After passing through that barrier of red flower sea, everyone originally thought they would see a defense line bristling with sentry posts, or a massive fortress filled with black smoke. However, what unfolded before their eyes was an eerily serene and bizarre picture scroll.
The canyon terrain ahead suddenly opened up here, forming a vast, perfectly oval basin encircled by towering cliffs on all sides, covered with large swathes of extrely lush broad-leaf vegetation.
It was a plant common throughout the South Seas—wild banana trees.
But there were far too many of them here, far too dense. They crowded this basin, packed tightly together, subrging any trace of possible structures.
Lin Jie stopped walking.
Ever since stepping into this basin, the strange, sickeningly sweet fragrance, so intense it was almost nauseating, had grown increasingly stronger.
"This isn't right."
Nadia's voice ca, trembling with fear.
This Dayak warrior woman was clutching the hem of Lin Jie's trench coat, her body uncontrollably shrinking back.
"What's wrong?" Lin Jie asked in a low voice, simultaneously raising the Serene Heart in his hand a few inches, vigilantly scanning the surrounding green plants.
"That sll..." Nadia's breathing beca rapid. The fear stemming from childhood trauma and tribal taboos was slowly eroding her reason. "It's the sll of Pontianak... the sll of that man-eating female ghost's bathwater."
Julian, standing nearby, frowned.
Lin Jie didn't speak. He carefully observed this banana grove through the eyepiece of his gas mask.
As his attention focused intensely, he noticed the plants weren't as quiet as they superficially appeared.
Hanging beneath those broad banana leaves were fleshy-pink, sac-like objects.
These sacs were pulsating with an extrely faint rhythm to so inaudible beat. With each pulsation, a visible wisp of pale pink mist sprayed from their pores, rging into the already sowhat hazy surrounding air.
"Move forward."
Lin Jie gave the order.
"Check the airtight seal of your masks. Do not trust any sll you perceive, nor any sound you hear. In this area, only the weapons in your hands and the backs of your teammates are real."
The team started moving again.
They cautiously navigated through the giant banana trees.
As they went deeper, the surrounding scenery began to blur. The stationary tree trunks and leaves in their peripheral vision were undergoing so extrely slow and bizarre twisting deformation.
"What is that sound?"
Julian suddenly stopped. He tilted his head, his expression tense as he looked toward the depths of a dense banana grove on the left.
In the dead air, an extrely faint yet rhythmic *plop-plop* sound was continuously coming.
It sounded like so heavy, viscous liquid was constantly dripping from a height onto broad leaves.
"Ignore it. Don't leave the formation." Lin Jie's voice was cold and hard as iron.
The readings on the detector in Evelyn's hand began to fluctuate wildly.
She instinctively directed the beam of her portable hand-cranked lamp toward the source of the sound.
The light column pierced the pink mist, illuminating an unusually thick wild banana tree less than five ters away.
This tree looked very strange.
Its stem was an abnormal dark red, its bark covered with bulging bluish-purple veins resembling varicose veins. At the ends of these veins hung bizarre, perfectly round fruits.
These fruits were encased in translucent, sli-covered white mbranes.
Through the mbrane, one could vaguely see formless lumps of flesh curled up inside.
Those lumps of flesh were squirming.
The dripping sound they had just heard was the milky-white sap flowing from a crack in this tree's stem, dripping onto the leaves below.
"What... species is this?" Evelyn felt her stomach churning. She wanted to look away, but her gaze seed glued, unable to move.
The mont the light hit those fruits.
One of the largest, most developed "fruits" suddenly trembled violently.
Imdiately after.
The translucent mbrane ruptured.
"Waaah—"
A sharp, shrill cry, exactly like that of a newborn infant being strangled, erupted from the ruptured fruit.
The lump of flesh fell heavily onto the humus soil below.
It writhed painfully on the ground, extending root-like limbs. A slit opened on its non-existent "face," continuing to emit the infant's cries.
"My God..." Julian's face turned deathly pale. The muzzle of his gun trembled. "Is that a... child?"
In his vision, the lump of flesh on the ground was rapidly materializing, transforming into a real, blood-covered infant reaching out to him with a tiny, pleading hand.
"That's bait!"
Lin Jie didn't hesitate for a second. The Serene Heart in his hand fired a shot.
