Chapter 118 World L: 1 Organizing the possibilities for the journey ahead...
After packing up the things they might need for the rest of the journey, Ethan and his companions prepared to continue their travels.
However, Ethan and his friends wanted to try to find the Guardians scattered in other worlds through the bead that could be linked to life signs.
After all, Yaroslava had found them through the City Will's counterparts, and they wanted to see if they could give it a try.
After a short delay, Ethan and Ethan began their research day and night. Finally, on the third day, they achieved a rare moment of resonance with one of the beads.
Although there was only a faint resonance, it was enough for Ethan and Ethan to find that world through it.
Ethan opened the portal, and just in case the chicks got separated, he packed them into his backpack and quickly passed through the portal with the others.
"Snap!"
Ethan vaguely heard some sound, which made him hesitate and look around in confusion.
"Snap! Snap!"
A clearer sound rang out, and Ethan looked in the direction of the sound. It was on his wrist, where the bracelet that connected the life signs of the other guardians was slowly breaking apart.
Three beads, all three beads, started to crack little by little at the same time.
Ethan's face drained of all color in an instant.
These are three guardians. When a guardian is in mortal danger, a protective shield will appear to block a fatal blow. If they reunite with their companions, the shield will stack up and become even more powerful.
However, some counterparts in certain worlds are indeed very powerful, and can even find other Guardians through links that Ethan can't even fully understand. If another Guardian happens to be found as a partner by a kind counterpart, but then encounters danger...
The beads that slowly develop cracks signify that the guardian's injuries are becoming increasingly severe, and they can no longer resist.
Ethan's mind went blank. He subconsciously channeled his power, wanting to create another protective shield to resist for a while longer.
"Everyone, wait!" Ethan raised his voice, extremely anxious, and didn't forget to change the other bead worlds he had previously linked to to the worlds of those three beads: "Let's change the world we're connecting to, the other guardians..."
"Snap!"
Before Ethan could finish speaking, the three beads on the bracelet turned into dust at the same time and disappeared into the passage.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. Less than ten seconds had passed since Ethan discovered the bead had started to shatter, and the three guardians were already dead. Ethan was so anxious that he couldn't even finish his sentence to tell the others.
Ethan's eyes widened, and he raised his hand in disbelief, staring at the empty space where there should have been three beads, his heart filled with shock.
The two British guardians and Donato from Italy are actually dead!
Before Ethan could recover from his shock, the passage inside the portal shook violently and even began to collapse, which was even worse news.
Ethan can no longer feel the connection to that world.
That world was destroyed. That's why the teleportation portal collapsed. Because the other side of the connection disappeared, this place became unstable. If they didn't reconnect to the world soon, their lives might be in danger.
There was no time for him to think about it anymore. Ethan quickly reconnected to the previous bead, and the partially collapsed passage slowly stopped collapsing.
The others were still confused about what was happening. After walking for a while, they realized that Ethan hadn't followed. He was just looking down at something, then suddenly looked up and said urgently that he needed to change the world he was connecting to. It seemed that something had happened to the Guardians.
But then he stopped halfway through his sentence, raised his hand in disbelief, and froze. Then the passageway shook violently, and the passageway, which had resembled a starry sky, slowly collapsed, the stars disappearing.
Because of the collapse of the passage, Nadia and the others subconsciously put their bodies into combat mode to deal with the unexpected situation, although they were still completely confused.
The commotion finally brought Ethan back to his senses. He fiddled with the beads, and the passage gradually quieted down, but Ethan still looked completely lost.
The three men, including Turner, exchanged glances. Finally, Turner approached Ethan and lowered his voice, asking, "Has something happened, Ethan?"
“…Just now, three guardian beads, at the same time…” Ethan’s voice was hoarse. He paused for a moment before squeezing out the words in a dry voice: “They turned into dust. I just urgently switched the connection to their world, but we didn’t have time to get there. They all lost their vital signs, and the world that was connected disappeared. That’s why this place collapsed… That world must have been destroyed.”
The others were stunned by these words, their eyes widening in disbelief.
Meanwhile, three guardians?
In the blink of an eye, before Ethan could even tell them, he was dead. Everyone looked grim, and no one spoke.
Tenas wondered what kind of dangerous situation could have caused all three guardians to die in that world at the same time.
Was it that the counterparts in that world were unfriendly, or was the situation in that world dangerous? Or, like before, were there people hunting them down to stop them from collecting power?
In either case, the death of the guardian companion is an unchangeable fact, but the latter case would be more serious.
A being capable of killing three guardians at once possesses immeasurable power; once they clash with it, casualties are almost inevitable.
Although it was a difficult task, and they knew that more crises awaited them, they still had to continue traversing the world. Their top priority was to find the other guardians.
