Just like the furry moon covered by clouds, it was very dark. That was probably the entrance to the hole where they fell.
The underground space they were in did not seem to be built in advance by the Baohuang Hotel. It was much larger, and most importantly, she could vaguely see the outline of a circular door on the wall in front of her - exactly the same as what they saw in the dream projection.
Then she quickly realized something was wrong.
They should not have been unconscious for long after falling, but they were unconscious no matter what. If she was the monster, shouldn't she control all the fluids to rush in all at once?
The enemy's target now seems to be me. It wants to eat me, get my flesh and blood, use them as credentials to open the fourth-level treasure house, and obtain all the remaining mimicry arrays...
Then it can rush in, and then control the dragon tomb to slip away. Why stop... What does it want to do up there?
“It’s waiting for someone.”
A voice sounded in the corner.
With a "clang" sound, Xia Yibing protected the girl with her left hand, took the knife handle with her right hand and threw away the scabbard, with the sharp blade pointing straight at that position: "You are causing trouble... get out of here!"
Hitzfeld said nothing, but she took advantage of the woman's cover to pull out the White Whale from under her skirt and made sure it was loaded with bullets.
It is not taken from the armpit or chest.
That's normal - it's just too hot.
A shadow was becoming clearer in the darkness ahead, and soon, Russell Igor walked out of the shadows, revealing his new look in front of the two men.
"you……"
"Mr. Russell..."
They each had some discomfort.
Russell's face is still okay, and his right hand is essentially a robotic arm, which is also fine.
But starting from the neck below, excluding his right arm, the skin all over his body was rotten.
The clothes had long been corroded, the skin was ulcerated, the muscles and blood were mixed together, and some places were so severely vacant and atrophied that the bones inside could be seen directly.
And this is obviously not his "final form". Even though he is already so terrifying, there are still tiny blood threads clinging to those exposed bones.
The source of the bloodshot was a part of the bone that had already turned "blood". Judging from the trend, these things would not be satisfied until they turned him into a bloody monster.
"……Why."
After a pause, Xia Yibing asked him.
She doesn't understand.
Russell had clearly asked her back not long ago, saying that she was the only one who had no right to feel dissatisfied.
Russell was full of righteousness at that time. He stood on the moral high ground and recklessly accused them, as if Hitzfeld was endangering the future of the continent by not being the queen and not following Sarah's arrangement.
But in the blink of an eye, everything changed.
He suddenly changed his position from "supporting Sarah" to "supporting the monster".
What about his morals?
What about his righteousness?
If all this was caused by Charuni killing all his relatives, and by Charuni using mechanical modifications to control him in order to take revenge on Sarah, then how could he have the nerve to say those words to her before?
"No reason."
Although he looked seriously injured, Russell was in good spirits.
His face was fair with a hint of redness, and his lenses looked like they had been wiped, with occasional reflections.
"From a moral perspective, I support Hitzfeld becoming the new king of Talignan according to Sarah's plan. That's true."
"If doing this can really make things better, I'm happy to do it."
"'What if'?" Xia Yibing understood the implication.
"If." Russell nodded and turned his gaze to Hitzfeld.
"For quite a long time, I was lost... Hitzfeld saw that as soon as he saw me."
"I don't hate Charuni. On the contrary, I understand his actions. I don't hate Sarah at all. Subjectively, I don't want to betray anyone, and of course I don't want to hurt you."
"Then what do you mean by saying those things? You are so two-faced--" The woman growled in her throat.
"Of course, because I think this is exactly the true meaning of life."
"I've had similar dreams several times since I was very young."
He stood just below the cave entrance with his hands outstretched.
One of the hands was a mechanical arm that was broken in many places, with parts and cables exposed.
One hand was deformed and mutated, and its five fingers looked like claws even bigger than a tiger's head.
He just stood there, in the thin light from above, with his eyes closed and a pious look on his face.
"I dreamed that I was lying in a warm place... like water, but different..."
"I can't feel my hands and feet. I feel like I don't have any organs... like a ball... a particle... and around me, no, in front of me, behind me, left to right, in all directions, there are things like me."
“We are like follicles.”
"Bathe together in the 'sea of life'."
"Time has no meaning there... The water waves can deliver enough nutrients. There is no difference between us, so there is naturally no question of targeting or jealousy."
“We rely on each other and have no worries.”
"Until the flames burst forth, the oceans collapsed, like the extinction of a world..."
“At this point, I saw my brothers and sisters start to change.”
"Some follicles have strange organs that can swallow up the hot bubbles and expel them from the body unaffected."
"Some follicles quickly stretch their bodies to become thin and long, and drill directly into other follicles, using them as meat shields to avoid danger."
"Some have two tentacles or fin-like extensions that they use to speed up in the water."
"For a long time, I couldn't understand the scene in my dream. It wasn't until King Charuni came to me and handed the thorn bird badge to me together with my mother, and I looked at the bodies falling around me, that I realized that the true meaning of life is competition."
