Chapter 337 The Origin of the Wooden Man
Lu Yuan ran over quickly.
The thing that had been emanating from the swarm rolled to the outer edge, more than twenty meters from the nearest battle. No one paid it any mind, so he crouched low and ran over.
The swarm of insects receded rapidly behind me, and the ground beneath my feet transformed from writhing gray to cold, shattered gravel.
The moment we left the insect swarm, the surroundings suddenly became much quieter, and the sounds of battle became muffled through the insect wall.
That thing was just a few steps away.
Lu Yuan squatted down, but did not reach out. There was a faint, strange aura emanating from the surface of the wooden figure. He couldn't tell what it was, but his instinct told him not to touch it directly.
The kneeling posture was exactly the same as the one he had seen in the underground hall of the warehouse, but it was smaller than he remembered, and its surface was covered with fine bark texture. The angle of the kneeling was stiff and fixed.
The process of insect transmission did not cause it any damage, and its surface remained clean and intact.
At the edge of my field of vision, gray and white text appeared.
[Detection target: Unnamed (lignified)]
[A source of pollution that introduces special knowledge and causes physical mutations seems to have some connection to a certain entity...]
Lu Yuan glanced at it again.
The last test result I saw in the abandoned house was "infected with some strange substance." This time it's different: "introduced special knowledge," and "has a certain connection with some kind of being."
The aura had mostly dried up, leaving only a tiny remnant clinging to the cracks in the bark's texture.
Lu Yuan hesitated for a moment.
He closed his eyes and carefully extended his senses toward the remaining aura.
[Sanity: -3...80/140]
The screen appeared.
A man stands in a dimly lit room.
He was young, well-dressed, and seemed to be someone of some status. He was holding a small bottle in his hand, which contained a dark green liquid.
His face was full of fervor.
His eyes were wide open, the pupils reflecting a deep green luster, his lips trembled slightly, and his breathing was rapid, as if he was about to touch something he had waited a lifetime for.
He tilted his head back and poured the liquid down his throat.
The body reacted much faster than expected.
First came the trembling, starting from the fingertips, spreading along the arms to the shoulders, and the whole body shook uncontrollably.
Then something was throbbing under the skin, pushing outwards again and again. The blood vessels on the back of my hand swelled to an abnormal thickness, and dark green lines emerged from under the skin.
The man looked down at his hands, and his expression changed.
The fanaticism vanished, replaced by fear.
"No...no...it shouldn't be like this..."
His voice trembled as he desperately covered the swollen areas of his body.
The skin began to tear from the forearm, and dark green branches burst forth from the cracks, streaked with blood and bits of flesh. The surface of the branches was covered with fine textures and was still growing rapidly.
A second, a third, and even more branches sprouted simultaneously from the chest, neck, and thighs.
"No!"
His mouth was still shouting.
But the sound got softer and softer.
The image froze for a moment, skipping over a period of time.
In the next scene, the person is kneeling on the ground.
The lignification spread from the limbs to the torso, the skin was almost invisible, the bark texture covered everything, the mouth was still open, and the last shout was frozen in that posture.
A wooden structure in a kneeling posture, exactly the same as the one in front of Lu Yuan.
But the video didn't stop.
The wooden figure's surface lit up for a moment, and dark green light seeped out from the gaps in the bark texture; some kind of connection was established in that instant.
Then Lu Yuan saw another place.
It is a tree.
Trees stretching to the horizon.
The ground is a flat surface woven from tree roots, spreading in all directions to the horizon. There is no soil or stone in sight, only layers upon layers of intertwined roots forming the entire land.
There is no sky overhead; the branches grow upwards from the ground, becoming denser and thicker until they intertwine completely at a certain height, blocking out all light and forming a dome composed of a canopy.
There is no end in sight, nor any boundary.
Something in the distance was moving slowly deep within the endless forest, so large that the word "distance" lost its meaning, because as it moved, the world of trees made way for it.
Lu Yuan's senses were repelled the moment they touched that outline.
[Sanity: -8...72/140]
He suddenly opened his eyes.
A layer of cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and his breathing became a little rapid.
The image has disappeared, but the scene is etched in my mind and will not fade away anytime soon.
He witnessed the whole process: the dark green liquid was poured in, the person got infected, and after running the whole course, they turned into this thing.
The nobles in the main hall of the Earl's mansion had their forest spirits running rampant, their skin cracked, and branches gushing from their flesh; these were men who had not yet reached a certain standard.
The Grey Pact selects from the very beginning. Once the infection contaminates the entire body and the person becomes completely woody, they become something connected to that world.
They are trying to summon something.
Lu Yuan didn't believe that Gray Contract could move that thing.
He had only glanced at it through a layer of residual aura before his senses snapped back, and his rationality dropped by eleven points. He didn't even have the luxury of looking at that outline for another second.
Even if all the Gray Contracts were combined, it wouldn't be enough.
But they don't need to pull it out. Even if only a tiny bit leaks out, it belongs to another world.
