Life Game In Other World
Chapter 613: Pollution (Super-sized - , Asking for Monthly Passes)

Chapter 613: Chapter 613: Pollution (Super-sized Chapter, Asking for Monthly Passes)

Sharp spikes gleaming with mechanical luster pierced through the cheek of the man with brown hair in an instant, followed by countless spikes erupting like a hedgehog’s back, piercing out from the man’s body, tearing his clothes, and twisting his frame.

It was then that Zhang Yusi realized that the man, who had been facing them all along, had a completely hollow back, with twisted flesh and shattered mechanical fragments entwined within.

A powerful wave of physiological nausea surged in her heart; she was prepared to face the grotesque creatures of the ruins, but not prepared to face twisted humans.

People are always filled with fear towards things that look human but are not.

At this moment, the white light of the sword had already collided with the sharp spikes on the man’s body.

The sharp sword blade glided along that seems like a hybrid of mechanical and flesh spikes, swiftly slicing diagonally across the man’s body, splitting it in two.

The man’s mutation was not complete, and foreseeably, he could exhibit even stronger forms.

But He Ao had no interest in waiting for someone else’s transformation to finish before attacking; although the man’s speed of transformation was fast, evidently, his sword light was faster.

The two halves of the body lying on the ground squirmed slightly, and even more spikes extended from the husks, as if continuing the transformation from just moments ago.

He Ao gazed at the husks.

Through this mutation, this originally ordinary D-level Transcendent had tapped into a power that was close to C-level, even though the mutation wasn’t complete.

Moreover, the man had departed from some human characteristics and acquired some bizarre mutations. He Ao’s attack that split him in two did not manage to kill him outright.

The two halves of the body seemed to have the tendency to squirm back to life.

He Ao invoked his Divine Sense, scanned briefly, and found the energy pathways within the man’s body, raising his sword for another strike.

After the mutation, the brown-haired man had two energy centers within his body, and these two centers did not dominate each other; just like two lives having formed one body. When He Ao had split him in two, these centers separated but could still sustain the energy loops of two bodies.

However, with He Ao’s subsequent sword strike, he directly shattered both energy centers in one go.

The remnants of the brown-haired man’s body twitched, and his eyes widened as if seeing some beautiful illusion. Blood spilled from his mouth, and his raspy throat emitted his final words,

"Home... Home..."

He Ao sheathed his sword, stepped forward, crouched down, and gently closed the man’s eyelids.

Zhang Yusi stared blankly at this scene.

He Ao’s decisiveness, speed, and ruthlessness deeply shocked her.

Though scared, she had a solid foundation in combat, and knew at such a close distance, if it were her, even with C-level strength, she couldn’t achieve what He Ao had done.

If He Ao had been even a fraction slower with his movement, the mutated monster could have successfully ambushed him, potentially injuring him and giving the monster a chance to transform fully.

That slight difference in speed, on the battlefield, could mean the difference between life and death.

And even after a successful attack, He Ao almost instantly realized the monster wasn’t completely dead and swiftly executed a follow-up slash, a precise and ruthless kill.

Such decisiveness and combat prowess was something Zhang Yusi had never witnessed before.

This young Minister seemed even more like a seasoned warrior who had been through countless battles and fire than those old generals she had seen in the Research Institute.

"Are you feeling better?"

He Ao stood up and, without turning back, asked casually as he walked ahead.

He had noticed Zhang Yusi’s discomfort just now, indicating she was a rookie with little combat experience.

However, the fact that she could control her discomfort during combat and swiftly adjust her state proved she had strong adaptability and self-control, capable of rapid change.

In theory, Zhang Yusi shouldn’t encounter such strong creatures after entering the Copy World.

Normally, after entering a Copy World, one would be assigned to a relatively safe area. Even though the death rate was still much higher than that of the main world, it was generally within an Explorer’s capability to manage.

With a little caution, survival was possible.

A lot of E-level and F-level Transcendents entered the Copy World and were able to return alive.

In a way, the Copy World was also a newbie village where one could level up quickly.

However, the current situation was obviously not normal.

Zhang Yusi’s situation was like being prepared for the newbie difficulty, only to be directly thrown into a nightmare-level Copy World.

"Yes."

Zhang Yusi, hearing He Ao’s question, nodded and followed by his side.

"Learn to accept, adapt, and control your emotions. No matter what you see, always remain calm first and foremost."

He Ao continued to move forward, quickly advising.

He Ao could temporarily protect Zhang Yusi in physical combat, but in this Transcendent world, the truly terrifying things were never from physical attacks.

For Zhang Yusi, the only one who could save her was herself; she must quickly adapt to the environment, increase her mental resistance, to have any chance of returning home alive.

"Understood."

Zhang Yusi followed He Ao, nodding with an air of understanding, and took note of He Ao’s words.

"By the way, do you understand Tia Empire language?"

He Ao asked slowly.

"A little."

Zhang Yusi nodded, "I need to use it when reading Tia Empire papers."

"Could you understand the conversation I just had with them?"

He Ao continued, his voice gentle.

"I could grasp the general idea."

Zhang Yusi nodded.

