Chapter 393: Stabilizers in the Field

The light rain, which had started sometime earlier, pattered down again, whispering through the surrounding weeds like cold laughter.

Lu Xin stepped out of the tent, looking up at the gloomy sky.

Meanwhile, Sister circled the few surviving soldiers, observing them curiously. She occasionally reached out a small hand, seemingly wanting to touch them, but after a sharp glare from Lu Xin, she quickly pulled back, content just to watch.

Father remained silently within the shadows, quietly observing the surroundings.

Mom, dressed in her exquisite little suit, was the sole splash of color amidst the gloomy wasteland and the pale lamplight.

“Is there a way to destroy this kind of pollution field?”

A sliver of hope rose in Lu Xin’s heart as he gently looked towards Mom.

But hearing Lu Xin’s words, Mom’s lips curled slightly.

“This pollution force field wasn’t formed by any logic I can understand, so I can’t help you.”

Mom explained softly, then gently shook her head.

Lu Xin let out a long breath and asked again, “Then, can we find the pollution source?”

Mom smiled. “The logic here is chaotic. So, from my perspective, you could say pollution sources are everywhere.”

Lu Xin paused, then shook his head helplessly.

Pollution sources everywhere also meant the pollution source couldn’t be found.

…

A heavy feeling settled in his heart. He had already decided to stay and figure this out, but facing such a complex and bizarre scene, he had to admit this was the first time a pollution event made him feel so utterly powerless.

His responsibility was to investigate the cause of this incident and clean up this pollution.

Cleaning up pollution was simple in theory: sever the logic chain or eliminate the pollution source.

But this pollution field was so vast, how could it be severed?

And because this pollution field was so vast, how could he find its source?

Being trapped within a strange incident without grasping its structure was the most agonizing part.

He wasn’t particularly skilled at investigations; Han Bing had always been a huge help in previous cases.

But now, even Qinggang’s database had no relevant cases to reference.

Who else could he ask?

…

Amidst the chaotic thoughts, Lu Xin suddenly remembered something.

He took out the communicator the researcher had given him.

Being near the observation post meant there was a signal receiver readily available. The communicator quickly decrypted the secret network and connected.

Watching the tech-heavy screen light up, Lu Xin accessed the Club platform.

Then, he typed into the dialog box: “Anyone here?”

Just like last time, complete silence. No one answered.

Lu Xin frowned and continued typing: “Need to ask everyone for advice. There’s an area with severe pollution. Everyone inside this area died, then was influenced and turned into ‘living people’. They don’t know they’re dead or why they died. If you tell them they’re dead, they turn into some kind of mental monster…”

“Has anyone encountered a similar incident or know how to handle it?”

“…”

After typing out so much, he paused, then added another sentence: “For anyone who can answer this question…”

Steeling himself, he typed out the numbers directly: “Reward: 100,000!”

After finishing, he waited quietly.

About ten seconds later, someone suddenly popped up: “Damn, are you telling a ghost story?”

Red Dancing Shoes: “It’s the middle of the night, you scared me! Wuwuwu…”

Blood Drops: “Where’s this exciting scene happening?”

“…”

Lu Xin slowly typed: “Right beside me.”

Red Dancing Shoes: “?”

Clockwork Orange: “Trying to pull an old prank?”

Laozi Tianxia Zui Shuai Jiu Bu San Ge Zi: “Exciting!”

Lu Xin let out a slow sigh. His expectations for this Club were dwindling.

But just then, he saw a private message notification. The sender was Mechanic.

Mechanic: “What’s the specific situation?”

Lu Xin felt a flicker of hope and quickly replied: “The general situation is as I described. I can roughly guess the pollution method – it’s a field-type pollution. But I don’t know how to break this field. Also, any colleagues who entered the field were affected by some unknown influence, killed each other, and died. We haven’t found the specific reason yet.”

“…”

Mechanic: “Are you sure you’re still alive?”

Lu Xin fell silent for a moment, checked his pulse, and then felt his own heart.

Most importantly, he glanced at his family nearby.

Then he replied: “Certain.”

Mechanic: “Then I’m relieved.”

Mechanic: “Besides coming back from death, do the pollution entities show any other signs?”

Lu Xin: “Apart from being dead, they’re just like living people. They remember their jobs, their children at home, parents, fiancées. If you don’t break the news that they’re dead, they seem even more normal than living people.”

Lu Xin: “Have you seen similar cases?”

Mechanic: “No.”

Lu Xin: “…”

Mechanic: “I haven’t heard of an identical case, but if you break it down, there are many references.”

Lu Xin: “?”

Mechanic: “I suggest you look for logic within the chaos.”

“For example, break this incident down into several different events.”

“First, some pollution affected them, making them kill each other and turning them into dead people.”

“Second, some pollution reawakened them, making them continue to work like living people.”

“Third, for some reason, they are unwilling to remember the fact that they are already dead.”

“Fourth, when someone points it out, they turn into mental monsters.”

“Among these four points, which one do you think is the key?”

“…”

Looking at the text transmitted by the Mechanic, Lu Xin was slightly stunned and followed the train of thought.

Breaking down the initially very complex situation did indeed make it clearer.

Following this line of reasoning, he sent a message: “Then, are there any cases of dead people resurrecting?”

Mechanic: “There are many abilities that can resurrect the dead.”