After hearing the whole story, the chick siblings couldn't help but feel a little heavy-hearted.
However, they were also prepared to lose their lives in the process. It was destined to be a thorny path, and even if you made it through, the pain left behind would be real.
Even after the injury heals, the scars left behind will tell the story of what happened.
There was no time to grieve for them; they quickly composed themselves and moved on to a new world.
Suddenly, their eyes lit up as they left the poorly lit passage, only to land on ruins.
What met her eyes was a scene of ruins. Nadia's eyelids twitched as she recalled the amnesiac and crazed Reena from before, and a sense of foreboding crept into her heart.
Please don't let this kind of thing happen again. I don't want to see that kind of existence again, like the last person in the world or something.
Nadia is already getting a bit of PTSD from this; she doesn't want the world to be any worse.
"Can you find the location of your world's guardian?" After landing and releasing the chicks, Ethan stood on Ethan's shoulder, trying to steady himself but still swaying uncontrollably. "If you can't, do you want me to help you?"
“No need, I can sense it, Owen, that German Guardian is nearby.” Ethan couldn’t bear to watch any longer, so he caught Ethan, who was about to fall, and placed him on his head. His shoulders weren’t broad, so there was no place for him to put his feet down. “If you’re going to fall, you can fall into my hat.”
Ethan gently stroked the bead that represented Owen with his fingers. Although it did no damage, the bead became dull and even turned black.
Ethan figured that her situation probably wasn't much better, so he connected to this one instead of Bertha first. Bertha's beads were all working fine.
A thread slowly emerged, connecting Owen's bead to a distant, dark place.
Yaroslava frowned and stared for a while before realizing that it wasn't a building or anything like that; there was activity going on—was it people?
They didn't act rashly; instead, they focused their attention on observing carefully, using their eyesight—which could even span an entire city—to slowly discern what that patch of darkness was.
Their blurry vision became clearer, and they saw what those dark things were—they were clearly countless zombies stretching as far as the eye could see.
Their skin was an eerie grayish-green, their hands and feet were crooked, and their walking posture was strange and stiff.
Their bodies were rotting in varying degrees; some had their shoulders, some their legs, and some even had half their faces rotten, revealing sharp teeth still covered with dark red bits of flesh and some congealed blood.
As it forced out a horrible roar, saliva flowed out of its rotting mouth like a leaky faucet, dripping onto the ground every now and then.
They only have the whites of their eyes, not pupils, making one wonder if they still have sight.
The zombies were dressed in rags, some even torn to shreds with only a few straps, but they no longer cared about such things. Their tiny brains were filled with nothing but hunger, wanting to devour everything.
They didn't even care about the death of their companions. Even if a zombie accidentally stumbled and fell to the ground, the other zombies would act as if they saw something different and would step over their companion's body.
Accidentally stepping on a companion's eyeball that fell out after a fall? Or even stepping on a companion's decaying body, making an already bad wound even worse, or even flattening the companion?
Sorry, they are zombies.
They should be thankful that their companions had zero appeal to their appetite. If it were a human, they certainly wouldn't be so indifferent. Everyone would rush to welcome the delicious human, making every part of the human feel welcome in their stomachs.
The dense, endless army of zombies made everyone's already pale faces even more grim.
Ethan glanced at the bead representing Owen, then at the silk threads connecting to the vast army of zombies, and fell silent.
Just kidding, this is a joke, right?
Owen is actually in there?! Whether he's a human struggling to fight zombies and ultimately being devoured by them, or he's turned into a zombie himself, either scenario is terrible!
Speaking of which, that bead has turned black. Could it really have turned into a zombie?
What if they find Irving, who has turned into a zombie and has lost all reason, only wanting to eat them?
If things continue to be out of control like this, it will only cause them trouble, rather than providing them with the help they would have gained by finding companions.
What should we do? Should we go inside to search? But we really can't see the end of it.
...Let's still look for it.
We can't just leave now. Let's find it first, and if things really turn out the worst we can imagine, then we'll make further plans.
We can't just abandon our companions like this.
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Author's note: This chapter actually took me almost three hours to polish... I've sorted out a few offline names, which I had planned from the very beginning.
I haven't been feeling well lately, and I've been under a lot of stress. My stress tolerance isn't very high, so I've decided to wait until the story is finished before reading comments. I don't even want to chat with anyone anymore. I feel like I'm constantly being drained of my emotional value when I talk to people. When I chat with my contact list, she only talks about her own things and just wants to output, without even reading what I'm saying, and she's too eager to share. I chatted with an intern who's rotating through the same department, and she kept complaining about cheating on her ex-boyfriend. Chatting is exhausting. Since I lost contact with my family and friends, I haven't had a normal conversation with anyone for months.
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