High Above

  Chapter 299 The Path of the Swarm (44)

  —want to look up at the blue sky.

  —Want to gaze at the stars.

  —want to touch the clouds.

  —I want to catch the wind with my hands.

   One desire after another is churning, one desire after another is shouting.

  Different people, different desires, different desires and hesitation.

  With sadness, with anger, with hope, with determination.

  All emotions are resonating with Ian, he feels all the emotions at this moment, how similar is the indescribably complex desire to him.

Imprisoned on this land, surrounded by souls bound by gravity, those countries that clearly have powerful technology but do not want to take a step forward, but wage war on other countries... Each of them makes him feel like Sad and angry again.

but…

  'he' can't see it.

His blond hair turned into dull gray, and the strong man with sky-blue eyes turned into an old man, but he still couldn't open the door to the outside world. Sequoia Base was like a cage, locking him in this comfortable place. But the underground space is gradually decaying.

   Yes, it is cozy and comfortable here.

   Yes, he is in a high position here.

   Yes, he has great power and the reverence of the people.

   Yes, he has reached the top of his life - he can do anything.

   Except what he wants to do.

and…

  He is dying.

  [After I die, can I send my body out of the ruins group? ]

  [Great Elder... Your body itself is our most important legacy. What if a mutated creature from outside devours your body and obtains the bloodline key? Among other things, your attached brain must be recovered]

The corpse itself is also property. This is a very normal fact. The flesh of Sequoia people needs special treatment before they can be buried, because the various nano-vaccines, special immune viruses and symbiotic bacteria in their bodies are from the pre-epoch. Once the technology left over from the period is leaked to the outside world, although it cannot be called an ecological disaster, it will definitely have adverse effects.

  The attached brain that inherits the memory must be removed after death and the memory uploaded.

  But for the Sequoia people, removing the attached brain is equivalent to removing half of their own soul. What do you want the crippled body for?

[Ok, I see…]

  No one could hear the faint despair in the voice of the Great Elder.

   And decisively.

  So, two years later, the automatic production line was suddenly damaged by an accident.

   Immediately afterwards, the restraint lock of the ecological park was destroyed.

  The two abnormal crises caused everyone in the entire Sequoia Base to be devastated. The automatic production line is good to say, after all, it has skills in its head. It is not difficult to remanufacture or repair. At most, it is a waste of time and needs to mine and smelt metal.

   But the ecological park was destroyed, and the heterogeneous creatures inside were mixed, enough to create a second-level ecological crisis here!

   While dealing with this huge turmoil, no one noticed that some extremely confidential genetic samples were taken away from the laboratory deep in the ecological park.

   Then, as if bad things weren't enough, one after another, some Sequoias disappeared.

  They suddenly disappeared one night, and they were silent, which made everyone very nervous, thinking that it was the aliens and individuals left outside in the ecological park, and now they were attacking them.

  Driving the armored **** members to patrol day and night, but there are still people who continue to disappear.

  Until one day, a person was discovered by the guards during the process of leaving, but this person had lost his will, his mind was completely disordered, and he was speaking in a mess of words, as if he was completely crazy.

  After detailed medical examinations, everyone was shocked to find that the attached brain located behind the person's brainstem had mutated, and this supposedly stable semi-psychic slug actually started to devour the human brain and attempted to replace it.

There is a source behind all of this. After careful investigation, the Sequoia people found out in horror that all the missing people disappeared at the other end of the H-55 underwater channel, which is the source of the viewing river and the cooling channel of the power pack. a small tributary of .

  In the water purification plant there, there is a hill made of corpses, and a small biological laboratory that has been established for a long time.

  Among them, many instruments are top-secret and only exist in the pre-epoch laboratory that requires a key card to pass through, and there is only one person who can open the laboratory without application.

   That is their leader, the elder Sequoia.

[what are you doing? ! Madara Qunson, why are you doing this! ? ]

  [Eternal Life]

  [Are you crazy? ! This is not immortality at all, you just turn yourself into an echo, even if you can really burn your soul into the brain-attached psionic network and become a mirror...you also become a brain-attached will collection, not now you! ]

[I do not care]

  [What... what? ]

   [I said, I don't care]

  —I don't care if I'm human, I don't care if it's against morality, I don't care if it destroys the ecological balance of Sequoia Base.

  —I don't care about you, and I don't care about myself.

  —Life, soul, memory, ego, these things are all shit, they are all rubbish, they will only produce despair and pain, can the hive network carry the complete me? Ridiculous, so what? It's only you bored fools who bother with such minutiae, and it's no wonder you're still enjoying yourself in this catacomb.

