Chapter 93

93/Seven Flows

Compared to the distant pollutant, Lu Yan felt something else was far more pressing.

"Please don't gender-bend me into a woman," he stated seriously.

The system's nonexistent fist clenched. [Calling you 'princess' isn't gender-bending! It's love, it's affection!]

The moon overhead did indeed wear a faint crimson shroud. Whether in Eastern or Western lore, a blood moon always heralded ill omens.

An annoying fly buzzed persistently, leading the way forward.

The path toward the manor grew narrower, the brambles on either side thickening, armed with deep black thorns. Small creatures occasionally rustled through the undergrowth.

Lu Yan's clothes were made of a special leather from the Eighth Research Institute, tanned from the hide of a mutated ox. Ordinary plant thorns couldn't pierce it; even lesser spiritual weapons struggled. Yet now, the black brambles were fraying the material.

Worried about being pricked and bleeding, Lu Yan grew a layer of fish scales along his legs. Golden scales that caught a faint gleam in the dim light.

Yan Bei curiously brushed a small tendril from his hair against them. "Is Lu Yan a fishy-fish?"

It tickled.

The system was stunned. [So… so stimulating.]

Lu Yan: ?

[I'm talking about the pollutant in the distance. Don't get the wrong idea.]

"Stop talking. Once we're back in the country, I'm contacting the Third Research Institute about a talent transplant."

[...]

[Crohman Manor has been a gathering place for the Deep Sea Society since the 16th century. Several of its past owners were burned at the stake. Generally speaking, if a wife hasn't borne children for years and the husband hasn't divorced her, it's usually the man who's infertile. The same goes for this married couple who became pollutants. The merchant, unwilling to let his shipping company die without an heir, joined the Deep Sea Society to pass on his inferior genes. Following the Deep Sea's guidance, he obtained something… special.]

[In short, the wife became pregnant. But she also began to mutate. The merchant had to hide her away, choosing the haunted Crohman Manor. He invited his friend from the Deep Sea Society—the doctor—to wait with him for the newborn's arrival.]

[By the second year of the pregnancy, the wife had fully mutated into a pollutant. Unfortunately, she was just a low-level, emotionless creature. She was locked in the manor's basement, waiting to give birth.]

[All the maids knew the lady of the manor had gone mad. Delivering her meals paid well, but it was dangerous.]

[Many of these maids were Filipina or girls from certain coastal provinces, sent by their families to earn money in Europa. Alone here, without kin, unable to speak the language. If they died, no one would care. Perfect meals for the lady.]

[My poor girls. Poor sacrifices.]

[If nothing went wrong, the fetus would have been born. But something did go wrong…]

The system lowered its voice. [This instance has three bosses. I think you've guessed: the doctor, the merchant, and the wife. Your task is to help the wife 'give birth' to the 'Eyes'. Then erase their consciousness so we can get ourselves a nice new pair of peepers, my treasure.]

"This seems different from the information in the dossier."

[If it were exactly the same, what would you need me for?]

Lu Yan began to pray that the peak pollution value for this area truly was the 6,700 recorded in the file. Any higher, and things would get messy.

He glanced at his phone. No signal, as expected.

I really must find a way to give the tech department a piece of my mind later. Useless every single critical moment.

[Your complaints are useless. This isn't a technical issue.]

Beyond the woods lay a pitch-black lake. At its center, on an island, stood a Gothic castle, its spires bristling with crosses.

Michael pondered aloud. "That's an excessive number of crosses."

Silver Gun coughed. "Gentlemen. There's no path from the lake to the castle. I'll look for a boat."

Michael cut him off. "No need for that trouble."

He slung his greatsword across his back. Pure white wings unfurled from his shoulders, their bases dusted with hints of gold.

Michael spread his arms, gesturing for Lu Yan and Yan Bei to come closer. "I've had specialized training. Carrying up to three hundred pounds in flight is no problem. You can head back from here."

Lu Yan's brow furrowed. "Do you have to carry us under your arms? Can't we do it another way?"

First, it had been Yang Tianxin at the mermaid club. Then Subject 01 at the institute. Being hauled around like luggage was an experience he'd rather not repeat.

Michael hesitated. "I could hold you… but you'd better not post about it on social media. I have a lot of fans. They might come after you."

