When the thirty-odd tribal natives dressed in bark and feather crowns fell to their knees on the deep green moss, a suffocating silence descended upon the world.
The white pollen in the forest drifted down quietly like snowflakes, landing on the old man's hair and on his trembling, raised arms.
“...Maha... Tura... Mal-Keth...”
“Teacher... what are they saying?” Lucia tugged at the back of Ryan's trench coat, her voice as faint as a mosquito's hum, her small face slightly pale with tension.
Ryan did not answer. He shook his head, signaling the girl to remain quiet.
He could not understand them.
Even though Ryan possessed the decryption logic for several ancient languages, facing these primitive syllables, which were completely detached from modern grammatical structures, was like staring at a book written in heaven.
After a long while, the voices of the prayer gradually subsided.
The leading old man finally raised his head slowly. His face was covered in deep, crisscrossing furrows like tree bark, and his eyes were cloudy, but a highly bizarre pale pink glow shimmered in the whites of his eyes.
Supporting his slightly hunched body, the old man stood up shakily from the moss.
He paid no attention to Ryan, who stood in his path, but approached Lucia step by step with a nearly devout, cautious posture.
Ryan's finger imperceptibly pulled back the hammer of his revolver.
But the old man did not make any aggressive movements. He stopped half a step away from Lucia, then extremely slowly raised his calloused and dirt-stained palm.
He did not touch Ryan, nor did he spare a glance at the gun's muzzle.
The old man extended his index finger, which was as rough as a withered branch, and extremely gently—as gently as a bird's feather landing on water—lightly tapped the exact center of Lucia's forehead.
Then, the old man closed his eyes.
Hum.
Three seconds later.
The old man opened his eyes. The pale pink glow in his cloudy eyes instantly flared, the wrinkles on his face twitched violently, and two streams of cloudy tears even rolled down from the corners of his eyes.
He turned around and spoke a long string of rapid, high-pitched indigenous words to his clansmen, who were still kneeling on the ground.
Clack!
As they conversed, the young hunters stood up and stepped aside, leaving a narrow passage. But when Ryan led Lucia through, he could clearly feel four or five pairs of cold eyes on them.
Just as they entered the edge of the tribal settlement, Ryan felt a subtle resistance in the shadows.
They were brought to a wooden hut located at the very edge of the settlement, isolated and damp.
The air was thick with an excessively rich, almost sickeningly sweet fragrance of flowers and tree sap.
Having spent only half an hour in the tribe, Ryan already felt a faint burning sensation in his lungs. With every breath, the tiny, glowing fluorescent spores floating in the air would slip down his trachea into the depths of his alveoli, bringing a faint but continuous sensation of numbness.
“Teacher... I'm so tired, I want to sleep...”
Lucia sat on the moss bed, her eyelids drooping as if weighed down by lead. Her face wore an abnormal flush, and she collapsed limply onto the bed, lacking even the strength to take off her shoes.
It was not just Lucia.
Ryan himself felt that extremely dangerous sense of comfort.
Leaning against the damp wooden wall, every muscle in his body seemed to clamor for relaxation. His bones felt weak and soft, and all the vigilance and rationality in his brain seemed to be slowly softened by warm water. A voice in his heart kept coaxing him:
“Just lie down... There is no conflict here, no poverty, no danger. Why not take a sleep here?”
Ryan bit the tip of his tongue hard!
A sharp, salty, and spicy pain exploded in his mouth, instantly clearing his mind a bit.
This forest was devouring human will.
Its life force was too abundant, so abundant that it was like a swamp of thick honey. When mortals stepped in here, there was no need for potent toxins or ferocious beasts; simply breathing the air would unknowingly strip them of all aggressiveness and vigilance through this overly sweet life force, eventually turning them into fertile nourishment to feed the forest.
Toward evening.
Ryan leaned in the shadow of the tree hollow, reaching into his inner pocket for his heavy revolver.
His hand touched the cold metal.
But when he pulled out a bullet and examined it closely, his brows knit tightly together.
