allendalepharm Chapter 1326 Parasite
Chapter 1326 Parasite
An hour later.
Su Xiao stood on a pile of alien corpses.
It wasn't that he intentionally stood on it, but rather that the pile of alien corpses beneath his feet had reached a height sufficient to elevate a person three meters above the ground.
Blood trickled down the blade of the Dragon Slayer Sword, gathering at the tip to form a full drop of blood. Then, pulled by gravity, it fell to the ground and smashed into the half-open mouth of a ground-dwelling creature.
He looked around and saw a brief vacuum appear on the battlefield below the southern section of the city wall—not because the alien species had been wiped out, but because they had finally learned to fear death.
The monsters with radiating pupils lingered fifty meters away from Su Xiao, their four claws pawing restlessly at the ground, their steel-needle-like back hairs standing up and then lying down, like a black wheat field ruffled by the wind.
Su Xiao stepped down from the pile of corpses and plunged the Dragon Slayer Blade into the skull of a still twitching Earthwalker. The blade pierced through the eye socket and exited from the back of the head, and the Earthwalker finally stopped moving.
Under the searchlights illuminating the fortress walls, the details of these alien creatures became exceptionally clear.
Their size is between that of a wolf and a cheetah, with a body length of 2.5 to 3 meters and a shoulder height of 1.2 to 1.5 meters.
Their four-legged running posture makes their back lines look like a drawn bow, and their front legs are significantly longer than their hind legs. This body structure is designed for high-speed running and instantaneous bursts of speed, making them unsuitable for climbing or swimming. They are only suitable for charging at speeds exceeding 60 kilometers per hour on open terrain.
The most striking part is the grayish-brown keratin layer on their underside.
That was alien biological armor, a composite structure somewhere between keratin and bone.
Lin Yi had the engineering students examine a piece of shed keratin layer with an electron microscope and discovered that the textures were actually micron-level flow channels that could reduce air resistance by 15 percent when the alien species was running at high speed.
At the rear of the southern section of the city wall, dozens of Kivotos students stood with their guns pointed at the dark area ahead.
Su Xiao stood there, alone with just a knife, blocking all the alien species in that direction.
The students watched Su Xiao's retreating figure, then looked at the crater of corpses surrounding him, and a complex emotion welled up in their hearts.
"That... is our teammate, right?" a student with pigtails asked in a low voice, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
"Probably. The teacher said that those wearing dark clothes are all on our side," the student next to her answered, but she herself wasn't quite sure, because she had never seen anyone kill so many monsters in just one hour.
"But he didn't look like a human being, more like... how should I put it, like a machine made specifically for killing."
No one refuted this statement because everyone saw the same thing.
Su Xiao stood still, his body slightly turned to the left, with the Dragon Slayer Flash held horizontally in front of him.
A ground-dwelling creature lunged at you from the front, its four claws dangling in the air, its mouth open, revealing three rows of inward-curving sharp teeth.
Su Xiao took half a step forward, his body passing under the Earthwalker's belly. The Dragon Slayer Flash pierced through the Earthwalker's jaw and exited from the top of its head.
The whole process was smooth and fluid, without any unnecessary movements.
Like a person tightening screws on an assembly line, every action is repeated hundreds or thousands of times, so the brain no longer needs to give instructions, the body knows how to move on its own.
Their only consolation now is that Su Xiao is one of their own.
If Su Xiao were an enemy, they would have no idea how to stop such a being.
Just as the battlefield below the southern section of the city wall was briefly calm, trouble broke out on the northern section of the city wall.
A contractor staggered back from the northern battlefield. His steps were very uncoordinated, like a puppet that had just learned to walk. When his left leg stepped out, his right arm would swing out as well. His center of gravity shifted from left to right, and every time he landed, it looked like he was about to fall, but he managed to steady himself at the last second.
He ran across the slope below the northern section of the city wall, past the mechanical dogs' supply line, past mountains of spent shell casings, and past several flatbed trucks transporting ammunition.
When the students of Kivotos along the way saw him like this, they instinctively moved aside to make way for him.
As he passed the engineering department's temporary repair station, he nearly fell headfirst into a mechanical dog that was having its ammunition belt changed. A student at the repair station reached out to help him up, but he shook off the student's hand and continued running forward, repeating that sentence over and over again.
