Chapter 55: Atonement Pales (IV)
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Warning: The contents in this chapter may cause discomfort.
Based on their itinerary, they should have reached Anas City in five days. However, they did not know why but the dense forest spread around them endlessly. There were no traces of the city, and not even a road could be seen. The GPS device in the hands of the soldiers also failed. The arrow that marked their current position was fixed in a certain location and remained unmoving. They tried to contact the nearest teams by radio, but there was no response.
They did not dare to release a signal flare, as they were worried that it would attract the horned people’s attention. And finally, they could not use the most traditional instrument—a compass, to locate themselves. Instead, they learned that the magnetic field on Pales was chaotic. The group suddenly found themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Moreover, at night, it was as if they had met a ghost—a strange cry followed them relentlessly. The light from a campfire flickered within the depths of the trees, just like the ghost fire that led people into traps. However, once they got close to the fire, they found that the ground was empty and there was no sign of a fire.
It wasn’t until the fifth night, when they got to the lake, that things started to go wrong.
It was not a very large lake and was probably formed after snowy water flowed down from a nearby snow-capped mountain. The lake’s water was peacock blue, and some purplish-red water plants were floating underneath. They could occasionally see bubbles floating to the surface or some fish of an unknown species cousin the water to ripple rhythmically. They set up camp on the sandbank beside the lake. In order to save their food, they drank some water from the lake and caught some fish, roasting them on a heating stone that could heat up quickly without emitting smoke. The fish’s lower lip was much more prominent than its upper lip, and its mouth was filled with dense fangs. It looked a bit scary, but it tasted pretty good. For the time being, they forgot about their troubles after losing their way and planned to enjoy the delicious food as they served as militants.
At this time, someone suddenly said that his younger brother had disappeared.
Ethan had come to know about the two brothers with team number 252, and he also knew that they were both in their early twenties. They had killed someone mistakenly while they were committing a robbery and were sent to the Forbidden City. They were known as Little A and Little B. Little A said that his brother had gone to relieve himself, but he hadn’t come back yet.
Wilson retrieved the GPS device for the nonhumans. Although the navigation function was basically useless, the inertial and infrared tracking functions could still be used, and he soon located Little B. He was 100 meters away from the camp. He had not entered the area cordoned off by the collar, so he did not trigger the device’s warning for when someone wanted to escape.
Wilson cursed and went to the woods to find him with a cigarette in his mouth, with Little A following him closely. However, not long after, they heard a shrill cry come from the woods. “No!!!”
The other soldiers and a few nonhumans, including Samuel, ran over. The thick bushes had been torn away by Sergeant Wilson to show a human body lying on the ground, but his head was gone. The cross section of his blood vessels, larynx, and trachea from his neck was clearly visible, and the collar that had been on his neck had also fallen into the pool of blood.
There was no sign of struggle in the surroundings, and they had not heard any suspicious noise. However, why wouldn’t there have been any commotion if he was so close to the camp?
All of them rushed back to the camp and grabbed their weapons. The nonhumans who didn’t see the scene didn’t know what had happened and thought the horned people were coming to attack them.
Even if there were no insects, birds, or wind, it should be impossible for there to be no sounds since they were in nature, right? It was like the sounds had been sucked clean by an invisible mouth.
After waiting for a long time, there were no movements. Wilson gestured for everyone to divide themselves into three groups. Each soldier led a group of nonhumans to search in a different direction. Derek stared at the screen of the infrared tracker, but he didn’t see any animals that were larger than a rabbit.
At this time, a female Alpha nonhuman suddenly pointed to one of the spherical braided balls hanging on the trees and said, “I don’t think these things were hung casually. You see, no matter which direction you look at them from, their positions are the same.”
Everyone noticed this strange anomaly after she spoke. Ethan looked forward and saw three to his left, with the one in the middle slightly smaller than the other two. There were also two to the right. He turned around, looked to the left, and saw three to the left and two to the right. He looked behind him and once again saw the same layout. As he walked forward, he found that the layout would remain unchanged with the aid of the vegetation. If he hadn’t been forced into this predicament, he would never have noticed this.
Derek reached out to grab a rattan ball and said, “I remember that an Asian country from ancient Earth had something called the eight trigrams array, which used certain walls or furnishings to create a kind of visual illusion for people to fall into. Some people also said that it would subconsciously hypnotize people, making them unable to walk out of a place for eternity. How interesting.”
He said those sarcastic words in a relaxed tone, causing many nonhumans to grow dissatisfied. Typheous asked, “So we are lost because we were confused by these things? But how could the horned people know the kind of arrays that people from ancient Earth used?”