The surface of the brass casing, originally solid and tightly sealed, was now covered in a thin layer of fine green moss. The moss was spreading across the brass at a visible rate, and the metal around the firing pin had even begun to show a fragile, oxidized decay.
Ryan pulled out his scalpel, attempting to scrape the moss off the casing.
But the moment the blade touched it, with a snap, the hard brass casing actually shattered like a dry cracker. The black powder inside spilled out, and upon contact with the damp air, instantly dissolved into a useless black sludge.
Ryan pulled out the revolver and emptied the ammunition one by one—out of the six bullets, four had completely misfired and gone moldy.
He felt the hardcover notebook in his pocket. He didn't even need to open it to guess that much of the handwriting inside had likely become blurred under the erosion of this moisture and these rules.
Just then, faint footsteps came from outside the tree hollow.
Ryan quickly slipped the ruined firearm back into his pocket, his hand resting on the handle of his scalpel.
The young hunter, his face painted with green sap, stood at the entrance of the tree hollow. Holding the leg of an unknown wild beast, he dropped it onto the muddy ground at the entrance with a wet thud.
He did not look at Ryan, only casting a glance at the sleeping Lucia, then snorted coldly and turned to melt into the night mist.
No words, no explanation.
Food was delivered, but thrown in the mud.
Ryan looked at the mud-covered meat, then at the darkening sky.
The next morning.
Before the thick fog had even dispersed, noisy sounds echoed from the tribe.
Ryan walked out of the tree hollow.
On the vine corridor not far away, four or five people were gathered.
A little girl of about seven or eight lay on the ground. Her face was pale blue, her breathing extremely shallow, and there was a bowl-sized dark bruise on her chest—she had accidentally been pricked in the back by a highly toxic wild thorn while playing in the canopy last night.
The toxin was spreading through her body. The little girl's limbs had begun to twitch, and her life force was rapidly fading.
The girl's mother crouched right beside her.
Normally, any mother seeing her child on the verge of death would surely hold her head and weep bitterly, desperately crying out for help.
Yet, the woman just crouched there quietly.
Her face wore an extremely gentle, even sweet smile.
She gently caressed the little girl's pale blue cheek with her hand, softly humming a soothing tune, as if comforting a child about to fall asleep. The surrounding onlookers from the tribe also watched this with smiles, their eyes as calm as a pool of stagnant water.
No one was anxious, no one ran to find herbs, and no one shed a single tear.
“Mama...”
The little girl cried out weakly, a bit of foam escaping her lips.
The woman was still smiling. Her smile was extremely standard, extremely beautiful, yet so cold it made one's bones ache. She even gently touched the little girl's forehead and whispered something.
Five minutes later, the little girl's breathing stopped completely.
She was dead.
The woman stood up, brushed the dirt off her skirt, picked up the little girl's cold body, and turned to walk deeper into the forest.
From beginning to end, her face did not show the slightest hint of sorrow, despair, or anger.
The entire tribe behaved like a group of puppets carved from ice, capable only of smiling.
Ryan stood a few paces away, a cold sweat breaking out on his back.
He finally understood the source of this bizarre feeling.
It was not that they were kind; it was that they simply lacked the emotions of sadness and fear.
Death was treated here as something as natural as a falling leaf. Their abundant "life force" had stripped them of their reverence for death, and had also stripped them of the most primitive human capacity for empathy.
This was not a human society at all; this was a group of... plants, completely assimilated by the forest.
II. Fragmented Perception
“Teacher...”
Lucia's weak voice came from behind.
The girl had woken up at some point and was tugging at the hem of Ryan's trench coat, her small face slightly pale as she watched the mother carry the corpse away.
“What did she... say just now?” Ryan asked softly, without turning around.
Lucia closed her eyes, trying to catch the faint, residual wavelength in the air.
After a long while, the girl shook her head, speaking with a bit of frustration and confusion:
“I don't understand... Teacher, I don't understand the specific words.”
“You can't hear the meaning?”
“No.” Lucia bit her lip. “I can only feel... that aunt didn't have any feeling of crying in her heart. None at all. Her heart... was very light, like she was just throwing away an old piece of clothing.”
