Chapter 96 Patience and Deterrence (10)
Shu Ningmiao staggered for a moment, but was not pushed away by Ai Ruiji. Instead, Ai Ruiji frowned, hooked her collar, bent his knees slightly to steady his steps, and stood firmly in place.
Eric's legs gave way and she was about to fall to the ground when Shu Ningmiao managed to catch her. Not wanting her to move around, she simply lifted her up by the waist.
She didn't notice any unfamiliar breathing, nor did she see any signs of other living people around her.
Standing behind her were only Wei Shengqianheng and a dead body.
Wei Shengqianheng moved silently, and although Shu Ningmiao pretended not to care about him, she couldn't help but keep an eye on him.
Even before she had fully turned around, she could pinpoint his location; he hadn't moved an inch.
She turned her gaze away from Wei Shengqianheng and looked towards the direction from which the commotion was coming from.
It wasn't Wei Sheng Qian Heng who scared Eric half to death; it was a real dead person.
Su Ni's body stood up silently, her limp head stiffly bending her knees, her spine straightening up segment by segment.
The corpse's lifeless eyes stared straight at her, and Shu Ningmiao could feel the girl's back trembling slightly beneath her palm.
Wei Shengqianheng stood there, separated from Su Ni's corpse, and exchanged a glance with her from afar.
Eric's teeth chattered: "He's still alive."
Shu Ningmiao's suspicious gaze swept over the corpse, and she did not make any rash moves.
She twisted Su Ni's neck with her own hands. Even if she didn't die, her spinal cord would be damaged, and she wouldn't be able to stand up.
—Is Su Ni even human now, looking like this?
In short, no matter how you imagine it, this thing cannot be Su Ni, at least not a "living" Su Ni.
This is a fact that Shu Ningmiao must believe right now, because another unspoken possibility means that she is about to face even greater trouble.
"He moved!" Erice raised his voice, hoping to persuade her to run: "His eyes moved."
"I saw it." Shu Ningmiao covered her mouth, suppressing her voice, and then let go, allowing her to fall gently to the ground, letting her use her hands and feet to hide behind her.
The heart-shaped earrings on her ears were vibrating violently, yet the corpse before her showed no signs of coming back to life.
Where do the signs of superpowers come from? Wei Shengqianheng can only release his superpower once at a time. The 'Forgiveness' superpower field he just used is still a few meters away, and the outline around the range is faintly emitting the light of Pandora.
Can the dead use superpowers?
It's simply unbelievable.
Shu Ningmiao's gaze fell subtly on Wei Shengqianheng, intending to observe his reaction, but unexpectedly she saw him take a step back without making a sound.
Muscle contractions are faster than brain responses.
The moment Shu Ningmiao saw Wei Shengqianheng's action, alarm bells went off in her mind, and she subconsciously took a step back at the same time as him.
In an instant, the ground began to shake. Shu Ningmiao's gaze swept quickly over the group. Ai Ruiji and Wei Shengqianheng barely managed to maintain their balance amidst the shaking, too preoccupied to notice anything amiss.
Su Ni—or rather, Su Ni's corpse—stood upright in place, motionless.
The tremor originated beneath his feet, where tiny cracks, like a spiderweb, spread across the floor tiles.
And this standing corpse, perhaps affected by the ground, when Shu Ningmiao focused her mind, she could see that its rotting skin trembled very obviously, as if there were still pulsating blood vessels under the skin.
A kind of overwhelming... chilling vitality.
At this point, Shu Ningmiao had to consider the possibility that Su Ni might have come back to life.
As the corpse changed, her idea was quickly shattered again. Shu Ningmiao saw the corpse's increasingly swollen face, if it could still be called a "face".
Su Ni's body was like a water-filled balloon, with water continuously flowing into her blood vessels, stretching her skin until it became increasingly swollen and thin. Her skin, muscles, and blood vessels were like a thin layer of rubber, constantly being stretched by the surging water.
"Crunch" "Crunch"
It's the sound of organs being twisted together after the body has deformed.
The corpse did not speak or make any further movements; it was like a bloated leather bag that was gradually bursting open.
The bizarre and grotesque scene made Shu Ningmiao blink slowly.
The good news is that Su Ni did not come back to life.
