Flames and jets of red light burst from the flamethrowers, spewing fire like a red dragon, forcing the mutated plant species blocking the entrance of the Puppet Circus Fantasy Night to retreat.
Dense, thick clusters of various plants gleamed in a deep green, completely obscuring the entrance. Several tongues of fire scorched the branches and leaves, pressing them to retreat purely out of biological instinct.
The branches and trunks rustled as the mutated plants withdrew in all directions.
The entrance to the haunted house revealed a tunnel like a mountain cave.
The fully armed and ready Sentinels entered.
Less than half an hour ago, some of them had been enjoying dinner, others were still engaged in Folded zone combat drills, and another group had been discussing strategic deployments for potential urban Folded zones in the future.
But plans never catch up with change. Despite the frequent abnormal energy fluctuations in Folded zones revealed in satellite images over the past month, no one expected this day to come so soon.
The first Folded zone to flip within the safe zone appeared in Imperial Capital City, and it was right next to the city center.
The amusement park was swallowed up in an instant and turned into hell.
On the satellite map, each Folded zone was divided into grids based on energy fluctuation values. Different levels of Folded Zones looked like puzzle pieces in different colors, while the Safe Zone was obviously the largest white puzzle piece on the satellite map.
The amusement park being swallowed created a blood-red pinprick on that white puzzle piece. When the image was magnified proportionally, it resembled a bullet hole. The bloody color and violently fluctuating energy values caused it to be immediately classified as “Unknown” from the moment it appeared, with a danger level above that of an A-level Folded Zone.
Many personnel had already been dispatched along the route into the park.
Before, Yan Ji had listened to Xin Hexue and was busy saving people, thinking he’d go look for Xin Hexue once things settled down. But the frenzied insect swarms and plant creatures seemed endless, and the spore fog in the air couldn’t be dispelled. Inside the park, more and more animals and plants were being infected and turning into mutants, presenting a situation where they couldn’t be wiped out fast enough.
Yan Ji was completely fed up with these mutants. He had no weapon at hand, let alone his usual go-to weapon. He had only borrowed a riot fork from a security guard, which wasn’t even as effective as the trident prop he’d seen the Poseidon actor wield earlier in the park. He slammed the mutants to the ground, and the gray wolf pounced forward like the wind, biting through their throats.
Yan Ji originally thought this would be a happy, unforgettable date. But now it was completely ruined. The happiness was gone, leaving only the unforgettable part.
A blade gleamed coldly as it pierced through an insect’s corpse and sliced through the night fog, and Yan Ji suddenly felt that the killing intent from the Sentinel across from him was aimed directly at him.
After all, Wei Zhuo’s sword was pointed straight at him.
It was less than a centimeter from Yan Ji’s Adam’s apple.
In the fog filled with spore dust, Wei Zhuo’s gaze couldn’t have been colder. “You didn’t protect him.”
Yan Ji stood frozen on the spot.
The team of Sentinels behind Wei Zhuo had already stabilized the situation in this area.
Yan Ji finally had a hand free to reach into his pocket for the communicator. Fortunately, he hadn’t lost it in battle.
He dialed, but all he got was a busy tone.
Yan Ji jerked his head up. The fact that Wei Zhuo could say those words meant he had already learned something. At the thought of Xin Hexue, fear crept in belatedly, and cold sweat soaked his back. “Where’s Xin Hexue?”
Wei Zhuo looked at him with a cold, silent gaze.
…
Yan Ji could finally discard the heavy riot fork.
A Sentinel from the rescue team handed him a military scimitar. The blade arced like a cold moon, sharp enough to shave a hair. It sliced through the skin of the mutant plants and animals with effortless ease.
Earlier, he’d taken a hit during the insect swarm’s assault, and there was a dull ache behind his shoulder blade. It was probably already bruised, even without looking.
But Yan Ji had no time to care. He cut down the aggressive green plants lining the path, and viscous, blood-like green fluid splattered onto his face.
He wiped it off with the back of his hand. The air circulation system inside the sealed building wasn’t well designed. His chest felt heavy and suffocated. The cold sweat from anxiety mixed with the hot sweat from battle, soaking through his uniform that wasn’t meant for combat.
The three Sentinels with flamethrowers continued clearing the way up ahead.
The heat didn’t just drive back the mutants, it made the Sentinels themselves uncomfortable.
The air was filled with the scorched scent of unidentifiable plant branches and leaves. For some reason, although it was clearly the smell of burning plant tissues, Yan Ji inexplicably caught a scent of something like grilled meat.
When the night fog had spread, he and Xin Hexue hadn’t even had dinner yet.
Thinking that the young man might still be in danger somewhere, hungry and trapped, Yan Ji’s tense jawline hardened. He questioned Wei Zhuo, “Are you sure Xin Hexue is here?”
Wei Zhuo only gave him a cold glance.