“Maybe it’s not the eight trigrams array but something they developed themselves?” Derek said with a shrug, “I don’t understand it either, so don’t ask me. However, if you give me a computer, then I might be able to write an artificial intelligence program to analyze it.”
“Don’t argue over that. It won’t help.” Samuel gave Derek a look of warning.
Wilson swore, “Damn it, what a shitty array. Let’s just tear it down!” As he said this, he stretched out his hand to tug at one of the balls. The other nonhumans followed suit, and soon all of the nearby rattan balls had been plucked cleanly. They planned to continue plucking all of the balls as they walked until the road was clear of them.
They did this until the female Alpha from before turned around. Her eyes suddenly widened, and she revealed a terrified expression.
Seeing her expression, Ethan and Samuel also turned back to look, and their eyes fell on the nonhuman at the end of the line.
That nonhuman had not noticed anything and merely looked at the three people staring at him, spreading his arms and asking, “What?”
However, before he could say another syllable, his words were cut short. He never saw it, but one of the originally immobile coral-like twisted trunks had moved, and its color gradually faded into a disgusting fleshy gray color. Its body was covered in wrinkles like an old pump pipe. It had a rounded tip with a small hole that was surrounded by wrinkled skin, which quickly and silently landed on the head of the nonhuman at the end of the line.
When Ethan and others turned around, they saw that the small hole on the rounded tip suddenly expanded rapidly, exposing a dark red mouth inside that was covered with layers of sharp teeth like a meat grinder. It wrapped itself around the nonhuman’s head like a pocket before quickly tightening again. Everyone in the vicinity heard the sound of a clean, sharp cut like someone was cutting frozen meat.
It all happened in an instant. The huge worm quickly retracted into the tree’s crown, and the nonhuman’s corpse collapsed onto the ground, his collar lying in a pool of blood. The whole process lasted less than three seconds, without any screams or struggles.
The three people who witnessed the scene stiffened until the female Alpha screamed.
“In the tree! It’s in the tree!”
Wilson had also seen the scene at the very last second. With a pale face, he yelled, “Everyone down! Watch your heads!” Another soldier fired several shots at the place where the worm had retreated, and the sound of the gunshots reverberated among the trees.
Wilson kept calling out to the other two teams nearby, but he only received echoes in reply. However, judging from the sound of chaos coming from their sides, it was likely that they also encountered something similar.
“There’s something like a snake in the tree that eats humans!” the voice of another female Alpha Sergeant who was leading the team sounded out unsteadily.
“All teams return to the base!” Wilson ordered loudly. Ethan quickly got up from the ground and ran back with the rest. At this time, he was suddenly pushed down by Samuel. He fell to the ground, only to find that a bloody mouth with the appearance of a meat grinder was closing in. He had almost become a headless corpse, just like those two nonhumans!
Ethan’s heart was beating wildly, and he was sweating. Samuel grabbed him and pulled him back up before dragging him backward with all his might. The worm-like thing still had its head extended from the tree and was eating people’s heads before quickly shrinking back. Wilson and the other two soldiers were constantly firing at it, and the sergeant seemed to have hit the thing with his gun. A pool of smelly, dark green liquid dripped down on the face of a man who was almost eaten, and they only heard the man’s heart-wrenchingly shrill scream before a puff of smoke rose from his face. The creature’s blood was actually corrosive.
The original team of thirteen people was quickly reduced to eight, but at this time, the situation in the forest suddenly changed, and the bushes shook violently. The soldiers raised their guns one after another, aiming at where the sound was coming from.
Then, a man rushed out. It was the chief security officer.
Behind him were Chen Zeng, Cavin, Gray Fur, and a few other nonhumans who Ethan was not familiar with. These people did not share the same number as him, so when they embarked on the journey to the city, their teams separated at the start. However, at this time, he saw them cutting sorry figures—Their clothes were covered with grass and leaves, and their faces were scratched. It appeared they were not much better off than them, and they had probably also met matters that were out of their control.
“We are on the same side! We are on the same side!” Cavin cried out loudly.
Wilson recognized the chief security officer and ordered the others to withdraw their guns. He frowned as he asked, “Where are Corporal Powell and the rest of the soldiers who were supposed to lead your team?”
It was Gray Fur who stood beside the chief security officer that coldly responded, “His head was eaten. We suffered heavy casualties.”
Wilson looked very depressed as he exclaimed angrily, “What the hell was that thing! I’ve been serving the military on this damned planet for three years, but I’ve never heard of such things being in the woods!”
“Sacrifice……” Ethan whispered, “I heard your soldiers say previously that they saw the horned people holding a sacrificial ceremony?”
