bookbashuk Chapter 139 A Storm Begins from the End of a Floating Stream
Chapter 139 A Storm Begins from the End of a Floating Stream
In the chaos, the stone slab fell to the ground and shattered.
"We only managed to salvage a few fragments. The rest... were all snatched up by those tentacles that emerged from the ground."
"We have to retreat. Mike... Mike seems a bit off. He's staring at that piece of debris without blinking."
The third file.
[Diary 15 - Nishizawa]
The background noise was filled with a cacophony of screams and gunshots.
Xize's voice trembled, and it sounded like he was about to cry.
"It's spreading. Faster than we thought."
"As soon as I get close to that piece of debris... as soon as I get close to it... my skin starts to itch, and then red blisters appear."
"Mike has gone mad."
"He locked himself in the observation room and talked to that piece of debris. He said... he said he saw it."
He saw someone.
"A person...with three heads."
Hoshino's fingers trembled suddenly.
Three heads.
This description was like a sharp thorn, instantly piercing her cerebral cortex.
She recalled the image the black swan had seen deep in her memory.
That... monster, twisted by the power of the end times, merging the past, present, and future into one.
"Keep releasing."
Xing's voice was somewhat low. She seemed to realize something as well, and her fingers gripping the Flame Spear tightened slightly.
The fourth document.
[Diary 21 - Nishizawa]
This is a surveillance recording.
The sound was incredibly clear, shockingly clear.
"Mike, put the knife down! It's me, Caesar! Look closely!"
"Hehe... Nishizawa..."
Another voice rang out. It was Mike.
But the voice no longer sounded human. It was like a throat stuffed with rotten flesh, muffled and unclear, yet carrying a strange kind of pleasure.
"You saw it too, Caesar?"
"That...that great being."
"Its skin is melting... flowing down like candle wax... so fragrant... so beautiful..."
"The head on the left is crying... the head on the right is laughing... the head in the middle... the head in the middle is looking at me..."
puff-
The sound of a sharp blade cutting into flesh.
What followed was a long, chilling chewing sound.
The recording abruptly stopped.
The office was deathly silent.
Only the sound of the wriggling flesh outside continued tirelessly.
March 7th covered her mouth, looking at Hoshino with terrified eyes.
"Just as I thought."
Hoshi closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
She raised her hand and rubbed her throbbing temples vigorously.
The skin beneath my fingertips was cold and stiff, as if what flowed beneath it was no longer warm blood, but some ancient, colder sand of time.
"The same planet as the previous Insectoid race."
Her voice was calm.
It was as calm as a stagnant pool.
"4546B...is also a planet shrouded in the fate of 'the end'."
"Mike, or everything on this planet, and us, are all things I remember that we experienced."
When Hoshi opened her eyes, the clock markings representing the end were slowly reversing in her golden pupils.
"The 'calamities' on this planet are not merely products of reproduction and abundance."
"And the final toxin."
"It makes time here no longer linear, intertwining the past, present, and future."
She turned around and looked out the window at the dark, deep sea.
At the edge of that abyss, the being known as "Candle Dragon" is silently watching all of this.
"But anyway."
Hoshino's palm was pressed against the window.
"We must all resolve this calamity."
"after all......"
A bitter smile curved her lips.
"This is something I experienced myself, but I have no recollection of."
"Or rather..."
"This is a sin I committed myself..."
The only sound in the cabin was the wet, sloshing sound of the wriggling flesh, like the digestive rhythm of some enormous stomach.
Shihoshi stuffed the PDA into the tactical bag on his waist and turned to look at the other four.
"continue."
Sunday spoke first, getting a step ahead of her.
He straightened his cuffs, and his face, which always wore a calm smile, now showed a rare seriousness.
"As the planet said, this planet is shrouded in an apocalyptic fate, with timelines intertwined in a tangled mess. Now that we've stepped into this quagmire, staying put will only make us sink deeper."
