novelraw Chapter 342: Cutting Off the Fragrance
Chapter 342: Cutting Off the Fragrance
The three teammates whose consciousness connections had been forcibly severed lay scattered on the ground in disarray.
Lin Jie had no time to check whether their breathing or pulse was steady, because the vibrations originating from deep underground were skyrocketing wildly. Several thick plant roots covered in purplish-red tumorous growths burst through the soil.
These roots immediately displayed a horrifying level of group coordination, intertwining and weaving together in mid-air to form a living cage that was continuously contracting.
Although the [Silencer] in Lin Jie's hand lost its advantage of paralyzing the nervous system when facing plants, the alloy blade reforged by the [Withered Cicada] still maintained its razor-sharp edge capable of slicing through iron.
He swung his arm.
Grey-white arcs of blade light slashed through the air. The roots attempting to approach his body snapped the instant they touched the blade's edge, spraying large amounts of dark green fluid with a strong corrosive property and a fishy, foul stench.
But this kind of simple physical cutting was merely an insignificant injury, like trimming fingernails, for a giant plant so massive it occupied nearly half the underground space of the valley.
For every tentacle severed, two or even three new roots would emerge from the churning soil, their tips waving with suction cups covered in barbs.
"To capture the bandits, first capture the king."
While sidestepping to dodge three tentacles, Lin Jie calmly recited this eternal tactical truth in his heart.His gaze pierced through the net of roots, firmly locking onto the Mimicry entity in the distance that was still standing under the banyan tree, disguised as the white-clothed female ghost.
As long as he severed that core gland emitting the pink pheromone mist, this farce constructed from illusions and biological instincts would end completely.
He took a deep breath, his entire body transforming into a black drill that forcibly tore a bloody path through the dense roots toward the core.
Yet, just as he was about to break through the encirclement and close within ten meters of that white figure.
Another mutation occurred.
The "white-clothed woman" with her back to him sensed the hunter's intent. The several petals folded together to mimic a human body suddenly spasmed violently.
"Giggle, giggle, giggle..."
An eerie laughter, overlapping countless vocal ranges—resembling both a young girl's delicate giggle and the buzzing of some insect's wings—echoed through the air.
The concentration of the pink pheromone mist skyrocketed in that instant, reaching a liquid-like viscosity visible to the naked eye.
Lin Jie felt his vision blur.
The clear world turned murky and distorted. The light signals received by his retinas were brutally tampered with by potent hallucinogenic chemicals during their transmission via the optic nerve to the brain's processing center.
He saw a scene that chilled his spine.
The solitary white figure standing under the tree suddenly proliferated like cell division.
One.
Two.
Three.
In less than a second, over a dozen identical white-clothed women appeared out of thin air in the center of the empty flower field.
Not only were their appearances exactly the same, even the subtle arcs of their hair and the folds of their skirts swaying gently in the breeze were identical, like countless reflections refracted from a shattered kaleidoscope.
These "women" turned around simultaneously.
On their faces, which should have been blank or terrifying maws, now grew faces Lin Jie knew all too well.
It was Nadia's face, Evelyn's face, Julian's face...
They wore miserable, spiteful smiles, opening their arms as they walked toward Lin Jie.
"It hurts so much..."
"Why didn't you save me..."
Multiple voices overlapped, echoed, and bombarded Lin Jie's ears. This composite hallucination attack, mixing visual deception with auditory interference, hammered fiercely against Lin Jie's rationality, which was already stretched to its limit.
If he swung his blade now, what would he strike? A patch of false air? The plant's true body? Or perhaps a teammate left behind on the battlefield?
This fear of "friendly fire" was the most fatal soft spot deep within every human warrior.
The monster named Pontianak clearly possessed extremely high hunting intelligence. It knew how to exploit the emotional weaknesses of its prey to construct a defensive wall stronger than steel.
Lin Jie's forward momentum was forced to halt for an instant.
It was this moment of hesitation that allowed the surrounding roots to close in again, trapping him in place.
"Fake."
Lin Jie closed his eyes.
He cut off the input of visual signals, forcibly blocking those false images that were madly interfering with his judgment.
If eyes can lie, then don't use them to see.
If ears can hear lies, then don't use them to listen.
In this world full of deception, only one thing was absolutely real and could not be distorted by any chemical substance.
That was energy.
Was spiritual nature.
Was ether particles.
