[Unstable mental state detected in host. Please ingest sedatives and specialized medication immediately.]

Many people had their sedatives made in the shape of cigarettes. Lu Yan didn’t like smoking, so his sedative took the form of candy—mint-flavored.

On the detector, Lu Yan’s mutation degree spiked to 14.7 before beginning to slowly recede.

Lu Yan glanced at the person on the ground and asked, “He won’t turn into a walking corpse, will he?”

The System’s tone was full of disdain: [No. In a true close-quarters brawl, spiritual-type Awakeners are total weaklings. They just have a lot of cheap tricks up their sleeves, which makes them highly annoying. And as you know, many Awakeners aren’t in the best mental state to begin with, which makes spiritual types seem even more exasperating.]

Next up was the universally beloved looting segment.

Lu Yan discovered that Chen Anzhi carried quite a lot of items, though most were scented cosmetics and skincare products.

The System: [Auxiliary items to facilitate hypnosis. You can use them too, though I doubt you know how to apply makeup.]

[Candles. Used for hypnosis purposes. Highly effective against humans. Shelf life: 3 years.]

In the System’s mouth, any incense or burning aromatherapy items Chen Anzhi used to aid sleep were uniformly referred to as candles.

[Pocket watch. A hypnosis tool. Pressed beneath the watch is a piece of human skin with the hand-drawn tenets of the Elysium Sect on it. It serves as a pass to enter the ‘Divine Kingdom.’]

Lu Yan pried the watch open. Sure enough, a thin piece of human skin parchment was pressed inside. Jet-black oil paint had been tattooed deep into the dermal layer, forming a bizarre, starry pattern. Staring at it for too long brought a wave of dizziness, resembling some sort of dark cult icon.

After taking stock of the spoils, Lu Yan cleanly disposed of the body to erase all traces.

He could already hear the buzzing wings of pollutants in the air. He estimated that before long, these chunks of flesh would be swallowed into their bellies.

On the map, the sole red light spot blinked out, leaving 23 blue lights.

This signified that there were still 23 trainees who had already suffered spiritual contamination.

Lu Yan walked toward the light spot closest to him.

The assistant instructor had once praised him, saying that Lu Yan would surely make the best hunter.

But Lu Yan had never imagined that a day would come when he actually needed to hunt “humans.”

More importantly, Lu Yan also had to consider the consequences caused by the information asymmetry.

He could very easily be branded a murderer. Although Lu Yan didn’t care all that much, he didn’t particularly want to end up in a military court either.

The first light spot Lu Yan encountered belonged to an old acquaintance.

Director Hu was responsible for keeping watch tonight, sitting by a campfire that had already died down. Due to a lack of energy, his head nodded rhythmically, but every time he was about to fall asleep, he would sharply pinch the flesh on his thigh.

Lu Yan remembered that Director Hu was a very famous surgeon in K City, who used to walk through the hospital corridors with his head held high. Whenever he encountered patients who couldn’t afford their hospitalization fees, he would always find ways to waive or reduce some of their medical costs.

Having practiced medicine for thirty years, the silk banners of gratitude he had received were more numerous than the award certificates Lu Yan had gathered since childhood.

Probably because of his gentle nature, Director Hu had fallen under the hypnosis unknowingly as early as the first day, becoming an Elysium Sect cultist in his dreams.

Lu Yan’s hand rested on his bow and arrow, unable to let fly for the longest time.

He asked the System, “Is this kind of spiritual contamination truly irreversible? Would King Fish be of any use?”

The System: [King Fish can reduce the mutation degree, but it cannot eradicate the imprint upon their souls.]

“He looks no different from an ordinary person.”

[You are always merciful in places I cannot comprehend, Host.] The System’s voice sounded quite intrigued. [Even if you don’t kill him, after a short while—perhaps just a few hours—that existence will descend upon the vessels. The vessels, of course, have senses; they will feel the agony of their souls being burst apart. Even if their bodies suffer no damage whatsoever, it will feel like death by a thousand cuts. They will perish amidst endless terror and pain.]

[Compared to that way of dying, a demise right now might actually be more fortunate.]

A flowering vine drooped down from the treetop above Director Hu’s head.

It was a pollutant, quietly closing in on its prey.

The sharp arrow that had rested on Lu Yan’s bowstring for so long finally found its purpose. The arrowhead buried itself deeply into the vine. The blood-sucking vine shrieked in pain, actually emitting a sharp, agonizing cry.

