1888: Memoirs of an Unconfirmed Creature Hunter

Chapter 338: Ecological Alienation

The bloody slaughter that occurred at noon came to an end in an extremely short time.

Corpses clad in dark blue night-walker attire lay scattered haphazardly among the rotting leaves.

Lin Jie did not immediately order pursuit.

He stood beside the corpse of the Deputy Leader, whose throat he had personally slit, his gaze fixed on the only escape gap deep within the jungle.

There, a string of chaotic, deeply imprinted footprints extended into the even darker depths of the dense forest. A few drops of not-yet-congealed dark red blood still clung to the broken branches and leaves of the shrubs.

These were the traces left by the sole survivor.

The one whose psychological defenses had been utterly shattered by fear, who had abandoned his companions at the last moment and chosen to flee in disarray—the fish that slipped through the net.

"He ran very fast."

Nadia walked back from the bushes that had been forcibly crashed through. She crouched down, pinched a bit of blood-stained soil between her fingers, and brought it to her nose to smell.

"He's injured, but it hasn't slowed him down. On the contrary, that fear of death is squeezing the last ounce of physical strength from his body." The Dayak princess stood up as she spoke. "Prey in this state often loses all reason and judgment. He won't think about how to hide his tracks; he'll just instinctively run wildly towards the place he believes is the safest.""That's exactly the effect I want."

Lin Jie did not show any impatience.

"If he were clear-headed, as a death soldier who has undergone strict training, upon realizing escape was impossible, he would likely choose to end his own life, or find a hidden place to set up a mutual destruction trap."

"But now, he's a mouse scared out of its wits."

"A mouse has only one thought when in danger: to scurry back into its hole."

"And what we need to do is follow behind this mouse and let it lead us to that rat's nest that isn't even marked on any map."

"But this requires patience."

Julian adjusted his glasses.

"This rainforest is too vast, and the terrain is too complex. If we follow too closely, he might turn and fight desperately out of despair. If we follow too loosely, this complex terrain and the rainstorms that could appear at any moment will completely erase his trail."

"Don't worry."

Lin Jie turned around and waved at Evelyn, who was sorting through the spoils, signaling the team to move out.

"In this world, some traces cannot be washed away by rain."

"As long as he's still alive, as long as he's still afraid, I can smell his scent."

The pursuit began.

It was a long, tedious, and extremely willpower-testing silent march.

The team maintained a relatively loose but mutually supportive search formation, struggling through the primeval rainforest where there were virtually no discernible paths.

Nadia walked at the very front.

At this moment, she had merged with the jungle.

She didn't need a compass or a map. She relied solely on subtle clues that were utterly meaningless in the eyes of ordinary people to correct their direction of advance.

A withered leaf overturned by a hurried footstep, a vine casually hacked through to clear a path, even mosquitoes and insects whose flight paths had been altered due to disturbance—in her eyes, these were all crystal-clear signposts left by the deserter.

"He paused here."

Nadia stopped beside a massive buttress-root tree, pointing to an inconspicuous scratch on the trunk.

"He leaned against the tree to catch his breath, probably for less than ten seconds. The moss here was rubbed off by his shoulder, and these drops of blood..."

She pointed to a small puddle of already-blackening blood in a crevice of the roots.

"His wound has reopened; the amount of bleeding is increasing. This means the rate at which he's losing stamina is accelerating, but he still doesn't dare stop to treat the wound."

"Because he's afraid."

Lin Jie walked up from behind.

He slowly extended his right hand, gently pressing it against the rough, damp tree trunk, and closed his eyes.

Reverberation Touch.

In this rainforest environment saturated with spiritual nature, his perception ability was amplified by the ambient biological magnetic field to a startling degree.

When his mental energy touched the surface texture of the tree, an extremely intense wave of negative emotion flowed through his fingertips into his brain.

It was a pure residue of emotion.

A complex mix of extreme terror, despair, exhaustion, and a desperate yearning for life.

In those few seconds the deserter leaned against this tree catching his breath, his mental state was already on the verge of collapse.

He felt an unseen pair of eyes staring fixedly at him from behind, felt that every rustle of leaves around him was the footsteps of Death.

That bone-chilling sense of fear was so intense that it had deeply permeated the very grain of this great tree.

"He's just ahead."

Lin Jie opened his eyes and withdrew his hand.

"About a kilometer away. His mental defenses are about to snap. Right now, he's running purely on the instinct to survive."