Wilson stared at Ethan. “So what!”
Chen Zeng sighed and explained, “For them to sacrifice the living was most likely because they wanted to summon something. After all, we don’t know much about this planet. Who knows what kind of creatures are lurking around. Maybe some of these monsters were awakened from hell.”
His words caused some of the nonhumans behind him to shiver. They were obviously so scared that they were at their wit’s ends.
“Don’t talk nonsense! Now, our main priority is to return to the lake to meet with the others!”
However, they had just taken a few steps when they once again heard the shrubs shaking around them and the wind whispering. While they were deliberating whether it was another team who had gotten lost, they suddenly saw a ray of silver light shining amid the woods. Wilson yelled, “Shit! It’s a horned person!”
He raised his gun, but before he could open fire, a figure suddenly shot towards Wilson and knocked him to the ground. The people who had come had silver-white skin and appeared thin and tall, with strong arms and reindeer-like long legs bent backward. They were wearing thick jackets and tight trousers. Wilson saw a pair of slender purple irises staring at him as a knife was held against his throat.
At the same time, about a dozen horned people rushed towards the panicking nonhumans. They could jump as high as a cat, and it was almost like they were falling from the sky. They lunged accurately at the nonhumans, knocking them to the ground one at a time. They also used the horns on their heads to bang into people, flipping them onto their backs. Samuel wrestled with a male horned person. He was stronger than Samuel had imagined, but he wasn’t nicknamed Iron Fist in vain. He found a chance to punch his opponent in the jaw and then jabbed his knife into his opponent’s chest without any hesitation.
The male horned person wailed, and his body twitched violently on the ground as if he had been electrified. It didn’t take long before he stopped breathing. Samuel was dizzy, and his ears were buzzing due to a blow from the male horned person. However, he immediately looked around for Ethan. Some of the nonhumans had been pressed to the ground and had their throats slit, while others were wrestling with male horned people on the ground in fights to the death. He noticed that a very tall horned person was carrying Typhoeus. The latter struggled as hard as he could, reaching out to him as he called for help.
Samuel rushed forward and knocked down the male horned person who was a head taller than him. The other party had been slammed onto his back due to Samuel’s brute force, and Typhoeus rolled to the side. The male horned person let out a terrifying roar and threw out a punch. Samuel tried to block it with his arm, but the opponent was too strong for him. He felt that his brain had turned into mush the moment he fell to the ground. In the next moment, the horned person had already jumped on him. One hand reached for his throat while the other raised a sharp knife full of barbs, about to pierce down. Samuel reached for his opponent’s wrist, but his strength was significantly reduced due to lack of oxygen. The blood rushing to his face made him feel as though his head was about to explode. Seeing the tip of the knife getting closer to his eyes, Samuel knew that the sharp object would penetrate his brain in the next moment.
Suddenly, the horned person’s eyes widened. A purple blade had penetrated his throat, and blue blood trickled down Samuel’s face. When Samuel pushed the dead body away, he saw Ethan staring at him in a dull and frightened manner. His glasses were splashed with blue blood, and his mouth was open, panting heavily as though he couldn’t breathe.
This was Ethan’s first time killing someone.
T/N: Summaries will be provided for subsequent chapters that may cause discomfort.
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
Warning: The contents in this chapter may cause discomfort.
Based on their itinerary, they should have reached Anas City in five days. However, they did not know why but the dense forest spread around them endlessly. There were no traces of the city, and not even a road could be seen. The GPS device in the hands of the soldiers also failed. The arrow that marked their current position was fixed in a certain location and remained unmoving. They tried to contact the nearest teams by radio, but there was no response.
They did not dare to release a signal flare, as they were worried that it would attract the horned people’s attention. And finally, they could not use the most traditional instrument—a compass, to locate themselves. Instead, they learned that the magnetic field on Pales was chaotic. The group suddenly found themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Moreover, at night, it was as if they had met a ghost—a strange cry followed them relentlessly. The light from a campfire flickered within the depths of the trees, just like the ghost fire that led people into traps. However, once they got close to the fire, they found that the ground was empty and there was no sign of a fire.
It wasn’t until the fifth night, when they got to the lake, that things started to go wrong.
It was not a very large lake and was probably formed after snowy water flowed down from a nearby snow-capped mountain. The lake’s water was peacock blue, and some purplish-red water plants were floating underneath. They could occasionally see bubbles floating to the surface or some fish of an unknown species cousin the water to ripple rhythmically. They set up camp on the sandbank beside the lake. In order to save their food, they drank some water from the lake and caught some fish, roasting them on a heating stone that could heat up quickly without emitting smoke. The fish’s lower lip was much more prominent than its upper lip, and its mouth was filled with dense fangs. It looked a bit scary, but it tasted pretty good. For the time being, they forgot about their troubles after losing their way and planned to enjoy the delicious food as they served as militants.
