Falling into the Abyss

Vol 2 Chapter 9: Atonement: Red Earth (7)

Tanithel's words made Ethan a chill. He seemed to have thought of something suddenly, rushed to the medical room next door, turned on the computer to call up the medical files of all the previous staff, and randomly selected a few people to browse through it quickly. Unsurprisingly, many people complained to psychologists of insomnia, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and hearing non-existent voices and other symptoms during the week before the disappearance event. Even people who did not report their mental problems experienced some physical problems. Problems, such as feeling extremely tired, headaches, dizziness, nausea, etc., and injuries at work have also increased significantly. With the ten or so documents he opened at random, everyone had some problems in that week.

"Ethan! What are you messing around with yourself! Go!" Samus shouted outside, "There is not even a ghost here."

Hearing the three words ghost shadow, Ethan felt that his hairs were standing up.

Back in the previous lobby, no one else was found. It was already sundown, and the three moons were large and small, drawing out a faint silhouette in the indigo night sky at different distances. Behind the strangely shaped mountain shadows outside the horizon was a bright violet color, and the oblique light stretched the shadows of the conical plants not far away. The angle always made people feel a little inexplicable violation.

The mother ship ordered them to rest in the base for one night. Many of the non-people proposed to spread out and find a good night's sleep in the bedrooms of the original pioneers, but Ethan didn't think it was a good idea. He whispered and eagerly said to Samuel, "Now that the people on the mother ship are resting, we'd better go find the kind of plant that Tanithel said as soon as possible."

"Don't worry, we are still waiting to explain the situation after watching that video for everyone tonight, so that everyone can understand what happened."

Ethan immediately said eagerly, "Don't! Most of the fifty of us were pulled over by force. Many of them are mentally unstable. You will only cause trouble when you show that video to them at this time. !"

Samuel frowned and turned to face Ethan. "You mean, don't tell them, let them fend for themselves?"

Listening to the obvious discomfort in Samuel's tone, Ethan was speechless. I wonder why you, an inhuman in the forbidden city, are so sympathetic. He then slowed down and persuaded, “It’s not necessary to say everything clearly, right? You and the other nine people are the leaders of this operation, and they will obey whatever you ask them to do. But our action must be as fast as possible. I have seen it. The previous medical reports of those missing people were mentally unstable before that thing appeared. If it is delayed for too long, I am worried that our people will have problems."

At this moment, there was a riot not far away. The woman Beta, who had been crying non-stop before, covered her ears with her hands, and shook her body back and forth in a seat in a panic, shouting "Stop! Stop! Shut up!!!" One year old and her. The almost male Beta tried to appease her, but she didn't stop at all, just staring wide and stunned and shouting "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I don't want to die!" Her voice was hoarse and stern, like a cuckoo weeping blood, becoming more and more weird in the overly gorgeous twilight of the red earth.

Ethan walked over quickly and asked what happened to the male Beta. He said she asked them who was talking to her just now, but none of us were talking to her. Then she suddenly started screaming.

Ethan's heart sank, recalling those mental state records who also claimed to hear nonexistent voices talking to them. He squatted in front of her, trying to break her hand covering her ears to communicate with her, but he couldn't call her at all.

At this moment Tanithel pushed aside the crowd and walked over, and put his palm on the woman's forehead. The third eye on the forehead was slightly opened. In an instant, Ethan felt a subtle change in the surroundings. It was as if the originally turbulent air suddenly settled down, and the invisible force absorbed the palpitating scream and suppressed the inexplicable anxiety that hovered in the hearts of everyone around him. Tanithel was chanting something in Eve in a low voice, something like a prayer. The woman finally calmed down and stopped screaming. She half-turned her head to stare at her priest with a look of compassion.

Tanithel slowly closed the eyes on his forehead and stroked the woman's cheek with his white palms, filled with endless compassion and tenderness. Ethan looked a little dazed, suddenly wishing it was himself who was touched by that hand at this moment. He was startled by the thought of his sudden intrusion, and quickly bit his tongue secretly to wake him up.

"Tell me, what did you hear." Tanithel asked softly.

The woman shrank, still seeming to be in shock. She wiped the tears of fear on her face with her sleeve, and after hesitating for a while, she said in a gnat-like voice, "It's so big... so big... we'll all die... no... it's more than death." It's terrible... we will be eaten by it and become part of it... I will never see my daughter again... I haven't seen her for four years!" After speaking, she began to cry again.

"It?" asked an Alpha next to him. "What are you talking nonsense?"

Tanithel glanced at the person who was talking, and his gaze was extremely sharp for that moment, and Alpha, who was much taller than him, felt a bit of chill. Tanithel had put on a gentle and compassionate expression again when he turned his head, and Ethan was dumbfounded by the speed.

"It talks to you in Earth language?"

"I don't know... I can't tell..." The woman's voice trembled, her hands kept twisting her clothes, "I heard it since I arrived on this planet. It was vague at first, like tinnitus, but after I came here, Hear it more clearly."

