Chapter 153 | I Transmigrated into Cultist Simulator

It was the seventh day after leaving Buenos Aires.

For the first time, Lucia deeply realized that 《Adventures in the New World》 and 《Travels in the Southern Wilderness》, which circulated among the scrap paper heaps of old bookstores, were nothing but lies made up out of thin air by third-rate writers sitting by their warm hearths.

Storybooks featured heroes, cowboys riding magnificent steeds, mysterious treasures, and romantic sunsets. In reality, an expedition across the Pampas consisted mostly of endless monotony, repetition, and exhaustion.

Rumble...

The heavy wheels turned slowly on the damp dirt highway.

Every day before dawn, Ryan would wake her. Washing up meant using bone-chilling morning dew or leather-flavored water from a canteen. Breakfast consisted of stone-hard dry biscuits, swallowed only after being softened in scalding, bitter black tea. Then came harnessing the horses, checking the axles, clearing the manure, and packing the sleeping bags.

Once the sun rose, it was a long journey of six or seven hours.

The carriage crawled across the boundless green plains, as if only the two of them remained in the entire world. Knee-high needle grass surrounded them under a sky so vast it induced vertigo. Occasionally, a hawk or two would circle high above, but otherwise, they did not encounter a single living soul to speak to.

In the evening, even more grueling chores awaited them—finding a sheltered depression to pitch camp, clearing weeds that might harbor venomous snakes, gathering dry cow dung and twigs for a fire, grooming the two horses, wiping their hooves, feeding them salted hay, and finally, boiling a pot of salty soup with tough salted beef and dried potatoes.

In just these seven days, tiny calluses had already formed on Lucia's once-delicate hands.

On the evening of the eleventh day, the carriage finally rolled into the town of Alberti.

This was the final southern stop of the Pampas railway built by the British, the very edge where Old World civilization met the true, untamed wilderness.

The moment they entered the town, the academic refinement of the University of Buenos Aires and the lively bustle of the harbor vanished. In their place was a coarse, wild atmosphere saturated with hormones and alcohol.

The streets were made of unplaned wooden planks, with muddy water churned up by horses and cattle flowing everywhere. Crooked signs hung on both sides of the street: “Old Argentine Cowboy Tavern,” “Pampas Furriers,” and “Guns and Flints Specialty.”

Those walking the streets were no longer ladies in skirts or professors with monocles, but retired soldiers wearing wide-brimmed felt hats with heavy revolvers slung at their waists, cowboys smelling of raw hide and sour sweat, narrow-minded yet extremely fierce fur traders, and a few shifty-eyed bounty hunters of mysterious origins.

Ryan parked the carriage in the backyard of a wooden inn that looked slightly cleaner than the rest, handed the stableman a few pesos, and instructed him to feed the horses with high-quality hay.

As night fell, the tavern on the first floor of the inn became incredibly boisterous.

An accordion wheezed out out-of-tune folk songs, and the smell of cheap liquor and roasted meat filled every corner.

Wearing a simple tweed overcoat, Ryan sat at a round table in the corner, a plate of medium-rare roast beef and a glass of malt beer before him. Lucia sat obediently beside him, cradling a glass of warm milk with honey, her eyes scanning the rough men around them with a mix of curiosity and nervousness.

Like an ordinary traveler, Ryan occasionally stopped a passing bartender or offered a pack of English cigarettes to a few half-drunk members of a harvesting team nearby, quietly asking about the state of the southern salt marshes and plains.

“The south? Heh, young man, take a word of advice from a pal,” a burly veteran with an eyepatch said casually, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke. “Once you go fifty miles southwest of this town, there isn't even a proper road sign! The alkaline flats over there are dry enough to peel your skin off. Aside from those uncivilized native Indians, even the wolves don't bother going!”

Another fur trader chewing tobacco added, “Though it's strange. The ecology in the south seems much better this year than in previous years.”

Ryan lowered his eyelids slightly, keenly catching the phrase. “Much better ecology?”

“Yeah,” the fur trader slapped the table. “Normally at this time of year, those southwestern ranches would have run out of grass due to drought. But over the past six months, several harvesting teams and fur traders who came back from there have said the same thing: ‘The grass is growing exceptionally well this year.’ Even the thorny shrubs have sprouted fresh buds.”

“Just the grass growing well?” Ryan asked softly.

“Of course, what else? Is it going to grow gold instead?” The fur trader burst into laughter, waving to the bartender for another pitcher of liquor.

The others at the table laughed along, resuming their chatter about which tavern had the prettiest girls or where horse prices had gone up.

To everyone else, “the grass is growing exceptionally well” was just the most unremarkable bit of idle chatter, perhaps even a stroke of good fortune worth celebrating.

