Netherworld Retrograde-Chapter 552 - 260 The Living Warship
The humanoid figure flashed by, and Li Yelai immediately became alert. It was definitely not an illusion!
"Did you see that?" Li Yelai quickly asked.
"Keep your voice down, what did you see?" Jing Lin, still vigilant of the flesh mutations that had just fallen asleep, turned back and asked.
"Above us, there was someone... no! It’s more accurate to say there was a humanoid object, just now, peering down at us inside the bridge. It vanished in the blink of an eye," said Li Yelai.
"Didn’t notice anything... are you sure you didn’t see it wrong?" Jing Lin asked.
"No mistake. Even if I’d seen it wrongly, that wouldn’t make an object simply disappear," Li Yelai replied, "There must still be something movable there, and it is humanoid."
"In this environment, it’s very difficult for humans to survive. Could it be a Returning Soul or some other parasite?" Jing Lin looked up toward the high bridge, "But it saw us and didn’t attack."
"We can presume for now that it’s not in league with the flesh mutations," Li Yelai analyzed, "It also doesn’t want the flesh mutations to discover it."
"That’s good then, at least it won’t take the initiative to attack," Jing Lin muttered.
The two set off again.
Jing Lin led the way, his left eye flickering as the ’Extreme Detail’ ability kicked in; any change, be it flying dust or sliding screws, would be immediately detected by him.
Meanwhile, Li Yelai followed half a step behind on his side, ready to support Jing Lin the moment he launched an attack.
However, as they climbed higher, they encountered evidence of fierce battles.
Inside a ship that had completely capsized and was cobbled together with other vessels, they found a scatter of shell casings and over a dozen flesh mutations that had been dismembered.
These flesh mutations had clearly been torn apart, their bodies reduced to skeletal remains, all flesh thoroughly vanished.
They must have been dead for many years.
Yet Li Yelai and Jing Lin’s expressions changed because those skeletons bore clear signs of burning and savage tearing.
Jing Lin crouched on the ground, looking at a thigh bone, and couldn’t help feeling a chill.
The deformed and twisted thigh bone had clear knife and tooth marks!
"Old Li, these are human bite marks," Jing Lin spoke softly.
"It appears there definitely were survivors," Li Yelai grimaced in response.
In this dangerous place where the sun never shone, survivors had no logistics or reinforcements, and naturally, no food source.
If they didn’t want to turn on their comrades, they would have had to feed on those flesh mutations, even if they had once been humans or some other creatures... to stay alive, they had to struggle to swallow this meat.
"Can you figure out the time?" Li Yelai asked quietly.
Jing Lin was silent for a few seconds, then replied, "The recent tremor disturbed the dust here; I’m not certain my judgment is correct, thirty years!"
The Border Fleet lost contact forty-three years ago, with landmine and footprints also around forty years old. Yet now, there were traces from thirty years ago...
Did survivors last in this hellish place for ten years?
How... did they carry on?
Were they... still persisting?
With these thoughts, both men fell silent and quickly moved closer to the Major Destroyer.
Although their hopes were very slim, they still hoped to find the soldiers of the Border Fleet from those years.
However, as they passed through a crew room, they were stunned.
Inside the crew room lay two bodies that had skeletonized.
They wore the combat uniforms of Border City, gripping clearly modified firearms, huddled together in a corner of the room.
And their heads had been severed by themselves, falling onto their own bodies,
They were soldiers of the Border Fleet... they had left their hometown and ended up dying here...
Li Yelai silently observed the two bodies.
Jing Lin, after examining them, spoke softly, "The cuts were made by a Chain-Saw Sword, judging from their posture, one of them placed the Chain-Saw Sword across both their necks, and then activated it, severing their heads... Perhaps without the head, it won’t become a flesh mutation. This was their last resistance."
"They wouldn’t become monsters even in death! Truly worthy of your Boundary City soldiers!"
"It’s tough for them; if someone could bury them, they wouldn’t have had to go through so much trouble," Li Yelai sighed softly, feeling quite distressed.
He suddenly thought of the illusion he had seen during the Fifth Sense.
Why can Forbidden Zone Creatures keep returning time after time!
But humans, must pay with countless brave lives!
This isn’t fair! Too unfair!
Humans must also obtain immortality, must also gain eternal life!
All things rot, yet life never ceases!
"Ai... life never ceases," Li Yelai quietly thought to himself.
Then, they moved through the cabin and saw even more bodies of flesh mutations.
No human corpses were in sight, but they found steel footprints.
Those must be the footprints of the Border Iron Guard...
"There are dragging marks on the ground; the bodies of the human soldiers were all dragged away," Jing Lin’s gaze swept across the battlefield, "There must have been more than twenty human soldiers here..."
The battle here had been brutal, with hundreds of flesh mutations assaulting the Iron Guards and human soldiers.
The human soldiers had relied on firepower to suppress the monsters, but in the end, the ammunition ran out.
Armed with shovels or knives, military sabers, the soldiers engaged in close combat with the flesh mutations!
But once the suppression of thermal weapons was lost, the flesh mutations, with their Spiritual Barriers, obviously gained the upper hand.
The human warriors paid a heavy price to kill off that group of mutants.
"Taking away the bodies of the human soldiers could have been to prevent them from becoming flesh mutations," said Jing Lin, "Perhaps it was the Iron Guards who took them away."