"Dean, please take me to a doctor quickly."
Dr. Lan was stitching up a wound on his arm in a relatively safe corner below the northern section of the city wall.
His blue jacket was torn at the shoulder, revealing a wound that stretched from his deltoid muscle to his elbow.
The wound wasn't long, only seven or eight centimeters, but it was deep, and you could see the dark red muscle fibers underneath.
He held the needle holder in his left hand and stitched his right arm stitch by stitch.
The staggering contractor bumped into the ammunition box next to Doctor Lan, causing the box to overturn and the bullets inside to scatter all over the ground.
Dr. Lan looked up at the man and paused her stitching.
The contractor's expression was extremely distorted at this moment, his features were squeezed together on his face, as if he was enduring great pain.
His limbs were as if they had just been tamed, each movement carrying an uncoordinated stiffness, as if the signal from his brain was intercepted by something when it was given, and by the time it reached his muscles it had become a different movement.
Without saying a word, Dr. Lan put the needle forceps in his mouth and took out a syringe from his waist with his right hand. The syringe contained a tube of light blue liquid.
This is a potent sedative he made himself, capable of completely shutting down the central nervous system of a sixth-tier contractor within 0.3 seconds.
He plunged the syringe into the contractor's jugular vein and pressed down the plunger with his thumb.
The pale blue liquid was injected into the blood vessels within seconds. The contractor's body froze the moment the liquid was injected, like a frozen sculpture, his eyes still open, his mouth still agape, still in the shape of the word "blue".
Before he fell to the ground, Dr. Lan reached out and caught him, carrying him on her shoulder.
The medical area inside the base camp was located in a row of white tents on the north side of the fortress, with red crosses painted on the tents.
Two SRT students stood at the entrance to the medical area, holding guns. When they saw Dr. Lan carrying someone over, they voluntarily lifted the tent flap.
When Dr. Lan entered the tent, Lin Yi was standing in front of a metal operating table.
A person lay on the operating table, wearing a dark leather armor soaked in blood. The left shoulder of the armor had been cut open, revealing a gruesome wound underneath.
The wound extends from the collarbone to the armpit, is over 20 centimeters long, and nearly 3 centimeters deep, revealing the white collarbone and scapula underneath.
Next to this operating table are two cots.
There was a person lying on each bed, all of them unconscious.
One of them had a bandage wrapped around his head, and a pale yellow liquid was seeping out from the bandage; that was cerebrospinal fluid.
The other one had electrode patches covering his chest cavity, which were connected to a vital signs monitor that Lin Yi had bought from the Workers' Street. The heart rate curve on the monitor would fluctuate violently every few seconds, then level off, and then fluctuate violently again, and so on.
The three men were in different poses, but they had one thing in common—a patch of hair had been shaved off the back of their heads, revealing the bluish-white scalp underneath.
Two of them had a stitched-up incision on the back of their heads. The stitches were neat and evenly spaced, indicating that it was Lin Yi's work.
Dr. Lan placed the person on his shoulder onto the open ground next to Lin Yi, then walked to the side, leaned against the tent pole, and began to re-treat the wound on his right arm.
Lin Yi glanced at him, then looked at the newcomer on the ground.
"Parasitized?"
"It should be." Dr. Lan unwrapped the bandage, revealing the unstitched wound, and picked up the needle holder to continue stitching.
"He suddenly became uncoordinated on the battlefield, walking like a penguin and speaking like a broken record. I judged that his nerves were disturbed, so I knocked him unconscious and brought him here. You'll know whether he's a parasite or not when you see him."
Lin Yi nodded, wiped the scalpel on an alcohol swab, then squatted down to examine the contractor.
He lifted the man's eyelids and shone a flashlight into his pupils.
The fact that the pupils did not become radial indicates that the parasitism was not yet complete; the parasite was still moving through the nervous system and had not yet reached the brain.
Lin Yi stood up and took a bottle of medicine from the shelf next to the operating table.
A handwritten label was affixed to the bottle of the medicine, which read "Neuron blocking agent, experimental type III" in illegible handwriting, belonging to a student from the engineering department.