Tanithel suddenly reached out to touch the woman's collar, and the information stored in the collar was continuously transmitted from the place where his fingers were connected to his private information database. The ball of breath swirling beside him immediately flew in front of him, projecting some materials written in Eve language. From the scattered terrestrial words, Ethan recognized that it was a personal medical history.

"There is no history of schizophrenia", Tanisel put away the breath ball with a solemn expression. Generally, human beings will have a certain premonition before they come into contact with objects or relics related to the **** of entropy, and some people who are naturally sensitive or weak in spirit are more susceptible.

Ethan leaned over to him at this time, "What did she say?"

Tanithel groaned, "Eat... and regenerate... It won't be her..." His eyes flickered, and there was a moment of joy, "I'm afraid we have less time than we thought."

Samuel saw this happen and knew Ethan was sure. He immediately summoned nine other people, each with about ten people, and went to the base to search for the cone-shaped blue creature that Tanithel said. Ethan and Tanisel stayed at the base and continued to search the computer system for the pioneering records left by the people before them. Everyone was inexplicable, wondering why Samuel and others would go out in the middle of the night. But seeing that the nine leaders were very nervous, they didn't dare to ask more and followed out.

As soon as they left Ethan, they asked the computer to call up a lot of data to check. The more he watched, the paler his face became, and he suddenly stood up and walked towards Tanisel who was sitting comfortably on the couch in the middle of the rotunda.

Priest Eve did not know where he got a bottle of unopened red wine, poured it into the glass, and sipped it gently. He adjusted the settings of the wall screen, and the other snow-white walls projected the scenery around the base. The deep purple twilight on the plain has slowly unfolded, three large silver moons are set against each other and hung in the hollow, and the red grassland is covered with a layer of silver frost and snow.

"All the plants on this planet are connected to each other!" Ethan ran to Tanisel and said, "The sap from the plant specimens collected by the previous people has been tested and compared with the plants on this planet. Animal blood is a component! Those'plants' outside are actually animals!"

Tanithel looked at Ethan with a horrified face, chuckled lightly, pointed to his side, "Sit down."

Ethan looked at him so carelessly that his whole person was going crazy. He didn't understand why Samus and the priest were so calm, did they know that they might soon face a situation that they couldn't understand? Ethan didn’t want to die so soon. He still had so many things left to do. He lived in dullness and silence for 29 of the first 30 years of his life. Nian's indulgence sent him to a place like the Forbidden City.

He can't die here so soon.

"Why does the entropy **** you mentioned only appear once in three years? Where is it hiding in these three years? This planet is too strange..." Ethan paced back and forth in front of Tanisel, unable to calm down, "I I have visited many undeveloped primitive planets when I was in the Department of Energy. Even remote and strange planets are not as strange as here... Don’t you think? All the “plants” are connected together. , Even the animals here grow thin lines when they sleep to connect with underground rhizomes... This planet itself seems to be a living animal!"

"Ethan." Tanithel raised his voice slightly, there was a certain indisputable majesty in his tone, "Come here, sit down."

Ethan's feet stopped, and Tanisel's sudden cold tone made him unable to refuse. He stood stiffly for a while, then reluctantly walked to the other side of the sofa and sat down.

Tanisel handed him the wine glass in his hand, “This bottle of wine is hidden behind some rotten vegetables, and it does not appear to be contaminated by entropy. It helps relieve anxiety.”

Ethan hesitated to take the wine glass, the edge of the glass still had the priest's lip print, and the liquid inside was like blood, sloshing and leaving a faint red on the glass wall. He frowned. "You priests can drink?"

"No more than one drink a day." Tanithel replied freely. "We believe that following instinct and having proper temperance is the best. No extreme behavior can bring us closer to God."

"God?" Ethan smiled bitterly, "If that thing is really your entropy god, do you want to become that kind of thing after a long time of cultivation?"

"If you can transcend the shackles of body, time and space, is there any harm in becoming like that?" Tanithel sighed, playing with his breath ball, "You know, our priest Eve is also divided into two factions. Yes. Most of the priests are taking the orthodox road, believing in the God of Xu, and taking the doctrine of God of Xu as the criterion. The other part, such as me, we admire the mysterious power of the God of Entropy. This is why I must participate this time. Rescue, and come to the Red Earth with you privately. The temple I belong to does not agree with my ideals."

Ethan stared in surprise at the exquisite man who looked like an antique doll in front of him. He didn't expect that such a bright person would worship monsters. In the eyes of people on earth, this is worshipping evil spirits like Satan? Obviously it should be a belief that is not at the same time as the preface, why is it just like a different branch of a certain religion?

Their Eve people's worldview is really special.

Ethan took a deep breath and suddenly raised his head and took a sip of wine. The mellow aroma of wine slid down the esophagus with a trace of blood, and the overflowing wine was left along the corners of his lips, winding along the contour of his jaw to the neck, as gorgeous as blood. Tanithel looked at him with an unpredictable expression, rubbing his fingers calmly on his life ball, and the personally identifiable information about Ethan flowed into his mind.

