Midnight arrived.
Lu Yuan leaned against the base of a ruin wall behind the defensive position, eyes closed. His revolver rested on his knees, the hammer pulled back to the cocked position.
The area toward the collapsed tunnel entrance was quiet; for the fourth consecutive night, no ghouls had surged out. However, tonight there was a sound that had not appeared before. It did not come from the tunnel entrance. It came from the direction of the vertical shaft.
He first noticed it around two in the morning. It was an intermittent scratching sound, drifting up from beneath the cast-iron cover of the vertical shaft. It was very faint. It did not sound like the sharp noise of claws raking against iron, but rather like something soft slowly writhing against the inner side of the cover. The sound lasted for a few seconds, then stopped. After a while, it started again. There was no pattern to it.
Lu Yuan opened his eyes, careful not to disturb the others. He stood up and walked to the location of the vertical shaft. The cast-iron cover was still in place, and after he had slammed it back yesterday, he had reinforced the edges with a circle of stone debris. The circle of copper powder along the edge of the cover was still there as well.
But when Lu Yuan squatted down, he saw something wrong. The edge of the copper powder circle, specifically the section closest to the gap in the cover, had changed color. The once dark-red copper powder had turned a greyish-green in several spots.
He pinched a small amount of the discolored copper powder with his fingertips and held it under his nose to sniff. There was no burning sensation. The ability of copper powder to burn the Eerie comes from the 'meaning' imbued within it. Normal copper powder heats up and repels upon contact with a source of pollution; the temperature and the force of mutual repulsion are enough to kill low-level Eerie entities. Yet, here, the effect of the copper seemed rather ineffective.
The greyish-green substance was slowly seeping out from the gap in the cover, bit by bit corroding the active ingredients within the copper powder.
The scratching sound rang out once more. It was right beneath the cover. Lu Yuan placed his hand on the cast-iron surface. It was icy cold, but beneath his fingertips, he could faintly feel a subtle vibration. Something was writhing on the other side of the cover, pressing against the iron plate, tentatively trying to push its way out.
"The thing below wants to come out."
Lu Yuan withdrew his hand and stood up. The copper powder circle was still effective overall; only the small section closest to the gap had discolored, accounting for about one-tenth of the entire circumference. At this rate, it would take another three to four days for it to fail completely. However, the copper powder could be replaced, so the threat was not immediate. Lu Yuan did not make a scene. He walked back to the defensive position and woke Bo Er, saying only: "Assign someone to watch the vertical shaft, and replace the copper powder every two hours."
Bo Er glanced at him, asked no questions, and nodded.
Throughout the rest of the night, the scratching sound occurred several times. Each time it was very short, with a sense of being very cautious. As the sun appeared, day broke. The seventh night had ended.
When the runes on the city wall lit up, Lu Yuan stood at the window on the second floor of the Alchemy Workshop and visually estimated their brightness. When the light reached the North Ward, the glow of the runes was reduced to nothing more than a thin veil. Bolen had gone early to check the section of conduction pathways he had repaired. When he returned, his expression was grim. "The backflow is starting to accelerate," the old man said, and that was all.
But there was no better solution for the time being. They could not return to the pipe network layer in the short term. Lu Yuan, meanwhile, looked at the edge of his vision, where grey-white text emerged silently.
【Sanity: +12…101/120】
【Guard I: +0.3…4.9/10】
"We'll just have to observe for now..."
Lu Yuan flexed his right hand; the split in the crook of his thumb had formed a hard scab, but there was still a pulling sensation when he clenched his fist. Moreover, there was important business today: dissecting those two greater ghouls.
Lu Yuan went behind the Alchemy Workshop to check on the state of the two greater ghouls. The copper powder circle was intact. The smaller one was quieter than yesterday. The severed limbs had stopped bleeding, and the grey-red fibers were still writhing extremely slowly, as if the body were still attempting to heal. Its degenerated eyes were half-closed, and its body was curled into a ball. The larger one was still writhing silently. Its shattered jaw opened and closed, emitting a garbled hissing sound. The grey-red fibers at its severed limbs were more active than those of the smaller one, stretching out from the cross-section one by one, slowly groping in the air, continuously healing.