"Should we speed up?" Evelyn asked with some concern, looking at the increasingly dense thicket of bushes ahead.

"No."

Lin Jie shook his head.

"Maintain the current speed. We need to give him a sliver of hope, make him feel that if he just runs a little faster, he can survive. But at the same time, we need to apply enough pressure so he doesn't dare stop to think."

This was the so-called "herding."

A hunter doesn't immediately charge into the flock to slaughter. Instead, he lets the sheepdogs circle and bark, using fear to drive the flock towards the designated slaughtering ground.

Right now, they were those patient sheepdogs.

And that deserter was the lead sheep.

Time passed slowly in the oppressive heat and humidity.

The afternoon sun gradually grew long and slanted, the patches of light filtering through the canopy beginning to take on a dusky yellow hue.

The atmosphere in the rainforest grew even more oppressive.

The ever-present chorus of cicadas and birdsong seemed to deliberately lower its volume, as if all living creatures sensed that a group of dangerous predators was passing through this area.

During the long pursuit, they gradually discovered more traces left by the deserter.

A discarded, empty alchemy potion bottle.

A strip of cloth used to bandage a wound.

And a backup pistol, jammed and angrily thrown into the mud in a fit of rage.

The deserter was gradually discarding all the weight on his person, like a drowning man desperately throwing away all the stones tied to him.

He was breaking down.

But he was still running.

Because in his fear-saturated brain, only that "home" deep in the jungle was the one safe place in this world.

"He's starting to flee blindly."

Julian remarked, looking at an obvious slip-and-fall mark on the ground.

It was a patch of thorny brambles covered in sharp spikes. Anyone traveling through the jungle would carefully avoid such a place. But the deserter had charged straight into it as if blind, leaving behind a large swath of torn-off branches and clothing fragments.

"This behavior indicates his rational thinking has completely ceased operation. Now, only spinal reflexes are controlling his body."

"Perfect."

Lin Jie glanced at the gap torn open by the brambles.

"The more he loses his reason, the more he will instinctively choose the shortest, most familiar path back to the nest."

"Even if that path is riddled with thorns and venomous insects."

Just then, Lin Jie suddenly stopped and made a halt gesture.

"What is it?" Evelyn asked nervously, tightening her grip on her shock gloves, thinking they were about to encounter another monster attack.

"The pressure we're giving him is a bit too light."

Lin Jie drew Serene Heart from his waist.

"He stayed here for over a minute just now. He might think we've lost him, or he wanted to stop and rest."

"That won't do."

Lin Jie raised the muzzle and, aiming roughly at the sky a few hundred meters ahead, casually pulled the trigger.

"Bang!"

Although silenced, in the quiet of the jungle, the bullet pierced through the layers of canopy, snapping several high branches and causing a loud rustling, crashing sound as they fell.

"Run."

Lin Jie silently thought to himself.

"Don't stop, don't look back. If you look back, you die."

Only a few seconds later.

From the dense forest depths a few hundred meters ahead, a sudden, violent commotion erupted.

It was the sound of someone crashing through branches in panic, stumbling and staggering before breaking into a frantic run again.

The startled bird had taken flight once more.

Lin Jie holstered his gun, a slight curve lifting the corner of his mouth.

"Continue following."

As the team pressed deeper, the surrounding environment began to undergo subtle, unsettling changes.

The typical tropical rainforest vegetation gradually grew sparse, replaced by some strange plants Lin Jie had never seen before—plants with twisted forms and abnormally vibrant, garish colors.

The fronds of giant ferns displayed a sickly purplish-red hue, their surfaces covered in vein-like raised patterns.

The vines entwining the tree trunks had turned a grayish-white, growing barbed thorns that resembled human teeth.

Even the scent in the air had changed.

The sour stench of rotting vegetation was now mixed with a faint, cloyingly sweet hint of... floral fragrance.

"What is that smell?" Evelyn couldn't help but cover her nose. "It smells like cheap perfume, or maybe... formaldehyde?"

"It's mutation."

Julian crouched down, observing a strange mushroom that looked like an eyeball.

"These plants have been forcibly altered by some external force. They no longer follow the laws of natural evolution, but exhibit a mutated state resulting from exposure to high-concentration spiritual radiation."

Just as his finger was about to touch the mushroom sample, a faint sound, like wet leather rubbing together, suddenly descended from the canopy shadows above his head.