The bad news is that things are heading in a much worse direction.
Fortunately, Su Ni's body swelled to a certain size and then slowly stopped, without suddenly exploding and catching her off guard.
What remained on the ground was an irregular sphere, completely stretched and twisted, made of flesh and blood.
Shu Ningmiao could still vaguely see some human tissue and pale bone fragments. The strong, fishy smell irritated her nasal cavity, and a nauseating itch rose in her throat.
She wasn't unfamiliar with dead people, but seeing this mixed "lump of flesh" at first glance was still a bit too much of a challenge to her human sensibilities.
On the swollen mass of flesh, every inch of tightly bound flesh seemed to contain blood vessels, pulsating rhythmically.
Thump, thump, thump.
Shu Ningmiao's temples twitched along with the trembling of the flesh, as if something was about to burst out.
Her gaze shifted downwards, and she watched helplessly as the paving stones beneath her feet gradually cracked, the intact ground slowly separating. As she moved her feet away, new gaps appeared all around her.
The floor tiles around the body collapsed with a crash, and Su Ni's body instantly disappeared into the hole in the collapse. It was pitch black below, and nothing could be seen.
Shu Ningmiao didn't hesitate any longer and turned to leave.
The collapse started from the body and spread outwards, with paving stones sinking irregularly, leaving no escape route.
The entire underground area of this church... is actually hollow.
She ran incredibly fast towards the exit, right where Wei Shengqianheng had been standing.
Wei Shengqianheng also moved forward a bit. At this moment, the ground beneath their feet trembled violently, and the shifting cracks separated the two of them once again.
He stopped in front of the crack, turned to look at her, and frowned slightly.
Thinking of this, she suddenly stopped in her tracks.
Was Wei Sheng Qian Heng's seemingly accidental step back a coincidence or intentional?
Although the church looked dangerous, the church of the Church of the Reverence was made of high-quality materials and the collapse was not fast, so it was not a matter of life and death.
There's plenty of time to run out of the church.
She was faced with only two very simple choices and one question.
Stay here or go out first.
Which one is closer to her goal?
A strong intuition flashed through her mind.
She stood still on the shaky ground, looking at Wei Sheng Qian Heng through the flying gravel and the warped, collapsed ceramic floorboards.
He seemed to be waiting for her to jump over the gap between them. When she stopped, he reached out his hand to her: "Hurry up."
The hand, with its well-proportioned flesh and bone, opened slightly towards her, the dappled sunlight above casting a golden hue around the knuckles of his little finger.
The height difference created by the fracture made him look like a savior when he reached out, his face carrying a hint of compassion.
Even though there was no expression on his face.
Shu Ning thought to herself that there was a reason why the church had chosen him from among so many orphans.
A beautiful face, an ethereal aura, and a compassionate expression—all of these are designed to make people spontaneously believe in things that don't actually exist.
The dust kicked up by the gravel swallowed the air, and the moment Shu Ningmiao's gaze fell on his hand, there was a moment of suffocating silence that shut out all the noise.
Debris fell from above and hit her cheek.
She watched his hand approach, her fingertips slowly moving closer, and she grasped his hand with a mixture of doubt and skepticism.
A faint smile appeared on his face. The girl's fingertips were soft and damp with blood loss, gently tracing the outside of his protruding knuckles.
The next moment, Shu Ningmiao gripped his hand tightly and pulled him down with such force that she dragged him down with her.
The two of them disappeared into the crevice.
A few seconds later, the incessant rumbling of the collapse abruptly stopped, as if a pause button had been pressed.
The church, which could be considered an ancient site just minutes ago, is now unrecognizable, with a huge crater formed in the center with a radius of several meters.
Erici's legs were still numb. She barely managed to climb the steps. The edge of the completely collapsed pit stopped right next to her legs. If it had collapsed even a fraction more, it would have swallowed her up as well.
She was still in shock, catching her breath for a moment, unable to believe that such a lucky thing could happen to her.
But Shu Ningmiao fell down.
Now that this has happened, Ai Ruiji is used to seeing Shu Ningmiao still acting as if she doesn't remember her at all and turning away without a word, and he doesn't feel any resentment at all.
Her terminal was taken by Su Ni, so she had no choice but to escape and seek help.