At this time, someone suddenly said that his younger brother had disappeared.
Ethan had come to know about the two brothers with team number 252, and he also knew that they were both in their early twenties. They had killed someone mistakenly while they were committing a robbery and were sent to the Forbidden City. They were known as Little A and Little B. Little A said that his brother had gone to relieve himself, but he hadn’t come back yet.
Wilson retrieved the GPS device for the nonhumans. Although the navigation function was basically useless, the inertial and infrared tracking functions could still be used, and he soon located Little B. He was 100 meters away from the camp. He had not entered the area cordoned off by the collar, so he did not trigger the device’s warning for when someone wanted to escape.
Wilson cursed and went to the woods to find him with a cigarette in his mouth, with Little A following him closely. However, not long after, they heard a shrill cry come from the woods. “No!!!”
The other soldiers and a few nonhumans, including Samuel, ran over. The thick bushes had been torn away by Sergeant Wilson to show a human body lying on the ground, but his head was gone. The cross section of his blood vessels, larynx, and trachea from his neck was clearly visible, and the collar that had been on his neck had also fallen into the pool of blood.
There was no sign of struggle in the surroundings, and they had not heard any suspicious noise. However, why wouldn’t there have been any commotion if he was so close to the camp?
All of them rushed back to the camp and grabbed their weapons. The nonhumans who didn’t see the scene didn’t know what had happened and thought the horned people were coming to attack them.
Even if there were no insects, birds, or wind, it should be impossible for there to be no sounds since they were in nature, right? It was like the sounds had been sucked clean by an invisible mouth.
After waiting for a long time, there were no movements. Wilson gestured for everyone to divide themselves into three groups. Each soldier led a group of nonhumans to search in a different direction. Derek stared at the screen of the infrared tracker, but he didn’t see any animals that were larger than a rabbit.
At this time, a female Alpha nonhuman suddenly pointed to one of the spherical braided balls hanging on the trees and said, “I don’t think these things were hung casually. You see, no matter which direction you look at them from, their positions are the same.”
Everyone noticed this strange anomaly after she spoke. Ethan looked forward and saw three to his left, with the one in the middle slightly smaller than the other two. There were also two to the right. He turned around, looked to the left, and saw three to the left and two to the right. He looked behind him and once again saw the same layout. As he walked forward, he found that the layout would remain unchanged with the aid of the vegetation. If he hadn’t been forced into this predicament, he would never have noticed this.
Derek reached out to grab a rattan ball and said, “I remember that an Asian country from ancient Earth had something called the eight trigrams array, which used certain walls or furnishings to create a kind of visual illusion for people to fall into. Some people also said that it would subconsciously hypnotize people, making them unable to walk out of a place for eternity. How interesting.”
He said those sarcastic words in a relaxed tone, causing many nonhumans to grow dissatisfied. Typheous asked, “So we are lost because we were confused by these things? But how could the horned people know the kind of arrays that people from ancient Earth used?”
“Maybe it’s not the eight trigrams array but something they developed themselves?” Derek said with a shrug, “I don’t understand it either, so don’t ask me. However, if you give me a computer, then I might be able to write an artificial intelligence program to analyze it.”
“Don’t argue over that. It won’t help.” Samuel gave Derek a look of warning.
Wilson swore, “Damn it, what a shitty array. Let’s just tear it down!” As he said this, he stretched out his hand to tug at one of the balls. The other nonhumans followed suit, and soon all of the nearby rattan balls had been plucked cleanly. They planned to continue plucking all of the balls as they walked until the road was clear of them.
They did this until the female Alpha from before turned around. Her eyes suddenly widened, and she revealed a terrified expression.
Seeing her expression, Ethan and Samuel also turned back to look, and their eyes fell on the nonhuman at the end of the line.
That nonhuman had not noticed anything and merely looked at the three people staring at him, spreading his arms and asking, “What?”
However, before he could say another syllable, his words were cut short. He never saw it, but one of the originally immobile coral-like twisted trunks had moved, and its color gradually faded into a disgusting fleshy gray color. Its body was covered in wrinkles like an old pump pipe. It had a rounded tip with a small hole that was surrounded by wrinkled skin, which quickly and silently landed on the head of the nonhuman at the end of the line.