  —I can’t see it, it’s a pity, but at least that new life can leave here with an immortal body and an immortal soul.

  —Then, go see the stars.

  The white cocoon of flesh and blood wrapped in fluorescent crystal clusters and living metal is agitating, as if it wants to stretch out its hand, crossing the ruins in the deepest part of the ground, crossing the layers of rock formations and the churning sea.

  It wants to reach out to touch, to touch the real wind, to touch the clouds in the sky.

  To touch the stars above the clouds and the sky.

   This is its wish, and the wish of the one who created it, and even all those who have been a part of it.

  Those who didn’t say it out, even though they didn’t really think about it, those who said ‘don’t want to leave the base’ had the most sincere wish in their hearts.

  —Even apes look up at the stars, let alone humans?

  Intense emotion, I don't know whether it is despair or the spirit of enlightenment impacting Ian's heart.

   Was it a candid statement, or an angry rant? Unbeknownst to him, the phantoms of the past swept across his mind, bringing about violent emotional shocks.

  It also resonated with the teenagers from the bottom of their hearts.

  [We are kind...we are the same...]

  A voice sounded, with sincere emotions: [We all yearn for the distance, longing to see things that we can’t usually see...]

  [The ruins are a cage, lifespan is a cage, morality is a cage, the body is also a cage, isn’t the sky also a cage? ]

  [We have to break free from the prison, break the chains... We are the same... I know you are the same as me...]

  The invisible will of the hive stretched out its spiritual power and flesh and blood tentacles, rushing towards Ian who was standing there, as if to embrace.

  From those chopped flesh and blood figures, there are silk structures like nerves and blood vessels extending out, with a texture like spores, wanting to climb on the boy's face.

  [Let us unite...we shall be one, one immortal...]

  [Let us break out of the cage together...]

  But these tentacle spores were cut off by a long sword without a sharp edge.

Ian raised his sword silently. He was obviously still immersed in the mental shock created by the will of the hive—it was an extremely special psionic skill, activated by empathy and resonance, as long as there was a slight similarity in thinking, it would It will gradually start to erode from it.

   No, not erosion, not parasitism.

   Instead, contribute.

The hive will share everything with Ian, it is not an attack, there is no hostility, as long as they have the same mood, have the same resonance, they are one, they are one will... If Ian's spirit is strong enough , can get rid of the influence of other soul fragments, and he can become a worm nest.

   Become the true Hive Will.

  But he still raised his sword, and the light golden sword light cut off all these tentacles and the beginning of a path of destiny.

   "Ahem..."

  The young man raised his head, panting in embarrassment, staring at the giant white cocoon in front of him, coughing out a breath that smelled of blood.

There, a huge brain is moaning silently, it can't figure out why, the life in front of it is so similar to it, they have the same dream, have the same desire, it is even ashamed, because the soul of the young man in front of him The madness in the depths can even surpass its persistence for thousands of years.

   So, why?

  The answer is actually very simple.

   “We do have similarities, but we are not the same.”

  The eyes are like stars, and Ian's body is surrounded by a blue-gold source quality halo. There is no anger, no sympathy, and no mockery in his eyes, only a touch of compassion.

  The young man solemnly raised his sword, and the inscriptions on the Chongyuan iron sword lit up one by one, and the light golden light shone uniquely under the silver-blue-green radiant light.

  Ian took a deep breath, as if communicating with the hive in front of him, or talking to himself.

  He said: "Because I know the truth, I know what the future looks like, and I am the one who lives in the 'future'."

  He said: "In the world after a thousand years, human beings are still repeating boring wars, repeating them under the sun, and never getting tired of it."

  He said: "I am not longing. I am a firm believer. I am not trying to touch the stars, I have to find the stars."

  He said: "The will of the hive, no matter who you are, whose fragments or new life-whether you believe it or not, I don't care, I will tell you."

   "There are no stars outside."

  "Our world is surrounded by the prison star's hell, the sky is pitch black, there is no guidance, no heaven and distance, no glory worth exciting, the starry sky you imagined never existed from the very beginning."

  —I know this, you don't, you just imagine.

  —You may be lost, you may be overwhelmed.

  —and I have decided, made up my mind, to still move forward, still to climb.

Saying so, Ian actually laughed. He showed a heartfelt, incomparably cheerful smile, but enough to be called a crazy smile: "But so what? I don't care about these things. There are some cosmic monsters or subspace natural disasters, only boring idiots would care about these details."

   "I will definitely find the truth and go to the high heavens."

   “This is what makes us different.”

  (end of this chapter)