After a moment, she managed to calm her breathing, gripped the hem of her clothes with one hand, and pounded her legs hard with the other.
Get up quickly... The sooner they call for help, the greater their chances of survival.
——
The landing took longer than she had expected.
There was a color deeper than darkness underground, as if the retina was stained with a layer of gloom, and even people who were close by could not be seen clearly.
Fearing the other person would disappear, Shu Ningmiao gripped even tighter, her nails almost digging into his skin.
In the deathly silence of the darkness, Shu Ningmiao could only hear the faint breathing beside her ear, in addition to the howling wind as she fell.
Wei Shengqianheng remained silent, as if he couldn't feel the hand that was firmly holding him.
His gaze was more pronounced than usual in the darkness, lingering on her face.
Just as they were about to land, Shu Ningmiao felt his struggle. He grabbed her arm with his other hand and shifted his position slightly.
The next moment they crashed to the ground. Shu Ningmiao was pulled by him and realized that the ground beneath her feet was not hard.
The warmth of her body seeped through the thin fabric, leaving a damp heat. She reached out and braced herself on the ground, quickly getting up.
She had a buffer and was fine, but Wei Shengqianheng truly absorbed the entire impact.
Shu Ningmiao reached out and groped in the darkness for a moment, her fingertips touching the contours of his brow and nose, from his forehead to his chin, her hand covering his face to trace all his features.
He looked up at her silently.
Shu Ningmiao then withdrew her hand, stood up, squatted down next to him, and pressed the leg that she had pressed down on: "Are you alright?"
Before he could answer, Shu Ningmiao heard a cracking sound echoing in the hollow underground, as crisp as the sound of some kind of porcelain shattering into countless pieces.
Wei Shengqianheng paused for a moment, then slowly said, "It's broken."
His tone wasn't accusatory; it was so calm it was as if he were simply stating a fact.
"……sorry."
She spoke as if she were sincerely apologetic, but in this situation, she still seemed somewhat lacking in sincerity.
Wei Shengqianheng coughed weakly: "I would rather hear you say that outside the church."
He rarely showed his emotions when he spoke.
"You can still get angry?" Shu Ningmiao squatted down to the side with her arms crossed.
"..." Wei Shengqianheng seemed unsure what to say to her, so he closed his eyes and turned his head to one side.
Shu Ningmiao wasn't lying; she hadn't intended to use Wei Shengqianheng as a human cushion.
Based on the estimated time, the fall should have been about seven or eight meters.
This height wasn't high for her; her reinforced body wouldn't suffer much injury just by landing like that.
If he wanted to make a move, she would go along with it and see what he was going to do.
After Wei Shengqianheng finished speaking this almost mournful sentence, no one spoke again between the two of them, and a sudden silence fell.
Shu Ning placed her delicate hand on his leg and pressed it thoughtfully. The bone beneath the muscle was broken and misaligned, and there was a very obvious tactile sensation; it was truly broken.
He doesn't have healing abilities, so it's unlikely he'll be able to stand up again.
After a moment of silent contemplation, Shu Ningmiao stood up, showing no intention of taking him away.
"I'll go check around to see if there's a way out." Shu Ningmiao helped him sit up. "You stay here for now."
Wei Shengqianheng grabbed one of her fingers: "Don't forget what happened just now. The corpse is still here... It's dangerous here."
His analysis was reasonable: "There are still people up there, she will go to ask for help, it is safer for us to stay where we are and wait."
Shu Ningmiao's fingertips twitched, slipping out of his hand.
Rather, she was going to find the fleshy ball that Su Ni had transformed into.
After much thought, she realized that this thing was definitely related to Achini. Rather than leaving the church and passively waiting for Achini to come to her, she decided to follow this thing to find him. She was fed up with the sword of Damocles constantly hanging over her head.
Shu Ningmiao felt there was no need to explain to him, and she was too lazy to even make up a reason.
The surroundings quieted down again, and he listened to the fading footsteps without saying a word.
After an unknown amount of time, the footsteps returned.
Shu Ningmiao stood in front of him, her face full of suspicion, and asked, "I forgot to ask you, why is there such a large basement under the church of the Church of Praise?"
He struggled to open his eyelids and slightly parted his lips: "Every church has a place like this. This is... an underground cemetery, used to place coffins."