When Ethan and others turned around, they saw that the small hole on the rounded tip suddenly expanded rapidly, exposing a dark red mouth inside that was covered with layers of sharp teeth like a meat grinder. It wrapped itself around the nonhuman’s head like a pocket before quickly tightening again. Everyone in the vicinity heard the sound of a clean, sharp cut like someone was cutting frozen meat.
It all happened in an instant. The huge worm quickly retracted into the tree’s crown, and the nonhuman’s corpse collapsed onto the ground, his collar lying in a pool of blood. The whole process lasted less than three seconds, without any screams or struggles.
The three people who witnessed the scene stiffened until the female Alpha screamed.
“In the tree! It’s in the tree!”
Wilson had also seen the scene at the very last second. With a pale face, he yelled, “Everyone down! Watch your heads!” Another soldier fired several shots at the place where the worm had retreated, and the sound of the gunshots reverberated among the trees.
Wilson kept calling out to the other two teams nearby, but he only received echoes in reply. However, judging from the sound of chaos coming from their sides, it was likely that they also encountered something similar.
“There’s something like a snake in the tree that eats humans!” the voice of another female Alpha Sergeant who was leading the team sounded out unsteadily.
“All teams return to the base!” Wilson ordered loudly. Ethan quickly got up from the ground and ran back with the rest. At this time, he was suddenly pushed down by Samuel. He fell to the ground, only to find that a bloody mouth with the appearance of a meat grinder was closing in. He had almost become a headless corpse, just like those two nonhumans!
Ethan’s heart was beating wildly, and he was sweating. Samuel grabbed him and pulled him back up before dragging him backward with all his might. The worm-like thing still had its head extended from the tree and was eating people’s heads before quickly shrinking back. Wilson and the other two soldiers were constantly firing at it, and the sergeant seemed to have hit the thing with his gun. A pool of smelly, dark green liquid dripped down on the face of a man who was almost eaten, and they only heard the man’s heart-wrenchingly shrill scream before a puff of smoke rose from his face. The creature’s blood was actually corrosive.
The original team of thirteen people was quickly reduced to eight, but at this time, the situation in the forest suddenly changed, and the bushes shook violently. The soldiers raised their guns one after another, aiming at where the sound was coming from.
Then, a man rushed out. It was the chief security officer.
Behind him were Chen Zeng, Cavin, Gray Fur, and a few other nonhumans who Ethan was not familiar with. These people did not share the same number as him, so when they embarked on the journey to the city, their teams separated at the start. However, at this time, he saw them cutting sorry figures—Their clothes were covered with grass and leaves, and their faces were scratched. It appeared they were not much better off than them, and they had probably also met matters that were out of their control.
“We are on the same side! We are on the same side!” Cavin cried out loudly.
Wilson recognized the chief security officer and ordered the others to withdraw their guns. He frowned as he asked, “Where are Corporal Powell and the rest of the soldiers who were supposed to lead your team?”
It was Gray Fur who stood beside the chief security officer that coldly responded, “His head was eaten. We suffered heavy casualties.”
Wilson looked very depressed as he exclaimed angrily, “What the hell was that thing! I’ve been serving the military on this damned planet for three years, but I’ve never heard of such things being in the woods!”
“Sacrifice……” Ethan whispered, “I heard your soldiers say previously that they saw the horned people holding a sacrificial ceremony?”
Wilson stared at Ethan. “So what!”
Chen Zeng sighed and explained, “For them to sacrifice the living was most likely because they wanted to summon something. After all, we don’t know much about this planet. Who knows what kind of creatures are lurking around. Maybe some of these monsters were awakened from hell.”
His words caused some of the nonhumans behind him to shiver. They were obviously so scared that they were at their wit’s ends.
“Don’t talk nonsense! Now, our main priority is to return to the lake to meet with the others!”
However, they had just taken a few steps when they once again heard the shrubs shaking around them and the wind whispering. While they were deliberating whether it was another team who had gotten lost, they suddenly saw a ray of silver light shining amid the woods. Wilson yelled, “Shit! It’s a horned person!”
He raised his gun, but before he could open fire, a figure suddenly shot towards Wilson and knocked him to the ground. The people who had come had silver-white skin and appeared thin and tall, with strong arms and reindeer-like long legs bent backward. They were wearing thick jackets and tight trousers. Wilson saw a pair of slender purple irises staring at him as a knife was held against his throat.
At the same time, about a dozen horned people rushed towards the panicking nonhumans. They could jump as high as a cat, and it was almost like they were falling from the sky. They lunged accurately at the nonhumans, knocking them to the ground one at a time. They also used the horns on their heads to bang into people, flipping them onto their backs. Samuel wrestled with a male horned person. He was stronger than Samuel had imagined, but he wasn’t nicknamed Iron Fist in vain. He found a chance to punch his opponent in the jaw and then jabbed his knife into his opponent’s chest without any hesitation.
