Chapter 22: Ancient Bacteria (Part 2)

“I want to go too!” Wang Xiaosi really was not afraid of death. Most likely, he had guessed that this was a good opportunity to approach the secret between Chen Yi and his own third brother.

Wang Third Brother shot him a look. “Stay here properly!”

“Why? I’m the one who had the accident!”

“Because I’m your brother!” Wang Third Brother was so angry he wanted to beat this troublemaker. He had only just returned, and this kid had already caused him trouble.

Chen Yi’s attention was not on the two brothers’ quarrel. He seized an opportunity, and while Wang Xiaosi was not paying attention, he used the Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique at close range to look at the circle of gray, misty fog lingering around Wang Xiaosi’s body.

The gray fog, magnified a thousand times, was stripped of its dazzling impurities and revealed its most original appearance.

But Chen Yi’s Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique was only at minor accomplishment right now, so he still could not see very clearly. He only knew that these were densely packed things, things that seemed alive and capable of moving. Like an invading army taking city after city, they were trying to penetrate Wang Xiaosi’s skin and drill into his body.

What shocked him even more was that there was actually a little of this gray substance on Wang Third Brother as well.

This forced him to shift his gaze to the larger space.

Once he looked, it was terrible.

Inside this room, the gray substance invisible to the naked eye was everywhere in clumps. The large ones were the size of soybeans, while the small ones were like specks of dust. They were scattered all over the place. The head of the bed where Wang Xiaosi had just been sitting was the hardest-hit area.

Chen Yi did not have trypophobia, but this scene still made him feel suffocated. It gave him the illusion that the entire world had been contaminated.

Contamination.

But it was not an aberration.

Then what was it?

Thinking of one possibility, Chen Yi’s pupils suddenly contracted.

He knew!!

Could this be the plague in the book that slaughtered cities and wiped out villages at every turn?

Or rather, it was a kind of ancient bacteria from a different dimension. After arriving in the present world, humans and animals with no resistance to it at all would have their lives easily devoured once entangled by it, and contamination would continuously spread.

The more Chen Yi thought about it, the more certain he became of this guess. After all, in the book, the bacteria from folded spaces were no less harmful to the human world than aberrations were.

In the early stages, aberrations still had to pounce on people one by one, but bacteria always maintained highly efficient transmissibility.

“Third Brother.” Chen Yi blinked and withdrew his divine ability. He said solemnly, “Contact Captain Ye immediately and have him take over this place. Everyone who has had contact with Wang Pingyuan must be isolated separately. After people arrive, take me to the place where Wang Pingyuan was found.”

Chen Yi spoke solemnly. As a soldier, Wang Ping’an understood the rule of obeying orders and prohibitions.

He had already been in awe of Chen Yi, and now he did not dare ask a single extra question. He immediately went out to make the call.

Less than five minutes later, the first group of team members in the Watchmen Special Action Team’s black training uniforms appeared at the gate of the Wang family’s courtyard and surrounded it completely.

The villagers downstairs, who had still been noisy, instantly fell silent.

Then someone shouted in fear, “What are you trying to do? Old Chen, hurry and ask them what they’re doing.”

Chen Jiankang hurriedly walked out of the house. After meeting with Captain Ye, he looked up and saw his son standing by the second-floor window.

He immediately said, “It’s fine. Don’t worry. It’s not like they’ll harm you, right?”

Seeing that the scene was basically under control, Chen Yi left the window and also hung up the phone.

He had already clearly explained his rough deduction to Tang Qirui over the phone. Isolate first. As for how to handle the follow-up, they would still have to wait until he came back from North Mountain.

This time, when they left again, Wang Xiaosi no longer made a fuss about going along.

The commotion downstairs was too big. It made him understand the severity of the matter. Thinking about how he had wandered dizzily around the peach grove yesterday, unable to get out, and finally even fell into a pit, he felt a burst of lingering fear.

Perhaps being able to return alive meant his life was blessed.

“Cough, cough!”

Lingering fear, anxiety, and the chill he had caught last night made Wang Xiaosi cough twice.

This cough seemed to flip some switch, and then he could not stop.

“Cough, cough, cough! Cough, cough, cough!”

He coughed until his head spun and his vision blurred. Sitting by the bed, he could not straighten up for a long while.

About half an hour later, downstairs had gone completely quiet.

The villagers who had originally gathered over in hopes of getting a free dinner had failed to eat the meal and were instead shut inside their homes to isolate separately. At the entrance to each house stood a person in a black uniform.

There were also those who refused to accept it. Those old street idlers who relied on their age to throw their weight around were all easily dealt with by the young people in black uniforms.

Over the phone, Xiang Lan said worriedly, “Why don’t you just not go? This is a special situation. Just say you aren’t feeling well either. What could they do?”

Chen Jiankang’s voice sounded over the phone. “It’s fine. I’m wearing a mask. If I hide and refuse to see people at a time like this, the villagers will only be more afraid. I’ll just reassure them at the door. Nothing will happen. Besides, if something really does happen, isn’t our youngest going to investigate? You know what our youngest is capable of. As for you, you absolutely must not take the grandchildren out casually.”

Xiang Lan swallowed down more words and forced a smile. “All right. Wear two more layers of masks.”

On the other side, Tang Qirui, who had received Chen Yi’s call, reported the situation upward. It drew a high level of attention from above. An epidemic prevention team geared up and set out for Lishui Village.

At this moment, Tang Qirui was not afraid of making things sound serious. At a critical moment of life and death, the thing to fear most was painting over peace where there was none.