But amidst the noisy laughter, Ryan sat in the shadows, slowly pulling out his hardcover notebook. In the margins of the “March Harvesting Log,” he calmly wrote down a line:

“April 15, 1891, Alberti. Multiple testimonies confirm: Over the past six months, desertified land on the southwestern border has shown large-scale, non-periodic vegetation recovery. Locals attribute this to improving climate.”

Closing the notebook, Ryan took a small sip of the bitter malt beer.

Three days after leaving the town of Alberti, all traces of civilization vanished completely.

There were no more railway tracks, no more wooden plank roads, and even the dirt highway carved by wagon wheels disappeared into the overwhelming sea of tall grass.

It was also from this day on that Lucia truly felt the fragility of life and the harshness of the wilderness for the first time.

The crisis did not arrive in the form of overwhelming monsters, but descended suddenly through extremely mundane and painfully real events.

At noon on the fourth day, as the carriage crossed a dry, muddy ditch, the horse on the left suddenly let out a sharp cry and collapsed heavily to the ground, neighing in pain.

“Teacher!” Lucia shrieked in fright.

Ryan leapt off the carriage in an instant. Without panicking, he quickly unbuckled the harness and knelt to inspect the hoof. The horse's hoof had slipped into a deep hole hidden in the tall grass. The edge of the horseshoe had been shattered by a hard stone, and the flesh of the hoof was pierced and bleeding, already starting to swell and feel hot to the touch.

“It's a puncture from needle-grass, combined with an injury from stepping on loose rock,” Ryan said, his expression somewhat grave.

In a no-man's-land with no veterinarian and no spare horses, a lame horse often meant the entire party would be stranded and left to die in the wilderness.

Over the next three hours, he had Lucia stay on the carriage on high alert with the shotgun clutched tightly in her arms. Meanwhile, he used a heated dissecting knife to slowly pick out the foreign debris from the hoof, disinfected it with strong liquor, applied a thick layer of butter-and-sulfur ointment, and finally wrapped it securely with canvas.

By the time he finished, Ryan was drenched in sweat, his arms covered in bruises left by the thrashing of the frightened horse.

It wasn't just the horse's injury; the lack of water also began to hang over them like a sword of Damocles.

A small seasonal spring marked on the map turned out to be nothing but a pool of foul-smelling stagnant water and a few rotting skeletons of wild goats when they arrived.

They were forced to use the water stored in their leather canteens, strictly rationing their daily intake. Lucia's lips began to crack and peel, and her throat burned as if it were on fire.

Late one night, after they had missed their planned campsite and were forced to sleep in the open under the howling wind, huddled close to the carriage, Lucia wept for the first time as she listened to the cold howling of wolves in the distance.

Looking at Ryan, who was calmly wiping down the bolt of his shotgun beside her, she sobbed quietly, “Teacher... are we going to die here?”

Ryan paused his movements and turned to look at her.

Under the moonlight, Ryan's eyes remained as calm as a deep pool of water, devoid of any ripples, yet conveying an unparalleled sense of security.

“As long as you keep your wits about you, and maintain your observation and reverence for all changes around you, the wilderness will not easily kill you.” Ryan reached out a rough hand and pulled the blanket up for her. “Sleep. The sun will still rise tomorrow.”

That night, listening to Ryan's steady breathing, Lucia finally drifted into a deep sleep.

At dusk on the sixth day, the horizon was painted a glaring blood-red.

The carriage passed through a patch of thorny shrubs of varying heights. On the flat grassland ahead, the dilapidated ruins of human structures suddenly appeared.

It was a highly typical nineteenth-century South American border ranch.

The wooden fences had broken and collapsed, and the roofs of several houses built of brick, stone, and rammed earth had half-caved in. The doors creaked and groaned in the wind. Clearly, this place had been abandoned for a long time.

“Teacher, is anyone there?” Lucia asked nervously, clutching her small pencil to her chest.

“Stay on the carriage. Don't move.”

Ryan drew the revolver from his waist, grabbed the heavy double-barreled shotgun from the carriage, and walked cautiously toward the ranch step by step.

The atmosphere here was incredibly eerie.

If this place had been raided by bandits or native Indians, the house should have been in ruins. Yet when Ryan pushed open the half-closed wooden door, the sight before him was unexpectedly tidy.

A few coarse porcelain bowls sat on the wooden table, unused firewood was piled in the corner, and even the iron plow and hoe hanging on the wall were completely intact. There were no signs of fire, no bloodstains, and no damage from a struggle.

It was as if, on some ordinary morning, the owner had suddenly put down everything, willingly and in a great hurry departed, leaving behind even their most basic belongings.

Ryan walked over to the wooden table and found a worn record book stitched with sheepskin. He flipped it open; it was a log used by the rancher to record sheep counts and trade accounts.

What caught Ryan's attention even more was the state of the yard.

The ranch's vegetable garden was about half an acre, and its surrounding fences had long since rotted away. In theory, in an arid, alkaline border wilderness without human care, a garden abandoned for over six months should have been choked out by weeds or withered to dust.