This potion was developed by students in the Millennium after they entered the Beast Continent. After Lin Yi discovered that this potion had a paralyzing effect on parasitic species, he ordered the engineering department to increase production.
He drew a vial of medicine, plunged it into the back of the contractor's neck, and slowly pushed the medicine in.
After the medicine entered his body, the contractor's body convulsed violently for a moment before returning to calm.
His facial muscles relaxed completely at that moment; the distorted expression disappeared, replaced by an empty calm, like a crumpled piece of white paper being ironed flat again.
Lin Yi lifted him onto another empty cot and secured his limbs with restraint straps.
Then he walked over to Dr. Lan and glanced at the wound he was stitching up.
"Do you need any help?"
"No need, it's almost finished sewing." Dr. Lan said, tying the last knot and cutting the sutures with scissors.
"You go about your business, I have to go back to the north later. I'm worried about the dean being alone in the north."
Lin Yi nodded, walked to the operating table, and began to treat the new patient.
He first turned the man over, making him lie face down on the operating table, and used a razor to shave off a small patch of hair on the back of the man's head, revealing a bluish-white scalp.
The razor made a soft swishing sound as it glided across the scalp, like someone gently rubbing sandpaper.
He picked up the specially made scalpel from the instrument tray, pressed the tip of the blade lightly against the skin at the incision site to confirm the location, and then began to make the incision.
There was almost no resistance when the blade cut through the skin, like cutting butter with a hot knife.
The skin is turned to the sides, revealing the dark red muscles and grayish-white fascia underneath.
Lin Yi used hemostatic forceps to clamp the exposed skin on both sides and used retractors to pull the muscle layer apart to expose deeper tissue.
Beneath the periosteum on the surface of the skull, a thin, white, filamentous thing is wriggling.
That's not the main body of the parasite, but rather nerve bundles that extend from the parasite to connect the host's spinal cord and brain.
This filamentous object, less than one millimeter in diameter and about three centimeters long, slowly moves between the periosteum and the skull, like an earthworm burrowing into mud.
Lin Yi used micro-tweezers to grasp the end of the filament and gently pulled it outward.
A small section of the filament was pulled out, then stopped, as if it were stuck by something.
Lin Yi didn't pull it forcefully. He switched the scalpel to his left hand and gently cut a small layer of the periosteum at the spot where the filament was stuck.
The resistance from the filaments immediately disappeared, and he pulled out a white worm about two centimeters long from the cut.
The insect contracted violently the moment it was pulled out of the body, as if it had been scalded, and then began to writhe wildly.
Its surface has a layer of viscous fluid, which begins to solidify when exposed to air, forming a thin, transparent membrane that envelops the insect.
Lin Yi placed the insect body into a glass petri dish and put the lid on.
The worm continued to wriggle in the petri dish for a few seconds, then slowly calmed down, curling up into a ball, like a dried earthworm.
This is the larva of the parasitic species. The adult is much larger, reaching up to 15 centimeters in length and nearly 1 centimeter in width. It has up to a hundred nerve bundles in its body, which can connect to multiple nerve nodes in the host at the same time.
However, it is difficult for adult insects to enter the body of a sixth-tier contractor, because the body of a sixth-tier contractor will automatically reject the invasion of foreign biological tissues.
Only these newly hatched larvae can enter the body through wounds or mucous membranes when the contractor is not paying attention, and then migrate upwards along blood vessels and nerves within a few hours, eventually reaching the brain and spinal cord.
Lin Yi placed the petri dish on a shelf to the side and then began to clean the incision.
He rinsed the incision with saline solution to remove any remaining bodily fluids, wiped away the blood with cotton swabs, and then began suturing. After suturing, Lin Yi took a tube of ointment from a nearby cabinet, applied a layer to the incision, covered it with gauze, and secured it with tape.
Lin Yi took off his gloves, threw them into the medical waste bin, and then went to the sink in the corner of the tent to wash his hands.
The hunter has killed 1 parasitic species, gaining 2 merit points.
The notification sound from the Paradise of Reincarnation rang in his ears, but Lin Yi ignored it and took out a dry towel from his pocket to wipe his hands.
The war continues.
The sound of cannons came from the direction of the city wall, not just a few sporadic shots, but a continuous roar, like a distant thunderstorm rolling on and on.