A shadow was slain by the cold sword and fell to the ground.
Only then did Yan Ji see it clearly…it was a bat that had rushed out from a dark corner.
The flames and heat flared again. By their light, Yan Ji finally saw the dial on his wristwatch. A bead of sweat from his temple dripped onto the mineral glass face, and the numbers swelled with the ripple of water.
Only then did he realize that barely half an hour had passed since they’d entered.
Yan Ji thought they’d been wandering through the haunted house of the Puppet Circus for half the night already.
Even though he was the team’s leader, who was supposed to always be calm and composed, Wei Zhuo couldn’t help feeling agitated. His voice had grown hoarse in the long, suffocating heat.
“According to the tapping code Xin Hexue used, it’s directly due north.”
The Honeysuckle squad had their own agreed-upon knocking code. When Wei Zhuo called earlier, Xin Hexue had been unable to speak, but Wei Zhuo heard the sound of tapping on wood in the background.
Due north.
And this not-yet-opened haunted house was located precisely on the northernmost side of the park.
Yan Ji fell silent.
Suddenly, he looked up and seemed to catch something at that moment. “Wait, everyone stop!”
The sentinels at the front stopped their flamethrowers.
Yan Ji hurriedly squeezed his way out of the formation.
On his way forward, he even stepped on a puppet man collapsed on the ground.
He pointed at the peeling red-painted wall agitatedly, where moisture had condensed into branch-like patterns trickling down.
But fortunately, it hadn’t blurred the handprint.
Yan Ji held his palm in the air near it, compared the size, and said with absolute certainty, “It’s Xin Hexue.”
Wei Zhuo looked over with cold eyes.
Yan Ji turned and pressed a strange wall lamp on the opposite corridor. A hidden mechanism within the wall made a clicking sound.
This was the entrance to the backstage dressing room.
However, before they could hesitate for even two more seconds, the entire semi-enclosed structure began to tremble.
At both ends of the hallway, darkness echoed with thunderous sounds and the wet scraping of something against the floor.
It felt like all the insect swarms and plant masses inside the building were surging toward them at once.
And that huge thing…
Mental bodies suddenly crowded the hallway. Every sentinel in the squad became alert, their muscles tight as they entered high-intensity combat mode.
………
They lost count of how many times they had charged in and fought their way out.
Blades pierced and withdrew. The gleaming edges of knives and swords were smeared with green slime.
Amidst the green mess, the only striking color was the red of sentinel blood.
More and more sentinels were injured during battle, slamming into the walls with a resounding thud as their backs hit the hard surface.
Wei Zhuo cut at his palm without hesitation, and the sudden rush of thick blood immediately drew nearly all the firepower.
Blood from a high-level sentinel was far more effective than any inducer in triggering the bloodlust of monsters.
He deliberately drew the mutants away, leading the vines out of the area.
“Find him.”
Wei Zhuo said coldly.
………
They finally found Xin Hexue.
The scene made all the sentinels who witnessed it hold their breath.
The half-dead plants coiled around the puppet circus stage, one branch and twisted vine after another twisting around like snakes.
Heavy dark red curtains, thick with years of dust, hung at the edges of the stage to the east and west, leaving everything onstage fully exposed.
The only beam of light in the dark world shone on the center of the stage.
It looked like a grand offering.
And the offering wasn’t a puppet, but a holy angel bound to a cross at the center of the stage.
Even though his forehead was wet, his black hair sticky and clinging to his skin, his state weak and disheveled, he was still beautiful.
His skin looked like paper soaked in water, and his thin chest rose and fell with shallow breaths.
At some point, his clothes had been changed into a pure white performance outfit. His shoes and socks were missing. The tops of his feet were colorless and almost transparent, revealing delicate faint blue veins.
Vines and branches clung to the cross, one after another, loop after loop, tightly binding the young man’s limbs.
His wrists exposed beneath his sleeves, the ankles below the pant legs, and the waist that looked so narrow even without a corset…
The scene was eerie yet strangely harmonious.
Dark green plants silently swayed on and off the stage, as if in devout worship.
Were they following their angel? Or something else?
There was no time to think. They killed every single mutated plant on the spot.
Wolf howls, tiger roars and various sounds rang out as various mental bodies and mutants clashed in a final battle.
Wei Zhuo appeared at the door. Because he had attracted most of the firepower, he now looked completely disheveled.
New injuries covered his body, and the arm holding his sword was bent at an unnatural angle from a fracture.
As for the bloody hole in his shoulder, it had been punched through during a fight with the strangling tree’s vines.
Wei Zhuo didn’t know what had happened. The strangling vines suddenly retreated. They had clearly held the advantage, yet it was as if something had taken control of them. They retreated in contradiction, vanishing swiftly without a trace.
Wei Zhuo originally thought they had realized the diversion was a trap and that the real goal was to rescue the guide.