"Good."

He Ao nodded slightly, pleased to skip the hassle of translation.

At this moment, the two had already walked up to the brunet male who was known as Yasia.

"Can you tell me what just happened?"

He Ao took a look at Yasia and softly asked in Tia Empire language.

The brunet male before him still had the look of someone with his soul frightened out, but his body was intact, not hollowed out at the back like the other brunette male’s. The energy flow within his body was fairly stable, too.

"Just now..."

Yasia trembled as he glanced at the other brunette male’s corpse and slowly began to speak.

The story he told was almost the same as the other man’s, except the one who was lured by the sea anemone monster to open the sluice was the brunette male, and this same man had attacked him while opening the sluice.

During his retaliation, he hurt the other man’s back and got injured himself.

After the brunette was injured, he ran back, and after he, Yasia, closed the sluice and blocked the sea anemone monster, he followed them, intending to alert He Ao and his companion.

At the end, shaking, Yasia widened his eyes, stared at He Ao, and repeated, "Lord He Ao, I feel something is wrong with this place, it’s far more dangerous than any ruins we know..."

He Ao listened calmly to the whole story, then softly asked,

"Do you believe your own story?"

"Ah?"

Yasia was taken aback.

Zhang Yusi, standing behind He Ao, was also startled. She had roughly understood the conversation between He Ao and Yasia.

She wasn’t sure whether Yasia’s account was correct, but Yasia seemed like a normal person, and if he were to launch an attack, this close distance would be the right time to do so, and he had even just spoken up to warn them.

However, it seemed Minister He was quite certain that Yasia’s story was ’incorrect’.

Where was the discrepancy?

Zhang Yusi suddenly realized—it was the sound! The sound! They claimed to have walked just one or two hundred meters, and in such a quiet metal corridor, Zhang Yusi could even hear the sound of their departing footsteps. But at such a close distance, if such an intense fight had broken out, why hadn’t any sound carried over?

"Isn’t that the case?"

Yasia stared blankly at He Ao, "Isn’t that the case?"

"Ah!"

He suddenly clutched his head, crouching down on the ground, curling up, his face contorting hideously as if enduring severe pain from his soul.

Zhang Yusi instinctively reached into her jacket.

At that moment, He Ao gently raised his hand to stop her.

"He still can be saved."

He turned and walked towards the metal door of the control panel he had just opened.

Although Yasia was not in the right state of mind, the energy pathways inside his body remained stable overall, indicating that the spiritual distortion hadn’t spread to his physical body.

This man must possess some mental resistance to withstand the spiritual contamination affecting him.

However, whether he could wake up depended on him.

If he did indeed undergo mutation, He Ao wouldn’t mind giving him a send-off.

Zhang Yusi glanced once more at Yasia on the ground, turned her head, and quickly followed He Ao.

He Ao had now crouched down, examining the words written on the inside of the metal door he had just opened,

In haste before, he hadn’t looked carefully at the words.

Only now did he have the opportunity to examine the words written in blood.

The good news was that, despite countless years, the text had preserved well.

The bad news was, it was written in the script of the First District.

Out of the six characters in this line, He Ao recognized only three,

[Do not...believe...]

Do not believe what?

...

He really suffered from his lack of culture.

"Minister He, are you looking at this? The ruins’ script?"

Zhang Yusi leaned in closer.

"Do you recognize it?"

He Ao turned to look at her.

"A little,"

Zhang Yusi pondered, "We at the Research Institute have all been studying this. He’s a bit odd, with no results published, and we can’t see his research findings either. But I happen to have provided him with some materials, so he shared some of his results with me. Still, I only recognize a few."

"Which characters do you recognize?"

He Ao asked quickly.

"The first one seems to be ’do not,’ a negation; I don’t recognize the second character; the third and fourth characters seem to form the word ’believe;’ the fifth character is ’wisdom,’ as in thinking or intelligence; and I don’t recognize the sixth one,"

Zhang Yusi looked at the characters, pondering each one as she spoke, "The scholar studying the ruins’ script told me that it bears a resemblance to Central Earth’s script. Both are pictograms with similar grammar structures. Putting the sentence together, ’Do not...believe wisdom...,’ what does this mean?"

He Ao recognized ’do not’ and ’believe,’ putting them together, the sentence was, ’Do not believe wisdom...’

"Can you write down the characters you know for me?"

He Ao turned and asked.

"Sure, but I only know about twenty to thirty characters. It’s just a coincidence this time."

Zhang Yusi nodded, raising her arm, which was affixed with an arm-mounted microcomputer issued by the Research Institute.

Everyone entering the ruins received one of these microcomputers. Actually, there were also combat suits, but this time they had come in such a hurry that they could only make do with the basics.

These microcomputers featured touch functionality and could transmit data over a short range.

Zhang Yusi quickly wrote down the ruins’ characters she knew along with their Central Earth equivalents and sent them to He Ao.

Receiving the characters, He Ao glanced down; although the number of characters Zhang Yusi knew was small, there were only a few overlaps with those He Ao already knew, effectively expanding his character library.

"Thank you."

He nodded in gratitude to Zhang Yusi.