The beams of searchlight swept back and forth across the night sky, revealing the silhouettes of the engineering department's drones hovering above the city walls. The muzzle flashes of their machine guns flickered in the darkness, like a swarm of tireless fireflies.
Lin Yi opened the war channel, typed a line of text, read it through to make sure there were no typos, and then pressed the send button.
The message was pinned to the top, with bright red text flashing at the top of the channel.
"Everyone, pay attention to the eyes of your own people when you encounter them. If their eyes turn into something resembling the radial pattern of an alien species, knock them unconscious immediately and bring them back to base. If you encounter white worms during the battle, be cautious, as they possess parasitic abilities. If you are parasitized, abandon the fight immediately and have someone else knock you unconscious and bring you back to camp."
After the message was sent, the war channel was quiet for about two seconds, and then suddenly erupted in chaos.
"Holy crap, I thought Erdan's eyes were weird just now. When did his pupils become like that?"
"Torch, did you just bump into me? Have you been parasitized?"
"Get lost, I didn't, you're the one who's been parasitized."
"Can you two just shut up? The doctor said to watch your eyes, not to start suspicions between you. Erdan's pupils have become like that, why don't you take him home?"
"He said he was fine, so we believed him. Who knows if he had already been parasitized when he said he was fine?"
"What do we do now? Erdan is still on the battlefield."
"I knocked him out and I'm carrying him back now. This son of a bitch is really heavy, what did he eat to grow so big?"
The war channel was in complete chaos, but Lin Yi noticed that the gunfire suddenly intensified at that moment.
It wasn't a tactical adjustment; rather, the contractors, having confirmed that Lin Yi could deal with the parasites, were now completely unleashing their full potential.
They were originally supposed to spend some of their energy observing their teammates' eyes and suspecting everyone who got close to them.
No, we don't need to anymore.
If Lin Yi says it can be cured, then it can be cured.
Parasitic species are quite troublesome.
In the heterogeneous population system, parasitic species belong to the first-tier subgroup, second only to fission species.
They are not large in size; the adults are only 15 to 20 centimeters long, no more than 2 centimeters wide, and weigh less than 100 grams.
If you only look at their size, they are not even as good as the weakest of the parasitic species, the ground-dwelling species. One ground-dwelling species can crush dozens of parasitic species.
However, their threat level is far higher than that of terrestrial species.
The Earth-walking species can only kill one person, while the Parasitic species can control one person.
A human commander controlled by a parasite can turn an army from victory to defeat in minutes.
A human engineer controlled by a parasite can completely paralyze a city's power system within hours.
A human leader controlled by a parasite can turn a race from unity to division in a matter of days.
The reason why humanity in this world is in such a miserable state is because of parasitic species.
When the alien species first awoke from the earth's core, the combined forces of humans and orcs were not at a disadvantage on the main battlefield.
Steam-powered war machines roared across the plains, while logistical supply lines, powered by electricity and heavy industry, continuously delivered ammunition and supplies to the front lines. Human and orc scientists worked day and night in laboratories to develop new weapons to combat the alien species.
Then the parasite arrived.
They silently infiltrated the cities of humans and orcs, parasitizing the upper echelons of humanity, disguising themselves as human leaders, standing on the platform of the council hall, and issuing one devastating order after another with the most sincere expression and the gentlest tone.
"The city's power system needs a full overhaul and will be temporarily shut down for three days."
"There are safety concerns with that batch of newly developed armor-piercing projectiles, so production has been suspended."
"The supply convoy at the front was attacked by aliens, and all supplies were lost."
“Our allies, the orcs, have slaughtered civilians in the rear and must be punished.”
One by one, link by link, like a spider web that is closing in.
By the time the humans and orcs realized something was wrong, the net had already tightened too much.
The production lines for advanced weapons were shut down, the power supply was cut off, communications between the front and the rear were disrupted, and the trust between humans and orcs was destroyed.
The parasitic species set back the civilizations of humans and orcs by decades without firing a single shot.
That's what makes them so terrifying; they have no direct combat capability, but you never know when they'll appear next to you.
You don't even know if the person standing in front of you is a real person or a shell controlled by white worms.
It took humans and orcs almost a generation to learn how to identify and fight the parasites.