The bullet accurately shattered the wailing lump of flesh on the ground.
A spray of green juice and pink pollen exploded. The nauseating cries ceased abruptly.
The shattered flesh rapidly withered, turning into a pile of foul-slling mud and plant fibers.
"Wake up, all of you!" Lin Jie barked sharply, forcibly pulling his teammates back from the edge of cognitive collapse.
Julian gasped for breath. He looked at the pile of plant debris on the ground, then at Lin Jie's back.
But this didn't dispel the fear. Instead, it made it more concrete, more viscous.
"There's sothing ahead."
Nadia, walking at the front, suddenly stopped. She raised her Parang, pointing toward a slightly more open clearing ahead.
There, amidst the layered green curtains, stood a white figure in silence.
It was a "woman."
She stood with her back to the group under a massive banyan tree. She wore a robe as white as snow, with long, jet-black hair cascading down her back, reaching all the way to her ankles.
Bathed in the purplish-red glow, this white silhouette appeared so sacred, beautiful, and filled with mysterious allure, utterly incongruous with the surrounding rainforest's atmosphere of decay and death.
A sweetness ten tis more intense than before emanated from that figure.
Even from dozens of ters away and through the heavy gas masks, that fragrance seed alive, rudely forcing its way through the gaps in the filter canisters and into everyone's nostrils.
It was a sll that made one's soul tremble.
It awakened the most primal desires and impulses deep within the brain—the longing for the mother, for a mate, for a warm ho.
"Mother..."
Nadia, her nerves taut, suddenly uttered a dreamlike whisper. Her hand, tightly gripping her war blade, went limp and dropped. The eyes once filled with fear now showed the infatuated look of a lost child who had found ho.
"No... that's Pontianak... a ghost..."
Although she was still muttering the na from legend, her body was already moving uncontrollably. She stumbled forward, step by step, toward that white silhouette.
"Co back!" Lin Jie growled, reaching out to grab Nadia's shoulder.
But his hand grasped empty air.
Because in that instant, it wasn't just Nadia. Even the usually rational Julian and Evelyn—their eyes also glazed over in that split second.
Like puppets pulled by invisible strings, they followed behind Nadia, step by step, walking toward that death trap.
"Damn it."
Lin Jie bit the tip of his tongue hard. The sharp pain brought a brief mont of clarity to his mind.
The White Vulture's Mark on his hand was frantically releasing that icy, arrogant predator's will. This high-level spiritual power from an ancient creature acted like a solid dam, barely holding back the pink torrent trying to erode his reason.
He activated the ntal Staircase.
The world instantly shed its ambiguous disguise in his eyes, transforming into a real model composed of cold data and lines.
He saw it.
That "white-robed woman" standing under the banyan tree was no human, much less a ghost.
It was a massive, nauseatingly huge, highly mutated and modified carnivorous plant.
That so-called "white robe" was actually several sickly-white, fleshy petals tightly wrapped together, simulating the drape of human clothing.
That jet-black "hair" was actually thousands of hair-thin, constantly wriggling black tendrils growing from the top of the petals. They drifted in the air as if conscious, capturing the heat and pheromones emitted by surrounding creatures.
And beneath that layer of white petals, there was no human body. Only a stem covered in dark red blood vessels and mucus, connected to a vast, greedy root network underground.
This was a perfect mimicry organism.
It was a biological weapon cultivated by the Black Lotus using alchemy and UMA genes, specifically designed to guard the gates of the Garden of Eden—the Mimicry Pontianak.
"Don't go! That's a monster!"
Lin Jie roared again, this ti infusing his voice with the spiritual pressure of White's Airspace.
This wave of impactful ntal energy finally brought a sliver of clarity to the three lost souls. They stopped, a flicker of confusion and struggle in their eyes.
The "white-robed woman" under the tree seed to sense the hesitation of her prey.
Her body—or rather, those several massive petals—suddenly trembled violently.
Imdiately after.
A sound erupted from within that "body"—a mix of infant wailing and the sharp, agonized shrieks of a woman in extre pain.
"WAAAHHH—!!!"
This sound was laced with extrely high-frequency ntal impact.
Simultaneously, those white petals spread open in all directions.
The sacred silhouette instantly transford into a horrifying, gaping maw.
