novelraw Chapter 343: Intestinal Infiltration
Chapter 343: Intestinal Infiltration
The pink, sweet, hallucinogenic, and suffocating aroma that had permeated the entire valley rapidly dissipated into the humid, hot rainforest wind with the death of that core plant.
The mist retreated like a shameful veil brutally torn away, exposing the truest, and ugliest, face of this area known as "Pontianak's Garden" completely to the sunlight.
The scene here was simply the physical manifestation of a nightmare.
Those red flowers, which had appeared delicate and vibrant, swaying in the wind during the hallucinations, had now all turned into clumps of grey, withered, rotten flesh. Their thick petals rapidly shriveled and blackened, having lost the support of moisture and spiritual nature.
As the sight-blocking plants and flowers withered and collapsed, the shocking truth hidden beneath them was finally revealed.
It was bones.
Tens of thousands of greyish-white bones, piled layer upon layer, already weathered to a brittle crispness.
They carpeted the entire valley floor, stretching as far as the eye could see.
"Crunch."
Evelyn's boot crushed a curved bone fragment half-buried in the mud, producing a crisp sound.She instinctively looked down, then immediately took a step back as if her foot had been scalded.
It was a complete human skull. A red seedling that hadn't fully withered yet grew from its empty eye socket, its jawbone gaping wide.
"Don't look."
Lin Jie's voice was cold and steady. He reached out a hand to support Evelyn, whose face had turned pale.
"These are all the residue left after being digested by that monster."
Julian crouched down and picked up a leg bone that clearly belonged to a large feline. He gave it a gentle squeeze with his fingers, and the bone crumbled into dust in his hand.
"Severe calcium loss. The marrow has been sucked completely dry." The scholar pushed up his glasses. "This indicates the digestive fluids secreted by that plant have extremely strong permeability. It doesn't just eat flesh; it doesn't even spare the essence within the bones."
"This is a huge morgue."
Nadia walked at the front, gripping her blade. Her gaze swept over the skeletal wilderness, as if searching for some specific trace.
"No, this is a garbage dump." She corrected herself. "The Black Ghosts threw all the useless waste into this valley. They kept that monster here not just as a guard, but also to dispose of bodies."
Lin Jie remained silent.
The team struggled through the bone piles for about twenty minutes.
The crunching sound of feet stepping on skeletal remains became the only background noise in this space.
As they gradually approached the end of the valley, the terrain began to steepen.
The lush green cliffs on both sides here turned into bare, black rock, covered with marks of artificial excavation and some long-rusted, broken iron chains.
Finally.
When Nadia swung her blade and cut through the last cluster of withered vines hanging over the only path, the secret base hidden in the deepest part of the rainforest, painstakingly operated by the Black Lotus for years, finally revealed its true form.
Lin Jie stood on a protruding rock, looking down from a high vantage point at the cluster of buildings located in the center of the massive basin.
Even for a hunter like him, accustomed to grand scenes, he couldn't help but hold his breath slightly at this moment.
It was an extremely massive fortress, filled with a sense of historical dislocation.
Its main structure was clearly from a spice plantation established by Dutch colonists a century ago.
The white columns with typical Baroque style, the towering pointed bell tower, and the rows of neat brick warehouses, though now mottled and covered with moss and vines from years of erosion, still revealed the ambition and arrogance of the Dutch East India Company that once sought to conquer nature.
But now, this ruin representing Western colonial civilization had been occupied and transformed by another, more ancient and more insane power.
The originally low walls used to prevent beast intrusions had been raised to a full five meters, plastered densely with yellow paper talismans painted with cinnabar symbols.
On the four corner towers of the wall, four ancient cannons were mounted. Their entire bodies showed a dark red hue, with muzzles cast into the shape of roaring tigers.
"Is that... a Hongyi cannon?" Julian squinted, looking somewhat incredulously at these antiques that should be lying in museums. "The heavy front-loading cannons cast with introduced Western technology during the late Ming dynasty?"
"Not entirely." Lin Jie raised his binoculars, focusing on the body of one of the cannons. "Look at its base and bore."
In the magnified view of the binoculars, one could clearly see that the ancient bronze cannon had undergone an extremely brutal magical modification.
Its base wasn't wooden wheels, but a hydraulic rotating platform constructed from countless gears and connecting rods.
