Chapter 488: Flesh Seed

Chapter 488: Flesh Seed

“Zheng Yichen ah, only someone who is not a Witch knows how this was born. I can say for sure that the Stone Forest is a unique, unreplicable special existence, hmm… As for the core, you should go to the very center of the Stone Forest to look. You might find some traces there.”

“The very center? Is the Undying Witch that traditional?” Zheng Yichen was shocked. He had been thinking earlier that it was absolutely impossible for it to be in the very center, and now Dan Marina said something that slapped him in the face!

“What tradition? The Stone Forest grew. When a problem appears, it’s naturally in the very middle. But you won’t easily get close to that area. The people from the Sanctuary Church are also watching that place.”

“I see. I’ll look for an opportunity then,” Zheng Yichen said. This time, he couldn’t be like Dan Marina last time in the Windwhisper Valley, sneakily taking that extremely rare Wind Elemental Crystal right under everyone’s noses.

“Mhm, let’s keep talking about that Derivative Witch. I’m quite interested in her,” Dan Marina said. “And also the one who captured those three dragons before.”

Zheng Yichen looked at Dan Marina with some suspicion. Even if this woman lost her own abilities, she couldn’t have become this slow, right? The matter about the three dragons was from many days ago. Could she really not know? “You really don’t know about this?”

“I know, but I want to hear you talk about it. There weren’t many eyewitnesses to this incident, and the Sanctuary Church hasn’t leaked much useful information.”

“…Alright.”

Just as Zheng Yichen was chattering away, the people who had left earlier all returned to the Temporary Camp. Dan Marina simply went back to her tent, and Zheng Yichen quickly returned to his single room as well, acting as if nothing had happened.

After returning to his single room, Zheng Yichen couldn’t help but curl his lips. So, what was that reaction of being afraid of being discovered earlier? He should have swaggered back! Why did he act like that… It seemed like it was because Dan Marina started it first, making him unconsciously follow suit.

Scratching his head, Zheng Yichen opened the tightly sealed bag to take a look and immediately closed it again. The hair inside had grown so much it was almost overflowing. Moreover, those independent pieces of flesh had fused together as if melting. Opening it abruptly, he saw a mass of something mentally polluting. Zheng Yichen simply threw this thing into his Personal Space…

He also checked on the Undying Witch’s reaction. She still appeared completely unresponsive. This isolation was very effective. Even when something created by the loss of control of some backup plans based on the Undying Witch came close, no abnormalities were detected. The bag thrown into his Personal Space was simply taken away by his main body and handed over to the waiting Irene.

Irene glanced down at the bag in her hand. “You delayed for quite a while.”

“I chatted with someone for a bit. This thing looks pretty ordinary.”

“Mhm, it is indeed quite ordinary. We’ll talk about the rest later.” Irene quickly left with the item. She didn’t return to her room but went straight to find Annie. Huh? When did these two become so in sync?

Zheng Yichen muttered to himself as he returned to his bedroom. He opened the door but didn’t see Loris there, which puzzled him. Was the time not right? No, that couldn’t be. He went to her room to look, and her room was also empty. After hesitating for a moment, Zheng Yichen called over the Ghost Maid on shift. After getting a clear answer, his eyebrows couldn’t help but rise. She, who almost never went out, actually went out?

And she went out at night? What was she doing going out at this hour?

Since she had gone out, Zheng Yichen had the heart to look for her but didn’t know how to. Looking for a Witch… unless you were a Witch yourself, it was too difficult for other beings to find one. Having lost his sleepiness, Zheng Yichen went to the Laboratory. He took out a pile of pre-printed molds from his Personal Space. These molds were all provided by the Ghost Maids. Although the full set wasn’t complete yet, he could still start making them.

The two Ghost Maids on maintenance duty, upon seeing Zheng Yichen’s actions, immediately had bright eyes. After putting it off for so long, was the master finally starting work?

Their almost glowing eyes were noticed by Zheng Yichen, who twitched the corner of his eye slightly. “I say, your mistress ran off, and you all can still be so at ease?”

