Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 796: Deterioration
But this raises another question - when Heruni acquired this "ability", he should not have been to the core area of the Gray Mist Forest, so how could he be eroded?
This is another "chicken or egg" problem: if Heruni wants to gain the ability to read the text of the Alpha civilization, he must suffer severe erosion, and if he wants to suffer this level of erosion, he must understand the inscriptions on these floor tiles.
Ke Lan has checked Heruni's information and is basically certain that he is a "natural person" and not a "symbiote" created by the undead crew like himself and the Prophet.
However, besides reading these inscriptions, there is another way to be eroded... Ke Lan couldn't help but think of Mo Jue's ending: for those with "prone to super-erosion constitution", they only need to see monsters like Erosion Skeleton or be attacked by Erosion Skeleton, and their own degree of erosion can easily exceed the critical value - but in this way, the third paradox arises.
Heruni's physique is not only not "easy to be super-corroded" like Mo Jue, but it is one of the most "resistant to corrosion" among ordinary humans. Otherwise, he would not be the last person in the "Shaojiang Modified" crew to become a corroded corpse, and he would not still retain the last trace of "humanity" after sleeping for more than ten years.
For someone like Hruni, unless he directly absorbs a large amount of "forbidden knowledge", it is impossible for him to increase the degree of erosion to the point where he has hallucinations and auditory hallucinations just by relying on a little "edge ball".
The crew of the "Shaojiang Modified" must have encountered other things at the time, but Ke Lan didn't know about them, and they were not recorded in the battleship's database.
But for Ke Lan, these things are not so important at the moment.
He wanted to know more about how many inscriptions on the tiles did Heruni and his team see back then, and what methods did they use to activate these tiles?
Is it also relying on the flesh and blood of the corroded corpse?
The flesh and blood of one Erosion Corpse can only activate one floor tile... and the number of floor tiles in this square is at least hundreds of thousands. Doesn't that mean hundreds of thousands of Erosion Corpses are needed?
Hundreds of thousands of people sacrificed...
A dangerous word popped up in Ke Lan's mind: collective sacrifice.
The last time a collective sacrifice of this scale took place was at the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City... The lives of hundreds of thousands of field legion soldiers were exchanged for the awakening of the god of war "Alexander".
Ke Lan initially thought that this was a wrong decision by the Undead Crew. Even if they wanted to cover up the truth about the clones, they shouldn't have used this method to fill the soldiers as flesh and blood sacrifices into this "ruin"... But now it seems that this decision was probably passed at the push of a traitor within the Crew.
There are people with ulterior motives and people who want to cover up the truth. Although the two groups have different goals, the process of achieving their goals is the same. Perhaps, in the eyes of the Undead Crew, the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are far less important than the stability of the Ark. They are all bargaining chips that can be sacrificed, and the heretics, the prophets and Alexander can only be regarded as executioners and scapegoats.
Ke Lan would not forgive the prophet, but as the truth was revealed bit by bit, he felt that the Undead Crew was becoming an increasingly hideous organization.
Perhaps, their original purpose was indeed for the future of human civilization, but as time went on... the hearts of this group of "humans" with long lifespans have begun to rot gradually.
Not to mention what would happen if hundreds of thousands of people were "sacrificed" here - even if Ke Lan could really do such a cold-blooded and cruel thing like the other members of the Undead Crew, he would have nowhere to find these hundreds of thousands of corpses.
Not only him, even the Undead Crew couldn't do it.
No one could bring hundreds of thousands of people to this place. The gray fog forest was an excellent barrier, perfectly hiding this square and this tall tower in this place.
If violence is used to wipe out the Gray Mist Forest from the surface of Alpha, Ke Lan is 100% sure that this will trigger the second level of protection - it is very likely that after the Ark's fleet uses plasma cannons to burn the entire Gray Mist Forest, it will find that the core area has sunk deep into the ground or has been moved to a place that other humans cannot set foot in.
The Undead Crew must have understood this truth, which is why they did not act rashly.
If he wanted to activate more stone slabs... Ke Lan couldn't help but cast his gaze on Ze Luo.
Since Ze Luo can mimic various things, he should also be able to simulate the flesh and blood of Erosion Corpse, right?
"Ke Lan! Ke Lan! Can you hear my voice?" It was not until then that Ke Lan noticed Sanshisan's roar - in addition to the roar, he also found that there were at least three hundred black flying blades around him, and the tip of each flying blade was pointing at the vital parts of his body.
"how--"
Ke Lan swallowed the word "了" ("What's wrong") that was about to come to his throat - he just lowered his head slightly to take a look and discovered the abnormality of his body.
A blood-red light was flashing on the chest, and even the thick combat uniform could not cover it... Through the clothes, one could see the red light flowing from Ke Lan's chest to his limbs... just like the human blood vessel distribution model in a medical school.
Ke Lan clearly remembered that before Mo Jue turned into a corpse, a dark red light had shone from under his skin.
Could it be that... the degree of erosion in my body has reached a critical value?
"Ke Lan! Ke Lan!" Thirty-three was still shouting loudly. His face looked very bad and his anxiety was evident in his words.
Even Ze Luo, who usually had a blank expression on his face, showed a hint of nervousness. Ke Lan could feel that he was surrounded by a solid space barrier - even though Ze Luo did not attack him, he was also unable to break through this space barrier.
"What's going on with you now?" Sanshisan asked anxiously, "You were just staring at the glowing stone tablet on the ground... Are you aware of the changes in your body? Hello? If you can hear me, please respond!"
"I can hear it." Ke Lan nodded. He took a deep breath, tried not to focus on the inscriptions, and tried to bury the information deep in his memory...