"I’m glad I could help."

Zhang Yusi waved her hand dismissively.

At that moment, He Ao’s gaze shifted toward the machinery inside the central control console.

Beneath this console, where the mainframe should have been situated, appeared to have been subjected to some kind of violent attack; the mainframe inside was thoroughly destroyed.

He Ao picked up a fragment and looked at it—a clear bullet hole and traces of laser burns were evident.

It seemed like a deliberate act.

He Ao glanced at the bloody characters on the door, thinking deeply.

He turned his head but noticed that Zhang Yusi was staring blankly at the massive glass wall.

"Minister He, the stars are changing,"

she said in a low voice.

He Ao looked up to see the starscape, which had altered slightly from before. On closer inspection, it was apparent that the endless stars seemed to be ’flowing’ in some fashion.

"We’re rotating,"

He Ao slowly rose, "This ’map’ is in motion; perhaps we’re inside a spaceship drifting through space."

Hearing this, Zhang Yusi was momentarily stunned.

Though she had harbored such a speculation, she dared not believe it.

At this time, He Ao was already moving toward the passageway entrance.

Yasia’s pained howls had weakened somewhat, now transformed into gasps of exhaustion tinged with pain.

When He Ao walked over, he was squatting by the wall, head lowered, wiping the sweat oozing from his forehead.

"Remember anything?"

He Ao crouched not far in front of him and asked softly.

"Mm,"

Yasia nodded, his expression still etched with pain, "Keso and I, the brother who just turned into a monster, we just left this place and entered the passage. We didn’t go far, maybe only a dozen meters or so, then..."

He clutched his head, grunted, and continued with difficulty, "We encountered a gate with glass windows showing a corridor on the other side. We were about to look for a switch to open the gate... and then I saw Keso suddenly attacking me with all his might..."

"I tried to fight back, and in doing so, I remembered your warning and snapped out of it, realizing it was all an illusion. I was actually cutting myself with a knife. That’s when I saw Keso also harming himself, so I quickly ran over to stop him,

"But I fell back into an illusion. I saw Keso being controlled, opening the gate and letting out the monster. I saw myself fighting with Keso, then I closed the gate and chased after Keso here. During this process, I lost the memory I had just regained from escaping the hallucination.

"I didn’t remember those memories..."

"In the hallucination, was there anything particularly unusual?"

He Ao continued asking.

"Something unusual..." Yasia held his head, "While I was fighting with Keso, I remembered my wife and family back home... Does that count...?"

"Mm."

He Ao nodded, stood up, "Try to control your emotions, keep hold of this clarity. Your mental strength is pretty good, you might be able to get through."

"Lord He Ao, what are these illusions..."

Yasia asked softly.

"Pollution," He Ao spoke calmly, "pollution from a Higher Being."

Pollution existed in the main world as well, appearing amidst bizarre events, but it wasn’t as terrifying and serious.

From He Ao’s experience in the Copy World, there were no special tricks to resisting pollution, unless one possessed some unique Transcendent prop. Otherwise, it was purely a matter of endurance.

Yasia was quite kind-hearted and knew gratitude. Even trapped in an illusion, he thought to come back and warn He Ao instead of mounting a sneak attack like his companion.

So, He Ao didn’t mind giving him a hand.

While He Ao spoke, Zhang Yusi also arrived behind him.

She looked at Yasia before her, recalling the D-level Transcendent who was just moments ago cautious and brimming with confidence.

She turned to He Ao, "Minister He, what should we do next?"

"Let’s go check out that gate."

He Ao lifted his bone sword and looked towards the silent, pitch-black passage and said.

He had roughly explored this circular hall, and it was time to check out the scene below.

Although this type of mental pollution was frightening for ordinary Transcendents, he was not overly worried.

"Minister He, may I join you?"

Zhang Yusi spoke slowly.

"Why?"

He Ao asked casually.

Zhang Yusi should have heard the conversation between He Ao and Yasia, knowing there was dangerous pollution ahead.

"I feel that there might be more complexity here,"

Zhang Yusi said honestly, "Just staying in this hall might not avoid the danger, so I want to follow you and test out my resistance. I don’t wish to be a burden to you. If only one of us can survive, I hope it’s you. Your survival is more valuable than mine,"

She looked up at He Ao, "If something happens to me, I might have to trouble you to bring my last words back to my family."

He Ao glanced at her and proceeded toward the passage,

"Follow me. Control your emotions, stay calm, and if you have any issues, tell me immediately. If you really fall into the illusion, clear your mind and imagine that you’re an idiot."

This ’I’m an idiot’ method was taught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during training, and its effectiveness varied from person to person. However, it did help to resist pollution to some extent.

Usually, Transcendents like Zhang Yusi who dealt with thought processes were the most sensitive to pollution, but if they could endure, they also had the longest resistance.

"Okay!"

Zhang Yusi nodded, following closely behind He Ao.

He Ao said nothing more, and the two walked towards the depths of the passage.

Actually, the corridor was not long at all. After walking barely a dozen meters, they saw the tightly closed gate and the dim bloodstains that covered the floor in front of it.