The male horned person wailed, and his body twitched violently on the ground as if he had been electrified. It didn’t take long before he stopped breathing. Samuel was dizzy, and his ears were buzzing due to a blow from the male horned person. However, he immediately looked around for Ethan. Some of the nonhumans had been pressed to the ground and had their throats slit, while others were wrestling with male horned people on the ground in fights to the death. He noticed that a very tall horned person was carrying Typhoeus. The latter struggled as hard as he could, reaching out to him as he called for help.
Samuel rushed forward and knocked down the male horned person who was a head taller than him. The other party had been slammed onto his back due to Samuel’s brute force, and Typhoeus rolled to the side. The male horned person let out a terrifying roar and threw out a punch. Samuel tried to block it with his arm, but the opponent was too strong for him. He felt that his brain had turned into mush the moment he fell to the ground. In the next moment, the horned person had already jumped on him. One hand reached for his throat while the other raised a sharp knife full of barbs, about to pierce down. Samuel reached for his opponent’s wrist, but his strength was significantly reduced due to lack of oxygen. The blood rushing to his face made him feel as though his head was about to explode. Seeing the tip of the knife getting closer to his eyes, Samuel knew that the sharp object would penetrate his brain in the next moment.
Suddenly, the horned person’s eyes widened. A purple blade had penetrated his throat, and blue blood trickled down Samuel’s face. When Samuel pushed the dead body away, he saw Ethan staring at him in a dull and frightened manner. His glasses were splashed with blue blood, and his mouth was open, panting heavily as though he couldn’t breathe.
This was Ethan’s first time killing someone.
T/N: Summaries will be provided for subsequent chapters that may cause discomfort.
Warning: The contents in this chapter may cause discomfort.Based on their itinerary, they should have reached Anas City in five days. However, they did not know why but the dense forest spread around them endlessly. There were no traces of the city, and not even a road could be seen. The GPS device in the hands of the soldiers also failed. The arrow that marked their current position was fixed in a certain location and remained unmoving. They tried to contact the nearest teams by radio, but there was no response.They did not dare to release a signal flare, as they were worried that it would attract the horned people's attention. And finally, they could not use the most traditional instrumenta compass, to locate themselves. Instead, they learned that the magnetic field on Pales was chaotic. The group suddenly found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Moreover, at night, it was as if they had met a ghosta strange cry followed them relentlessly. The light from a campfire flickered within the depths of the trees, just like the ghost fire that led people into traps. However, once they got close to the fire, they found that the ground was empty and there was no sign of a fire.It wasn't until the fifth night, when they got to the lake, that things started to go wrong. It was not a very large lake and was probably formed after snowy water flowed down from a nearby snow-capped mountain. The lake's water was peacock blue, and some purplish-red water plants were floating underneath. They could occasionally see bubbles floating to the surface or some fish of an unknown species cousin the water to ripple rhythmically. They set up camp on the sandbank beside the lake. In order to save their food, they drank some water from the lake and caught some fish, roasting them on a heating stone that could heat up quickly without emitting smoke. The fish's lower lip was much more prominent than its upper lip, and its mouth was filled with dense fangs. It looked a bit scary, but it tasted pretty good. For the time being, they forgot about their troubles after losing their way and planned to enjoy the delicious food as they served as militants. At this time, someone suddenly said that his younger brother had disappeared.Ethan had come to know about the two brothers with team number 252, and he also knew that they were both in their early twenties. They had killed someone mistakenly while they were committing a robbery and were sent to the Forbidden City. They were known as Little A and Little B. Little A said that his brother had gone to relieve himself, but he hadn't come back yet.Wilson retrieved the GPS device for the nonhumans. Although the navigation function was basically useless, the inertial and infrared tracking functions could still be used, and he soon located Little B. He was 100 meters away from the camp. He had not entered the area cordoned off by the collar, so he did not trigger the device's warning for when someone wanted to escape. Wilson cursed and went to the woods to find him with a cigarette in his mouth, with Little A following him closely. However, not long after, they heard a shrill cry come from the woods. No!!!The other soldiers and a few nonhumans, including Samuel, ran over. The thick bushes had been torn away by Sergeant Wilson to show a human body lying on the ground, but his head was gone. The cross section of his blood vessels, larynx, and trachea from his neck was clearly visible, and the collar that had been on his neck had also fallen into the pool of blood.There was no sign of struggle in the surroundings, and they had not heard any suspicious noise. However, why wouldn't there have been any commotion if he was so close to