So he rushed over, worried that the vines had returned.
When Wei Zhuo saw the scene onstage, his pupils shrank. He dragged his heavy body forward, instinctively ready to help.
But Yan Ji was already rushing forward with his blade, like a knight hacking through thorns and brambles.
His scimitar sliced through the binding vines.
The angel on the cross fell into the arms of the young sentinel.
Wei Zhuo’s broad shoulders tensed silently. His eyes were so dark that even moonlight couldn’t penetrate. He stared fixedly at the scene.
Yan Ji anxiously checked Xin Hexue’s condition.
Fortunately, aside from being in poor condition, there were no visible external injuries.
But when held in his arms, Xin Hexue’s body was cold, trembling slightly in an abnormal way.
Yan Ji tried to wake Xin Hexue’s consciousness.
Only to hear the dazed guide mumble in a dreamlike murmur, “He Botian…”
The voice was intermittent and faint, “Run quickly…”
[Yan Ji heartbreak value +10]
………
Yan Ji had no idea Xin Hexue’s mental power had been exhausted to such an extent.
What Xin Hexue had explained before was that his mental power had been weakened to some degree after He Botian’s death.
He didn’t expect it had reached the “exhausted” state that Ji Yushan described.
If he had known, he would have directly stopped Xin Hexue when the other party arranged for him to go save people and went off alone to draw the monsters away.
It felt like someone had clenched Yan Ji’s heart in their fist, squeezing it mercilessly. It was so painful he even thought his heart would shatter from it.
He rested his forehead against the outer wall of the operating room corridor, but the cold wall couldn’t calm his mind at all.
Yan Ji hadn’t had time to change out of his clothes, and his black jacket was still covered in the dirt and stains left from battle.
This was the White Tower, the White Tower’s medical department.
Today, they had made an exception and allowed two sentinels in.
The reason was Ji Yushan had named them specifically, saying these two sentinels were needed for the treatment of the guide whose mental power had been damaged.
Since there were no physical wounds, and the damage to mental power wasn’t something surgical procedures could fix.
The pale young man was soon wheeled out on an operating cart. Yan Ji subconsciously stepped forward to follow and almost bumped into Wei Zhuo who was also rushing forward. The two of them avoided each other with equally unpleasant expressions.
The medical staff transferred Xin Hexue into a VIP ward.
And the two sentinels were stopped outside.
Yan Ji protested anxiously, “Can’t I at least see him?”
The person blocking them said coldly, “Clean up. Disinfect.”
The White Tower staff looked at the two sentinels like they were walking pathogens.
“…”
Wei Zhuo had injuries that required more than just washing and disinfecting. The wound on his shoulder needed surgery.
Compared to him, Yan Ji’s wounds were mostly superficial.
So Yan Ji returned to the ward entrance earlier. Since he didn’t have a change of clothes, the White Tower provided standard hospital gowns.
Ji Yushan’s assistant and a researcher were also there.
This researcher had previously helped with front desk reception and happened to be the one who received Xin Hexue the first time he came to the institute to fill out his identity form.
When she saw Wei Zhuo, the researcher’s expression subtly shifted.
She had only been transferred under Ji Yushan this year and wasn’t familiar with the famous sentinels and guides from the frontlines. She didn’t even recognize their faces. So when Xin Hexue first came to the institute, not only did she fail to recognize him, she also mistook the Wei Zhuo who came with him as his husband.
In the end, Xin Hexue had to explain that they were just friends.
Later, when she happened to hear about the relationship between Xin Hexue, He Botian, and Wei Zhuo, the researcher felt very embarrassed.
How could she have mistaken He Botian’s good brother as Xin Hexue’s partner?!
She didn’t expect that after returning from studying abroad, she’d run into the very same people again.
The researcher dug at the floor with her toes in silence.
This time, she definitely wouldn’t say anything wrong again.
But since Ji Yushan was still inside checking on Xin Hexue’s condition, the four of them waited in the hallway outside the ward, bored and making idle small talk.
Researcher: “Lieutenant General Wei Zhuo and Major General Xin Hexue have such a close bond. You are staying by the ward so devotedly, truly worthy of being good friends!”
‘Saying “good friends” shouldn’t go wrong, right?!’
“…Mm.”
But Wei Zhuo’s expression visibly darkened.
Researcher: “…”
She quickly changed the subject and looked at Yan Ji. “And this one is…?”
A face she hadn’t seen before. “Also a friend of the Major General, I suppose?”
Yan Ji’s lips were tight. He deliberately raised his voice and straightened his spine. “I’m Xin Hexue’s boyfriend.”
The researcher had a sudden realization. “Then you must be Lieutenant General He Botian! I’ve heard so much about you!”
Yan Ji: ?
A drop of sweat trickled down the researcher’s temple.
Wait, did she mess up again?
Was her information outdated?
