"Invasion" will be first released on Jinjiang Literary City on November 7, 2022.

It hadn't rained for many days, and the sun was blazing high in the sky, shining brightly on the rammed earth walls, leaving a thin layer of floating sand on the surface of the earthy yellow walls. The breeze blew up the powdery sand, blowing it onto the skin of passers-by.

"It smells like the sweat of a sentry." Roy covered his nose with a silk handkerchief and crouched to pass through the archway, complaining, "This place is too dirty, so I hate coming to the Military Control Office the most."

On the yellowish-brown archway hung an old plaque of the Military Control Office. Passing under the plaque, one could see a large gray parade ground. A large number of sentries were coming and going, and something was playing on an electronic screen on one side, with many people gathered around to watch the excitement.

Roy walked along the other side of the aisle, explaining to the people around him, "We are just going through the process, completing the formalities and then leaving. If they make some requests that you don't like, you don't have to respond."

The person behind him heard what he said and hummed softly in response.

It was a very young girl, wearing an exquisite uniform exclusive to the Orientation School in the White Tower, an ivory brocade long skirt and a white silk blouse embroidered with gold thread. The hem of the skirt revealed layers of lace edges, swaying with her steps.

She walked quietly in the sunlight, with a tender face, a slim body, and skin as white as porcelain and jade, like a flower covered with morning dew. She appeared at the edge of the school field covered with flying sand, which was very abrupt.

This is a guide who was carefully nurtured and raised in that tall white tower.

The sentries passing by seemed to suddenly feel awkward when they saw her.

They pushed and shoved each other, whispered and talked in low voices, and all kinds of eyes could not help but glance over. The loud-voiced guy subconsciously suppressed his shouting, and the shirtless soldier quietly pulled up the coat hanging around his waist because of the hot weather.

There were some sporadic sounds coming from somewhere.

"Did you hear about it? It's her...the guide."

"The engagement was broken off by the matching sentinel?"

"Do you think... am I hopeful... hehe..."

"Don't be silly. What level are you? Are you a noble? There are so few guides nowadays."

"Can't you just think about it... No one wants it anyway..."

“…”

Roy felt angry when he heard these words.

"They don't even want a guide like this. Jiang Yangshuo, that piece of shit, must have a distorted brain." He thought so, and when his eyes fell on Lin Yuan, he couldn't help but feel sympathy. "Poor little girl, she must have been hit too hard that she applied to do such a hard job as exploring the contaminated area? She's really pitiful."

However, the girl named Lin Yuan who was following behind him seemed to be completely oblivious to the gossip around them, nor did she notice the sympathetic looks of her companions.

She looked calm, with almost no expression, and her eyes were focused a little further away, as if she was looking at the other side of the parade ground.

Roy followed her gaze.

On the other side of the parade ground, there was a row of eerie iron racks. One end of the rough iron racks was buried deep in the soil, and the exposed part was rusty, as if stained with blood that could never be washed away.

At this moment, there was a man hanging on the rack. The prisoner was shirtless, with his hands tied and hung above his head. It was obvious that he had been hung here and tortured for several days.

Half of his face was covered in black blood, and his original appearance could not be seen at all. However, from his taut muscles, sturdy body lines, and various old wounds on his skin, it was clear at a glance that he was a very young sentinel.

A young but experienced sentry. I don't know what serious crime he committed, but he was hung here for public torture.

Roy knew that public interrogation was a custom in the barracks.

The Sentinels are the toughest fighters, but also the most troublesome group.

They always go in and out of those nightmarish contaminated areas, snatching resources from those deformed monsters and living a life with their heads on their waists.

The overloaded senses and repeatedly suppressed manic emotions, and the fate of being unable to survive without counseling or medication, sometimes make those strong guys become as terrifying as monsters.

Guys who turned into monsters, committed crimes, or did something wrong would be hung on these racks and publicly executed.

For punishment, but also for shock.

Of course, given the corrupt character of the imperial officials, no matter what kind of serious crime you have committed, as long as you pay enough money or find a strong enough backer, you can get away with it.

On the other hand, if it was a poor guy from a remote sentry tower, who had nothing, even if he just touched a tiny corner of the hundreds of military regulations, he might be hung on this kind of iron frame, humiliated repeatedly, or even tortured to death.