Originally, most of his attention was on Samuel, but the intuition of this Beta was a bit beyond his expectation. His interest in Ethan also increased.

"It turned out to be a crime of treason, I really can't see it..."

Ethan was unprepared, choked on the alcohol, coughed embarrassedly with his sleeve over his mouth, and said a little, "You...what did you say?"

Tanisel tilted his head slightly and looked innocent. "It's nothing, I'm just a little curious."

The atmosphere between the two people became a little embarrassing. To be precise, Ethan felt embarrassed unilaterally. His anger and anxiety were smoldering in his heart, and he was inconvenient to vent. Seeing him avoiding his sight, the knuckles holding the cup were a little white, and he said with an apologetic and sincere smile, "Sorry, I read your personal information without your consent."

In fact, Ethan knew in his heart that non-humans have no privacy at all, and it is understandable for the other party to view his own information. Only just entering the forbidden city, I am not used to this feeling of being seen through. At this moment, the other party apologized so solemnly, and he also knew that he had no right to be angry, so he slowly exhaled a sulky breath, adjusted his emotions, and wanted to reply "It doesn't matter". However, before the words could be spoken, he noticed that a thin and short line on the white ground was approaching in a roundabout way, which seemed to be a bug.

But isn't this base completely sealed? Why are there bugs?

Ethan squinted his eyes and stared carefully at the line segment that hesitated and gradually approached and gradually increased with the change in perspective. However, when he really saw the bug, his instinctive fear made his hair stand on end.

It was a worm about twenty centimeters long. It had a cylindrical body and was thicker than a normal centipede, except that there were no visible legs. The gray-black body does not have the carapace that ordinary bugs have, but it is a bit like the skin of a snail without a shell, and some black blood vessels that are constantly winding and changing with the flexible twist of the body are vaguely visible inside the body. But what is really frightening is that its front end is bumpy and has a vague face.

A face with human features.

Ethan stood up abruptly to retreat, but forgot that there was a sofa behind him, and fell on the cushion. He turned his head to look at Tanithel in horror, but was slightly surprised to see the other party, but there was no fear, and even a bit of novelty. The priest stood up, walked to a place only one or two away from the bug, and squatted down.

The worm seemed to sense that his gaze also stopped wriggling, suddenly curled up into a spiral and stayed in place motionless. A distance away, Ethan couldn't see whether there was any expression on his face, or if the thing was conscious. He sat stiffly on the sofa, most of the wine in his hand had already spilled, soiling the white leather sofa.

Tanithel faced the strange bug quietly. The weird front end folds and undulates, vaguely stacked in the shape of human facial features, but it is slightly twisted and deformed, swollen and ugly. Probably the area of ​​the eyes closed into two lines of different lengths, but a round hole was formed in the area of ​​the mouth, and a tuft of weird black fluff protruded from it, still faintly twisting. And in its soft body like jelly, there is also something flowing in its winding movement.

What a disgusting thing.

Tanithel turned around and took the wine glass from Ethan, spilled the wine on the ground, and then buckled it on the bug. The bug was suddenly locked in a transparent cell, but it didn't move, as if it was dead.

Ethan dared to walk a few steps closer, his face wrinkled in disgust, "What is this? How did you get in here? This place should have been sealed by Gina?"

Tanithel was still staring at the strange bug, and after a short while, the eyes on his forehead opened slightly.

This time the eyes opened wider than the previous two times, and Ethan could see clearly that there seemed to be no pupils in the third eye, only a cloud of silvery white. There was a sudden change in Tanithel's expression. He opened his eyes suddenly, and the originally gray iris turned into a blank, and the original delicate face suddenly became strange and solemn.

Ethan couldn't help but stepped back, not knowing what to do for a while. He had heard that Eve people could see the "truth" of the world with all their eyes open, but no one could tell the truth. But he never knew that the Eve with all three eyes turned out to be such a supernatural appearance.

This state only lasted for a moment, and Tanithel suddenly closed his three eyes, and when he opened his eyes again, he had restored his original gray eyes. He often sighed and stood up.

Ethan asked immediately, "What did you see? What is it? Are the native creatures here? How did they get in?"

Tanithel glanced at him and shook his head. "You don't want to know."

Ethan was almost mad when he heard such an answer. He hated that someone would say halfway but not say the whole thing. It happened that the people around him especially liked to play mystery, especially this somewhat abnormal priest.

This way of communication like guessing is not efficient at all. Why do so many Alpha and Omega just don’t understand?

"So it has something to do with your entropy god? Then should we stomped it to death?" Ethan wanted to do it, but Tanithel stopped him, "No. I will keep it for a while to observe. Wait until the others come back, don’t let them move him."

Ethan was a little discouraged, but seeing Tanithel's face was unquestionable, he couldn't say anything, he could only respond.

It's just that Tanithel used "he" instead of "it" just now?

Is it wrong?

Note: The wording of "he", "she" and "it" in Earth language is different.

The author has something to say:

Thanks to the old comrades who have been chasing in the previous chapters~~~ I was so moved that my eyes were tearful~~

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