Yet, the garden before them was growing exceptionally lushly.

The wild cabbage, tomatoes, and several unknown drought-resistant crops inside were growing like mad. Their stalks were as thick as small branches, and their emerald-green leaves shimmered with a healthy luster in the setting sun, completely choking out the surrounding weeds.

But it was merely “lush.”

There were no exotic flowers emitting strange lights, no twisted or deformed plants, and no supernatural energy fluctuations. It was as if it had received the world's most perfect fertilizer and most abundant irrigation—it was simply too healthy, healthy to the point of feeling unnatural.

Ryan knelt by the garden and used his dissecting knife to slice open the stalk of a cabbage.

An incredibly rich white sap welled out, releasing a faint, sweet aroma.

“No signs of disease...” Ryan murmured to himself. An imperceptible gleam flickered deep within his left eye. In his perception, the rhythm of life in this soil was steady and vigorous, as vibrant as an organ that should have been aging but had suddenly regained its youth.

He pocketed his knife and chopped up a few heads of cabbage. At last, they would have fresh vegetables for dinner tonight.

Night fell.

They decided to camp tonight in the ranch's relatively intact main house. Once the campfire was lit, the aroma of freshly boiled cabbage and tough beef filled the room, breaking the long-standing silence of this abandoned land.

After dinner, Lucia, who had been highly tense for several days, finally let go of her exhaustion. Leaning close to the warm campfire, she quickly drifted into a deep sleep.

She had a dream.

The dream was extremely brief, containing nothing frightening or terrifying.

In the dream, she saw no gods, nor did she see any towering world trees. She simply found herself walking barefoot through an incredibly vast, seemingly endless field of flowers.

The sunlight in the sky was warm and bright, and the wind brushing past her ears carried a gentle warmth, like a mother's touch.

Beneath her feet, countless plants—both familiar and nameless—grew at a visible rate. Green sprouts burst from the soil, and flower buds blossomed one after another. The dense aura of life enveloped her, bringing an unparalleled sense of relaxation and comfort.

It felt as though a traveler who had journeyed a long distance had finally stepped into a warm spring, completely soothing away even the deepest aches in her bones.

“Phew...”

Lucia took a deep breath, a sweet smile gracing her face in her sleep.

The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight filtered through the collapsed roof and into the room, Lucia opened her eyes.

Sitting up from her blanket, she felt completely refreshed. The exhaustion and mental tension accumulated over the past few days had vanished overnight, and even her cracked lips had regained their healthy color.

“Teacher!” Lucia stretched, calling out excitedly to Ryan, who was outside inspecting the carriage. “I had such a magical dream last night!”

Ryan turned around. “What did you dream about?”

Lucia hopped out of bed, gesturing excitedly as she described it. “I dreamed of a massive field of flowers. The sun was so warm, and so many plants were growing. When I woke up, I didn't feel tired at all, and my whole body felt warm!”

Upon hearing this, Ryan's gaze froze ever so slightly.

Recalling the abnormally lush garden and the arc of vegetation that continued to stretch southwest, Ryan methodically pulled out the 《Flora Observation Log》.

On the page dedicated to “Lucia's Personal Records,” he calmly wrote down a line:

“April 20, abandoned ranch. Lucia experienced a deeply comfortable dream state upon sleeping (dreamt of large-scale plant growth). Post-waking mental state and physical strength recovered at an abnormal rate. Continued observation of the resonance depth between her instinctual perception and local plant vitality is required.”

Having finished the entry, Ryan put away the notebook and stepped into the half-collapsed house to pack up the last of their things for departure.

Before leaving, Ryan walked over to the wooden table once more.

He reopened the worn sheepskin ledger left by the rancher. Previously, he had only scanned the trade transactions at the front, but this time, he meticulously flipped through every single page to the very end.

The earlier entries were entirely normal, consisting of mundane matters like “Sold twelve sheep in March” or “Purchased two tons of hay in April.”

However, on the very last page of the ledger, the once-neat handwriting had suddenly become sloppy, carrying an undercurrent of faint unease.

There were only two extremely brief sentences:

“January 12, 1891. The rain is good. The grass is growing too fast; the sheep cannot finish eating it.”

“January 28, 1891. Lord, the grass is getting higher.”

Beneath the sentence “the grass is getting higher,” there was a heavy ink line slashed across, nearly tearing the paper.

No follow-up, no explanation.

This was the last piece of writing left to the world by this ledger, and by this ranch.

The date stopped three months ago.

Ryan stared quietly at the heavy ink line.

Outside, a gentle breeze blew, rustling the overly lush cabbage leaves in the garden. Sunlight bathed the desolate yard; everything seemed so peaceful, so full of life.

But beneath this vibrant greenery, an inexplicable, indefinable strangeness, like a venomous snake lurking deep in the grass, was quietly spreading toward the secular world.