This sound instantly jolted Director Hu and his two teammates, who were still in their sleeping bags, wide awake.

The teammates hurriedly unzipped their bags. Looking at the pollutant beside him, Director Hu patted his chest with lingering fear.

Lu Yan leapt down from the tree like an agile big cat, landing without a single sound.

“Ah, Little Lu!” Director Hu stood up, his face instantly filling with gratitude. “I knew that arrow was shot by you the moment I saw it! That accuracy is top-notch. Say no more, I’ll write a letter right now to have the director give you the position of Chief of the Emergency Department at K City First People’s Hospital!”

Lu Yan: “Thank you, but I already am.”

Before coming to A City, the hospital administration had already very consciously granted him that professional title.

Director Hu was momentarily at a loss for words. “Why did you come here?”

Lu Yan: “I came here because there is something I need to discuss with you.”

“What is it? As long as you don’t want to marry my daughter, everything is negotiable.”

Lu Yan expressed the gravity of the situation as concisely and swiftly as possible: “Director, have you ever come into contact with an organization called the Elysium Sect? You might have already been spiritually contaminated.”

“The S-Rank pollutant from the Divine Kingdom wants to descend here through its believers. Anyone who has previously attended the dream church of the Elysium Sect will be marked with its imprint.”

“Tang Xun’an is participating in this exercise. Several high-level pollutants have decided to kill him, including the ‘Holy Lord,’ who specializes in spiritual contamination.”

“Its consciousness will be projected into the believers simultaneously. The believers acting as vessels will die directly because they cannot withstand such powerful spiritual force and pollution values. What I am doing now is destroying its vessels before that pollutant descends, avoiding an even greater loss down the line.”

“If the Holy Lord descends, the consequence could be that the entirety of P City is leveled to the ground.”

Lu Yan omitted some of the intermediary causal links, but if Tang Xun’an failed, the outcome would pretty much be exactly that.

Director Hu’s teammate asked in confusion, “And how exactly do you know all this?”

Lu Yan: “One of my talents includes ‘Cross-Species Communication.’ I overheard it when these insects and plants were whispering among themselves.”

As he spoke, a man-eating flower vine drooped down from a tree. Its thick stem concealed rows of dense, sharp fangs inside, opening wide as it tried to bite Lu Yan.

Lu Yan caught the vine with his bare hands, twisted it into a tangled knot, and tossed it aside.

“Furthermore, there was a traitor from the Divine Kingdom in my team. I conducted a bit of an interrogation on him as well.”

For some reason, it sounded incredibly unreliable.

Halfway through listening, the expression on Director Hu’s face became unnatural. By the time he finished hearing it all, he fell into a long silence. “Is that so… How do we destroy those vessels?”

“By letting the vessels die a natural death,” Lu Yan said, keeping his eyes locked onto Director Hu’s the entire time.

One teammate keenly sensed the shift in the atmosphere and uneasily reached for his weapon.

The other teammate tapped his electronic watch, raging, “Why has the external distress signal failed? Where’s the reception?!”

What they didn’t know was that upon discovering the scarcity of distress signals, the regulatory group had already dispatched personnel into the pollution zone to investigate the cause.

Regrettably, the mushrooms blanketing the ground had already awakened.

“What he says should be true,” Director Hu said suddenly. “Over the past two months, I have indeed kept having a similar dream. I dreamed of light and hope… and someone was chanting ‘Elysium and eternal life’ in my ear, saying that it was where the soul’s happiness resided.”

“Every time I woke up, I would feel terror amidst the fulfillment. Because all of this was just too similar to the rumors surrounding the Divine Kingdom… but I didn’t dare to think about it.”

Director Hu rambled on, saying a great deal. Probably because his thoughts were disorganized, there wasn’t much logical connection to his speech.

He clutched his head, shivering all over, looking utterly pitiable.

“Doctor Hu,” the teammate took a step forward, asking out of sheer heartache, “there must be another way, right?”

They turned their pleading eyes toward Lu Yan.

But Lu Yan merely shook his head in silence.

“I don’t want to die, Doctor Lu.” Out of terror, Director Hu’s old face twisted as he wept. “I… my son’s household registration, and my grandson’s school district housing… none of it is settled yet. I…”

Lu Yan raised the bow in his hand. “I’m sorry. I am truly sorry.”

“Enough!” The teammate shielded Director Hu. “Right now, this is all just your side of the story. Based on just a few sentences, you want his life?!”

“Special Operations Department Staff Oath, page two, line three,” Lu Yan stated. “Everyone memorized it on the first day of training.”

