Chapter 708: Neo's Suicide

Chapter 708: Neo's Suicide

This bizarre and bloody scene plunged everyone around into a mental stagnation.

I am wearing a high-end customized divine robe, carrying two issued protective holy artifacts, possessing two guardian marks left by divine artifacts in my palm, as well as various potions, scrolls, and my own exclusive props;

The original anxiety should have been: whether one could endure until completing the mission and getting out.

It was like taking a deep breath to dive, hoping to surface before the oxygen was depleted. This was the perception of most people before entering.

Yet reality directly slapped them across the face: as it turned out, the pollution could completely ignore all your self-righteous protections.

You were not diving, there was no timestamp to calculate, and there was no progress bar to display; the moment you jumped down, the originally blue and clear seawater could very well turn into sulfuric acid instantly.

With a splash, a person went in; with another gurgle, the skeleton floated up.

This was divine pollution.

Karen pursed his lips, the words Kevin had spoken to him surfacing in his mind:

"Divine pollution is not a demon beast, not an exotic demon, it is not an entity with subjective consciousness, but that is precisely what makes it most terrifying.

It cannot be predicted, much less traced, and even the aberrations manifested after being contaminated have countless ways of unfolding.

Even a god would find this kind of pollution extremely troublesome.

Because it is, after all, a plague formed after the death of a god."

In front of it, even clergymen with ample protection were as fragile as paper; if this pollution were not controlled in time and allowed to spread, the realm of living beings it encompassed would all become a Paradise Lost with a dark theme.

Standing in the distance, Neo watched Toliso suddenly go mad and self-mutilate, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly; yes, he was forcing himself not to laugh out loud.

Was it random?

Then,

If it fell upon me, would I be able to die with peace of mind?

Whether to the living Karen or to the deceased Elisa, he could finally give an account;

After all, he wouldn’t be committing suicide, but dying in an accident, and well, the motive even carried a grand attribute.

Indeed, Neo had insisted that Karen add his name to the list partly for this reason.

For a very long time, or rather, ever since Miss Elisa's accident, Neo had been preparing to lie down permanently, yet he could never find a posture that satisfied him; tossing and turning, he always felt there was still a pea beneath dozens of layers of mattresses poking at him.

Let it be me next, let it be me next...

May the God of Light bless me, may the Bloodthirsty Ancestor bless me, may the God of Order... Neo glanced at Karen in the distance and frowned slightly: Bah.

Toliso's heart stopped beating, and his entire body froze with it.

However, just when everyone thought it was over, that heart began to turn black, and then with a series of rapid bangs, it began to beat violently again. Toliso himself abruptly stood up, his arms flung open as wisps of black smoke erupted from his body, as if he were undergoing dissolution... no, volatilization.

In just a few breaths, more than half of his entire body dissolved away, and that black heart was also dissolving;

In the end, except for his backpack and clothes, the man himself completely vanished, but that banging sound of the heartbeat continued to echo relentlessly.

He was dead, but his body and soul had been twisted, or rather re-interpreted, becoming a part of the surrounding pollution.

Karen felt a twinge of pity in his heart; this man had just requested a chance to meet him on behalf of his daughter, and now, it was already over.

But there were no further emotions, because before entering this place, everyone had prepared themselves psychologically.

The extremely solemn volunteer assembly from earlier was, in truth, a funeral held in advance.

At this moment, Richard spoke up: "It doesn't seem as cold as before."

Little Jerry possessed a unique sensitivity to the surrounding environment.

Muri said: "Is it because someone was just contaminated, so the level of pollution around us has decreased? If someone in the team gets contaminated, does it mean that for the next period of time, the probability of others being contaminated is lower, forming a short-term protection in disguise?"

Karen immediately refuted: "No, it follows no patterns, and have you forgotten? The surrounding clergymen kneeling on the ground—they were all victimized almost simultaneously back then."

There must be no reliance on luck, because it offered no patterns for you to figure out; once you self-righteously believed you grasped some pattern, you would likely die even faster.

"Director Karen, no matter what, let's go in," Quaito said. "Let's strive to be quicker and finish the mission."

The inside of the cave was bound to be more dangerous, but they had no way back; rather than staying put to savor the pain and fear, it was better to plunge ahead blindly to avoid remaining here to endure further mental torture.

But right at that moment, Alfred suddenly crouched down.

"Alfred?"

Karen walked over, and Alfred immediately stood up, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe the cold sweat from his face.

"Young Master, just now dozens of consciousnesses suddenly entered the mental chain, almost tearing my mind apart."

When saying this, Alfred deliberately scanned the surroundings; clearly, the consciousnesses he referred to were those of the clergymen kneeling on the scene.

"How is it now?"

"After severing the mental chain, it's fine. The pollution here can be transmitted through the mental plane."

"Do not probe it."

"Yes, I understand."

"Let's go in."

"Understood, Young Master."

Karen walked over and picked up Toliso's backpack; the closer he got to the position where the man died, the clearer the sound of the beating heart became.

The moment he turned to walk back, a wisp of breeze seemed to blow past Karen's ear, as if someone were leaning in close and whispering to him:

"Director, what you promised me, you must absolutely never forget."

Karen ignored the voice, threw the backpack to Ventura to continue carrying, and waved his hand to signal everyone to enter the cave.

