51 Future

◎He who lights the fire will burn himself, and he who blows the whistle will be buried forever◎

The spirit suddenly hurts.

It was very similar to the time she faced Di Zi, yet also different. Di Zi wanted to kill her, while the other party was more like encountering a fun prey, pinching her neck and just watching her suffocate and struggle with a playful look.

Yan Xunzhi's nerves suddenly felt numb all over his body, and his legs went weak. He held on for a while, exerting his mental strength, and only staggered slightly.

The image flickered. A cheetah bared its teeth, its fur sleek and smooth from long-term medication, its limbs strong. Its fur swelled under the immense pressure, but it persevered, ducking low to lower its center of gravity and resisting the invasion.

Kong Wei's expression changed slightly, and he grasped her arm. Her mental energy flowed through, and Yan Xunzhi immediately felt the breath coming freely after surfacing.

She gritted her teeth, gathered her strength, and with a burst of force, she threw the mental force back!

There was an imperceptible vibration in space.

That mental force was like a person stretching out their finger to pin down an ant, not using much force, not caring whether or not they could trap it. When the ant is no longer an ant, even a ladybug can break free.

The other party was only slightly surprised, and then suddenly appeared in mid-air, "Hey, are you the guide?"

Guides could already condense their spiritual energy, and their spirits could even manifest as physical bodies, but this was the first time they had seen one condensed into a human form. Yan Xunzhi watched as she slowly crystallized into a human form from mid-air, climbed out of the coffin-like freezer, and stood before them, looking nothing like a real person.

She was pulled behind Kong Wei, dumbfounded, "You...you..."

Frozen for years, even though she was just a physical entity transformed by her spiritual power, her eyebrows and eyes were still frosted. Yan Xunzhi looked at her and felt that although her facial features were the same as others, with no extra nose or missing eyes, her face was so unique that there was no one else like her in the whole world.

——Even the cold and distant Kong Wei had never given her this feeling.

Is this Xiao Mingran?

A one-in-a-million genius from the underground era?

She was still gazing at him when she suddenly heard Xiao Mingran sigh, "So Xuyan left his body here."

Xu Yan? She reacted to who it was before Kong Wei's pupils suddenly shrank. He said in horror, "Get out of her mental power!"

"I didn't stop." Xiao Mingran leaned back against the freezer compartment and smiled. "Can't you see? I only took a quick look and then left."

"Do you not trust yourself, or are you afraid of me?"

Yan Xunzhi couldn't help but look at Kong Wei.

She has gained a lot of weight recently in the medical department, and even her face doesn't look so sharp and angular anymore. But now her shoulders and back look particularly thin. Compared with Xiao Mingran, she is obviously inferior in momentum.

Yan Xunzhi's understanding of Xiao Mingran was limited to Kong Wei's narration. She was too far away from him, and she actually didn't have any feelings for her. Instead, she was only surprised that Kong Wei was afraid of her.

Even Kong Wei is afraid of such a powerful person?

She had never seen Kong Wei afraid of anyone...

A flash of lightning flashed through my mind. Oh! Xu Yan! The person on the ground being devoured by the worms!

Yan Xunzhi hesitated and held Kong Wei's hand.

She shuddered as if she had been electrocuted, and when she realized it was Yan Xunzhi, she gently bent it back into her hand.

She had always been the sentry. In terms of division of labor, she was the gun, the bullet inside it. But Kong Wei was far superior to her in every way. She only needed to follow behind Kong Wei, reloading and hanging the bullet on her waist, waiting. She didn't even need to fire.

She had never experienced the mental breakdown, disorder, and mania that other sentinels suffered from being lost in the wind and sand because of going to the ground many times to collect information.

If beauty gave her the first layer of shell, allowing her to grow up peacefully, then Kong Wei gave her the second layer of shell, allowing her to never suffer the pain of being a sentinel.

Even if Kong Weiwei wasn't thinking about her, even if what she saw in her eyes was never her...

Pulling it back gently, Kong Wei looked at her in surprise. Just as she was about to say something, Yan Xunzhi shook her head.

They shared a vision in which she walked silently toward her, her tail swishing.

Like that long corridor, Kong Wei pulled her along, and she didn't care where she walked. In the mixed platoon of the military district, she had always been the one walking in the front.

He took a step forward and stepped between the two of them. "Do you know Xu Yan?"

Don't imagine the unknown. Yan Xunzhi stood before them, neither afraid nor trembling.

Xiao Mingran's ability was certain to Kong Wei, but unknown to her. Don't imagine how terrifying the unknown was. Just like when she first stepped onto the surface, she was terrified of foreign objects, thinking that the giant creature was unmatched, but in the blink of an eye, she could even kill the ground itself.

She tried hard to recall the serial numbers on their nameplates. They didn't seem to be from the same era. Xiao Mingran should have never seen Xu Yan. "You didn't fall asleep even in the cryostat?"

Xiao Mingran narrowed his eyes slightly, did not move his feet, but seemed to move closer.

The mental pressure was like a net covering her, and the threat was like suffocation, and he touched her neck again.

"Hibernation is a natural law. I choose to follow nature, so I can't go against it."

But a newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger, ignorant and fearless. Yan Xunzhi only regarded her as Kong Wei, whose temper was even worse, on the verge of losing his temper and preparing to teach her a lesson.

Kong Wei also liked to use his mental power to oppress her, and he was so comfortable and familiar with it that he felt like a fish in water.

