Lu Yuan ran over quickly.
The object delivered by the insect swarm had rolled to the outer perimeter, about twenty meters away from the nearest clash. No one could spare a moment for it, so he stayed low and rushed toward it.
The coverage of the Swarming Worms receded rapidly behind him, the writhing grey beneath his feet turning back into cold gravel.
The moment he left the swarm, the surroundings suddenly grew much quieter. The sounds of battle became muffled, dampened by a wall of insects.
The object was only a few paces away.
Lu Yuan crouched down but didn't reach out. A faint, strange aura seeped from the surface of the wooden man. He couldn't say for sure what it was, but his instincts told him not to touch it directly.
It was in a kneeling posture, exactly like the ones he had seen in the underground hall of the cargo station, but it was a size smaller than he remembered. Its surface was covered in fine bark-like textures, its kneeling angle stiff and fixed.
The relay through the insect swarm hadn't caused it any damage; the surface was clean and intact.
At the edge of his vision, grey-white text surfaced.
【Detection Target: Unnamed (Woodenized)】
【A source of pollution introduced by special knowledge, leading to physical mutation. It appears to have a certain connection with a specific existence...】
Lu Yuan took another look.
The last time he had seen a detection result in the abandoned house, it had said “infected with a strange substance.” This time it had changed to “introduced by special knowledge” and “a certain connection with a specific existence.”
The aura had mostly dried up, with only the last remnants clinging to the fissures in the bark texture.
Lu Yuan hesitated for a moment.
He closed his eyes and carefully extended his perception toward that residual aura.
【Sanity: -3... 80/140】
An image appeared.
A man stood in a dim room.
He wasn't old and was decently dressed, looking like someone of status. He gripped a small vial in his hand, which was filled with a deep green liquid.
His face was full of frenzy.
His eyes were wide, reflecting a deep green luster in his pupils. His lips trembled slightly, and his breathing was rapid, as if he were about to touch something he had waited for his entire life.
He tilted his head back and gulped down the liquid.
The physical reaction was far faster than expected.
First came the tremors, starting from his fingertips and spreading along his arms to his shoulders. His entire body shook uncontrollably.
Then, something began to bulge beneath his skin, pushing outward in rhythmic pulses. The veins on the back of his hands swelled to an abnormal thickness, and dark green patterns surged from under his skin.
The man looked down at his hands, his expression changing.
The frenzy vanished, replaced by terror.
“No... that's not right... it shouldn't be like this...”
His voice shook as he desperately tried to cover the swelling parts of his body.
The skin on his forearms began to tear, and dark green branches suddenly sprouted from the cracks, trailing blood and shredded flesh. The surfaces of the branches were covered in fine textures, and they were still growing rapidly.
A second branch, a third—more branches erupted simultaneously from his chest, neck, and thighs.
“No!”
His mouth was still shouting.
But the sound grew smaller and smaller.
The image flickered for a moment, skipping a period of time.
In the next frame, the man was already kneeling on the ground.
The woodenization had spread from his limbs to his torso. His skin was almost invisible, replaced entirely by bark textures. His mouth remained open, his final scream frozen in that pose.
A wooden construct in a kneeling posture, identical to the one in front of Lu Yuan.
But the vision didn't stop there.
The surface of the wooden man lit up for an instant, a dark green light seeping from the cracks in the bark texture. A certain connection was established at that moment.
Then, Lu Yuan saw another place.
It was a tree.
An endless expanse of trees.
The ground was a plane woven from tree roots, stretching in all directions to the edge of the horizon. There was no soil, no stone—only layers upon layers of coiled, intertwined roots forming the entire land.
There was no sky overhead. Branches grew upward from the ground, becoming denser and thicker until they completely interlaced at a certain height, blocking out all light and forming a dome of canopies.
He could see no end and no boundary.
In the distance, something was moving slowly deep within that endless forest. It was so massive that the word “distance” lost its meaning, because as it moved, the world made of trees stepped aside.
Lu Yuan’s perception was snapped back the moment it touched that silhouette.
【Sanity: -8... 72/140】
He snapped his eyes open.
Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and his breathing quickened.
The vision had vanished, but the scene was branded into his mind, and it wouldn't fade anytime soon.
He had seen the entire process. The deep green liquid was ingested, the person was infected, and after the process ran its course, they became this thing.
The nobles in the main hall of the Count's Mansion, whose Forest Seeds went berserk, their skin cracking and branches erupting from their flesh—those were the ones who didn't meet a certain standard.
The Grey Covenant had been screening people from the very beginning. Once the contamination completely took over and the person was fully woodenized, they became something connected to that world.
They were trying to summon something.
Lu Yuan didn't believe the Grey Covenant could actually pull that entity over.
He had only caught a glimpse through a layer of residual aura and his perception had been repelled, costing him eleven points of Sanity. He didn't have the luxury of looking at that silhouette for even one more second.
Even the entire Grey Covenant combined wouldn't be enough.
But they didn't need to pull it all the way through. Even if just a sliver leaked out, it would be something from another world.
The seals of the Bronze City might not necessarily hold. If they failed, the things behind the bronze walls and the things within the abyss...