It was still Neo and Philomina in the lead, while Karen brought up the very rear of the team.

The cave tunnel was not deep and was quite spacious, but there were many defensive arrays and barriers; each one was immensely powerful, and all were in an activated state.

This meant that after the experiment failed, the people inside had activated the self-isolation arrays; though the sin was of their making, they could be counted as having contributed their share to suppressing the pollution.

Without these layers of obstructions, the first wave of pollution leakage and diffusion might have been enough to break through the seal set up by Bishop Delon and his men.

However, the overflow at the periphery was already this terrifying and bizarre; heaven knew what they would encounter in the deepest depths inside.

The four young experts stepped forward one after another, opening the defensive arrays one by one; this was where they were needed. The four of them handled all the technical work, while the task of the remaining volunteers was to protect them and carry the equipment and tools—or to put it more bluntly, to die ahead of them.

Finally, they reached the bottom of the tunnel, and a tightly closed, massive stone door appeared before them.

Inside was where the laboratory lay.

Nicole, the expert from the Church of Principles, stepped forward; runes appeared in her palm, and similar marks changed on the stone door. Soon, accompanied by a heavy grinding sound, the stone door slowly opened.

But right at that moment, a bizarre light suddenly erupted from the stone door; the massive stone door now looked like a chocolate sandwich biscuit soaked in milk;

It was fine while still, but once pulled... it broke apart, and the contents it had absorbed began to drip and ooze out.

Everyone subconsciously began to pull out scrolls and holy artifacts, and some were already prepared to stimulate the divine artifact marks to seek shelter, but that beam of light did not fully diffuse outward; instead, it vanished immediately after appearing, creating a slight visual drop and dizziness.

Yet the surrounding air seemed to boil instantly, and from behind them came a clamor; everyone immediately turned around to look back. There was nothing behind them, but the sense of clamor was drawing closer and closer.

Vaguely, it brought a foul stench that covered and erased all traces.

Located at the very rear of the team, Karen did not hesitate for a second and stimulated the mark left to him by Goddess Mylas's Harp in his palm; a blue halo diffused outward with him as the center.

Although the impact was formless, Karen could still perceive the trembling of his soul, as if a ferocious beast with a blood-red maw were lunging straight toward him.

Without retreating, without dodging, Karen even took a few deliberate steps forward.

At this moment, his sense of duty made him reflexively choose this path; Bern had allowed him to steal the greatest share of the spotlight at the volunteer assembly, so it was only natural that he should now step up and shoulder the greatest share of the risk.

Boom!

Had it been blocked?

It seemed blocked, yet it also felt as though it had not; the burning heat within his body grew increasingly intense, like something frantically boring into every single pore of his flesh, while a membrane seemed to arise between his consciousness and his body, a formless power wrenching and severing the two apart.

In his daze, Karen caught the sound of footsteps nearby, alongside the approaching murmur of a conversation:

Do you know what it will mean for us if the project does not succeed?

What will it mean? I only know that even if this project is executed step-by-step with absolute precision at every single stage, the final probability of success is already inherently low.

Heh, by the same token, the probability of this project failing in the exact manner we want it to fail is also very low.

So, what exactly do you mean?

Our contingency plan for failure, I believe it can be upgraded further.

Our contingency plan level is already incredibly high. Do you know how much breath I have to waste every time I go back to brief them on the project’s progress, just to convince those lords not to slash the budget for this item?

I still feel it isn’t high enough, because it cannot withstand the most extreme failure scenario.

Then you needn't worry, because you could have the best contingency plan in the world, and you still wouldn’t be able to withstand that kind of consequence.

Karen opened his eyes and saw two elderly men walking side by side further and further ahead of him; one wore the divine robes of Order, the other wore the divine robes of Principle.

Suddenly, Karen sensed someone behind him. He turned around and saw a shadow that had appeared behind him at some unknown moment, and from within that shadow, a long sword reached out, already impaling his body.

Yet previously, he had been utterly oblivious to it.

Suddenly, the sword began to turn purple, subsequently disintegrating into strands of purple hair that rushed rapidly into his body, dense and fast, refusing to spare a single pore.

His nasal passages began to clog, and his ears were stuffed with the purple hair; upon entering, they began to rapidly multiply, and after multiplying, they sought to get out.

Once, twice, thrice...

They could not get out; a cycle that was supposed to function normally seemed to have jammed right here.

Then, they began to fall into disarray, becoming frantic; if they truly possessed a consciousness, they would probably cry out in alarm: This is not the track we anticipated.

Karen reached out, clutching his chest, grabbing a handful of the purple hair and pulling it outward.

The process was agonizing, as if the blood vessels throughout your entire body had turned into steel wool, and during the extraction, every single part of your being radiated an aching torment unbearable to ordinary men.

Fortunately, Karen’s pain threshold was high, particularly his endurance for extreme pain; it was not that he could not feel the suffering, but rather that he could remain perfectly clear-headed while in excruciating pain.

Finally, a mass of purple flocculent matter was torn out by him, and those hairs began to melt, gradually twisting to form a face; though somewhat abstract now, it could still be recognized as Tolisso.

Minister Karen... do not forget your promise to me... hahaha hehehe...

He was not Tolisso.

Yet it had attached itself to him.