Chapter 164: Voluntary Death

Bai Zang stretched his muscles, feeling the more solid and controlled power in his body, as well as the unprecedented clarity in his mind.

"My mental power... is indeed different. My perception of the thing 'inside' has become much clearer, and I'm... not as scared anymore." He pointed to his head, referring to the pollution in his body.

"This is just the first step," I said calmly. "Tempering only makes your mental strength stronger, allowing you to resist loss of control to a certain extent. But if you want to truly become stronger and achieve new evolution, you need to contact the source of pollution again."

Bai Zang's eyes flashed with brilliance, and without the slightest hesitation, he asked, "When do we leave? Where are we going?"

"So urgent?" I looked at him with amusement: "Don't you want to take a break?"

Bai Zang smiled excitedly and replied, "It's night time now, which is when the pollution sources are most active."

"Okay." I shrugged.

After a few seconds of thought, he continued, "Now. Go to a place you know where the pollution concentration is high enough, but it's relatively safe. It's best if there aren't too many or too complex pollution sources, otherwise it will be difficult for me to protect you."

I stood up. "You need to actively embrace the abyss. Under the impact of pollution, use your newly tempered will to guide and transform it, completing your second evolution. I will help you deal with the monsters that may affect you, but this time, you have to rely on yourself to avoid losing control."

"Okay!" Bai Zang didn't hesitate and immediately grabbed a rough hand-drawn map from the drawer, pointing his finger at an area near the edge of the old industrial area, marked with a red skull.

"This is the abandoned underground research institute of 'Glow Pharmaceuticals'. We went there half a month ago and saw those strange red threads everywhere. The pollution concentration is definitely high, and there are not many monsters in the entire Tiannan City recently, which is just right!" Bai Zang introduced to me with great energy.

"Let's go." I nodded, turned around and went out first.

The cover of night was the best. Without alerting anyone else in the base, we two slipped out silently like two ghosts and scurried towards the ruins of the factory.

The abandoned Glow Pharmaceutical Research Institute, like a huge steel tomb, lies in the darkness.

Before I even got close, a stench of chemical decay, mold growth, and some indescribable nausea hit me. The institute's gate had long been twisted and distorted, revealing a pitch-black entrance like the maw of a monster.

"Follow me closely, the terrain here is complicated." Bai Zang whispered, scanning the surroundings with sharp eyes. He took the lead and stepped into the darkness.

The interior of the institute was in ruins and pitch black, but my perception was sharp, and the eyes on my arms provided true vision, allowing me to see my surroundings clearly even in absolute darkness.

Broken glass and collapsed equipment were everywhere. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in a thick layer of red, filamentous material that moved slightly like a living thing, entwining itself with the scattered remains.

These corpses are probably the former employees of the factory, but they did not survive the apocalypse.

We walked forward for a distance in the darkness. The deeper we went, the more red filaments we saw. These "red velvets" were ready to move, and they surrounded us silently and slowly at an extremely slow speed.

"It's about here." I said.

Bai Zang nodded, squatted down and dipped his fingers into some "red velvet".

The moment they touched his skin, the red filaments began to wriggle into it.

As time went by, Bai Zang began to feel noticeably uncomfortable. The red threads on his hands were like countless tiny red poisonous snakes, scrambling to drill into the cracks in the skin at his fingertips!

Bai Zang's breathing became increasingly heavy. After a while, his body suddenly stiffened and he groaned. His face instantly lost color and beads of sweat the size of beans oozed from his forehead.

This scene reminded me of the first time I was infected, also with red threads. I think his feeling should be similar to mine.

At the same time, a large amount of red velvet crawled towards my ankles and calves like sharks smelling blood, trying to climb and drill into them.

However, as soon as they touched my skin, the power derived from Gali in my body trembled slightly like an invisible barrier.

These low-level pollutants, as if encountering a natural enemy, instantly lost their vitality, withering and falling away, transforming into insignificant red dust on the ground. This level of pollution no longer posed any threat to me.

But the situation on Bai Zang's side was not so good. He clenched his teeth, let out a suppressed roar from his throat, and his body began to tremble violently uncontrollably.

The blood vessels beneath his skin showed strange scarlet veins, as if there were living things crawling inside. His eyes were sometimes white, sometimes bloodshot, his eyes struggling frantically between clarity and confusion.

The existing pollution in his body was completely activated by the new influx of "red threads", like two violent torrents colliding and tearing through his body! On the mental level, countless chaotic and distorted illusions frantically attacked his newly tempered but far from solid will defense line.

Just when Bai Zang was fighting a desperate battle with the pollution in his body and almost lost his perception of the outside world, a slight movement came from the dark shadows.

It seemed like something was attracted by the breath of living people and the fluctuations of pollutants here.

Behind a pile of discarded instruments covered with thick red velvet on the left, two turbid yellow lights lit up, accompanied by a teeth-grinding sound of bones rubbing against each other. A monster shaped like a skinned rat, covered with wriggling red threads, pounced out silently, and its rotten teeth bit Bai Zang's defenseless neck!

"Hmph." I snorted coldly, leaving a faint afterimage in my wake. My true vision had already locked onto its presence and attack trajectory. With a burst of speed! I appeared in front of Bai Zang as if teleporting, and a flash of cold light flashed in my hand!

“Puff!”

The blade pierced the monster's gaping mouth with incredible precision, piercing the back of its head! The monster didn't even have time to whimper before its momentum abruptly stopped. The red threads covering its body instantly dimmed, and its massive body fell heavily to the ground like a torn sack, splashing a pool of foul-smelling mucus and withered red threads.

My Miao Dao is not stained with blood. Monsters of this level can be easily dealt with by just infusing a little of my power into the sword.

But almost at the same time, the red velvet-covered ventilation duct grille above his head suddenly deformed and fell away! A monster resembling a giant human-faced spider with a twisted human face on its abdomen descended from the sky, carrying sticky silk threads. Eight sickle-like limbs covered in red silk pierced Bai Zang's skull!

Before I could even look up, I flipped my wrist and the blade of the Miao Dao turned into a deadly silver arc and slashed upwards!

“Swish! Swish! Swish!”

There were a few soft sounds of a sharp blade cutting leather, and the monster's falling body was precisely dismembered into several pieces in mid-air.

Smelly entrails and sticky green fluids rained down, but I was able to pull Bai Zang aside slightly to avoid them. Shattered debris and withered red silk fell to the spot where we had just stood.

I looked at the monster fragments next to me and my expression twitched. Although I have seen it many times, I still feel disgusted when I look at it carefully.