the camp?All of them rushed back to the camp and grabbed their weapons. The nonhumans who didn't see the scene didn't know what had happened and thought the horned people were coming to attack them. Even if there were no insects, birds, or wind, it should be impossible for there to be no sounds since they were in nature, right? It was like the sounds had been sucked clean by an invisible mouth.After waiting for a long time, there were no movements. Wilson gestured for everyone to divide themselves into three groups. Each soldier led a group of nonhumans to search in a different direction. Derek stared at the screen of the infrared tracker, but he didn't see any animals that were larger than a rabbit.At this time, a female Alpha nonhuman suddenly pointed to one of the spherical braided balls hanging on the trees and said, I don't think these things were hung casually. You see, no matter which direction you look at them from, their positions are the same.Everyone noticed this strange anomaly after she spoke. Ethan looked forward and saw three to his left, with the one in the middle slightly smaller than the other two. There were also two to the right. He turned around, looked to the left, and saw three to the left and two to the right. He looked behind him and once again saw the same layout. As he walked forward, he found that the layout would remain unchanged with the aid of the vegetation. If he hadn't been forced into this predicament, he would never have noticed this. Derek reached out to grab a rattan ball and said, I remember that an Asian country from ancient Earth had something called the eight trigrams array, which used certain walls or furnishings to create a kind of visual illusion for people to fall into. Some people also said that it would subconsciously hypnotize people, making them unable to walk out of a place for eternity. How interesting.He said those sarcastic words in a relaxed tone, causing many nonhumans to grow dissatisfied. Typheous asked, So we are lost because we were confused by these things? But how could the horned people know the kind of arrays that people from ancient Earth used?Maybe it's not the eight trigrams array but something they developed themselves? Derek said with a shrug, I don't understand it either, so don't ask me. However, if you give me a computer, then I might be able to write an artificial intelligence program to analyze it.Don't argue over that. It won't help. Samuel gave Derek a look of warning. Wilson swore, Damn it, what a shitty array. Let's just tear it down! As he said this, he stretched out his hand to tug at one of the balls. The other nonhumans followed suit, and soon all of the nearby rattan balls had been plucked cleanly. They planned to continue plucking all of the balls as they walked until the road was clear of them.They did this until the female Alpha from before turned around. Her eyes suddenly widened, and she revealed a terrified expression.Seeing her expression, Ethan and Samuel also turned back to look, and their eyes fell on the nonhuman at the end of the line.That nonhuman had not noticed anything and merely looked at the three people staring at him, spreading his arms and asking, What? However, before he could say another syllable, his words were cut short. He never saw it, but one of the originally immobile coral-like twisted trunks had moved, and its color gradually faded into a disgusting fleshy gray color. Its body was covered in wrinkles like an old pump pipe. It had a rounded tip with a small hole that was surrounded by wrinkled skin, which quickly and silently landed on the head of the nonhuman at the end of the line.When Ethan and others turned around, they saw that the small hole on the rounded tip suddenly expanded rapidly, exposing a dark red mouth inside that was covered with layers of sharp teeth like a meat grinder. It wrapped itself around the nonhuman's head like a pocket before quickly tightening again. Everyone in the vicinity heard the sound of a clean, sharp cut like someone was cutting frozen meat.It all happened in an instant. The huge worm quickly retracted into the tree's crown, and the nonhuman's corpse collapsed onto the ground, his collar lying in a pool of blood. The whole process lasted less than three seconds, without any screams or struggles.The three people who witnessed the scene stiffened until the female Alpha screamed. In the tree! It's in the tree!Wilson had also seen the scene at the very last second. With a pale face, he yelled, Everyone down! Watch your heads! Another soldier fired several shots at the place where the worm had retreated, and the sound of the gunshots reverberated among the trees.Wilson kept calling out to the other two teams nearby, but he only received echoes in reply. However, judging from the sound of chaos coming from their sides, it was likely that they also encountered something similar.There's something like a snake in the tree that eats humans! the voice of another female Alpha Sergeant who was leading the team sounded out unsteadily. All teams return to the base! Wilson ordered loudly. Ethan quickly got up from the ground and ran back with the rest. At this time, he was suddenly pushed down by Samuel. He fell to the ground, only to find that a bloody mouth with the appearance of a meat grinder was closing in. He had almost become a headless corpse, just like those two nonhumans!Ethan's heart was beating wildly, and he was sweating. Samuel grabbed him and pulled him back up before dragging him backward with all his might. The worm-like thing still had its head extended from the tree and was eating people's heads before quickly shrinking back. Wilson and the other two soldiers were constantly firing