Although so many coffins are placed here, not just anyone can lie down in them; only celebrities are qualified to sleep here after death.
Shu Ningmiao gave a short "oh": "I just pushed open those coffins, and there was nothing inside."
It turns out she came to him with the answers in mind when she asked him questions.
Wei Shengqianheng couldn't help but chuckle—in such a short time, with her agility, she had already opened and looked around all the coffins, but finding no body, she had come back to try and get information from him.
After a long pause, he spoke with a helpless expression: "I don't know either. This place has been vacant for a hundred years, and no one has maintained it. It may have decayed, or it may have been stolen..."
She didn't speak again. Wei Shengqianheng lowered his eyes and heard the sound of the stone coffins rubbing against each other.
"With so many corpses lying underground, neither buried nor burned, doesn't it smell?"
Shu Ningmiao seemed to be bending over and groping for something inside the coffin, her voice carrying a heavy echo.
In this environment, listening to her constantly asking nonsensical questions, he stared at the empty darkness before him and felt a sense of absurdity.
“It’s lead.” After a long silence, Wei Shengqianheng finally answered her question: “The lead powder and lime placed in the coffin can neutralize the gas and liquid.”
How did you know?
“The coffins placed under the church all need to be collected by clergy members themselves.” He said calmly, “The higher the status of the person collecting the coffin, the closer the soul is to heaven.”
Shu Ningmiao was no longer listening to what he was saying. She thought he had told a lame joke, but she missed the chance to laugh, so she didn't think about it anymore and lifted her head out of the stone coffin.
She rubbed her fingertips together, and white powder fell softly in the darkness.
The powder that Wei Shengqianheng mentioned is still there, with a small amount remaining at the bottom of the coffin. When crushed, it is dry and has no strange smell.
If the body had undergone the process of decay and decomposition in the sarcophagus, the powder inside the coffin should not be in this state.
She walked around and could sense that there were coffins on both sides, one after another, arranged very densely.
However, when the coffin lid was opened, it was completely empty; there was no corpse lying in any of the coffins, which was extremely eerie.
Could it be that the Church of Reverence is secretly engaged in some kind of smuggling deal, with these corpses lying in the place closest to God, but in reality they have already been dismantled and sold by weight?
She made some disrespectful and malicious speculations on someone else's turf, then gave up on investigating further and continued walking to other places.
If this were a cemetery, it would explain why such a well-maintained basement has no lights.
Her terminal had been out of power for several days and was now just a brick.
I thought I would have to keep walking in the darkness, but after many twists and turns, I saw a faint light after only a few steps.
Having reached this point, she could no longer kick the coffin while exploring her surroundings. She had left the deliberately enclosed space of the tomb and was now surrounded by a vast open area.
This made her even more suspicious. The size of the coffins and the area of the basement didn't match at all. The coffins there only occupied about a third of the church's space. Why was so much space left unused? It couldn't be used to let the dead breathe.
As she gradually made out the color of the light source emerging from beneath her feet, she seemed to understand what this place was used for.
A pale blue halo reflected on the wall, dim and damp, as if water droplets were falling.
This wasn't her imagination; her ears twitched, and she really heard the sound of water.
To be precise, it's not water, but Pandora in its liquid state.
The road ahead gradually became winding and narrow, and the smooth walls were no longer there. The rough, pried-open walls were uneven, and there were countless holes of different sizes on the ceiling.
An uneven staircase led deeper into the room, but thankfully the room was bathed in a pale blue glow. She stepped lightly onto the staircase and descended smoothly.
Stopping before the last step, the intense blue light assaulted her eyes, and for a moment, her gaze was stung by the sudden brightness.
The underground space suddenly opened up, and Pandora gathered at the bottom of the steps, like a lake sleeping underground, or a quiet blue gem, its depths unclear.
Her suspicions when she stepped into the church grounds were correct; there was an unregistered Pandora's Spring beneath the church.
The underground tomb has been under renovation for a long time, and Shu Ningmiao, who is not a believer in the Song Church, does not know that there is a Pandora's Spring here.
Whether it was to make a fortune or for other purposes—Pinus allowed private mining of Pandora, but the Pandora tax was extremely heavy, and roughly half of the profits had to be given to the government. Shu Ningmiao was not surprised that the Church concealed tax evasion.