"You definitely understood it wrongly..." Xia Yibing's mouth twitched.
"I didn't!" Russell stared.
"It is in this unscrupulous competition that those follicles can blend with each other, evolving faster and faster, becoming more and more comprehensive, and eventually giving birth to the greatest of all living things - humans!"
"You dare to say it's not true?"
"..." Xia Yibing's face was distorted and she did not answer.
She always felt that something was wrong, and it was difficult for her to refute Russell until she had sorted out all her thoughts.
"Yes, yes..." Russell lowered his head again.
“It seems that ‘the law’ is right…I should follow this framework…the rules within this framework and do what they tell me to do.”
"Whether it's bearing the infamy of 'slaughtering blood relatives' or promoting the 'Dragon Queen Project', as long as it is beneficial to the progress of civilization, I can do it."
"But I'm hesitant, you know? Hitzfeld?"
He looked up at the gray-haired girl again.
"I'm sure the 'law' is right for Sarah and for Russell Igor. But the 'law' is not something that comes naturally."
"It is man-made, it came later. There is another rule before the law, which we call the law of nature. The obsession that naturally grows in people's hearts following the law of nature, I call it 'justice'."
"This is not what we were talking about before." Hitzfeld looked at him and tried to keep his tone calm.
Of course, she could tell that Russell's mentality was no longer normal, so she tried not to irritate him at this time.
"What we compared before was law and morality. Morality is the proof that we are human beings and not beasts. This comparison does not involve justice. Justice can only exist based on morality..."
"Those are people!" Russell interrupted her impatiently.
"Of course people can talk about morality, but - Hitzfeld, our enemies are not just humans."
"Those monsters... and the gray fog... the evil god! You've been involved in many big cases, and I think you know that you can't talk about morality with these things."
Hitzfeld finally frowned.
She agreed with half of Russell's theory.
It still sounds reasonable, but it is precisely because she has experienced it and witnessed it...saw so many people sacrificed in front of her...without hesitation, that she would retain half of her opinion.
There is certainly no morality in fighting monsters.
But the root of morality... the human heart... human nature, this is the important proof that they are human beings, and the best weapon to fight against evil gods.
"I hesitated and hesitated until I saw you on the red earth, Hitzfeld."
Russell looked at the girl with fanaticism.
"You are indeed very special... You are weak but determined, and you never look back on every choice you make... It is from you that I was inspired to take another path."
"Have you decided to side with monsters?" Xia Yibing simply put down the knife and laughed at him.
"You can't say that." Russell shook his head.
"Allowing Hitzfeld to become the Queen of Dragon Country as planned will definitely be good for Sarah, but whether it will be good for the entire civilized world in the long run is not certain."
He wants that thing to eat me?
Hitzfeld was simulating his thoughts simultaneously.
No... He said he didn't just want to cooperate with the monsters. He believed that competition could elevate life and make it stronger. What Charuni did to the Igor family and the competition and hatred he saw every day planted seeds in his heart. He probably felt that a unified civilized world that only respected Sarah would lose hope. He wanted Tarinian to break away from Sarah's control and become strong from the inside out...
He wants to pit the East and the West against each other!
Thinking of this, the girl's back was covered in cold sweat.
This... this plan involves too much.
“This is not something you can figure out on your own.”
Hitzfeld said suddenly.
"who is it?"
"Who instructed you?"
"What are you talking about?" Russell looked at her strangely. "Aren't you the one who prompted me to make up my mind..."
"It's not me!" The girl interrupted him, "Your dream is not normal... Who did you come into contact with when you were a child?"
"If I really have to say who I have come into contact with while sleeping, it would probably only be my mother..."
Russell narrowed his eyes.
"your mom?"
Hitzfeld was stunned again, and then his eyes became sharper: "The dream we had in the hot springs... was it you?"
On the night before leaving for Kerge, she and Xia Yibing had a similar dream.
This was very strange. Even though Sixus testified to them that it was the Nature Orb that was causing trouble the second time, it was still very strange - the second time at least there was the external object of the fire starter, the fire knife, but the first time, they just slept together.
It's just a normal sleep process, why do I have those dreams? There must be a reason behind it.
"It's me." Russell nodded.
"Of course the natural orb wouldn't appear out of nowhere."
"But if there is another half of its kind... the sphere guiding it, then nothing it does will be strange."
"...!?"
Xia Yibing looked at Russell and then back at Hitzfeld, her mouth open, unable to speak.
The other half of the sphere...
The other half of the ball is on Russell?
Was it Russell who guided them to dream at that time?
"Whether choosing law, morality or justice, you must first come to Kerge." Russell confirmed again what he had done.
"So I have to give you some reasons to peek into some of the memories it retains."
"How could you control the natural sphere so easily..."
Xia Yibing just felt that reality was full of unreality.