The seal on the Bronze City might not hold. If it doesn't, what lies behind the bronze walls and what lies within the abyss...
Lu Yuan took off his coat, wrapped it around the wooden figure, tucked it under his arm, and ran away.
The direction indicates the location of the guardian.
Inside the workshop ruins.
J realized as he resealed the package that the wooden figure sent out by the insect swarm was gone forever. One of the five was missing; the ritual was incomplete.
He didn't have time to care.
Margaret's fist, encased in a pale blue watery shell, slammed down. J used his remaining hard shell to block it, and at the moment of impact, his knee sank half an inch.
One corner of the hard shell broke off, and the resealing consumed his last reserves of black water. Most of the hard shell on his arms had dried up and fallen off, revealing the skin underneath to be white and grayish.
Margaret's extraction never stopped; the air was so dry it hurt to breathe, and the remaining moisture in J was still being pulled out.
He glanced in Q's direction.
Q's condition wasn't much better. The two hooded figures gave Q no chance to recover. The pale white figures' claws and serrated arms took turns slashing and cutting. Every time Q's black liquid repaired a layer, two layers were shaved off. His body shrank to less than a third of its original size at the start of the battle, and his body was riddled with holes.
On the other side, 9 is about to give out.
Klaus's bone sword kept striking the same spot—his old rib wound. The newly covered carapace was mostly shattered, and the remnants of crystalline erosion seeped a pale green light from the cracks. Each impact tore the crack apart.
Klaus's two afterimages blocked his retreat, one in front and one behind, making it impossible for him to even turn around nine times.
Even Jie couldn't withstand the attendant's purple longsword. The sword light, accompanied by purple glow, pierced the most vulnerable part of the joint seam after the expansion with each strike.
The swollen flesh charred and peeled off under the scorching purple light, exposing a large area of the second layer of skeleton, with the grayish-white bone surface emitting charred smoke.
The rib carapace of number 9 has finally fallen off.
The entire piece was knocked off by the fourth slash of the Klaus bone sword, crashing to the ground and shattering into several pieces. The flesh beneath was covered in crystallized green veins, rotting deep within. 9 groaned, his parrying power weakening considerably.
Klaus's eyes remained unchanged, but the green light on his bone sword surged, and he unleashed his next strike.
J watched all of this.
Q won't last much longer, and 9 and the Ring won't last even longer. He himself couldn't even fully harden his shell; this woman had beaten him until he was barely alive.
His gaze pierced through the gaps in the swarm of insects and landed outside.
A sea of writhing gray. The swarming insects had sealed off all exits.
J's face contorted into a grimace.
"K."
The sound wasn't loud, mixed in with the sounds of collisions.
"How long are you going to hide?"
The outer perimeter of the insect swarm.
Lu Yuan ran with the wrapped wooden figure between his legs, his feet on the ground of gravel and bronze. The sounds of the battlefield were muffled behind him by the insect wall.
Although the guardians hadn't appeared, their heavy aura couldn't fool the gray-white characters; their location was clear. Without hesitation, Lu Yuan rushed in that direction. As long as he delivered the wooden figure...
Just then, Lu Yuan felt a chill run down his spine.
The feeling was extremely sudden; something was approaching from behind, moving so fast that he didn't even have time to determine its direction.
Timekeeping.
The moment the thought triggered it, the power of the pocket watch surged from inside the chest cavity and flowed into the limbs along the blood vessels.
accelerate.
[Sanity: -1...71/140]
Everything around him slowed down. The gray insect walls at the edge of his vision, the flying pebbles under his feet, and the rhythm of the surging insect swarm in the distance were all slowed down. Lu Yuan suddenly increased his speed, quickened his pace, and at the same time, turned to the side and deviated from his original route.
The aura behind him didn't extend.
Instead, we're even closer now.
Stasis.
He subconsciously used his second ability to transmit time, sending it out through his mind.
No response.
The power of timing collided with something the moment it made contact with the target.
Some external interference was hindering the stillness; his intentions were conveyed, but the timing did not draw upon reason.
They know how to deal with time synchronization.
There's no time to think about it anymore.
A figure was already close behind him.
Lu Yuan was still in accelerated mode, all his senses were stretched to the limit, and his reactions were several times faster than usual, but he still couldn't dodge. The opponent's speed far exceeded his accelerated limits.
"What an interesting extraordinary path."
The voice came from less than a step behind him, so close that the breath touched the back of his neck. The tone was curious, even gentle.
"It can even handle time synchronization?"
Lu Yuan glanced at it from the side.
The young man had slightly disheveled hair and wore a dark gray robe commonly seen on students of the Bo Xue Tower, the hem of which was stained with mud. His face was somewhat languid, his eyes half-open, and a slight smile played on his lips; he stood there with a relaxed posture.
Lu Yuan had seen this face before.
As he and Laurina walked through the corridor of the Tower of Learning, this person leaned against the wall, holding a half-read book in his hand, his head slightly tilted, not even glancing at them. Lu Yuan glanced at him again, but didn't even see any gray or white text.
He looked like a student.