A gray-white vine coiled around the trunk suddenly sprang up. Its tip, a fleshy bud bristling with barbs, opened wide and lunged with a foul-smelling gust of wind, biting viciously at Julian's wrist.

Julian's reflexes, though enhanced by Discipline, were still a split-second too slow against this close-range, ambush launched without any prior killing intent.

Just as that hideous maw was about to snap shut and inject its venom.

"Thwack!"

A silvery flash of blade light arrived later but struck first.

Nadia's figure burst in from the side, her parang whistling through the air and striking with pinpoint accuracy at the seven-inch vital node of the vine.

A dull thud, like severing a mollusk's limb, erupted.

A thick, foul-smelling dark green fluid gushed from the severed end. The severed section of vine writhed and thrashed violently on the ground, emitting a sharp, shrieking cry akin to a baby's wail.

That shriek seemed to act as a signal to attack.

Other gray-white vines on the surrounding trunks also stirred, as if summoned by some collective consciousness. They awoke from their mimetic slumber and began to wildly whip their barbed limbs towards the group.

"Fall back! Don't let their sap touch you!"

Nadia roared, shielding Julian. She quickly pulled a pouch of demon-repelling powder mixed with sulfur and some kind of red mineral dust from her waist.

She took a deep breath, held the powder in her mouth, and then spat it out towards the frantically thrashing devil vines ahead.

Simultaneously, she struck a fire starter in her other hand and tossed it into the cloud of powder.

"Whoosh—"

A dazzling orange-red fireball exploded amidst the tangle of vines.

Upon contact with this specially-made flame, the seemingly ferocious mutated plants recoiled violently. They emitted a charred, foul stench, rapidly withered and blackened, and finally retreated, trembling, back into the depths of the dark canopy.

"These are Ghost Hand Vines." Nadia stepped forward and crushed the still-twitching severed limb underfoot. "They like to suck the bodily fluids of living creatures. Ordinary blades can't cut through their tough skin. Only fire and sulfur cause them pain."

She wiped the green blood from her blade, her eyes coldly sweeping the still-restless shadows around them.

"This forest has gone mad. We must be even more careful."

"We are approaching the laboratory's area of influence." Lin Jie said, his expression turning grave as he looked at the scorched, twisted plants around them.

This large-scale ecological mutation was not something that could form overnight.

This meant the scale and danger of the experiments Yan Xilou was conducting here far exceeded their imagination.

He wasn't just creating monsters.

He was attempting to reshape the ecological laws of this jungle.

"Look ahead."

Nadia, who had been silently leading the way, suddenly spoke, her voice filled with deep apprehension.

Everyone looked in the direction she pointed.

The terrain ahead began to slope downward, forming the entrance to a massive valley shrouded in thick mist.

The dense trees ended abruptly here, as if severed by an invisible boundary line.

In their place was a low shrubland blanketed with bright red flowers.

The flowers were shockingly large, each the size of a washbasin. Their petals had a thick, fleshy texture, and their color was a red so vivid it seemed freshly dredged from a pool of blood.

And at the far end of that sea of flowers, the deserter's trail became exceptionally clear.

He no longer concealed his path. Instead, he had trampled a straight line through the flowerbed, a road leading straight into the depths of the valley.

"That's the entrance to Pontianak's Garden."

Nadia said in a low voice, her hand unconsciously tightening around the finger bone pendant on her chest.

"My people never dared approach that place. Legend says a man-eating female ghost lives there. Anyone who enters loses their mind and eventually becomes fertilizer for the flowers."

"It seems he really did run back there."

Lin Jie gazed at that beautiful, deadly sea of flowers.

There was only one reason the deserter dared charge without hesitation into this place the natives considered forbidden.

Because he knew the correct path through it.

Or perhaps, this terrifying garden itself was a natural barrier the laboratory used to defend against outsiders.

"Get ready."

Lin Jie took a deep breath. The cloying floral fragrance caused a slight, restless stirring within his White Vulture's Mark.

It was an instinctive resistance to a certain kind of contamination.

"Our guide has completed his task."

"Next."

"It's our turn to take the stage."

He stood at the edge, activating Reverberation Touch one last time to sense the aura left by the deserter.

This time.

The intense fear was gone.

In its place was a final, fleeting sense of peace and release.

"Let's go."

Lin Jie stepped into that sea of red flowers.