The two Ghost Maids looked at Zheng Yichen in confusion. One of them took down the specially customized keyboard Zheng Yichen had ordered. This thing was for the Ghost Maids to trial. Once a public beta version was made in the future, Zheng Yichen said some of his big plans could officially be implemented!

Only after typing through the Ghost Maid did Zheng Yichen gradually understand. In their view, Loris going out was a common occurrence. In the past, it was normal for Loris to be out for ten days to half a month. There were even times when she didn’t return for several years, which happened often… They were long used to it. At the same time, this was also a form of trust in their mistress.

Reading such an answer, Zheng Yichen instead felt a bit uncomfortable. It seemed like he was lacking a bit of trust…? Tch, what nonsense!

Knocking his own head, Zheng Yichen rubbed his paws together and started working. Since he wasn’t sleepy anymore, he might as well take the chance to make two trial versions of maid-style Alchemical Puppets.

The next day, Zheng Yichen walked out of the small single room in the Temporary Camp, yawning. After putting away the small single room, he noticed the atmosphere in the campsite felt off. “Brother Oss, what’s going on?”

“Something happened at the campsite,” Oss said, giving Zheng Yichen a speechless look. How could you know nothing about such a big event?

“I went home last night, so I didn’t know anything.”

Oss nodded in understanding and then explained. Everything was fine last night, but in the early morning, a bunch of flesh-pile monsters appeared, exactly like the ones in the post the Sanctuary Church made yesterday. However, this time, the flesh pieces piled up in the monsters weren’t limited to humans; there were also many beasts and even Magical Beasts.

Coupled with the sudden increase in Sanctuary Church members, the atmosphere in this Temporary Camp became unusual. If it was something easily resolved, the Church wouldn’t have needed to transfer new members from other places to volunteer here.

Some time had passed since the early morning until now. Some people had already found out that these Sanctuary Church members who came for rapid support were from other Temporary Camps. That meant this place had a big problem. Some people couldn’t help but plan to leave, but all of them were stopped. They vented their dissatisfaction, but a single sentence from the Sanctuary Church people easily shut them up.

If you want to die, then go ahead and run. This place won’t stop you.

“Can’t we go to the Stone Forest area either?” Zheng Yichen asked.

“No,” Oss shook his head. “There have been some unusual movements in the Stone Forest area too… Hmm, the specifics are being kept secret by the Sanctuary Church here. We don’t know for now.”

“I see. Alright then, I’ll go gather some inside information.” As Zheng Yichen said this, he looked for an acquaintance in the Temporary Camp. Of course, it wasn’t Dan Marina, but another old fellow with a rich inner monologue… Moser.

Seeing Zheng Yichen find him with a grin, Moser knew trouble had arrived for him. He twitched the corner of his eye slightly and inconspicuously moved to a less crowded spot. He looked at Zheng Yichen silently and with a natural air of authority, attempting to make Zheng Yichen leave with his gaze.

Sadly, he failed.

“Hey, old buddy, I have a coupon here. Look…”

“Speak!” Moser said succinctly and sparingly. He snatched the slip of paper from Zheng Yichen’s hand—a slip that seemed purely perfunctory. It being a slip was one thing, but the key issue was that it wasn’t even torn neatly; the edges were all jagged. It couldn’t be more perfunctory.

For Moser, as long as the writing on it wasn’t perfunctory, it was fine. Written on it was a string of mysterious numbers, something very useful. This was what Zheng Yichen called an Activation Code. After entering Zheng Yichen’s Online Store and using this thing, one could claim the so-called coupon Zheng Yichen mentioned.

Why did Moser take it so decisively? Because if he didn’t take it, he’d get nothing. If he didn’t take it, Zheng Yichen wouldn’t give up easily and would still say something in the end. This dragon wasn’t that easy to dismiss. Since that was the case, why not take it? Consider it recouping a bit of loss.

“What’s going on over at the Stone Forest?”

“Just that?” Moser looked at Zheng Yichen somewhat puzzled, a bit incredulous. Did Zheng Yichen only ask such a simple thing? That was easy to answer. After all, what happened at the Stone Forest would be made public later. The more tightly a secret is kept, the more people want to know. The matter at the Stone Forest was big… Having more people involved wasn’t a bad thing.