So, is this why Achini chose this location?
She didn't believe that Achini's Pandora was inexhaustible; perhaps this was a backup energy source he had prepared.
Bathed in the room's light, she saw what she was looking for: Su Ni, in her red "flesh ball" form, which had swelled to the height of two people, floated quietly in the middle of Pandora's Spring, motionless, as if it were a dead object.
Blood, dead flesh, and seemingly pure Pandora liquid clung together, and the huge mass of flesh floated half-submerged in Pandora, with blood vessels and tissues swaying in the water like threads.
It resembles a deformed fetus soaking in amniotic fluid.
A thought flashed through her mind, and Shu Ningmiao's heart suddenly started beating a few beats faster.
Yes, it's almost like... an embryo nurtured by Pandora.
Liang Siyan once said that Achini may have originated from Pandora. Could it be related to this lump of flesh?
What kind of monster will this thing turn into? What is its relationship with the Corruption?
A storm raged through Shu Ningmiao's mind. Seeing that the lump of flesh remained motionless, she slowly walked down the steps into a pool of Pandora's Pool.
The pool wasn't deep; when she stepped in, it only barely reached her waist. However, Pandora's texture was different from water; it was thick and sticky, and the feeling of it enveloping her was strange and even heavier.
After wading through a vast expanse of Pandora and getting closer to the mass of flesh, she realized that this red mass of flesh was much larger than she had seen before, and she had to tilt her head back to see its full size.
Shu Ningmiao gestured the size of the blade in her hand and the lump of flesh, pondering how to kill the thing.
Even at such close range, she could not hear any signs of life within the fleshy mass; only deathly silence.
She couldn't even be sure if the thing was alive, so naturally she couldn't think of a way to kill it.
How about we make a few holes first?
Shu Ningmiao reached out towards the fleshy ball, pondering which spot would be most suitable to poke, but unexpectedly, in an instant, a chilling tremor came from beneath her palm.
She quickly withdrew her hand, but the lump of flesh seemed to come alive in an instant, beginning to deform slightly and emitting a piercing sound.
It looked as if there really was a fetus trapped in the amniotic sac, struggling incessantly, its limbs visible in the reflection.
The surface muscle fibers bulge and stretch continuously, making it look less like flesh and more like a thin sheet of paper.
With a hiss, the outer skin suddenly ruptured, and the blackish-red liquid that gushed out splashed everywhere, polluting Pandora's pure blue color.
From the gaping hole, a pale, bloodied arm emerged, its skin covered in dark lines mixed with blood, and drops of blood dripped from its fingertips.
A strong, fishy smell wafted towards us.
The hand tore off the outer skin clinging to the body, and the discarded flesh and blood fell into Pandora.
Blood-red, fiery long hair clung wetly to his pale face, covering half his body, obscuring his features. From the filthy flesh crawled a tall, naked man, his blood clinging his hair tightly to his skin, like a live fetus just emerging from the womb.
He looked up, and Shu Ningmiao could only make out his golden eyes through the blood-red hue; they were as bright as flowing lava.
In that instant, Shu Ningmiao saw no ambition in his eyes; there was nothing in his pure gaze, yet it felt familiar to her.
The next second, a smile appeared on his lips, and his gaze truly met hers, suddenly taking on an indescribable wildness, a dangerous sense of aggression emanating from within.
"Mom... I've finally seen you again..."
He looked at her calmly, his voice filled with tenderness, as if he had no idea how shocking his words were: "I have a lot to tell you."
After seeing the hallucination last time, hearing that name again made Shu Ningmiao suspect that she was hallucinating, but she was also very sure that there was nothing wrong with her ears and head.
Fortunately, there were no people from the Pinheid government here, otherwise, if he had bitten her like that, she wouldn't have been able to explain herself.
The attack on the viaduct followed immediately after the bombing.
No matter how many times she saw him in her memories and hallucinations, they were complete strangers in reality.
Achini was like a raging fire that fell from the sky, burning away all the peaceful life she could have lived.
Having a knife held to your neck is extremely uncomfortable.
So, she came to solve the problem.
Shu Ningmiao remained unmoved, as if she hadn't heard what he said, and her tone was steady: "I also have many questions for you."
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