perfect and there was no [Erosion] VR game.”

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“Oh-oh, then there was a natural disaster and the Erosion Marshes moved over from the east side, so the residents had to flee to Y City. X City later became one of the most severely eroded zones and even the players weren’t allowed to go there.” Shu Jun followed along: “I do know of this information.”

“If it were just a natural disaster, those Erosion Marshes wouldn’t stay in X City for such a long time. X City was rather dry and not suitable for them to inhabit.”

“…But your guess is that there’s something in X City.” Shu Jun said as his eyebrows furrowed.

“Yes, I suspect that while the Erosion Marshes were there, it wasn’t a natural disaster that destroyed City X but a man-made disaster. However, there’s too little information about these marshes. My thoughts are only guesses and lack evidence.” Zhu Yanchen clutched the briefcase in his chest and struggled to stand up from their pile of supply luggage: “As long as I can determine the situation in X City, I can… well…”

Barely a few seconds after standing still, Zhu Yanchen fell forward, his body curling up in pain. Shu Jun looked around to find the surrounding darkness still empty and nothing unusual popping up.

“The erosive substance concentration seems wrong.” Zhu Yanchen said with difficulty.

They are still on the periphery of an eroded zone and hadn’t even returned to the river they first saw when entering this place. How could the erosive substance suddenly rise, unless —

Shu Jun felt his back turning cold. He instinctively blew the mud sled away from the boulder. The next instant, the boulder moved.

Another chuckle came to them and the ‘boulder’ slowly disintegrated. The monsters let go of their hugging posture and chased after the mud sled. If Shu Jun had reacted only a second slower, these monsters would have brutally pounded onto them.

This group of monsters had rather similar shapes, looking like they came from the same mold as the other monster they saw earlier.

Zhu Yanchen held back the pain, raised his muzzle and stood back to back with Shu Jun, who was clutching the broadsword in his hands. Before he could even adjust his posture, a gust of wind rolled up and some mud splashed onto him, then Shu Jun hugged his waist and the two rushed into the sky.

“Hush.” ​​Shu Jun hissed against Zhu Yanchen’s ear.

Trying to ignore the hot sensation in his ear, Zhu Yanchen looked down.

If someone else came over, they might just scream. The land around them was completely covered with those four-legged monsters, with only a small path in the middle. Some of them were running behind the sled, while the few in front were guiding and pulling the mud sled in a specific direction.

“They manipulate the moisture in the air to deflect light, thus creating an illusion of ‘nothingness’. If we stayed on the mud sled, we wouldn’t be able to see anything.” Shu Jun whispered. “It’s just a small trick, Luo Duan likes to use it a lot.”

“Did you just use the erosive substance as our doppelgängers?” Zhu Yanchen saw the two figures still stuck on the mud sled… They were clay figures with his and Shu Jun’s blood-stained bandages still entangled on them.

“No one has seen these monsters before. They suddenly appeared, so they probably came for me. Since they almost mistook me for their leader, they probably detected me based on the erosive substance in my body — With so little time, I could only come up with these doppelgängers. Let’s just hope that they won’t find out about the real ones too fast.”

“No —” Monday’s coarse scream came from below their feet.

 Zhu Yanchen: “…”

“I can follow them first and get everything back if necessary. How are you, are you feeling better?”

“Let’s observe for a few minutes and then return to the mud sled.” Zhu Yanchen didn’t answer his question immediately .

“What?!”

“The erosive substance concentration near X City has never been low. It was just me being unprepared just now — There’s medicine in the briefcase, so I’ll be fine if I eat them promptly.” Zhu Yanchen carefully studied the route that the monsters were moving in: “They’re taking us in the direction of X City, their speed isn’t bad.”

…Can you not describe such a horrifying situation as though you’re waving a taxi? Shu Jun found himself stupefied.

“They mistake you for the leader, which means that they do have a leader. Looking at how it is now, it seems that before the leader makes a decision, they won’t do anything to us… I suspect that the illusion has already begun a long time ago. As for the Corpse Parasite and the single monster we saw earlier, they were probably just to test you.”

Zhu Yanchen paused for a second: “If they bother to put up such a show, they won’t be so careless. Sooner or later our ‘clay figures’ down there will be exposed. We might as well take this as an opportunity to hitchhike them, then you can also save some energy.”

“A Yan.”

“Huh?”

“If you didn’t have me, would your original plan be this exciting?” Shu Jun carefully descended while muttering: “Or I can lure them out, then you do whatever you want to according to your original plan……”

“There’s no need to.” Zhu Yanchen’s tone sounded like he was smiling: “I came here because of them, now that they’re here, I don’t have to go looking for them.”

As soon as the two of them landed back on the mud sled, the crowd of monsters around them disappeared instantly. If it hadn’t been for them looking from the sky just now, Shu Jun would almost believe that the two of them had successfully gotten away. He simply summoned a tiny wind and let the invisible monsters continue their duty of pulling the mud sled and carrying on their ‘invisibility’. The mud sled quickly swept across the land, where the scene seemed rather peaceful.

Pretend I don’t see them, pretend I don’t see them. Shu Jun thought silently in his heart and threw a piece of meat to Monday to stop its mouth from sprouting more nonsense.

Zhu Yanchen ate his medicine, sat down properly and calmly gazed at the direction of X City.

Shu Jun had been feeling that Zhu Yanchen’s temperament had somehow changed. Surrounded by invisible monsters, Zhu Yanchen’s delight seemed to greatly outweigh his fear. His whole body exuded an inexplicable radiance, but this sensation didn’t make Shu Jun feel at ease.

It was just like fireworks that were reaching their most gorgeous moment and would extinguish in the next second.

I hope my intuition won’t work so well this time, Shu Jun thought, Isn’t this man supposed to live for at least one more month?

The four-legged monsters were rather competent. The original plan would have the two of them travel for five days, but the monsters reached the destination in less than three days. At first, Shu Jun and Zhu Yanchen pretended to be ignorant, but later they became a little numb —  they couldn’t see the monsters around them anyway, so it was natural to occasionally forget about them. Shu Jun stealthily flew up from time to time to confirm their position. Apart from that, their trip was pretty uneventful.

It was just that because the erosive substance concentration was too high, Zhu Yanchen had to continuously take in more medicine, which really made Shu Jun feel his stomach churn.

On the third day after the four-legged monsters took over the mud sled, the illusion around them all faded like melting snow, and the remnants of X City were completely exposed before their eyes.

No matter what Zhu Yanchen’s guess is, he’s definitely right, Shu Jun thought. X City was more than just ‘there’s something in that place’ — The scene in front almost made his heart stop beating.

“A Yan, you quickly take some samples for your research.” Shu Jun took a long breath: “Then I’ll take you to run away.”

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