But both heterogeneous and parasitic species are evolving.
Each generation of parasites is more elusive, more cunning, and more difficult to detect than the previous generation.
The first death of the contractors in battle was caused by the parasitic species.
That was in the first hour after the war began, on the northern section of the city wall.
During the battle, a contractor from the Paradise of Reincarnation suddenly turned around and stabbed his teammate in the chest with his weapon.
The action was completely unexpected. One second he was slashing at the aliens, and the next second his knife was piercing his teammate's heart.
Then the contractor who committed the crime also fell down. The larva of the parasite crawled out from the back of his head. The white insect body was covered with dark red blood and pale yellow cerebrospinal fluid. It writhed in the air for a few seconds before being crushed by someone next to it.
This is the tactic of parasites. They don't care about their own death; they only care about one thing—killing as many enemies as possible before being exposed.
After being parasitized, the parasite uses its own nerves to connect to the victim's brain, not to replace it, but to connect in parallel.
The victim is still conscious and can still see, hear, and feel, but the parasite has taken away control of her body.
You can see what you're doing, hear what you're saying, and feel your hand holding the weapon trembling, but you can't stop yourself.
This feeling is more terrifying than death.
Before the message was sent out, two people had already been sent to medical tents along the northern section of the city wall.
One of them knocked himself unconscious. The moment he felt something in the back of his head, he smashed his temple with the hilt of his knife, so hard that he fractured his cheekbone.
Another was knocked unconscious by his teammates. His teammates noticed that his pupils were starting to radiate outwards, and without saying a word, they hit him on the back of the head with the butt of a rifle, the force being just enough to knock him unconscious without killing him.
The one Dr. Lan brought was the third case.
After one of the contractors had slashed down several ground creatures in front of him, he felt a stinging sensation on the back of his head.
He plunged his weapon into the ground, reached for his waist with his left hand, and pulled out the syringe that Lin Yi had given to each contractor; the syringe contained a pale blue nerve blocker.
He plunged the syringe into the side of his neck and pressed down the plunger with his thumb.
Three seconds later, his body began to sway, his vision began to blur, and his legs began to go weak.
In the last second before losing consciousness, he used his last strength to shout, "Carry me back."
Then he collapsed.
Several contractors around him heard his shout and glanced at his pupils—radiating patterns had begun to appear.
The two contractors reached out at the same time, one grabbing one of his arms and dragging him off the battlefield.
As he was dragged, his boots dug two furrows in the mud, and his body bumped and scraped against gravel and spent cartridges, but he did not react at all; the nerve blocker had rendered him completely unconscious.
The two contractors dragged him to a supply point below the city wall, handed him over to the engineering students, and then turned and rushed back to the battlefield.
There was another contractor who was even more outrageous.
He suddenly stopped while slaying the aliens, turned around, and looked at his teammates behind him.
“Look into my eyes.”
His teammate glanced at him.
"what happened?"
"Has it turned into a radial pattern?"
"No."
"Take another look."
"No, your eyes are perfectly normal. Do you have paranoia? The doctor said that not everyone will be parasitized."
"I know, but I always feel a little itchy on the back of my head."
"That's sweat. You're sweating, and the sweat is running down your neck to the back of your head. It's normal for it to itch."
"you sure?"
"I'm sure. If you don't go and kill the aliens, they'll kill me."
"Okay, I'll trust you this once."
The man turned around and continued to slash at the alien species, his movements even more ferocious than before, as if he were using the alien species' blood to relieve the itch on the back of his head.
Below the southern section of the city wall, the horde of alien species in front of Su Xiao finally began to retreat.
It wasn't a rout, but a tactical retreat. They left behind more than three hundred corpses in front of them, and then regrouped two hundred meters away from Su Xiao, forming a loose arc-shaped formation.
Su Xiao stood atop the pile of corpses, watching the alien creatures, but did not give chase.
He still has enough stamina to fight for another two hours, but his sword needs a rest.
Several small nicks appeared on the blade of the Dragon Slayer Sword, which were left from cutting into the alien bones.
The blade was very hot, and the blood evaporated into white steam on the blade.
Su Xiao inserted the tip of the knife into the ground, allowing the blade to cool naturally in the night breeze. (End of Chapter)