He said, “Sect Master Chen said that after ordinary people are infected with ancient bacteria, they are very difficult to treat. But some people may awaken because of it. They may also turn into living ghosts, so…”

At this time, Chen Yi had already arrived at the peach grove on North Mountain.

The environment here was actually quite nice. Sunlight shone on the treetops, lighting up the red, plump peaches above. Although the ripe peaches were not large, Chen Yi could still recall their taste. They were sweet as honey, and with one bite, they burst with juice. So no matter how much the adults warned them not to come to North Mountain, there was no boy in the village who had never been here.

Now seven or eight years had passed. Chen Yi and the others had all grown up, but the peach trees still grew here, even more lush than before.

Peaches that could not be eaten in time fell to the ground and grew into new peach saplings. Unfortunately, they could not compete with the old trees for nutrients. Most of them grew crooked and lopsided, and it was rare for them to flower and fruit. Their appearance was truly not good either.

Chen Yi slowed his pace along the way to accommodate Third Brother, and it took more than half an hour to reach the place.

The memories of coming here to pick peaches belonged to the original owner, but Chen Yi had lived here for a long time, and it seemed he could no longer quite distinguish who was who.

They were all children from the countryside and all had similar memories. Besides, if this world truly had a multiverse, then he and the original owner were probably different lives of the same person.

Pulling his gaze back from the peach trees, Chen Yi followed closely behind Third Brother and walked forward a while longer.

It was not far. In fact, they had not really left the peach grove’s area. There were just fewer peach trees here, while the shrubs around them had grown lush once more. The decaying leaves underfoot were so thick they could bury half a foot.

Third Brother pointed ahead and said, “It’s right here. I remember that pit. I used to poke my head in and look before. It wasn’t that big or that deep.”

Chen Yi saw it, but did not move.

He did not move, and he also pulled Third Brother back, no longer letting him get closer.

While vigilantly observing the surrounding environment, he asked, “Don’t you feel that it’s very quiet here?”

Third Brother froze for a moment, and only then did he realize that for a forest, this place was indeed excessively quiet. The insect cries and birdsong that should have been there could not be heard at all.

Chen Yi glanced at him and used his foot to brush aside the fallen leaves where he had noticed something unusual.

The damp, withered yellow leaves parted to both sides, revealing a rat underneath.

The rat was already dead, but it seemed not to have been dead for long. It was still stiff, had not rotted, and therefore had no especially obvious stench.

Chen Yi’s discovery shifted both men’s attention to the ground beneath their feet.

Once they looked, it was terrible.

Among the fallen leaves, they saw more corpses: snakes, rabbits, squirrels, and even some insects.

The more they looked, the more there were. It was practically a forest graveyard.

Third Brother’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he murmured, “What’s happened to this world? Why is it so hard just to stay alive? The aberrations haven’t even been solved yet, and now bacteria have come too.”

Chen Yi did not speak. He did not know how to explain.

Should he say that this was a book, and in order to temper the protagonist, the difficulty of the world had been increased? The Chen Yi of today could no longer regard it as none of his business with such ease.

In truth, in the book, by the time the protagonist appeared as an adult, half of this world had already been destroyed. Humans lived inside protected zones, while outside the protected zones was a forbidden zone of life.

Only at that time, humanity was still unable to distinguish the difference between aberrations and bacteria, and regarded them all as ghost disasters. In particular, this kind of bacteria, which had large-scale infectiousness and could create living ghosts, was even given the title of an S-rank ghost disaster.

Even more tragically, the fear brought by death gave wings to humanity’s imagination, ultimately creating a true S-rank ghost disaster: the urban legend known as the Plague Ghost.

By actively infecting themselves, controlling ghosts, and gradually no longer fearing these bacteria, Night Watchers were able to walk outside the protected zones.

Ordinary people, however, could never do so.

Moreover, excessive absorption of violent spiritual energy also left Night Watchers in a state where they could go berserk at any moment. Their lifespans were short, and most of them did not die good deaths.

Chen Yi knew ancient bacteria would appear relatively early, but he had not expected it to be this early.

It was equivalent to aberrations only awakening last month, and now these ancient bacteria had already revived.

This disaster-ridden world really could be summed up with one word: tragic.

But that was under the premise that he had not transmigrated here with a Goldfinger.

While Wang Third Brother was sighing ruefully on this side, Chen Yi had already quietly begun observing with his divine ability on the other.

Black petals rotated in his eyes. Before him, all the chaotic substances in the world disappeared. Only the existence he wanted to see remained. It was magnified a thousand times and presented before his eyes in meticulous detail.

This was an area occupied by countless ancient bacteria. In the sky, on the ground, on tree trunks and branches, dense layers of them covered and tangled together like hanging beehives.

They especially loved to cling to living things. The ancient bacteria on these animal corpses were clearly stronger, and their vitality was also greater.

After sensing the presence of living humans, these bacteria surrounded them, covering their faces and clothes, more and more of them gathering.

Chen Yi could see them, but even Wang Third Brother could sense that something was wrong.

Because he had entered Qi Refining and his body had become much lighter, yet it suddenly grew heavy, and his head became dizzy and muddled, not very clear.

From this, one could see what terrible things would happen if an ordinary person encountered them.

Last night, when Wang Xiaosi had been picking peaches nearby, he had probably fallen victim like this. In a daze, he could not get out and instead stumbled toward the lair on his own.

Chen Yi looked at the ancient bacteria that had already wrapped around him and frowned in disgust.

He shook his hand, and the bacteria fell rustling down, as if there were a protective film around his body and they could not linger on him for long.

So, just as he had thought, the appearance of ancient bacteria was not without a once-and-for-all solution. Unfortunately, the person who could make that decision was not him.

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