He turned his head and glanced at the dark, deep sea outside the window.
"Why don't we take advantage of our mobility and try our luck on that Starship? The company has deployed a P45-class strategic ship here, which must store far more detailed data than this small laboratory. If we can find clues to the source of the calamity, this trip will be worthwhile."
"I agree."
Xi Lian nodded. Her long pink hair remained dry and fluffy under the protection of the force field, making it particularly eye-catching in this bloody inferno.
"Besides, there might be survivors on that ship."
"Survivors? In this godforsaken place?"
March 7 muttered something, but his hand had already reached for the ice bow at his waist.
"Alright, let's go, let's go. If we keep smelling this stuff in here, all those compressed biscuits I had for lunch will be wasted."
Hoshi grinned.
"Then let's go."
She glanced back at Caesar's desk. The half-empty cup of coffee, speckled with grayish-white mold in the dim light, resembled a frozen eyeball.
Xize, I've received your data.
As for your corpse... it's probably just one of those lumps of rotting flesh mixed in with what's under your feet.
She silently recited a phrase to herself, then turned and stepped into the flesh-and-blood tunnel leading to the exit.
As he re-submerged into the deep sea, Hoshi felt a brief moment of relief.
Although the seawater was cold and viscous, it was at least much fresher than that iron coffin filled with the smell of decay.
The five people swam along the seabed toward the distant Starship wreckage.
The silhouette of the giant ship was clearly visible from several kilometers away. The broken hull stretched between the sea and the sky, its bow submerged in the water and its stern rising above the surface, like a broken giant sword.
Black plumes of smoke still rose from the cracks, pressed low beneath the amber-colored sub-space barrier, like black snakes crawling under the sky.
As the distance decreased, underwater visibility began to drop sharply.
Numerous metal fragments, broken pipes, and unidentified black debris floated in the water, forming a murky "fog curtain."
Just as everyone passed through this fog.
March 7th let out a scream.
"What is that?!"
Less than thirty meters ahead.
A... thing is slowly moving.
It is described as a "clump" because it cannot be described using any normal biological classification.
The object was about two stories high and looked like a giant, stretched and deformed meat pie.
The red and white epidermis is distributed alternately, with the red parts resembling peeled muscle and the white parts resembling exposed fat layers. The boundary between the two is blurred, as if they are constantly melting and reshaping.
It has no head, no limbs, and no identifiable organs.
The entire body was like a lump of raw meat that had been broken and then pieced back together, its surface covered with holes of all sizes. Each hole opened and closed rhythmically, spitting out streams of murky, fishy-smelling liquid.
The most disgusting thing is those "buoys".
Dozens of translucent air sacs floated on the surface of the meat. The air sacs were filled with a yellowish-green liquid, and some wriggling filaments could be vaguely seen in the liquid.
They resembled the tentacles of a jellyfish or the egg sacs of a parasite, swaying with each movement of the flesh.
"vomit......"
On March 7th, he couldn't hold it in any longer and started dry heaving, covering his mouth.
"What the hell is this thing? It looks like it fell into a blender... never mind, I can't describe it."
Xing's face didn't look too good either, but she forced herself to endure the nausea and aimed the Flame Spear at the lump of flesh.
"Should we fight?"
"etc."
Hoshi pressed down on Hoshi's gun barrel.
She narrowed her eyes, and the clock of the end slowly turned in her golden pupils, analyzing the energy composition of the lump of flesh.
"It...has no intention of attacking."
This is true.
Although the enormous lump of flesh was terrifying in size, its movement resembled that of an old cow strolling in a pasture. It even "thoughtfully" veered around a protruding rock, avoiding a collision.
"Just like the fungal mats in the lab."
After observing for a while on Sunday, a conclusion was reached.
"A mere proliferator. It simply... exists. It possesses no advanced cognitive abilities."
"A huge, swimming... lump of rotten flesh."
"That's what Hoshi concluded."
