Chapter 95

Chapter 95

Uriel's three-meter-tall corpse was bound in chains, with two iron nails driven into its eye sockets. Retrieving it wouldn't be easy.

So, despite the grief and fury burning in his chest, Michael chose to leave Uriel hanging on the cross. He'd notify the logistics team for a unified retrieval once the pollution incident here was resolved.

Back on solid ground, Lu Yan fought down a wave of nausea and immediately began collecting the arrows scattered across the floor.

His bow only came with fifteen bolts. Over time, he'd lost five to various misfortunes. Every remaining arrow was precious.

He wiped the filth from each shaft with a handkerchief, sprayed them with disinfectant, and slid them back into his quiver.

The last arrow he picked up had a shriveled eyeball impaled on its tip.

The iris was half silver, with no visible pupil. The spidery legs it once sprouted had all fallen off.

As Lu Yan plucked the eyeball from the arrowhead, King Carp split open a mouth in his palm. A crimson tongue lashed out like a frog's, aiming to snatch the morsel.

Lu Yan closed his fist around the eyeball.

The tongue slapped against his knuckles. Instead of getting angry, the creature coiled affectionately around his fingers, rubbing and sliding against his skin.

[Don't spoil the child.] The system's voice was stern. [This fish has already hatched. You can't let your 'precious son' eat it. If he does, its power becomes his.]

[When this fish hatched, three pollutants in the manor fought over it. One quarter went to the Merchant. One quarter went to the Doctor. The remaining half went to the Wife.]

Lu Yan stared at the eyeball, no larger than a broad bean, in his palm. "So... I have to eat it myself?"

[It's a special item stripped from a pollutant. It has nothing to do with human anatomy. If you need a comparison, think of it as... fish eyes.]

Lu Yan knew that, of course. The clarification was mostly for the censors—last time, a similar description had gotten him locked for three days.

Who knew what the original fish looked like? The texture was like thick-cut pork belly, bursting with greasy juice when bitten.

It sat heavily in his stomach. For such a small thing, it felt unnaturally dense and uncomfortable.

With the final arrow secured, Lu Yan rejoined the group.

Michael raised his lantern, thinking for a moment. "Perhaps you should return first. I sense great danger here."

After all, they were enthusiastic helpers from the distant East. If they died here, explaining it to the First District's Pollution Prevention Center would be difficult.

The system chimed in: [The child in the Wife's belly is about to be born. The next red moon is in a month. By then, it will be too late.]

Lu Yan turned to Yan Bei. "Do you want to go back?"

Yan Bei closed his eyes, pondered for a moment, and shook his head slightly. "Going back means traveling alone. Also dangerous."

[Scientific experiments long ago proved that plants have emotions and can think.]

[Because of his evolutionary form, Yan Bei can engage in simple telepathic communication with nearby evolved plants. While plant thoughts aren't as clear as a human's, they can still provide useful information.]

So, Lu Yan stated plainly, "Michael, I know what you're worried about. But the unknown pollutant ahead isn't something you can handle alone. Both Yan Bei's abilities and mine can help you."

Lu Yan's willingness to face danger moved Michael deeply.

He stepped forward and embraced Lu Yan. "My beautiful Eastern friend. When this mission is over, let's follow each other on social media."

This was Michael's highest form of friendship. His account had millions of followers, but he only followed nine users!

The staircase to the castle's second floor spiraled tightly around a central column.

The column was narrow, forcing them to turn every few steps. The dizzying ascent was deeply unpleasant.

Michael, feeling lightheaded, spread his wings again and airlifted everyone up.

If the first floor resembled a 13th-century church, the second was a marked improvement—at least advancing to the 20th century.

Lu Yan casually flipped a light switch on the wall.

Astonishingly, there was still power, though the light was dim and flickering sporadically, betraying years of neglect.

A drop of liquid fell from the ceiling.

Lu Yan looked up and came face-to-face with a clustered mass of eyeballs, pressed together like fish roe. A ring of pale yellow froth lined the edges.

Even he couldn't stop his Pollution Adaptation Index from uncontrollably rising by 1.5 points in that instant, pushing his data perilously close to the 50 mark.

Lu Yan took a deep breath. "Why didn't you remind me to bring an umbrella?"

The system sputtered: [...I... how was I supposed to know it would start drooling the moment it saw people?]

Drool. Somehow, that made it even more disgusting.

Lu Yan's face was impassive as he pulled out his last disinfectant wipe. "Don't look up."

He had the system, and his own index increased slowly. Breaking free from the gaze of the eyeballs was relatively easy for him.

His two teammates might not be so lucky.

Fortunately, neither Michael nor Yan Bei were horror-movie cannon fodder. They obeyed without question.