Lin Jie raised his left hand wearing the brass vambrace, his index finger quickly flicking the tiny mechanical knob hidden beneath the leather three times.
"Click, click, click."
That was the crisp sound of gears meshing into place.
[Cursebreaker Vambrace] — Mode Switch.
[Spiritual Sonar] Activated.
An invisible pulse wave, detectable only by those with highly sensitive spiritual perception, spread out spherically in all directions from Lin Jie as the center.
Like the ultrasonic waves emitted by bats in pitch-black caves.
This spiritual pulse refracted and provided varying degrees of feedback the instant it contacted surrounding objects. These feedback signals were then converted into a series of three-dimensional compositions formed from pure lines and light points in Lin Jie's mind.
The colorful world full of mist and illusions disappeared in this moment.
Replacing it was a cold reality outlined by grey-white lines.
The ferocious white-clothed female ghosts turned into masses of weightless air disturbances in the sonar's vision. Those seductive and resentful voices became meaningless waveform noise.
Only at the massive root system of the banyan tree thirty meters ahead was there a huge energy source, pulsating violently like a heart, emitting a blinding red light.
That was the true body.
That was the only reality.
"Found you."
Lin Jie reopened his eyes. His gaze pierced through the falsehood, firmly nailing itself onto that red energy core.
He reversed his grip on the [Silencer].
The muscles in his legs tensed.
Although the [Black Mercury] trench coat had lost its spiritual support and could no longer perform Phase Slip, the specially treated leather still granted him formidable physical defense.
"Kill!"
Lin Jie let out a low roar. Ignoring all surrounding interference, he charged straight toward the core wrapped in layers of illusions.
The false phantoms tried to block him, reaching out to grab his clothes, but they shattered and dissipated like soap bubbles upon contact.
The real roots around him whipped over frantically, but under the omnidirectional warning of the [Spiritual Sonar], Lin Jie could always make the most precise micro-adjustments to evade at the last possible moment.
Twenty meters.
Ten meters.
Five meters.
As the distance closed, that cloyingly sweet, nauseating fragrance intensified to its peak, making Lin Jie feel as if his throat was stuffed with clumps of sticky honey.
The giant flower bud disguised as a white-clothed woman finally realized its deception had failed.
It no longer maintained that human form. Several massive white petals suddenly burst open, revealing the ugly true body within, covered in deep red tumors and digestive glands.
It was a giant maw over two meters in diameter, covered in countless barbs and tentacles.
Deep within the maw was a glandular organ continuously secreting pink mist. That was the heart of this death garden, the source of all hallucinations.
"Splurt—"
A high-pressure jet of digestive fluid shot from that giant mouth, heading straight for Lin Jie's face.
Lin Jie gave up dodging.
Or rather, he had no space left to dodge.
He swung the hem of his trench coat, using the layer of [Oil Ghost Skin]—now dimmed but still resilient—to forcefully block this corrosive attack.
"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—"
White smoke rose from the trench coat's surface. That top-tier material, capable of even deflecting bullets, began showing signs of being eaten through by such high-concentration digestive acid.
But it was enough.
This brief one-second defense bought Lin Jie the final opportunity to close in.
He charged right up to that giant maw.
He understood clearly. For a plant-type UMA of this size, simple physical cutting was unlikely to completely destroy its core functions in a short time. Moreover, its regenerative abilities were extremely strong; cutting off half would allow it to quickly regrow.
To kill it completely, or at least make it stop releasing poison gas, a more thorough, more destructive method was needed.
Chemical means.
Lin Jie's left hand plunged at lightning speed into the backpack he had taken from Julian.
Although Julian was a scholar, he had the habit of carrying various strange alchemy potions.
His bag always contained some high-concentration reagents prepared for emergencies.
Lin Jie had no time to decipher what the labels on those bottles said.
Because at this distance, regardless of the potion, any high-concentration chemical substance would be a deadly poison for this creature with its internal tissues directly exposed.
His hand grasped three cold glass bottles.
It was strong acid, mercury, and some highly unstable incendiary agent.
"This is for you... an extra course."
The corner of Lin Jie's mouth curled up.
He directly thrust his left arm, gripping the three glass bottles, deep into the frantically writhing giant flower bud!
The barbs tore through his trench coat sleeve, pierced his skin, drawing strings of blood droplets.
The intense pain made Lin Jie's brow furrow slightly, but his movements didn't pause for a moment.
