Chapter 296 Ontology
"What a beautiful voice."
"It truly lingers in the air."
"Did you hear me?"
Gu Heng was completely absorbed in the work, as if he were appreciating a masterpiece left behind by an art master after years of neglect.
“I really hope you can remember what you said when you come to your senses.” Anru pointed to the faces that were still shouting “I’m so hungry.” They were growing more and more clustered together, like mushrooms sprouting after the rain. They were all the same species, just a little different in size, and judging from their growth trend, they would obviously continue to grow new ones.
"She woke up."
"Discovering that you are about to be replaced."
"She was very sad, extremely heartbroken."
Gu Heng added, "So the child now has a new idea... Bell Hera, she is rooted in this name, absorbing the honor, fame and all the meaning it bestows."
Anru didn't want to hear his illogical nonsense at all, but she also knew very well that he had no choice at the moment, so she simply asked, "Why are there... so many Bells here?"
"Sunset Hill is the negative aspect of the Mirror of Eternal Dreams."
“All of our extremes originate from this.”
“And she is the third way to get out,” Gu Heng explained.
Then, he said no more and quickened his pace. The faces plastered on the surrounding buildings began to recede again, the main road remained the same, but now it evoked images of grayish-white intestines. Few of the branching corners were visible anymore, as if all the decorations were preparing to disappear.
Gu Heng didn't stop, but walked through them all the way to the depths of this large experimental base. An Ru followed closely, realizing that they were approaching the most primal part of this nightmare.
“Look at my body.”
"Assimilation has already begun."
"Because the future has been reversed, the existence of you and me has been redefined."
He turned around and suddenly reached out his hand to An Ru Shi.
She looked at the other person's outstretched fingers. Ever since the day they met in Eoubs, she had praised Gu Heng's hands for being very beautiful—the kind of slender and bony works of art that office workers possessed. But now, looking at them, the style of these works of art had completely changed. They had become some kind of bizarre and grotesque organ, with the fingertips blooming like flower petals, separating into seven or eight fleshy leaves. This thing could even tremble.
Ai An barely managed to look away, unsure of what to say for a moment, before finally managing to stammer, "We'll all get out of here."
Clutching the inhibitor in her hand, she carefully avoided the mutated, deformed monster—the scene now resembled a combination of an office and an experimental base, with things emerging from the ground that might be just mouths or teeth with human faces, crawling around.
About ten meters directly in front of the two people was a place that used to be a bathroom. The partitions and shower stalls were long gone, leaving only a few broken rubber sheets. The water pipes were rusted beyond recognition and covered with mold.
Along the edge seeping yellowish, rusty water, grew several Bell faces—or rather, heads, which, perhaps because of their proximity to the water, had grown into complete heads. As one continued to probe deeper, these heads gradually aged, slowly maturing from infancy, and becoming more and more like living people.
They cried out, "It hurts so much!" with such sorrow in their eyes.
An Ru didn't dare to linger and quickly left the spot with Gu Heng.
Along the way, the mouths that hadn't absorbed much nutrition multiplied again, and many centipede-like segments even grew from their edges. The mouths themselves were constantly chewing something, making indistinct sounds.
Gu Heng listened intently, as if in a morbid state, and discovered that they were calling out "welcome."
The road seemed to have no end.
This is something so terrible that it defies description.
Anru didn't know how far they had gone, nor whether Xien had caught up. If she had, then they were moving too slowly; perhaps she had died along the way? That would be for the best.
They entered another office, one that was quite large and even more spacious and luxurious than the previous one, filled with various decorations and jewelry. This place was more like a jewelry store than an office.
Gu Heng finally stopped and stared blankly ahead.
An Ru looked over.
A girl.
In other words, it was a complete Bell, without any deformed organs.
But that guy isn't doing too well right now.
They didn't see her at first glance because the child had almost been swallowed by those hungry alien creatures.
At first glance, it looked as if she had been pranked and embedded in the wall, with a bunch of random, unrelated things scattered around her.
Five documents, seven empty test tubes, and a ceramic doll of a completely different style were mixed together somewhat abruptly, as if they had been hastily arranged because the person involved was unsure if they would have enough time, so they just left them there.
As for Belle in her girl form, only her upper body remained on the floor. Her hair was disheveled, and it looked as if the wall had swallowed the remaining half of her body, and she was just savoring it, so she was chewing very slowly.
Gu Heng knelt down very quietly, pressing his ear to the floor as if listening to something he couldn't hear.
An Ru pulled him behind her, cautiously took two steps forward, and looked at the situation in front of her. The other utensils remained unchanged, except for the wall—it was probably also a "human" that had been mutated, so it should have a digestive system or something. Most of the child's body was encased in it, and some kind of cone-shaped black bone material pierced through her two palms, making her almost grow into the background.
Inside that enormous black hole of repeated chewing, there were teeth that had come to life. They were originally just office supplies like blueprints, staplers, and thumbtacks, but now they had grown human-like limbs, most of them stained red with blood.
They grumbled and complained, wondering who would eat this long-unseen live flesh.
The person in question looked to be only fifteen or sixteen years old, with incredibly delicate features, which was quite striking in contrast to the bloody scene.
Even so, she was still alive. Under the immense pain, Bell's face appeared depressed, gloomy, and dark. She was wearing a pure white hospital gown with something engraved on the upper left: "Eoubs, a key person under monitoring."
Anru realized she had seen her in this form before—she remembered, to be precise, that before arriving in the Siberian infected zone, she had overstepped her authority by looking at many reinforcement lists and information on the first batch of operatives—Bell Hera, when Eoubs first discovered her "imperfectionist" characteristics, was dressed like this.
Even now, despite enduring such immense pain, she remains expressionless, forcibly enduring it. She endures this long, agonizing process of being torn apart and dying, her eyes showing neither hatred nor reluctance, only a chilling, mechanical repression and calculation.
Calculating the probability of survival, pondering the final outcome, and waiting for death.
It was as if she was born from death and dissolved within it, a monster.
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