They didn't just avoid looking up; they practically glued their eyes to the floor.

The second-floor hallway resembled an art gallery, its walls lined with oil paintings.

"Religious paintings. The style is Renaissance. But the brushwork and technique don't match any school I'm familiar with."

Yan Bei had painted oils before, and Renaissance art was unavoidable in his studies. He was knowledgeable about the sculpture, murals, paintings, and even folklore of that period.

The further they walked, the more grotesque the paintings became.

Lu Yan asked the system, "Is this even something I should be looking at?"

[Look. It's free. If you feel off, drink some sedative.]

Reassured, Lu Yan continued his inspection.

Initially, the paintings depicted straightforward religious narratives. Then came more depictions of demons in hell.

Later still were indescribably bizarre images.

These seemed to portray sections of deep-sea creatures. Sometimes a massive, spiny fish eye. Other times, a half-rotted fish belly stuffed with human remains. These works bore the creator's signature in the corner.

Lu Yan leaned in. The artist was the owner of this manor, the boss of an ocean shipping company.

"Is this also some form of deep-sea worship?"

[No. This is just pure insanity.]

The final painting used a low-angle perspective.

The master knelt before a cluster of stone pillars. Enormous black tentacles, studded with ferocious eyeballs like those of a cold-blooded creature, coiled around the pillars.

The paintings had hung for who knew how long, gathering a layer of dust from neglect.

Yet, Lu Yan could still feel the artist's piety radiating from the canvas.

[If this were a game, you'd probably see a question mark floating above this painting. Indicating a searchable object.]

[It's not a game, but you have me. Tear this painting open. What you're looking for is inside.]

Lu Yan drew the red dagger and, under the puzzled gazes of the others, slit the canvas.

Red-brown paint, like congealed blood, seeped from the wound in the fabric.

Lu Yan tore the painting open. Behind it, tucked within the frame, was a faded, yellowing photograph.

The system let out a cold laugh. [Precious photographic evidence of a cult gathering.]

The setting was clearly a whaling ship, its hull's English lettering half-obscured.

A crowd of at least a hundred people stood at the ship's bow, their faces beaming with joy.

Most were Western faces, making the East Asian man standing front and center stand out strikingly.

It was Lu Cheng. The shooting date in the lower left corner was exactly one month before Lu Yan was born.

Michael asked, puzzled, "Lu, how did you know there was something in the painting?"

Lu Yan replied, "Intuition."

He tucked the photo into his pocket, his expression turning somber.

Michael sensed his distraction and wisely didn't press further. Everyone had secrets. Prying wasn't a good habit.

At the very end of the oil-painting hallway, three small frames rested atop a fire hose cabinet.

Lu Yan glanced at them and immediately frowned.

The first painting depicted a golden-haired, six-winged angel. Its face was blurred. A massive golden sword impaled its body. Its head had split open, a tree crown sprouting from within. More than half of its pristine white wings had turned black.

The second painting showed a tree, strikingly similar to the banyan from Luochuan Botanical Garden. A face twisted in agony was visible in its trunk, and its crown bloomed with black flowers.

The third painting depicted a person buried in the earth, face unseen. Their chest was slit open. Countless disgusting, ferocious tentacles, studded with fleshy tumors, erupted from their stomach, filling every blank space in the frame.

These paintings were like prophecies of their deaths.

Yan Bei stepped forward and touched them. "The paint isn't dry. Just finished."

All the paintings used dark colors, save for the vividly bright red of the depicted flesh and blood.

Irritated, Michael tore the three paintings to shreds. "What nonsense. Pure theatrics."

[The Doctor, in life, was also a believer of the Deep Sea Society. Besides that, he truly was your professional peer—an experienced obstetrician with a wealth of delivery experience.]

But the Wife in the basement refused to give birth, and the doctor had sprouted a few extra pairs of hands. So, he’d developed other hobbies. Dissecting corpses, for one. And painting.

“Did he take Wurilei’s talent?” Lu Yan asked internally.

System snorted. [Compared to the Wife and the Merchant, the doctor did retain some shreds of sanity. But a mutant whose evolution is incomplete… does that sound like the work of a functioning brain?]

[The one who took Wurilei’s talent is with the Deep Sea Society.]

[The doctor is currently in the third-floor operating theater. Installing his own brains. You see, he’s run out of other corpses in the castle to defile, so he’s developed a passion for self-dissection. Wurilei left him with some serious psychological trauma. To this day, he refuses to go near the first-floor hall, terrified the angel might rise from the dead.]

[Doctor. Pollution Value: 7019.]

[Talents: Surgical Precision, Genetic Fusion.]

[Pathology: Aberrant Morphology, Psychosis.]

[Defeat him to obtain the key to the basement.]