at it, and the sergeant seemed to have hit the thing with his gun. A pool of smelly, dark green liquid dripped down on the face of a man who was almost eaten, and they only heard the man's heart-wrenchingly shrill scream before a puff of smoke rose from his face. The creature's blood was actually corrosive.The original team of thirteen people was quickly reduced to eight, but at this time, the situation in the forest suddenly changed, and the bushes shook violently. The soldiers raised their guns one after another, aiming at where the sound was coming from.Then, a man rushed out. It was the chief security officer. Behind him were Chen Zeng, Cavin, Gray Fur, and a few other nonhumans who Ethan was not familiar with. These people did not share the same number as him, so when they embarked on the journey to the city, their teams separated at the start. However, at this time, he saw them cutting sorry figuresTheir clothes were covered with grass and leaves, and their faces were scratched. It appeared they were not much better off than them, and they had probably also met matters that were out of their control.We are on the same side! We are on the same side! Cavin cried out loudly.Wilson recognized the chief security officer and ordered the others to withdraw their guns. He frowned as he asked, Where are Corporal Powell and the rest of the soldiers who were supposed to lead your team?It was Gray Fur who stood beside the chief security officer that coldly responded, His head was eaten. We suffered heavy casualties. Wilson looked very depressed as he exclaimed angrily, What the hell was that thing! I've been serving the military on this damned planet for three years, but I've never heard of such things being in the woods!Sacrifice Ethan whispered, I heard your soldiers say previously that they saw the horned people holding a sacrificial ceremony?Wilson stared at Ethan. So what!Chen Zeng sighed and explained, For them to sacrifice the living was most likely because they wanted to summon something. After all, we don't know much about this planet. Who knows what kind of creatures are lurking around. Maybe some of these monsters were awakened from hell. His words caused some of the nonhumans behind him to shiver. They were obviously so scared that they were at their wit's ends.Don't talk nonsense! Now, our main priority is to return to the lake to meet with the others!However, they had just taken a few steps when they once again heard the shrubs shaking around them and the wind whispering. While they were deliberating whether it was another team who had gotten lost, they suddenly saw a ray of silver light shining amid the woods. Wilson yelled, Shit! It's a horned person!He raised his gun, but before he could open fire, a figure suddenly shot towards Wilson and knocked him to the ground. The people who had come had silver-white skin and appeared thin and tall, with strong arms and reindeer-like long legs bent backward. They were wearing thick jackets and tight trousers. Wilson saw a pair of slender purple irises staring at him as a knife was held against his throat. At the same time, about a dozen horned people rushed towards the panicking nonhumans. They could jump as high as a cat, and it was almost like they were falling from the sky. They lunged accurately at the nonhumans, knocking them to the ground one at a time. They also used the horns on their heads to bang into people, flipping them onto their backs. Samuel wrestled with a male horned person. He was stronger than Samuel had imagined, but he wasn't nicknamed Iron Fist in vain. He found a chance to punch his opponent in the jaw and then jabbed his knife into his opponent's chest without any hesitation.The male horned person wailed, and his body twitched violently on the ground as if he had been electrified. It didn't take long before he stopped breathing. Samuel was dizzy, and his ears were buzzing due to a blow from the male horned person. However, he immediately looked around for Ethan. Some of the nonhumans had been pressed to the ground and had their throats slit, while others were wrestling with male horned people on the ground in fights to the death. He noticed that a very tall horned person was carrying Typhoeus. The latter struggled as hard as he could, reaching out to him as he called for help.Samuel rushed forward and knocked down the male horned person who was a head taller than him. The other party had been slammed onto his back due to Samuel's brute force, and Typhoeus rolled to the side. The male horned person let out a terrifying roar and threw out a punch. Samuel tried to block it with his arm, but the opponent was too strong for him. He felt that his brain had turned into mush the moment he fell to the ground. In the next moment, the horned person had already jumped on him. One hand reached for his throat while the other raised a sharp knife full of barbs, about to pierce down. Samuel reached for his opponent's wrist, but his strength was significantly reduced due to lack of oxygen. The blood rushing to his face made him feel as though his head was about to explode. Seeing the tip of the knife getting closer to his eyes, Samuel knew that the sharp object would penetrate his brain in the next moment.Suddenly, the horned person's eyes widened. A purple blade had penetrated his throat, and blue blood trickled down Samuel's face. When Samuel pushed the dead body away, he saw Ethan staring at him in a dull and frightened manner. His glasses were splashed with blue blood, and his mouth was open, panting heavily as though he couldn't breathe. This was Ethan's first time killing someone.T/N: Summaries will be provided for subsequent chapters that may cause discomfort.