“Of course. What else did you think I would ask?” Zheng Yichen countered. The matter about the Derivative Witch? Irene had taken over. Just wait for news. It was just a matter of knowing earlier or later. Compared to that, the matter of the Stone Forest was more important.

Moser shook his head and began talking about what happened at the Stone Forest. Originally, only ‘spirits’ would appear there as the Stone Forest slowly crumbled. But now, the Stone Forest had undergone new changes. Besides still producing some ‘spirits,’ it had started producing various ‘people.’ The strength of these people varied. So far, none were particularly powerful, but this was only the initial situation.

The weak ones were just like ordinary people, only with a bit of extra strength. The strong ones could go head-to-head with some Church knights. Even if the outcome was severe fractures or serious injuries, they had a very unique characteristic: strong regenerative ability!

“Currently, the discovered ‘people’ are only active at the edges. We can’t rule out that new, more powerful ones will appear deeper inside. More importantly, they… cannot die!”

Moser said with a somewhat heavy expression. Powerful strength didn’t matter; the Sanctuary Church had many more powerful individuals. However many weirdos appeared, they would just eliminate them. The key was that those weirdos couldn’t die. Even if they were completely crushed, new ones would appear not long after.

This was based on detailed statistics. Some specialized personnel even recorded the faces of those weirdos. After killing a specific one, they could find a new one elsewhere. This meant they were in a state of cyclic regeneration.

“That forest is related to a Witch, right? Didn’t your methods for dealing with Witches work?”

“White Moon Crystal had some effect…” Moser shook his head. They tried the specialized methods for dealing with Witches. The effect was only slightly stronger than other methods. The practical significance wasn’t very good; it only delayed the weirdos’ recovery speed.

“Then have you found any reason for it?”

Zheng Yichen muttered to himself internally. Was he so unlucky? Just as he was starting to prepare to act, new changes occurred. According to what Moser said, after the number of weirdos active inside accumulated, it would probably become almost impossible to move around in there.

“No.”

“What about near this campsite?”

“…” Moser twitched the corner of his eye slightly. Are you just going to leave what you said earlier? You clearly only asked about the Stone Forest!

Watching Zheng Yichen take out a second, even more perfunctory coupon, Moser took a deep breath and snatched it away. “The problems near the campsite aren’t major. We just discovered those previous Flesh Seeds, and there are a lot of them!”

“How many?”

“No less than four thousand!”

“That’s really quite a lot.” Zheng Yichen couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his mouth. The total number of people in this Temporary Camp, at most, added up to just over three hundred. It wasn’t that there were few people here, but the Stone Forest was huge, so there were many Temporary Camps like this. This was the average number of people. After a while, the number of people here should increase a bit more.

“The number isn’t the issue… The human forms derived from those Flesh Seeds aren’t strong. What the Church worries about is that actively eliminating those human forms might cause the number of these Flesh Seeds to increase further…”

Since Moser said that, it seemed they had found the connection between those Flesh Seeds and the Derivative Witch. Thinking about this new Derivative Witch, Zheng Yichen pondered, how should he put it? She was the type that ‘if you plant a girl today, you can harvest a bunch tomorrow.’

Thinking about it, it had a rather horrific atmosphere. Unfortunately, in this world, supernatural horror… didn’t mean much. Ghosts? A big Fireball thrown at them basically wiped them out. What was there to talk about ghosts scaring people?

Seeing Zheng Yichen’s somewhat absent-minded look, Moser thought perhaps he hadn’t realized the seriousness of the problem. So he continued explaining. “Four thousand is just a conservative estimate. Once they erupt, their numbers might increase by tens of times.”

“Thinking about how many single men there are in this world, one girl for each person wouldn’t be bad either…” Zheng Yichen pinched his chin and said.

“…” Moser rubbed his forehead and gave Zheng Yichen a weird look. So what nonsense are you thinking? Who said they were girls? “You might have heard wrong. I said human forms, not the ‘woman’ we encountered in the forest that you burned to ashes!”