Inside the petals was only a deep red cavity filled with viscous digestive fluids and countless fine barbs.
And right in the center of that cavity grew a fleshy tumor that looked like the upper torso of a human female.
This tumor had no eyes, only a mouth split open to the ears.
"Hiss—"
As the petals opened, an even more concentrated pink mist surged forth from the cavity.
This ti, it was a high-pressure spray.
The pink mist quickly swallowed Nadia, Julian, and Evelyn, who were at the front, and rapidly expanded toward Lin Jie's position.
Lin Jie held his breath and retreated explosively.
The surface of his Black rcury trench coat shimred with a dark blue light, attempting to deflect the corrosive, ntally polluting mist.
But he could only protect himself.
He watched helplessly as his three teammates were completely enveloped by the thick pink fog.
A few seconds later.
The mist dissipated slightly.
The three figures were still standing there, not fallen, not digested.
But he realized the situation had beco much worse.
Nadia slowly turned around.
Her eyes had turned an eerie pink, her pupils dilated to the limit. A twisted, insane smile hung on her face.
She raised her Parang, its tip pointing at Lin Jie standing not far away.
It wasn't just her.
Julian and Evelyn also turned around.
Julian adjusted his crooked glasses. His usually scholarly face was now covered in bulging veins, with drool uncontrollably dripping from the corner of his mouth.
His right hand, holding Discipline, raised with unnerving steadiness, the dark muzzle locking onto the space between Lin Jie's eyebrows.
Evelyn hung her head, emitting a series of bone-chilling low laughs.
The Tesla Coil Gloves on her hands were fully charged. Dazzling blue electric arcs danced wildly at her fingertips, crackling and popping.
They had changed.
In Lin Jie's vision, they were still his teammates.
But in their own eyes, in the brain cognition completely rewritten by the high-concentration pheromones, the man in the black trench coat standing before them was no longer the trustworthy teammate.
But a monstrous, hideous creature dripping with pus and rotting flesh... a monster.
A demon threatening the safety of that "Sacred Goddess," one that must be eliminated.
Cognitive modification.
This was the most terrifying ability of the Pontianak.
It wasn't just creating illusions. It was a violent rewrite of the brain cortex's "friend-or-foe identification chanism."
It used special biological pheromones to forcibly sever the victim's brain's mory links regarding "teammates" and replace them with the label of "mortal enemy."
In this realm of fragrant lies.
Family beca foes.
Guardians beca invaders.
And that plant monster waiting to feed had beco a totem that must be defended with their lives.
"Kill... it..."
A beast-like growl squeezed from Nadia's throat.
"Protect... the Goddess..."
Julian's finger rested on the trigger. The barbed wire on the Discipline pistol trembled excitedly, sensing its owner's killing intent.
"It is... a virus... must... be purged..."
Evelyn lifted her head. Those pink eyes were filled with fanaticism and coldness.
Lin Jie stood in place, looking at these three comrades who had once fought alongside him, shared life and death with him, but who now had beco the people in this world who most wanted him dead.
His heart sank to the bottom.
This was ten thousand tis more troubleso than facing the pure power-crushing force of the Plague Butcher.
Because he couldn't fight back.
Whether it was the Serene Heart's bullets or the Silencer's toxins, they were all fatal to these fragile human bodies.
With just the slightest movent of his finger, he could kill any one of them.
But he couldn't.
"So this is your thod?"
Lin Jie glanced at the massive, faintly trembling plant in the distance, as if silently mocking him.
His gaze grew unprecedentedly cold.
He slowly lowered his hands, slightly adjusting his stance, putting his body in a state ready to explode at any mont.
"Fine."
"Since you want to play."
"Then I'll play with you."
"As long as I don't kill you... breaking a few bones should be fine, right?"
Before the words finished.
Julian's gun fired.
"Bang!"
That alchemical bullet carrying the rule of "must-hit" sliced through the air, heading straight for Lin Jie's heart.
Simultaneously.
Nadia pounced like a hunting leopardess, her Parang sweeping through the air with a whoosh.
Evelyn's electric arcs followed closely, sealing off all escape routes.
Lin Jie's figure swayed in place.
Black rcury activated.
An afterimage appeared.
A battle of mutual slaughter officially began to unfold in this bewitching sea of red flowers.
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