Roy asked Lin Yuan: "What's the matter? Is it someone you know?"

Lin Yuan retracted his gaze and shook his head, "I seem to have seen it before, but I don't remember it."

The two walked across the parade grounds and up the stairs of the administrative building.

I saw the electronic screen next to the rack, playing a blurry video.

There is a strange-looking instrument connected to the screen.

There is a transparent hemisphere of unknown material on the top of the instrument.

From the height at which Roy was standing, he could just look through the sphere and was horrified to find that inside the transparent cover was a human brain that had been separated from its own body.

That piece of human brain is stimulated from time to time by some fine electric current, and it can even tremble slightly.

Roy stood on the steps, looking at the trembling human tissue from afar, and found this thing really creepy.

This strange instrument, called the Cylinder Brain System, is a relic from the old days. Its function is to read some of the memories left in the brain after a person dies.

At this moment, the image playing on the screen is the memory of the brain in the tank. It is the last image left in someone's mind before he died.

Roy actually didn't understand why so many people in this world liked to read the memories of the dead. He was not interested in it either.

Unfortunately, this thing is very popular among the nobles in the empire, even though humans today are no longer able to produce such sophisticated instruments.

They sent Sentinels to venture into contaminated areas and search for them among the ruins of the past.

Those people took it and looked at various memories of death, and they never got tired of it.

They have also developed a variety of uses. Even here in the military control office, you can see one like this.

Countless noisy sentries were crowded under the screen watching.

The image on the screen was blurry and weird, and looked like a contaminated area full of monsters. There was a lot of blood, strange shadows swimming back and forth, and it was filled with sharp and weird screams.

These images are different from what we see with our eyes. Sometimes the images are extremely colorful and clear, while other parts are blurry and chaotic.

This is the perspective of the dead. The most frightening and impressive things left in the minds of the dead before they died are particularly bright and clear in the picture. Otherwise, they will appear blurry.

At this moment, the face of a sentry appeared clearly in the center of the picture.

Young, bloodstained, red-eyed, furious.

The sentry was looking down from a high position, holding a gun in his hand, his face as gloomy as a devil from hell.

He held up the black muzzle of the gun, motionlessly pointing it in the direction of the screen. The screen was shaking constantly, but the gun's color was intense, and it was pointed steadily in front of him from beginning to end.

There were intermittent sounds coming from the background. It was the dead man talking, with distorted cries mixed in with the mournful pleas for mercy.

He begged, cried, and muttered desperately for mercy.

From a first-hand perspective, it sounds particularly pitiful.

It was obvious that the deceased was killed by this sentry, and the murderer was now hanging on the rack.

"I give it to you, all of it."

"It's worth a lot of money. A lot of money. All of it to you. Spare my life."

"Spare my life, give me a chance to live."

"Please, please...oooo."

The dead man's hands kept rising and falling, trembling, and he repeatedly held up a fist-sized, amber-like crystal.

The stone was shimmering and shining, and upon closer inspection, it was breathtakingly beautiful, and it seemed as if there was a living creature moving in its center. He offered this priceless treasure to the Grim Reaper in front of him, begging him to spare his life.

However, the muzzle of the gun on the screen was firm and indifferent, approaching slowly and suffocating.

Then the screen went black.

After a snowflake-like screen, the picture returns to the beginning.

This is the only short segment in the entire video that is played over and over again.

Victims crying, wailing, and trembling with fear.

A cold-blooded, gloomy, murderous murderer.

It was pitch black, and the muzzle of a gun was approaching slowly, making people feel hopeless.

Despair and death are played back and forth.

The onlookers felt the same way and couldn't help but feel sad for the deceased.

A sentry recognized the crystal and gasped, "Is that insect jade?"

"Yes, energy stones. They are very valuable."

"I've never seen such a large piece of living insect jade before. How much is it worth?"

"No wonder, murder and arson for the gold belt. Just for this, he cruelly killed the entire team."

For a moment, the sentries watching the scene were almost furious.

It was said that a whole team of sentinels entered the contaminated area, and eventually all the members of the team, including the researchers assigned by the Empire, died inside.

