This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!
Chapter 377: A Bunch of People Died

Chapter 377: Chapter 377: A Bunch of People Died

In the dark space, Chen Ke’s only sensation was falling, with dim, unnamed halos of light sprinkling down from above.

Suddenly, his feet touched the ground, and looking down, he saw a floating rectangular transparent platform.

The platform was roughly 3.5 meters wide. Along the edges lay aligned rows of regular perforations, with one platform after another spiraling out, extending all the way up to a screen of light.

He leapt across the platform towards the glowing gateway, entering the world of 35mm photographic film.

In 1839, humanity had invented the camera, mastering the technology to lock away moments in time.

The trickery of light and shadow turned fleeting moments into eternity on a thin plastic strip.

In Harlowin’s hands was a negative, a gate to another photographic world. Chen Ke was curious about what kind of world he would enter.

He had to traverse through fragments of bygone time until he found the photograph taken at the moment Harlowin was killed.

Then he would leap out of the photograph to where the camera was.

Chen Ke leaped into the screen of light, was engulfed in darkness, and when his feet hit solid ground and he opened his eyes once more, all he saw was a sky full of stars.

The air carried a hint of gasoline scent, and in the distance, there were rows of low warehouses.

A barbed wire fence surrounded these warehouses, with a warning sign hanging on it that read: High Voltage, Keep Out.

Chen Ke looked around; it was the middle of the night, but the moonlight was bright. In the distance lay a rolling range of red mountains – the place resembled a secluded military base.

He took a few steps towards the low buildings when suddenly, a row of 3D art text appeared midair in front of him: "Agent Wildflower."

At the same time, a violin’s BGM fittingly began to play, the style and segment of the music bearing a strong cinematic feel, likely lifted from a main theme.

"Damn... what the hell is this..." Chen Ke was startled by the subtitles before him and stared at them for a long while.

The subtitles slowly faded, while the music continued.

Chen Ke walked a few steps further and four new lines of text appeared.

Director: John Smith

Lead: Harlowin Mestera

Cinematography: Anthony Price

Producer: Lorin Scott

He reached out to touch the subtitles, but they dissipated into a colorful smoke as he made contact, gradually vanishing midair.

The violin BGM also slowly receded, restoring silence to the surroundings.

After walking several dozen more steps, Chen Ke arrived at the barbed wire, not daring to touch it, but looked for a way to make a hole to crawl through.

Following the fence to the left for a while, he noticed an abandoned cross-body bag on the ground.

Squatting next to the bag, his gaze fell on a tear in the fence’s wire netting. Inside the bag, there were insulated gloves and wire cutters; someone else, like him, intended to get in.

Just as he was about to climb through the opening, he saw in the not-too-distant ground a pile of dark objects.

"Huh?" Chen Ke looked curiously towards it.

It was a pit a hundred meters away, seemingly deliberately dug, and filled with many black objects.

Unable to restrain his curiosity, he stood and walked to the pit, discovering it was stacked full with black body bags.

Each bag was stuffed full, and roughly counting, he estimated there were over a hundred in the pit. Turning his gaze back towards the base, he couldn’t help but have numerous thoughts bubble into his mind.

If this were a movie, perhaps the plot would have reached its end by now, and the photo would have captured just a moment, which, logically, shouldn’t spawn too vast a world.

Indeed, that was the case. The surrounding mountain range enclosed this clearing tightly in its midst, forming a visible wall. The row upon row of warehouses before him amounted to the entirety of this world.

Chen Ke carefully slid into the pit, stepping on the piles of the era, which clearly contained human corpses.

If these contained the guards from the military base, at least Chen Ke could see what he was up against, whether ordinary humans or humanoid monsters?

He unzipped the nearest body bag a little, and the face of the deceased came into view. The moonlight shone on the person’s face, startling Chen Ke.

It was Harlowin.

White short hair, dressed in a black overcoat, with three bullet holes piercing the chest, the pale cheeks still smeared with fresh blood.

"Dead... The Harlowin in the photo is dead..." Chen Ke murmured to himself.

Without Harlowin, finding the next photo in this world would be much harder.

Chen Ke sighed. Since she was dead, he’d have to take matters into his own hands...

He zipped down the body bag a bit further and pulled out Harlowin’s entire corpse, then began searching the pockets of her clothing.

The Harlowin in the pictures were all just shadows of the past. The real her was already dead, so this couldn’t really count as desecration of a body, could it...

The coat’s pockets were empty. Hesitating for a moment, Chen Ke still went ahead and unbuttoned her overcoat one by one.

Underneath, she wore a bulletproof vest and a white and black turtleneck sweater, but clearly, the holes in Harlowin’s chest were the handiwork of 7.76mm caliber rifle bullets—the shattered ceramic pieces were driven into her body with the kinetic force of the bullets.

By the looks of Harlowin, she hadn’t been dead for long, her body cold but not yet stiff. Chen Ke ran his hands down to her waist and undid the bulletproof vest’s buttons, yanking the vest from her body.

Harlowin’s shocking gunshot wounds were exposed; the blood holes had already dried, the sweater stuck to the flesh, and the swelling around the wounds was frightening.

The three bullets had entered her body and exited through her back, leaving an open wound that resulted in a large chunk of flesh missing from the area of her left scapula.

Chen Ke didn’t focus on the wounds but continued to thoroughly search her pockets; however, everything was empty.

An empty holster, empty magazine pouch, empty spare belt bag, and more empty pockets...

Perhaps all of Harlowin’s possessions had been taken. Who took them? That was damn interesting.

Chen Ke put her body back into the body bag and zipped it up.

Someone who searches, uses a gun; this proved that at least some people, or at least some kind of intelligent beings, were inside that cluster of warehouses.

He rolled the body bag aside and dragged another body bag over to see what was inside.

He unzipped it.

"Shit..."

Chen Ke stared at the person inside the body bag, utterly dumbfounded.

It was still Harlowin, white short hair, black overcoat, but the expression on her face was somewhat gruesome—she must have endured immense pain before dying.

As he unzipped further, he immediately covered his nose. A stench that was both fishy and astringent assaulted his nostrils.

Inside lay Harlowin, slit open and gutted—her belly like a dissected fish, intestines and feces entwined. Chen Ke immediately stepped back a few paces.

"This..." Chen Ke felt both disgusted and confused.

He opened many more body bags, and without doubt, all of them contained the corpses of Harlowin, killed in different ways and by various means.

Some were electrocuted, some had their heads dissolved by acid, some beaten to death with brains battered out, some strangled, and some even dismembered... It was practically a complete encyclopedia of human death.