The good thing about being forced to jump levels is that everyone she sees is strong. She was naturally afraid at first, but after seeing so much, she's become numb. In the White Tower and the military district, everyone could easily crush her. Xiao Mingran's strength was no different from the others.

Yan Xunzhi pondered her words for a while, but couldn't make any sense of them, and his mental picture was fluctuating.

Kong Wei knew that she knew. She didn't dwell on it and asked again, "If you were asleep, how could you have seen Xu Yan?"

Besides, what does it mean to “lose your body here”?

Did her spirit escape and survive? What were those worms devouring?

Xiao Mingran retorted, "I have sacrificed my freedom and been imprisoned here for decades. If only you, the guide, could have seen this, then it would be a great loss for me to light this fire."

Yan Xunzhi seemed to understand but not quite.

"Is it eternal life?"

Xuyan saw the way to eternal life, left his body on the ground, and fell asleep with Xiao Mingran?

She couldn't help but quickly glance towards the cryostat. Could Xu Yan's spirit still be inside?

Xiao Mingran naturally caught on to her little movements and was unusually patient. "You don't understand, why do you have to play the hero between the two of you?"

Her gaze passed Yan Xunzhi, but was immediately blocked.

Yan Xunzhi looked into her eyes. His physical mental power hardly changed his expression, but she saw a different kind of familiarity there.

Kong Wei was able to wake her up here because she used to be a senior executive in the Central White Tower. She knew very well what was in the freezer and who had the authority to open the door.

What about Xu Yan? She was only the deputy commander of the Northwest District. Without opportunity, how could she enter the South District freezer? If only by chance, would Xiao Mingran remember her name?

"...She's been reborn." Yan Xunzhi saw her raise an eyebrow, and his heart almost confirmed it. "Xuyan came to you, hoping that you would take her to be reborn again, is that right?"

She didn't know how they were reborn, but rebirth didn't require a body, so Xu Yan threw away his body and found Xiao Mingran.

Does she need Xiao Mingran to take her to be reborn? Yan Xunzhi rejected the idea as soon as it occurred to him. Xiao Mingran obviously didn't know Kong Wei. If she could only be reborn through her, then she should also remember Kong Wei.

Suddenly, she remembered that when Kong Wei first told her this history, she didn't understand it, and Kong Wei told her without asking for further explanation, "This is the most important thing to me."

What was it talking about? Eternal life.

As the alien object freezes and hibernates, it can fall into a deep sleep, preserving its spiritual power for a long time. The immortality they speak of is never about traveling to the future, but about returning from the future.

This is indeed what matters most to her.

She was reborn through this.

Xiao Mingran nodded. "Perhaps Xuyan was reborn? I don't know, but she was already mentally damaged when she came to me. She's a long-necked worm, at the bottom of the food chain. Unable to compete with other alien bodies, she could only ask me to carry her."

Being killed by an alien being was the most fatal event on Earth, but Xu Yan wasn't surprised by her own fate. She had once been lost on Earth, having been reborn from a deep sleep by invading the mind of an alien being. Her current fate was a stroke of luck bestowed upon her by heaven.

Half of her exoskeleton was shattered, leaving Xuyan half-offline. She knelt on the ground, her hands hanging, powerless to struggle. She allowed the swirling yellow sand to form a pillar around her, quickly half-burying her.

Before I died, I thought there would be a kaleidoscope of things, but it seemed like this life was too long and the images had no beginning.

In her dying memories, she kept thinking about the alien creature that killed her.

That alien creature not only possessed powerful mental power and a complete mental picture, but could also temporarily control her exoskeleton failures and control the wind and sand to confuse her vision.

Moreover, he would selectively hunt her, unafraid to be drawn in or distracted, his purpose extremely strong. If she hadn't been reborn with a dual spirit, she would have passed away by now.

This is not something that ordinary alien objects can do - this is completely contrary to the Federation's judgment that they will become demented.

Experiments can never simulate nature, and foreign objects evolve in accordance with nature.

Suddenly, my fingertips touched something.

Rough and squirming. Xu Yan strained to open his eyes, his spirit seemingly returning to him, and in the instant he saw clearly, he regained consciousness.

This type of sandworm is commonly found in the yellow sand. They live in large groups, are easy to survive, and possess a weak mental power to call their companions. Their lifespan is short, but they are highly fertile, and their mental power can be partially passed down through generations.

Many people have seen the future long ago, but they didn't know it was the future until they died because of it.

The distress light was broken, leaving only the assembly whistle on one side still usable. As long as the mental power was activated, the whistle would continue to blow.

Xuyan turned on the whistle, picked up the long worm, and closed his eyes.

The whistle was so sharp that without the earplugs, every sound seemed to pierce her eardrums.

If she can no longer return to the underground...

This was the last thing she could do in this world.

She will not die, she will be assimilated and live in symbiosis with the worm.

Using herself as nourishment, she accelerated the evolution of the worm. The worm was the simplest alien, and even if it evolved successfully, it would hardly pose a threat to the underground sentinels. It was also the easiest alien to compare to. Anyone who saw it would know the true future.

If he arrived quickly enough, he might be able to rely on the worm to sustain his life and retain some of his unexhausted mental energy, from which he could extract information about the remnants of the foreign object.

She put the worm into her brain.

【Author’s words】

Pickled Fish: Oh my god… what the hell is rebirth? Why am I just ordinary? I don’t accept it!

Kong Wei: It doesn’t matter, you are the most special one here.

Pickled fish: ...