And behind the bore, several brass pipes emitting white steam were connected.
The cloud and dragon patterns used for decoration on the cannon body had been re-etched, filled with some kind of alchemical material emitting a faint blue glow, forming a complete energy pressurization circuit.
"That's the alchemical version of Shenjiying technology." Lin Jie lowered his binoculars. "Yan Xilou combined steam power with Daoist talismans. Those cannons definitely don't fire solid iron balls, but some kind of alchemical shell with high-explosive or poisonous gas properties."
"And look at the wall."
Lin Jie pointed to the top of the encircling wall.
There, a squad of guards was conducting a patrol back and forth.
But they weren't human.
Or rather, they could no longer be called human.
They walked upright, wearing tattered Qing dynasty military uniforms, holding spears or matchlock guns.
But their heads were ferocious beast heads.
Some had faces and fangs covered in blue-red stripes like mandrills.
Some had black pig snouts and floppy ears.
Others had lizard heads covered in scales.
Lin Jie could clearly see the transitional marks on their necks where skin met fur. That was a natural fusion of flesh and blood, as if the demons and monsters that only existed in the "Shan Hai Jing" or ancient Chinese supernatural novels had walked alive into reality.
"Modification?" Evelyn covered her mouth, her eyes full of terror. "Is this why they were collecting those UMAs? To conduct this... cross-species chimera experiment?"
"This is 'Zao Chu'." Julian's voice trembled slightly, remembering some records about Eastern evil arts. "A forbidden technique using surgery and drug catalysts to turn humans into beasts, or beasts into humans."
"It seems Yan Xilou doesn't just want to create a god." Lin Jie looked coldly at those monsters patrolling the wall. "He also wants to create a demon army."
These half-human, half-beast monsters, though appearing absurd and ridiculous, clearly possessed physical capabilities far exceeding normal humans.
They traversed the half-meter-wide wall top as if walking on flat ground. Each leap could span several meters. Their beast eyes flickered with a bloodthirsty red light, retaining the keen instincts of wild animals.
"A frontal assault is impossible."
Lin Jie withdrew his gaze, quickly making a judgment.
"Alchemically reinforced walls might not even be breached by ordinary explosives. And the firing arcs of those four Hongyi cannons cover the entire basin entrance. The moment we show our heads, even with the protection of [Black Mercury], I'd only become a pile of minced meat under that caliber of cannon fire."
"And those monsters' sense of smell and hearing are definitely extremely sharp. Stealthy approach is extremely difficult."
This was a fortress in the truest sense.
An iron fortress combining Eastern and Western war technology with black sorcery.
"What should we do?" Julian asked. "Wait until night?"
"Useless." Nadia shook her head. "These things have better vision at night than during the day. And this base definitely has an early warning mechanism for spiritual nature fluctuations, just like the minefield we encountered at the river mouth."
Just as everyone was at a loss, Nadia suddenly seemed to remember something. She turned and looked towards the side rear of the ruins.
There was a dense thicket of shrubs pressed against the cliff face, seemingly without any path.
"The Dutch."
Nadia suddenly uttered this word.
"What?" Lin Jie looked at her.
"I heard from the elders of my tribe. Over a hundred years ago, when those red-haired devils were growing spices here, to drain the toxic wastewater produced from processing the spices, and also to escape when besieged by our people, they built a secret passage."
Nadia pointed to a depression buried under a pile of rubble at the base of the cliff.
"It's an underground drainage system. It directly connects the plantation's main building basement to the outside river."
"Later, the Dutch left, and that drainage outlet was abandoned. But I remember the location."
"Drainage system?" Evelyn's eyes lit up. "If it's the industrial drainage pipe of a large plantation, the diameter should be enough for a person to pass through."
"But it's definitely blocked too." Julian reminded. "Since Yan Xilou occupies this place, he couldn't have failed to check such an obvious vulnerability."
"He might block the exit." Lin Jie looked in that direction, a glint flashing in his eyes. "But he can't block... groundwater."
"The water table in this rainforest is very high, and geological shifts happen frequently. After a hundred years of abandonment, that drainage pipe is likely partially blocked by underground rivers or silt, or has collapsed."
"For the Black Lotus Sect, that's an abandoned, unusable dead end. So their defensive focus is definitely on the ground and air."