Ryan reached out and stroked Lucia's hair.
That was enough.
Lucia was not an all-powerful translator. She could not translate these ancient syllables word-for-word into Spanish; what she could receive was merely the fragments of emotion released alongside the syllables.
And the emotional fragment the woman had released just now was "completely devoid of fluctuation."
When a person could remain as calm about the death of her own flesh and blood as if she were throwing away an old piece of clothing, the order practiced within this tribe had already crossed the boundary of humanity that Ryan could comprehend.
“Go back to the tree hollow,” Ryan said in a low voice, pulling Lucia along. “Do not interact with anyone here, and do not eat any unchecked food they give you.”
Noon.
Ryan attempted to make one final try.
Taking advantage of the tribal residents gathering in the central area, he led Lucia to a dirt slope at the edge of the settlement.
He pulled out his scalpel, crouched down, and attempted to dig up a plant root that was emitting a faint purple glow, intending to pack it into his cloth bag—even if he couldn't bring it back to the secular world, he wanted to try and preserve an independent physical sample within this forest.
However, the instant the tip of his blade severed the root—
Rustle...
The surrounding ground suddenly trembled slightly.
Ryan watched as the dirt inside the hole he had just dug with his scalpel actually backfilled itself like flowing water!
And the severed purple root, in less than three seconds after leaving its original spot, melted directly into a wisp of pale purple gas, silently rising into the air and vanishing without a trace.
Even the footprints Ryan had left on the ground were completely smoothed over by the wildly spreading moss the instant he lifted his feet.
No trace was left behind.
The Wood was actively erasing all disturbances brought by outsiders.
It refused to be changed, refused to be sampled, and even refused to "leave a trace."
Ryan stood up, looked at the pristine slope, and put away his scalpel.
He made no further futile attempts, nor did he try to dig up the soil again.
Night fell once more.
The tree hollow tonight was exceptionally cold and damp. The heavy fog outside had almost condensed into water droplets, continuously dripping down the wooden walls.
Lucia lay on the moss bed, her heavy eyelids closing.
The continuous consumption of spirituality over the past few days had left the girl's face somewhat pale.
Ryan sat beside her, holding the shotgun that now had no ammunition left, serving as a final blunt weapon.
Deep in the dark night, Lucia plunged into that dream once more.
This time, there were no long speeches, no complex scenes.
Within her extremely blurry and chaotic dream vision, Lucia saw only a vast, black fog.
Deep within the fog, the silhouette of an incredibly massive tree loomed, like a mountain towering between heaven and earth.
The shadow of the tree swayed.
Lucia could faintly see a blurry figure standing beneath that colossal shadow.
But that figure was too far away, separated by dozens of layers of dense fog and the void.
Lucia strained with all her might to see the other person's face, to see if they were male or female—
Crack!
Like fragile glass, the dream shattered without warning.
No sound, no dialogue, no prompt whatsoever.
Lucia opened her eyes abruptly, her forehead covered in cold sweat, panting heavily.
Ryan immediately handed over a bowl of cool rainwater: “What did you see?”
Lucia took the water bowl, took a large gulp, and shook her head in bewilderment: “Teacher... I didn't see anything clearly.”
“There was only the shadow of a tree, and a blurry person standing beneath it.”
“That's all?”
“That's all... Just as I wanted to walk forward, the dream shattered.” The girl's voice carried a hint of frustration and fatigue.
Ryan looked at the girl's pale small face and nodded gently.
No revelation, no oracle, they didn't even know who the other party was.
The truth was still tightly wrapped deep within that heavy mist, only revealing the tip of the iceberg.
Ryan turned his head, looking out at the pitch-black night, and the faint, swaying outline of the giant tree in the distant fog.
The tribe's hostility, the lack of human emotions, the erased samples, and these fragmented, blurry dreams...
Ryan pressed his hand onto the handle of the scalpel at his waist, the faint golden glow deep in his left eye burning calmly in the darkness.
Rate on N.U.