"Although it's extremely disgusting, at least it doesn't bite."
She paused for a moment as soon as she finished speaking.
A strange sensation rose from the soles of my feet, traveled up my spine, and shot straight to the top of my head.
That feeling... felt very familiar.
It's like on the planet Teremi-IV, where the final destiny resonates with the entire planet.
Warm.
A continuous flow of warmth, like the amniotic fluid from the womb.
She subconsciously glanced back at Sunday.
"Sunday."
"Um?"
"Has your power... changed at all?"
Sunday paused slightly.
Immediately, his pupils contracted sharply.
He raised his right hand.
On his fingertips, the iconic golden commandment still pulsed.
But... the color changed.
The warm, soft, and harmonious golden hue that was originally there is now undergoing a gradual transformation. New colors are emerging from the core of the light, colder, sharper, and more imposing.
The gold became pure.
Pure to the point of being almost blinding.
"order."
Sunday uttered those two words in a low voice.
A complex light flashed in his eyes. There was shock, relief, and a hint of...nostalgia.
"The shackles of a harmonious destiny... are peeling away. In their place are something older and more fundamental."
He slowly clenched his fist, feeling the renewed power between his fingers.
"The authority of Taiyi. The laws of order. A destiny already doomed after being absorbed by 'Harmony'..."
"It is regenerating inside me."
"really."
A barely suppressed smile curved the corners of Hoshino's lips.
This is what she's been waiting for.
The End of Fate, being the most unique among the eighteen fates, is not essentially an "end," but rather a "return to zero."
Resetting to zero means returning everything to its starting point.
Return to that purest, most fundamental state.
The "harmony" that Sunday once possessed, in its essence, stemmed from the inheritance and distortion of "order." Now, under the continued permeation of the power of the end times, the outer shell covered by "harmony" is shattering, revealing a more authentic self within.
This is one of the real reasons why she was selected for the assault team on Sunday.
"You're not the only one."
Xi Lian's voice drifted from the side, a trembling tone tinged with a mixture of surprise and confusion.
She opened her arms, and a warm, flowing light appeared between her palms.
The light, like liquid mercury, flowed and wove between her fingers, forming fleeting fragments of images—fragments of the sky of Onpharos, of the flower sea of the Elegant Secret Pavilion, of Bai'er's smile...
"The power of memory... has become stronger."
Xi Lian blinked her big blue eyes, which reflected the light in her palm, her expression like that of a child who had found a beloved toy that had been lost for many years.
"Back in Onphalus, I could only read and preserve memories. But now... I can feel those memories becoming something more substantial. They have weight, they have warmth."
"I even feel that... if I wanted, I could use these memories to recreate a world."
She looked up at Hoshino.
"This is... Fu Li's power? The power of the Star God of Memory?"
Hoshi nodded.
"One of the core powers of the final destiny: Return to the origin."
"Sunday's 'harmony' has restored 'order.' Your 'fragments of memory' have coalesced into the complete 'path of memory.'"
"It's all about the awakening of your own potential. I just... helped you open the door that was always meant for you."
"So you planned this from the very beginning."
On Sunday, as he caressed the new, cold, and sharp golden light on his fingertips, a deeper meaning appeared in his eyes as he looked at Hoshino.
"The real purpose of selecting me and Xilian into the assault team, besides considering our combat capabilities, is to use the final battlefield to catalyze our destiny's return."
Hoshi shrugged, her gray hair shimmering silver in the reflection of the water.
"You found out."
She smiled openly and honestly.
"The power of the Order Star God and the Memory Star God is far more effective against the Calamity of Demons than ordinary Harmony and memory fragments. You can think of it as... a free upgrade."
"Hello!"
A disgruntled voice came from behind.
Xingyou stepped forward, grabbed Xingxing by the collar, his golden-gray eyes filled with resentment.
"They both leveled up, but what about me? I don't feel like a 'Pioneer Star God' at all! Your favoritism is so obvious!"
....................................