"But for us."
Lin Jie glanced at the unused alchemical explosives in Evelyn's backpack.
"That's the only... intestinal tract leading to the 'Garden of Eden'."
"Though a bit dirty, a bit smelly."
"But at least it's better than being blasted into bits by cannons."
Lin Jie adjusted his equipment, re-checking his gas mask.
"Nadia, lead the way."
"Let's go crawl through that dog hole."
Using the cover of the surrounding dense vegetation, the four cautiously circled around the sightlines of the frontal defenses, feeling their way towards the hidden location at the foot of the cliff.
The closer they got to that spot, the stronger the swampy stench in the air became.
When Nadia pushed aside the ferns as tall as a person, a brick archway opening, only half a person high and mostly blocked by rubble and silt, appeared before them.
The area around the opening was overgrown with black moss. Streams of turbid sewage slowly seeped from the gaps in the rubble, converging into a small, foul-smelling creek.
"This is it." Nadia covered her nose. "This is the Dutch sewer."
Lin Jie stepped forward, gently tapping the stones blocking the opening with the barrel of [Serene Heart].
The sound was dull. Indicating mud behind the stones.
"Seems we're going to be masons for a while."
He didn't directly move the stones, as that might cause the accumulated water inside to surge out instantly, creating noise.
He drew his short knife from his waist, carefully cutting through the mud bonding layer between the stones, then moving the rubble piece by piece.
Half an hour later.
An opening large enough for a person to crawl through was cleared.
A stench ten times more intense than outside instantly assaulted them. It was the smell of century-old, sealed marsh gas and rotting matter.
"Evelyn, check the gas composition."
"High methane concentration, but still within safe limits. Oxygen content is low." Evelyn looked at the instrument. "No open flames, no gunfire."
"Understood."
Lin Jie was the first to crawl in.
Thick, cold, and slippery silt instantly enveloped his lower body. He crawled forward in the darkness, his knees and elbows scraping against the rough brick floor.
The tunnel was pitch black. Only occasionally did a sliver of faint light leak down from cracks overhead, barely illuminating a few meters ahead.
The environment here was extremely oppressive. The narrow space induced a strong sense of claustrophobia.
And the tunnel wasn't peaceful.
Lin Jie could feel something swiftly swimming through the mud ahead. Possibly some blind fish that fed on rotting matter, or some mutated aquatic insect.
"Follow."
Lin Jie's voice produced a dull echo in the narrow pipe.
"Don't fall behind. Don't make noise."
Like a string of silent moles, the four arduously wriggled through this forgotten underground intestinal tract of a century.
This was not a pleasant journey.
Besides the stench and sludge, they faced the constant danger of potential collapse.
But as they went deeper, the vibrations belonging to the Black Lotus Sect base became increasingly clear.
They could hear heavy footsteps from above.
They could faintly feel the oppressive sensation generated by the gathering of high-concentration spiritual nature.
They were approaching the core.
Approaching the heart of that madman.
After crawling for an unknown length of time, the pipe ahead suddenly widened.
Lin Jie stopped.
Blocking his path was no longer mud and stones, but a vertical metal grate.
Though rusted, the grate was still very sturdy. Each iron bar was as thick as a wrist.
Through the gaps in the grate, Lin Jie saw a massive underground reservoir ahead.
And above the reservoir, faint light filtered down.
"We're here."
Lin Jie said in a low voice.
Through the gaps, he carefully observed the environment of the reservoir.
Several thicker drainage pipes connected there, and the walls clearly showed signs of artificial reinforcement.
Most crucially.
At the edge of the reservoir, he saw some fresh footprints.
Traces left by something with sharp claws, resembling a large lizard or canine.
Though abandoned, this place wasn't completely unguarded.
"Get ready."
Lin Jie tightened his grip on his short knife. The [Black Mercury] trench coat on his body began to emit a faint glow.
"We're about to enter that 'Garden of Eden'."
"But before that. We need to deal with a few... guard dogs."
He reached his hand towards the lock mechanism of the grate.
The rusted structure was as fragile as tofu under the cutting edge of the alchemical short knife.
"Click."
A section of the grate was silently removed.
Lin Jie took a deep breath, then silently slid into the underground reservoir like a black venomous snake.
Infiltration.
Begins.