Lu Yuan untied his coat, wrapped it around the wooden man, tucked it under his arm, and started running.
His direction was toward the Guardian.
...
Inside the workshop ruins.
The moment J resealed the wrapping layer, he knew that the wooden man sent out by the insect swarm was not coming back. They were down to four; the ritual was missing a piece.
He didn't have time to worry about it.
Margaret’s fist, shrouded in its pale blue water shell, smashed toward him. J blocked with his remaining hard shell, his knees sinking half an inch into the ground upon impact.
A corner of his hard shell shattered. Resealing the opening had exhausted his last reserves of black water. Most of the hard shell on his arms had already cracked and fallen away, revealing pale, greyish skin beneath.
Margaret’s siphoning had never stopped. The air was so dry it was painful to breathe, and J’s remaining moisture was still being dragged out of him.
He glanced toward Q.
Q’s situation was no better. The hooded pair gave Q no room to recover. The pale white figure’s claws and bladed-teeth arms took turns shredding and cutting him. For every layer of black liquid Q repaired, two were sliced away. He had shrunk to less than a third of his original size, and his body was riddled with holes.
On the other side, 9 was reaching his limit.
Kraus’s bone sword kept striking the same spot—the old wound on 9’s ribs. The newly formed carapace had mostly shattered, and the residue of the crystalline erosion seeped a pale green light from the cracks. Every collision tore the wound further open.
Kraus’s two afterimages blocked the path of retreat from front and back, leaving 9 unable to even turn around.
Jie was also failing to withstand the attendant’s purple longsword. Every strike of the purple-glowing blade hit the weakest points of her joints after they had expanded.
Her swollen flesh constantly charred and fell away under the burning purple light. Her second skeleton was largely exposed, the grey-white bone surface emitting acrid smoke.
9’s rib carapace finally fell off.
An entire chunk was shaken loose by the fourth strike of Kraus’s bone sword, falling to the ground and shattering into pieces. The flesh beneath was covered in green crystalline patterns, rotted to the core. 9 let out a muffled groan, his blocking strength weakening significantly.
Kraus’s expression remained unchanged. The green light on the bone sword flared, and the next strike was already coming down.
J watched all of this.
Q wouldn't last much longer, and 9 and Jie were even worse off. He himself couldn't even condense a full hard shell, having been siphoned to within an inch of his life by this woman.
His gaze passed through the gaps in the insect swarm, looking outside.
All he saw was writhing grey. The Swarming Worms had sealed off all exits.
J’s face twisted into a snarl.
“K.”
His voice wasn't loud, blending into the sounds of impact.
“How much longer are you going to hide?”
...
At the perimeter of the insect swarm.
Lu Yuan was running with the wrapped wooden man under his arm. Beneath his feet were gravel and bronze-cast ground. The sounds of battle were muffled behind the wall of insects.
Although the Guardian hadn't appeared, that heavy aura couldn't hide from the grey-white text. The location was clear, and Lu Yuan charged toward it without hesitation. As long as he delivered the wooden man...
At that moment, a sudden chill ran down Lu Yuan’s spine.
The feeling was extremely abrupt. Something was approaching from behind, moving so fast he didn't even have time to judge its direction.
Timekeeper.
The moment the thought was triggered, the power of the pocket watch surged from within his chest, pouring through his veins into his limbs.
Acceleration.
【Sanity: -1... 71/140】
Everything around him slowed down by half a beat. The grey insect wall at the edge of his vision, the gravel flying beneath his feet, the rhythm of the surging swarm in the distance—everything was pulled into slow motion. Lu Yuan’s speed surged, his steps quickening as he veered off his original path.
The aura behind him didn't fall back.
Instead, it got closer.
Stasis.
He instinctively tried to use the second ability of the Timekeeper, sending out the mental command.
There was no reaction.
The power of the Timekeeper hit a layer of something the moment it touched the target.
Some kind of external interference was blocking Stasis. His intent had been transmitted, but the Timekeeper hadn't drained any Sanity.
They knew how to deal with the Timekeeper.
There was no time to think.
A figure was already right behind him.
Lu Yuan was still in the state of Acceleration, and all his senses were pushed to the limit. His reactions were several times faster than usual, yet he still couldn't get away. The other person’s speed far exceeded his limit even while accelerated.
“What an interesting transcendent pathway.”
The voice came from less than a step behind him, so close that the exhaled breath hit the back of his neck. The tone carried a hint of curiosity, even a touch of gentleness.
“You can actually handle the Timekeeper?”
Lu Yuan glanced sideways.
It was a young man with somewhat messy hair, wearing the deep grey robes common among Polymath Tower students. The hem of his robes was stained with mud. His face looked somewhat languid, his eyes half-open, and a trace of a smile hung on his lips. His entire posture was loose and relaxed.
Lu Yuan had seen this face before.
In the corridor of the Polymath Tower, when he and Laurina had walked past, this person had been leaning against the wall, holding a half-finished book. His head had been slightly tilted, and he hadn't even spared them a glance. Lu Yuan had taken an extra look at the time, and not even the grey-white text had appeared.
He looked exactly like a student.
Rate on N.U.