The only one who came out alive was a young and powerful captain.

Initially, no one knew what was going on. After all, mass destruction was common in contaminated areas.

However, by coincidence, another search team entered the place at that time and found the body of the researcher who had been shot near the exit.

They brought back the brain of the dead researcher and luckily exposed the crimes of the evildoers.

In fact, there are many such things.

The contaminated area is an area that is completely closed off from the outside world. Once you enter it, it is difficult for people outside to know what is happening or what is done inside.

Such closed and terrifying areas are often like real areas. Before entering, everyone is human, but after entering, in the twisted and dark world, some people become monsters.

"An entire team of our brothers was killed. This is too cruel." An old sentry said through gritted teeth. He was a veteran who had led a team and witnessed the death of countless brothers. He couldn't bear to see such a thing.

Someone else in the crowd spat, "I was defeated by this guy before. I was very respectful and thought he was a big shot. The Ice Blade, the Sword of the Empire. I admired him very much. Now, I can only blame myself for being blind."

"What Ice Blade? Pah!"

"I never thought he had an easy life before. He was just a little stronger and a little higher in rank, but his personality was very arrogant and he was very annoying. Look, he turned out to be a despicable person hiding in the contaminated area and doing such a dirty job."

"I say to the judge, the evidence is irrefutable, what else is there to interrogate? Sentence him to death and let him die as an atonement for his crime."

The sentries became more and more angry as they cursed. As soldiers who had experienced life and death on the battlefield, what they hated most was people who stabbed their brothers in the back.

"In my opinion, the death penalty is too lenient for him." The sergeant in charge of the torture leaned over the table where the torture instruments were placed and announced to everyone.

He interrogated the prisoner for several days, using every possible means on him. But the prisoner was a tough nut to crack, and no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't get any information out of the matter his superiors had asked him to inquire about.

I was just feeling very angry.

At this moment, the guards watching were very excited and wanted to vent their anger, so he said with a fake smile, "I think such a criminal should be sent to the Rose Camp. Let him sacrifice his body for the country and apologize for his crimes until he dies."

The Sentinels had various barracks numbers, but there was no real place called the Rose Barracks.

But everyone present knew tacitly what kind of place it referred to.

The guards watching the scene burst into laughter, and many of them whistled in vulgar ways.

The most popular topic in the barracks was obscene topics. Especially when such humiliation was imposed on a strong man who was far beyond their reach in the past.

"From now on, the Ice Blade will be renamed the Ice Flower." The speaker was a very tall female sentinel. She moved her strong shoulders and looked at the prisoner with a wanton look.

"Don't worry, the brothers will take care of you." This other strong sentinel, with gnarled muscles and strong arms, had lost to the prisoner in the Sentinel School competition. Now seeing his opponent in trouble, he could humiliate him at will, and he jumped higher than anyone else.

Just when he was about to speak without restraint, he suddenly felt a chill all over his body.

For no apparent reason, a creepy feeling welled up in my heart.

It was as if the whole person was suddenly pressed down on the coldest and darkest bottom of the sea, bearing a tremendous force.

In the distance, in the deep blue, there seemed to be a huge and terrifying whale slowly floating and looking over from a distance.

At that glance, an overwhelming pressure came over him, as if he was a prey being stared at by a natural enemy. He couldn't help feeling afraid. His bones went weak and his legs could hardly stand. He wanted to crawl to his knees.

The muscular sentry looked pale and sweaty, and he gritted his teeth to avoid kneeling down in front of everyone.

He raised his head tremblingly, and saw the imprisoned prisoner on the rack raise his eyes and glance down coldly.

That gaze penetrated the blood curtain covering his face, like a bloody blade that had killed someone, cold and sharp.

He didn't look like someone who had been tied to the rack and tortured for days.

This... is this the pressure from a high-ranking sentinel?

How could he be suppressed to this extent? What level has he reached now?

The sentry felt guilty. Even though he couldn't believe it, he finally shrank back and quietly left the crowd. He no longer dared to hide in the crowd and say those insulting words.

Lin Yuan, who was already far away from the training ground and was walking up the stairs, suddenly seemed to hear some sound and turned around.

It seemed that I heard the familiar sound of waves.