Lu Yuan returned to the Alchemy Workshop to retrieve his dissection tools. When he pushed the door open, Bolen was already waiting on the first floor. The old man stood at the entrance leaning on his cane, his toolbox placed by his feet. Kail was behind him carrying another box, his expression somewhat nervous. Bolen spoke before Lu Yuan could even open his mouth.
"I've been thinking about one thing all night."
Lu Yuan looked at him.
"Those two greater ghouls in the pipe network—why would they act like that?"
Bolen's voice was not loud, but he spoke faster than usual. "Those that charge up from the ground, no matter how large, are just Eerie entities. They don't detour, they don't coordinate; they howl when struck and keep charging after the howling stops. But those two in the pipe network were different. One was catalyzing humans, and the other was commanding the face-hounds. This is not rational."
The old man looked at Lu Yuan. "During the mutation process of a ghoul, the brain tissue undergoes large-scale degeneration and atrophy. According to basic common knowledge in Inscription and Eerie Lore, the brain capacity of a ghoul above the second rank is less than one-third of what it originally was. The brains have rotted away. How could they possibly become intelligent?"
Lu Yuan did not respond, because he also wanted to know the answer.
"There is one more thing," Bolen pointed to his toolbox. "I want to see if there are any clues on those two things related to the pipe network backflow. I have spent my life repairing inscriptions; I am more sensitive to the corrosion and pollution of copper than any of you. If there are traces of the pipe network pollution source within the ghouls... I will know the moment I touch them."
He paused. Lu Yuan looked at him. The old man's eyes were glowing again, just as they had been when he saw the copper pillar at the edge of the abyss.
"Aren't you afraid?"
"I am," Bolen answered without hesitation. "But I am more curious."
Lu Yuan was silent for two seconds. "Tell me before you touch anything. Some tissues might have pollution residue."
"I know my limits."
The three of them walked behind the Alchemy Workshop. Bo Er and a Nightwatcher stood guard on the perimeter. They started with the smaller one, leaving the larger one alive for later comparison. Lu Yuan laid out the professional instruments Laurina had left behind on the empty ground nearby: knives, bone saws, forceps, and glassware. He retrieved a pair of thick leather gloves from the bottom of his toolbox and put them on. Kail helped by handing him tools from the side.
Bolen squatted near the head of the ghoul, his toolbox open, a blue-white faint light flickering in his eyes as he stood ready. Lu Yuan picked up the scalpel. The split in the crook of his right hand had not fully healed, and his fingers felt stiff when gripping the blade. The first cut into the keratinous layer went slightly askew. He switched to using his left hand as the primary grip, with his right hand only assisting in stabilization.
The keratinous layer was harder to cut than expected. It wasn't because it was thick; on the contrary, the keratin thickness of the pipe network ghouls was thinner than those on the surface. But the density was far higher. The blade struggled to cut in, like slicing through a piece of compressed, hardened leather.
Bolen leaned in and placed his hand on the cross-section of the opened keratinous layer; a blue-white glow lit up for an instant. "The density is abnormal," the old man said, using a carving knife to scrape off a layer of debris and rubbing it between his fingertips. "The arrangement is extremely dense. It looks like it was compressed by some external force; this is not a naturally grown structure."
Lu Yuan did not stop and continued cutting downward. The muscle layer was exposed. Between the grey-red muscle fibers, a large number of thread-like objects were densely entwined. They were grey-green—the exact same color as the substance backflowing through the copper pipes in the network. They permeated between the muscle fibers like fungal hyphae, winding, inserting, and intertwining, having almost grown into the muscle tissue itself.
Lu Yuan used his forceps to clamp onto a section of it, carefully peeling it away from the muscle fibers. It was about two centimeters long, slightly thicker than a hair, with extremely fine markings on its surface. He held the forceps up to his eyes. The thread-like object moved. It was not the recoil from being stretched straight, but autonomous writhing. That small section of grey-green material on the tip of the forceps began to slowly curl and expand after detaching from the ghoul's muscle tissue. Two of its ends were groping blindly in the air, like a severed worm.