“That was done by an Alchemical Puppet. It has nothing to do with me.”

If you didn’t carry that kind of thing on you, would this happen? Burning to ashes was burning to ashes. Being completely clean was a method of cleanup. The Sanctuary Church planned to do the same. After simple research on those Flesh Seeds, related Life Field Researchers discovered an incredible situation: every drop of blood scattered from that thing had independent regenerative properties…

It wasn’t the normal regenerative property brought by Life Energy, but rather regenerative properties brought by a force opposing it, having little to do with Life Energy. Therefore, some life-withering Magic had poor effects on them. The best method was to burn them completely clean. Other methods could work too, but none were simpler than burning.

Operations like Moser’s, directly using Dark Power to turn them to dust, weren’t something ordinary people could pull off.

“Human forms? Do you mean something like this?” Zheng Yichen thought for a moment and took out a human body model. It was a one-to-one, high-precision, realistic model made by Zheng Yichen. It could be disassembled in minute detail. After completely taking it apart, it could give the assembler a puzzle game experience with a difficulty level of 999+…

Looking at this almost real human body model, Moser’s eye twitched. Were Auxiliary Profession Practitioners all this crazy? Those Auxiliary Profession Practitioners researching the Flesh Seeds fell into an inexplicable fervor during their research. Now Zheng Yichen… although he didn’t seem fervent, taking out these weird things, he was probably also not quite right in the head.

“Pretty much. No specific facial features or gender characteristics. The body strength is also very average, but it’s much stronger than the ‘woman’ we encountered before. It might also be getting stronger…”

“Alright, how do you plan to deal with these things?” Zheng Yichen asked. Moser didn’t speak. He looked into the distance and pointed to a farther place. “Look over there.”

Zheng Yichen looked in the direction Moser pointed. At this moment, the sun hadn’t fully risen yet, but the direction Moser pointed to showed a faint layer of morning light. That morning light rippled slightly—a product of Magic. Following the morning light and looking around, the morning light connected into a continuous expanse. Zheng Yichen couldn’t help but whistle upon seeing it. “You guys are going all out, huh? Planning to completely seal off this place?”

“There’s no better way than this,” Moser said with a heavy tone. “Right now, those Flesh Seeds are only on a small scale. But no one can guarantee if similar things are hidden elsewhere. Moreover, the changes in the Stone Forest are closely related to the Flesh Seeds.”

“Before this is resolved, people here can’t leave either?”

“Entry allowed, exit not. Those Flesh Seeds have a very special attaching property. They can be unknowingly carried by people.”

“What about parasitic properties?”

“We haven’t discovered such a situation yet,” Moser shook his head. The hard-to-detect carrying property was troublesome enough. Adding parasitic properties on top of that? That would be a real mess!

Zheng Yichen chuckled. Thinking of a special character concept, his expression suddenly turned a bit suppressed, making Moser curious internally. This guy was always grinning. The sudden change in style felt a bit uncomfortable. What was he going to say?

“Think about it carefully. Not having parasitic properties now might be because that thing is too weak to break through the skin. But… what if someone ate it?”

“…”

“What if it accidentally floated into an eye? Or was inhaled into a nostril?”

“Stop, stop, stop! The minimum independent requirement for a Flesh Seed is a small drop of blood. It won’t float, and no one will inhale it!” Saying this, Moser paused slightly. Indeed, such things wouldn’t happen, but being eaten… just thinking about a malignant fleshy mass possibly appearing inside one’s body… “That would just be disgusting. Do you think the Professionals’ Mana and Battle Qi are fake?”

“Oh? I forgot about that,” Zheng Yichen blinked. He was only thinking about the possibilities of such situations on Earth and had overlooked the characteristics of Professionals.

As long as powers like Mana or Battle Qi didn’t encounter equally special parasites, they could generally expel foreign objects. Even kidney stones or gallstones could be shattered with good control of special power!

Moser returned, deeply worried. Mana and Battle Qi were indeed useful, but that didn’t mean they would always be effective. It was better to take more precautions against potential hazards from stored food.

If not possible, during this period, just order takeout for every meal!