His arm pushed all the way next to that pulsating core gland.
Then.
"Crunch!"
A crisp sound of shattering glass echoed inside the damp, sticky, fleshy cavity.
Three completely different, extremely violent, and mutually incompatible alchemy potions mixed together in that instant.
Strong acid met incendiary agent.
Mercury met organic tissue.
A violent chemical storm erupted within the plant's most fragile, most core interior.
The instant he crushed the bottles, Lin Jie quickly retracted his arm and used a backward kick to flip away, leaping far back.
"Boom— Gurgle, gurgle—"
Sounds like a stomach violently boiling and churning came from within the plant.
The Pontianak suddenly convulsed violently as if electrocuted.
Large amounts of black blood, mixed with multicolored reagent foam and rotten tissue, gushed from its flower bud mouth.
The pink pheromone smoke continuously spreading outward was cut off by the impact of this intense chemical reaction.
Its core gland was being dissolved, burned from the inside.
The roots attacking Lin Jie around him stiffened, then fell limply to the ground.
The eerie red mist enveloping the entire valley began dissipating at a visible rate.
Sunlight pierced through the tree canopy once more.
The real, cruel colors of the jungle returned to everyone's sight.
Lin Jie half-knelt on the ground, clutching his bloodied left arm, gasping for breath in large gulps.
Although the price was significant, he had won.
He had "cured" this plague in the simplest, most brutal, yet most effective way, on both physical and chemical levels.
"Cough... cough..."
A fit of violent coughing came from nearby.
Julian was the first to wake up.
He struggled to get up from the ground, first looking around in confusion, then instinctively reaching to push the glasses on his nose bridge, only to find they were long gone.
Immediately after, his gaze fell on the still-warm [Discipline] pistol in his hand, and on his heavily injured friend half-kneeling not far away.
Memory fragments flooded his mind.
Firing.
Shooting.
Wanting to kill him.
"God..." Julian's hand trembled, the gun falling to the ground. "I... what did I do?"
The next to wake was Nadia.
This formidable female hunter sprang up from the ground, her parang still tightly gripped in her hand.
She warily scanned her surroundings, but when she saw Lin Jie's bleeding arm, her face turned deathly pale.
"You..." Her voice trembled.
The last to wake was Evelyn.
She rubbed her aching wrist, opening her eyes groggily.
When she clearly saw everything before her—the giant plant withering and rotting, the mess on the ground, and the injured Lin Jie—she practically screamed, jumping up and rushing to Lin Jie's side.
"Lin! Your hand!"
She fumbled frantically in her bag for the first aid kit, only to find it empty. All those potions had been used by Lin Jie as bombs.
"It's fine."
Lin Jie waved his hand, signaling her to calm down.
He tore a strip from his shirt's inner lining with his right hand and skillfully tied a tourniquet above his left arm.
"Just superficial wounds. Won't kill me."
He looked up at the three teammates gathered around him, their faces filled with guilt and lingering fear.
No blame. No anger.
"Don't look like that."
Lin Jie said calmly.
"I told you, here, eyes and ears will deceive you."
"You just had a nightmare."
"And now."
He stood up, patting Julian's shoulder with his uninjured right hand, then glancing at Nadia and Evelyn.
"The dream is over."
"We're still alive."
"That's enough."
The three fell silent, their eyes slightly red.
They knew Lin Jie was comforting them.
The feeling of wielding weapons wanting to kill their most trusted companion, that sense of manipulated despair, would become a psychological shadow for them for a long time.
But Lin Jie's words also gave them an unprecedented sense of reassurance.
Because this man had done it.
Not only had he survived that desperate situation, but he had also kept his promise—not harming any one of them.
This inspired more awe than mere combat prowess.
"Gear up."
Lin Jie didn't give them much time for sentiment.
He turned to look at the completely withered, rotten remains of the Pontianak, now just a pile of decaying branches and leaves.
Behind that pile of remains.
On the mountain wall previously obscured by the flower field, a bronze sluice gate was revealed, completely hidden by illusions until now.
The door was rusted, covered in vines, but one could still see the cold, hard lines belonging to human civilization.
Above the gate, a lotus emblem, almost eroded beyond recognition, was faintly visible.
And a line of faded inscription carved in vigorous Chinese characters:
"Creation Project - Zone A"
"We're here."
Lin Jie pointed at the door.