Lu Yuan's movements paused for a moment. Bolen leaned his face in. Seeing the writhing object, his pupils contracted sharply. "It's actually alive?"
Ignoring Bolen, Lu Yuan placed the thread-like object into a glass dish. It landed on the bottom of the glass, paused for less than a second, and then began to slowly crawl along the inner wall of the vessel. Where it crawled, it left a very fine, grey-green wet trail. Then, it touched a small piece of ghoul muscle debris remaining at the bottom of the dish. It drilled inside. The speed was so fast that the naked eye could barely keep up. In just two seconds, the color of that debris changed from grey-red to grey-green, and thread-like patterns identical to those inside the ghoul's body appeared on its surface.
【Detected Target: Unknown Hyphae (Unknown Sub-species)】
【Characteristics: Suspected mutated derivative of a known scavenger fungus species, with an unknown evolutionary path. It bears similarities to scavenger fungus in morphology, but there are significant differences in color, activity, and growth patterns.】
【Note: There is an unclear symbiotic relationship between this hyphae and the ghoul individual... Knowledge insufficient, analysis interrupted.】
【Weakness: Unknown.】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.3…13.8/100】
Lu Yuan stared at the glass dish. This was not the ghoul's own tissue. This was an independent living thing—a type of hyphae parasitic within a living body. It could invade the host's body, infiltrate along muscle fibers, spread, and transform the host's tissue into part of itself.
Bolen also stared at the dish for a long time. "The pollution in the pipe network..." the old man's voice was somewhat dry. "Is it the same thing as this?"
"I'm not sure, but I suspect there's a connection." Lu Yuan frowned and picked up the scalpel, turning to the ghoul's forelimb. After cutting through the skin layer, Lu Yuan discovered a structure that the surface ghouls did not possess: a meat sac. It was about the size of an adult's thumb joint, embedded deep in the muscle of the palm. The interior was filled with grey-red mucus, exactly the same as the secretions the two greater ghouls used when catalyzing human mutation.
【Detected Target: Subcutaneous Parasitic Sac (Dormant)】
【Contents: Composition unknown, highly similar to secretions on the surface of certain high-level ghouls... Knowledge insufficient.】
【Inner wall root system structure suspected to have a homologous connection with the cyan hyphae... Analysis interrupted.】
Lu Yuan dissected the meat sac completely. The inner wall was covered with the roots of the grey-green thread-like objects. It was not a simple attachment; the roots had already grown into the wall of the meat sac. The threads wrapped around the sac wall like vines, their roots penetrating the wall and growing together with the part of the ghoul's body that was originally capable of secreting mucus.
"This meat sac was not grown by the ghoul itself," Lu Yuan said, looking at the mass of flesh still pulsing before him. "It is a new organ constructed within the ghoul by the hyphae."
Bolen did not speak, clearly having discovered it as well. The structure of a ghoul was covered in even the most basic books. Anyone with a bit of common sense in Eerie Lore knew that this thing should not appear inside a ghoul. He retrieved something from his toolbox: a small fragment of copper pipe, a sample taken from the break in the conduction pathway yesterday, with a dark brown corrosion layer on the inner wall. He placed the copper pipe fragment next to the dissected meat sac. He pressed one hand on the copper pipe and the other against the meat sac, closing his eyes. A blue-white faint light lit up from both hands simultaneously.
It was very quiet. Kail did not dare to breathe loudly beside them. Over ten seconds passed. Bolen opened his eyes. His expression had changed.
"This thing really has a pulse?... And the rhythm of the pulse is actually patterned??" Bolen revealed a look of astonishment. "The interval of the pulse inside this thing is actually completely consistent with the rhythm of the pipe network backflow?"
Homologous. The grey-green substance backflowing in waves through the pipe network. The deep corrosion on the inner wall of the conduction pathways. The living thread-like objects inside the ghouls. The dark green vines with eyeballs in the catchment basin. They were, in all probability, the same thing.
【Bronze City Status: +1, 6/50】
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