—To nip danger in the bud, I stand ready to make sacrifices at any moment.

Back then, Lu Yan had even complained to the System that the oath was completely anti-human. Yet in the end, there were quite a few people who truly practiced it as their faith.

The teammate’s expression turned blank, and the hand holding the weapon slumped powerlessly to their side.

This was a scene Lu Yan had long since anticipated.

[I’d call this the price of playing the fool.]

“I understand what might happen,” Lu Yan answered very calmly, “but I will still do it. Doing this makes me feel like I am still human.”

Lu Yan looked at Director Hu: “The household registration and the school district housing—if I can make it out alive, I will definitely get them done. You can choose to do it yourself, or let me do it.”

Director Hu’s team didn’t have high spiritual power thresholds; the three of them combined couldn’t match Lu Yan.

After crying for a long time, Director Hu finally calmed down.

He said, “Then I’ll do it myself. At least that way I’ll be mentally prepared.”

With that, he fished his surgical scalpel out of the pocket of his protective suit. Director Hu had practiced medicine for many years and performed no fewer than a thousand surgeries, yet this was the first time his hand trembled so violently while holding a blade.

Following Director Hu’s death, wisps of crimson aura drifted out from his corpse, eventually converging into a palm-sized humanoid figure.

The aura on the little figure turned from red to white.

The white humanoid was bright and gentle, but it bore a peculiar pattern on its body—the exact same one found on the piece of human skin parchment Lu Yan had obtained.

The little figure hopped and skipped all the way forward, finally sinking into the earth like a puddle of water, vanishing without a trace.

[Red is the color of a contaminated soul. After cultists die, their souls are split into two by the Holy Lord to weigh the good and evil of their lifetimes.]

[The Holy Lord will devour sinful souls as his own nourishment—like Chen Anzhi, who died directly without a trace. He will also guide kind souls to the Divine Kingdom, just like Director Hu.]

[In a sense, the Holy Lord is indeed constructing an ‘Elysian Pure Land.’]

“Why does he want to do that?”

[I guess he just really likes the feeling of playing ‘God.’]

Using the white cloth from Director Hu’s clothing, Lu Yan fashioned a flower for him and placed it upon the corpse.

Everyone present had witnessed that bizarre white humanoid figure, as well as the eerie pattern upon its body.

No one doubted the truth of the matter anymore, but the atmosphere only grew more oppressive and silent. Facing Director Hu’s remains, the teammates let out low, muffled sobs.

“That traitor told me,” Lu Yan spoke up, “that there are 23 contaminated people in total. I will nip the vessels in the bud one by one before that existence descends. Aside from that, I hope you can spread this information as far as possible.”

Lu Yan unwrapped a mint candy and popped it into his mouth. “Whether others believe it or not, I don’t want to land myself in prison this early.”

Deep Within the Botanical Garden.

An unimaginably massive banyan tree was deeply rooted at the absolute center.

Its vines spread into the distance, spanning an unknown number of miles. Its canopy blotted out the sky and sun, visible with absolute clarity even from dozens of miles away.

The banyan tree seemed to possess life, its trunk gently rising and falling with its respiration.

But upon closer inspection, one would find that its branches were entirely covered with terrified human faces.

These people had been frozen at the final moment of their lives, becoming nourishment for the tree.

Death and vitality intertwined continuously.

At the very peak of the tree trunk, a massive human face was faintly discernible, its eyes lowered with an expression that looked benevolent and merciful.

The ground was blanketed with blue mushrooms, casting a breathtakingly beautiful fluorescent glow.

A flying bird passed by; a green vine suddenly shot out like a projectile, delivering the little bird straight into the giant’s greedy, gaping maw.

The entrance to the Botanical Garden had long since been overrun with vines, sealed airtight.

Yet at this moment, these plants were rapidly growing, draining nutrients from the mother body, and then withering away.

Wherever the yellow dust swept, not a single blade of grass remained.

07 followed behind Tang Xun’an and said, “Actually, there’s no need to go to all this trouble. I can just burn it directly.”

“Leave it.” Tang Xun’an’s reply was somewhat overly laconic.

The silence here was unsettling.

The giant face upon the banyan tree opened its eyes and said, “He is here.”

And so, a wind whipped up out of nowhere within the Botanical Garden. Those wildly growing branches began to snicker, their mouths chanting the exact same words, though their pitch grew sharper and sharper: “He’s here, he’s here, he’s here!”

Devour him.

Or, destroy him.