Not likely, Michael.

Lu Yan picked up Yan Bei, who looked at him curiously, a small white flower blooming atop his head.

He was much heavier than expected.

[He is a tree, after all. Not a person.]

Michael then lifted Lu Yan into the air.

The combined weight of the two far exceeded three hundred pounds. His flight became wobbly, precarious, as if he might plummet from the sky at any moment.

The system choked up. [Your first time flying, and you didn't save it for your dragon puppy!?]

Lu Yan asked flatly, "Should I jump down now to preserve my virtue? Remember to erect a memorial tablet for me this time next year."

He looked down at the lake below.

The water was inky black, its surface dotted with disgusting pustules and numerous small whirlpools.

These whirlpools spun endlessly in the muck, like malicious eyes. Staring too long induced dizziness.

On the distant shore, the old hunter doffed his hat and waved.

The water looked so filthy that Lu Yan instinctively tightened his grip on Michael, accidentally plucking out a golden feather.

Before Michael noticed, Lu Yan tried to stealthily stick it back in.

Michael shot him a glance, straining under the weight. "Since you pulled it out, keep it. If you burn it, it can trigger the 'Holy Light' talent. Briefly repels pollutants."

[Effective range: Pollutants weaker than Michael.]

It seemed Michael was indeed a well-rounded support-fighter type. No wonder he was confident leading newcomers.

The manor's gate was dilapidated, its iron railings choked with thorns.

A sign at the entrance read: Private Property. Keep Out.

Up close, they could see that every cross on the estate had a person nailed to it. Long dead, weathered to skeletons by sun and wind.

Michael drew the red greatsword from his back and cleaved the already-weak chain.

The lock sizzled faintly, as if scorched. The severed thorns oozed a blood-red sap.

[Grudge-Twisted Thorns. Wild plants mutated by pollution. Pollution Value: 1,500. Regenerative. Can be refined into material for fishing nets.]

[They often grow where many have died unjustly.]

Michael took out his detector. The ambient pollution value had already risen to 3,500.

He turned, instructing, "I'll lead. Stay close. Don't get separated."

Still uneasy, he plucked a few more golden feathers, handing them to Lu Yan and Yan Bei.

Yan Bei whispered a thank you, thought for a moment, then quietly drew a small knife across his own arm.

A clear, water-like fluid welled up.

Six small white flowers bloomed on his head.

He plucked them, giving five to Lu Yan and, with obvious reluctance, one to Michael.

"You can eat these," he explained softly.

Without lifting a finger, Lu Yan had acquired three feathers and five flowers.

[In return, you could give them some of your golden scales. You are a koi, after all.]

Lu Yan felt that even if he were a koi, given his track record, he'd be one with a debuff.

He decided against such a reckless gesture.

Tonight's moonlight seemed unusually bright.

In the long-neglected garden, the fountain was dry, revealing carved marble patterns at its base. Lu Yan glanced at them. The designs weren't traditional roses or acanthus leaves, but tentacles covered in bulbous growths.

The relief carving made it look, at first glance, like actual octopus tentacles lay coiled in the garden bed.

[The merchant's shipping business involved some ancient sea worship. Under the Deep Sea Society's influence, he came to venerate a nameless Old God. Its external form is rather indescribable, most often manifesting as tentacles.]

[Lucky for him he didn't live to see Shen Qingyang become a pollutant. He'd have been overjoyed.]

Michael pushed open the castle's main doors.

Inside was, unsurprisingly, pitch black. The entry opened into a cathedral-like hall. Stained glass windows in the walls and dome cast fragmented, hazy moonlight. Combined with the faint, ghostly sound of a crying baby from outside, the atmosphere was pure horror film.

Lu Yan's night vision revealed more. At the center of the great hall stood a massive cross. Nailed to it was a figure of grotesque height—at least three meters tall.

Several rusted chains hung from the ceiling, binding the limbs of a corpse. Two long, sharp steel spikes pierced through its eye sockets. Behind the body, a pair of crimson wings hung limp and powerless. Its feet were no longer human, but a tangle of root-like, tubular structures that trailed down to the floor.

From the withered corpse, two trails of bloody tears had dried.

[This is clearly a highly aberrant Chosen One. The Michael beside you should be more familiar with him...]