Originally he just wanted to give it a try, but he soon found that it was really useful: when he stopped thinking about those things, the blood-red light under his skin gradually dimmed until it was completely extinguished.
He reached out and unzipped his coat, unbuttoned his shirt, and lifted up his underwear. His exposed skin was smooth and fair, without any scars or mutations. Ke Lan used his fingers to rub the area of his chest where the red light was most concentrated. He could clearly feel the flexible subcutaneous tissue and muscles, as well as the bones underneath. The heart in his chest was beating vigorously, constantly pumping oxygen-filled blood through the blood vessels to various organs throughout the body.
There was no pain, itchiness, or any strange feeling when touched or pressed.
In just a few seconds, Ke Lan changed from a humanoid self-propelled LED light back to his original state.
When he heard Ke Lan's response, Sanshisan's tense face relaxed a little, and after seeing that Ke Lan's body was no longer "glowing", he withdrew most of the black flying blades aimed at Ke Lan.
But he didn't dare to let down his guard completely, and asked Ke Lan in a deep voice: "Are you... Ke Lan? Or something else?"
"Of course I'm Ke Lan," Ke Lan replied.
Thirty-three turned his head and glanced at Ze Luo, who nodded to him and removed the space barrier around Ke Lan.
"Just now... what on earth happened? Why were you staring at that glowing floor tile? No matter how I called you, you seemed to be completely deaf to me? Also, why did your body glow along with the floor tile? I heard from Ze Luo that Mo Jue also had this 'symptom' before he turned into an 'Eclipse Corpse'... Could it be that you just approached the critical point of some kind of over-eclipse?" Sanshisan asked a series of questions in one breath.
"...Don't worry, I'll answer them one by one." Ke Lan waved his hand and said, "The order of the Alpha characters on this floor tile has changed. I guess it's because after absorbing the flesh and blood of the corpse, some mechanism inside the floor tile was activated. These inscription characters were recombined into an inscription with a completely different meaning from the previous prayer. It's not that I couldn't hear you just now, but the amount of information contained in this inscription was too much, and I couldn't help but be fascinated by it."
Although many contents overlapped with what Ke Lan had guessed before, when the truth was revealed before his eyes, it still had a strong mental shock on Ke Lan.
"What's the content?" Thirty-three asked subconsciously.
"If I told you, I'm afraid you would..." Ke Lan made a "you know" expression to Sanshisan. The latter was stunned at first, but then reacted immediately.
The contents of these inscriptions even caused such amazing changes in Ke Lan's body, not to mention him, an "ordinary person".
"So, is your body... okay? To be honest, I really thought you were going to turn into something called 'Corpse'..." said Sanshisan.
"I'm not sure... maybe I've just walked around the edge of the 'super eclipse'." Ke Lan put on his clothes, buttoned them up and zipped them up. "But to be honest, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have felt anything unusual in my body."
But she really didn't feel anything when she was being eroded... Ke Lan added in her mind that when the tentacles "grew" on Mo Jue's forehead, she herself didn't notice it at all. As for whether she felt anything when she turned into an eroded corpse later, that was unknown.
"By the way, didn't you say before that this kind of 'erosion' is irreversible? Then why did your body return to its original state?" Thirty-three looked at Ke Lan with a little curiosity.
"Maybe... it's because my own erosion is already very serious..." Ke Lan said, "Although I look no different from a normal human now, my erosion is probably dozens or even hundreds of times that of Mo Jue's eroded corpse... It shouldn't be strange for me to glow or something, right?"
Ke Lan thought that if he dug a piece of flesh out of his body, it would grow back quickly. Logically, it should be normal for him to grow some tentacles or other strange organs that did not belong to humans. However, his body had always maintained a human appearance and had never changed...
Is it because I have always firmly believed in my heart that I am a human being?
What if...
Ke Lan imagined the back of his hand covered with scales. Soon, a slight itching sensation came from the back of his hand. The originally fair and smooth skin suddenly turned into a hard stratum corneum and split apart, forming layers of stacked scales that covered the back of Ke Lan's hand.
After Ke Lan gave up this idea, the scales on the back of his hand immediately returned to its original fair and smooth skin.
Even the position of the pores is exactly the same as before.
"Hiss..." Ke Lan couldn't help but feel a strange feeling in his heart. He looked at Ze Luo, and Ze Luo also looked at him.
The hand that had undergone the change was always behind its back, so Sanshisan did not see this surprising scene.
Ke Lan remembered that he didn't have this ability before - he had imagined himself turning into a monster more than once, but his body had never undergone such changes... This was the first time.
Could it be that the corroded body has deteriorated to a certain extent, allowing the flesh to gain the ability to change shape at will?
There is at least one thing Ke Lan is certain of, the closer to the critical point of "super erosion", the more powerful the eroded person will gain...but trying to gain power in this way is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst.
"Then you could turn into a 'Corpse' at any time?" Sanshisan frowned, "Like a time bomb."
"In fact, it's the same for everyone. This kind of erosion is impossible to prevent." Ke Lan sighed, "Even if you close your eyes and plug your ears to block all your senses, as long as your brain is not completely dead, it can even instill those things into your mind through dreams... In the face of this kind of power, humans are simply unable to resist."
In fact, he didn't say the second half of the sentence: Not only humans are unable to resist, but the Alpha civilization is also unable to resist.
"Well, let's not talk about this... Let's talk about the stuff on the floor tiles. Even if you can't tell me what the inscriptions say, at least you have to let me know whether these things are related to the 'secret' that Mo Zhuorui and Heruni mentioned?"
Ke Lan nodded: "The truth about the disappearance of Alpha civilization should be recorded on the floor tiles of this square."
