Chapter 118: A Dead World
After listening to Yu Xian's analysis, Zhang Shou immediately asked the question he cared about most. "Can we go back?"
He was not afraid that he himself would never be able to return. But if he ended up dragging Yu Xian into this and making him stuck here as well, he would feel guilty for the rest of his life.
Yu Xian smiled. "Since we can come here, naturally we can go back. But there is no rush. We are already here. Might as well investigate why the zombies from this place keep getting teleported to Twin West Mountain."
Zhang Shou patted his chest and let out a sigh of relief. "That's good. As long as we can go back, that's good."
With a flicker of his thought, Yu Xian commanded the two Perfect Lifeforms still inside the spatial bubble to descend from the sky. "Kill all the zombies here. Don't stop without my order."
The two creatures immediately moved in silence. Everywhere they passed, they struck down zombies one after another. The highest-ranked zombies here were only at Sparrow rank, while both Perfect Lifeforms were Dragon rank, so there was no suspense in the battle at all.
Zhang Shou's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "Holy crap, Salted Fish! You got stronger behind our backs again."
Recently, he had been working extremely hard, but he had only risen by two ranks and somehow gained two abilities. But compared to Yu Xian's cheat-like growth rate, he felt like a joke, an utter joke!
With a faint, knowing smirk, Yu Xian replied, "What made you think you actually had a chance of catching up to me?"
Zhang Shou widened his eyes and opened his mouth but, in the end, could not rebuke Yu Xian. After all, the facts were right there in front of him. Anything he said would only be an excuse.
He looked at the fallen zombies around them and changed the subject. "There are way too many zombies in this place. And... their clothes look ordinary. It's like they were just normal people who were turned into zombies after dying."
Watching the zombies awaken and claw their way out of the ground, Yu Xian murmured eerily, "What if that really was the case?"
These zombies were dressed in rags, but from the style of their clothes, he could tell they probably were not supernatural beings. They had simply been ordinary civilians. It was only after death and under the influence of corpse miasma that they had transformed.
Yu Xian turned to Zhang Shou. "Let's go scout the perimeter!"
He ordered the two Perfect Lifeforms to clear the way, flanking them. Then he and Zhang Shou walked across the black earth. As far as the eye could see, everything was barren. There was not a single tree or blade of grass, only an endless stream of zombies awakening from beneath the ground, then being effortlessly killed by the Perfect Lifeforms.
In Yu Xian's mind, this space was extremely chaotic. He tried to form a model of it using Super Smell and Super Brain, but the model was completely blank, as if this place did not exist. Only when zombies crawled out of the ground would individual zombie models appear in his mind.
These zombies stank so badly that he simply blocked out their stench. As a result, the blank spots in his mind became even larger.
Yu Xian and Zhang Shou stopped walking after half an hour. In the distance, they saw a strange tree. More than fifty corpses hung from it. When the corpses sensed the two of them, they twisted wildly like insects, but were unable to break free from the ropes around their necks.
Zhang Shou pointed at one of the corpses and whispered, "Salted Fish, look at that zombie over there."
Yu Xian looked over and discovered that the zombie was actually carrying a tattered briefcase on its back. He immediately controlled a silver thread with his finger, extended it, and cut the rope binding the briefcase to the zombie. Then he brought the briefcase back.
The zombie had used a rope to tie the briefcase firmly to itself. Perhaps there was important information inside.
Yu Xian did not directly touch the briefcase. Instead, he used silver threads to open it. Sure enough, many old documents were inside. He took them out and examined them one by one, his brows gradually furrowing.
Curious, Zhang Shou asked, "What is it?"
Yu Xian passed the documents to him. "Have a look. They are all written in Chinese."
Zhang Shou took a pair of gloves from his spatial ring and put them on. He took the documents and glanced over them. "What is wrong with Chinese? Isn't that a good thing?"
Yu Xian looked at Zhang Shou. "Then what if... we are actually no longer on the Blue Planet? What if we are no longer in our world?"
Zhang Shou was shocked. "How is that possible?"
Yu Xian looked at the documents and sighed. "I also wish it were impossible, but all the evidence is telling me that this is not our world. At the very least... have you ever heard of the Flame Dragon Empire?"
He pointed at the seal on the document.
Flame Dragon Empire, Ninth Research Institute!
Zhang Shou stared at the words on the seal, his eyes widening. Only after a long moment did he say in astonishment, "So we crossed into another world?"
Yu Xian looked over the document and nodded grimly. "Yeah... we've arrived in a world that's already dead."
The Theory of Corpse Miasma Expansion was something Yu Xian had come across a while back, but he had scoffed at it. In his mind, with the sheer number of supernatural beings, they would eventually be able to handle corpse miasma.
But now, he seemed to have arrived in a world where the Theory of Corpse Miasma Expansion had proven him wrong. The concentration of corpse miasma here was extremely high. Although it had not yet reached fifty percent, it was at least around thirty percent. For living creatures, that was already an extremely lethal concentration.
The reason Zhang Shou was perfectly fine in this world was that his body rejected the intrusion of other energies. As for why Yu Xian remained unaffected, it was because he was a vampire. Theoretically, he wasn't much different from a zombie, as both belonged to the category of the undead.
However, this did not mean others would be fine here too. Other living beings had no way to survive in such a high concentration of corpse miasma. Even if they clung to life, corpse miasma would gradually infect them and ultimately turn them into zombies.
As he looked at the documents, Yu Xian could not help but wonder, "Is our world also destined for the ending of this world?"
These documents explained the process of corpse miasma expansion in detail and also mentioned the final fate of many supernatural beings. Powerful supernatural beings could no longer remain in this world, so they fled into the Abyss. None of them ever returned. After losing the protection of the strong, the weak became food for the zombies.
Even without being attacked by zombies, people living in an environment with such a high concentration of corpse miasma would gradually become extreme, irritable, and violent, their minds filled with negative thoughts. In the end, they would even turn on one another before becoming zombies.
The terrifying part was that there was no solution to corpse miasma. As long as zombies existed, corpse miasma would inevitably be produced. The more zombies were killed, the more corpse miasma would be released.
If they did nothing, the zombies would only grow stronger and stronger, becoming more and more dangerous. By the time doing nothing was no longer an option, once the zombies were killed, the corpse miasma released from their bodies would be even greater.
It seemed that as long as Forbidden Fruits continued to appear, as long as someone wanted to become a zombie, this ending was inevitable. There was simply no way to change it.