[The three bosses in this castle have different desires. But their attitude toward outsiders is the same.]

Michael fumbled near the doorway for a while. "You've got to be kidding me. It's the 22nd century and there's no electricity? Not even those live-action mystery games are this cheap."

He pulled out his phone and switched on the powerful flashlight.

The beam swept over the figure on the cross, and Michael sucked in a sharp, cold breath.

His wings unfurled, and he shot into the air in an instant.

His hand trembled slightly as he reached out, tentatively placing his fingers beneath the nose of the figure on the cross.

No breath.

Even though he'd already guessed, Michael couldn't stop himself from gripping the greatsword in his hand until his knuckles turned white. "U... Uriel."

In ancient religious mythology, the God Jehovah was served by four great archangels.

Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel.

The myths couldn't be verified, but in the present day, there were indeed four such Chosen Ones.

They had awakened early in the outbreak of the Pollution Disease, during the same event, growing wings like those of angels.

It was a blessing from the unknown. For decades, they had used their own flesh and blood to shelter the world.

The titles of the Four Archangels were almost as renowned abroad as Tang Xian'an's was at home.

"Uriel was my comrade. He disappeared twenty-six years ago. His spiritual power threshold was 6,100 when he vanished. Headquarters searched for a long time but found nothing. Investigating his past correspondence revealed he'd been privately tracking the Deep Sea Society..."

"The Deep Sea Society was a religion popular on the peninsula last century, heavily involved in the occult. At the time, the Church of Bliss and the Deep Sea Society, one in the East and one in the West, absorbed many followers. Both cults are now considered toxic waste. The former's leader is the infamous S-Class pollutant, the Holy Spirit. But the Deep Sea Society's leader seems to still be a Chosen One, one who styles himself as God. They've been operating in secret."

Michael's gaze fell to Uriel's abdomen. A beautifully crafted dagger was embedded there, engraved with roses and wild lilies.

This was Uriel's dagger. An A-Class spiritual weapon named Hellfire.

"Uriel took his own life. He felt his aberration rate was about to cross the limit, so he ended it... but someone hung his body here." Michael's expression grew cold. "They didn't take the weapon. Uriel's spiritual weapon, Hellfire, has a corrosive fire effect on pollutants. So this was done by a high-level pollutant with intelligence."

He pulled the dagger free, descending back to the floor. His eyes swept over Lu Yan and Yan Bei before finally handing the blade to Lu Yan.

"Take it. Give it back to me when we get out," Michael said.

[Hellfire. An A-Class spiritual weapon.]

[Congratulations. You are temporarily in possession of one of humanity's strongest daggers. It truly was briefly bathed in divine blood, granting it burning, corrosive properties against all pollutants. Except psychic types. If not for Uriel, the child in the wife's belly could have been born twenty-six years ago.]

[Pretty cool, right? Go on, give it a try. The castle's first floor is the merchant's domain. The second and third belong to the doctor. The basement is the wife's delivery room.]

[Now, the merchant has been released by the doctor.]

The moon seemed to vanish from the sky, plunging the interior into absolute darkness.

Yan Bei's hair coiled tightly around Lu Yan's arm.

Michael frowned, lighting the wall-mounted lamps one by one.

"My aptitude is warning me," Lu Yan said softly.

Almost the moment the words left his mouth, the floor split open with a crack nearly a meter wide.

A mass of translucent mucus squeezed up from below. It resembled a half-developed egg—the egg white veined with blood, the yolk filled with spherical eyeballs.

Lu Yan drew the bow from his back and loosed an arrow.

The silver arrowhead struck an eyeball, bursting it in a spray of blood.

[Don't look at those eyes.] The System warned. [Staring at them will accelerate your aberration rate.]

This was clearly not the merchant's full form. The mucus continued to pour out, quickly spreading across the floor like a tidal wave, surging toward them.

[The Merchant. Pollution Value: 6,100. Aberration Direction: Mucous Liquefaction.]

[I refuse to acknowledge this thing as human. I think its aberration direction is 'Pollutant Reincarnated as Slime.']

[Among the thousands of eyeballs, one is its core. This mucus is its gastric fluid. Highly corrosive. Highly polluting. If only you could fly.]