“Puppet-type Ability Users like creating mentally modified people. These look like living people but are actually dead. Also, there was an incident in the South where hordes of corpses rushed a city. Hongling City also had an incident with stitched-together people. And a settlement near White Paper River had a widely circulated soul transfer incident a year ago. They’re all similar abilities.”

“But fundamentally, all these incidents involve either a large number of mental monsters parasitizing corpses, or they are under the influence of some powerful Dominator group ability. If you’re not in a rush right now, I can slowly explain these to you.”

“Then you can compare which case is similar to what you’ve encountered…”

“…”

Looking at the information sent by the Mechanic, a memory suddenly flashed through Lu Xin’s mind.

Encountering this situation previously, because it was so abnormal and the pollution was formless and intangible, made him suspect some unknown pollution was spreading nearby. But after hearing the Mechanic’s words, he suddenly realized that perhaps the problem didn’t lie with unknown enemies.

This type of pollution, making dead people come alive and work normally, seemed like a first encounter.

But he had seen someone capable of awakening the dead before.

He took a deep breath and looked towards the direction of Happy Town.

He still remembered when he first entered Happy Town and awakened the Queen, he had seen a row of rotting corpses buried underground. They had been dead for years, but under the Queen’s influence, they crawled out from the ground, holding firearms, confronting him and his family.

This incident clearly proved that the Queen possessed the ability to awaken the dead.

But the strange part was that the corpses awakened by the Queen were very different from the ones he was seeing now.

Besides, their current location was still some distance from Happy Town.

The real Happy Town was that small town with the white, crowded little houses.

It’s just that the Queen’s mental radiation was powerful, covering a range of almost fifty kilometers.

And their observation post was already ten li beyond the outermost edge of the Queen’s mental radiation.

The place where Researcher Wang Song and the main Information Gathering Team ran into trouble was even farther, thirty to forty li away.

Even though Lu Xin’s understanding of the Queen was still limited, he could be certain that the Queen couldn’t possibly awaken dead people from this far away.

Moreover, the dead awakened by the Queen would obey her will, unlike the situation now.

…

He quickly typed: “No need for the stories, I’m in a hurry.”

“But I know of one similar pollution source.”

“However, the distance between them is too great, and the characteristics of the pollution are completely different.”

“…”

Mechanic: “The core characteristic is the most important.”

“You need to understand that waking the dead is essentially mental power at work. Just like Puppet-type Ability Users can create and control mentally modified people, mental power can parasitize objects, and naturally, it can also parasitize corpses.”

“After parasitizing a corpse, it can control the corpse’s actions and extract memories from the undamaged brain.”

“But theoretically, this puts a strong drain on the mental entity and usually doesn’t last long.”

“In the situation you encountered, people dead for over a week are still working normally… that’s a huge mental drain…”

“…”

Hearing this, Lu Xin paused slightly, thinking of a doubtful point.

According to the Mechanic, after the living dead are resurrected, their mental power should be consumed, becoming weaker and weaker.

But the few mutated colleagues he saw actually had stronger mental entities than usual.

Each of them even had a psychic magnitude reaching two to three hundred.

He hurriedly sent this observation over, asking: “Why is that?”

Mechanic: “Very strange. That doesn’t conform to common sense at all.”

“Dead people maintaining a living state for a long time, with their psychic magnitude increasing instead… this suggests at least two things.”

“First, the pollution source or Ability User exerting this influence is very powerful.”

“Second, the pollution field you’ve encountered might not just be polluting, but also transmitting mental power.”

“…”

Lu Xin: “Transmitting?”

Mechanic: “Yes. A transmission of mental power that violates biological instinct. Whether it’s mental monsters or pollution sources, they actually possess biological characteristics. They pollute others, plunder their psychic magnitude, making them part of themselves.”

“But transmitting one’s own mental power to others is a very unreasonable thing to do.”

Lu Xin: “Then, why would a field appear that violates biological instinct?”

Mechanic: “There are many reasons. The will of a mental monster or some special parasitic items could achieve it.”

“After all, I’m not nearby. Perhaps you’ll have to investigate the reason yourself…”

“…”

Lu Xin fell silent.

Taking a deep breath, he suddenly stood up and walked into the rain.

He suddenly remembered something. When the advance team of the Information Gathering Team first arrived nearby, although they didn’t dare act rashly because they didn’t understand the type of pollution encountered, they still conducted a preliminary inspection and found something.

Approaching the group of soldiers squatting silently on the ground, Lu Xin first glared at his sister, then asked them in a low voice.

Fortunately, these soldiers still had memories of it and quickly retrieved it for him.

Lu Xin brought it back to the tent, took a picture with the communicator, and sent it to the Mechanic.

Taking a deep breath, he typed: “Have you seen this thing before?”

As he spoke, he sent the photo.

The Mechanic replied quickly: “This should be a type of signal stabilizer, used to maintain a certain force field. If I’m guessing correctly, there should be many more of these things around you. Their function is likely to be placement around the field’s perimeter to maintain its stability. Heh, looks like what you’ve encountered isn’t an ordinary field…”

Lu Xin: “How should something like this be dismantled?”

“…”

Mechanic: “Too easy. Just destroy these stabilizers.”

Lu Xin: “Then how do I find all these things?”

Mechanic: “That I don’t know. After all, I’m just providing an idea. Smile. Smile.”

Mechanic: “Can you transfer the money to me now?”

Lu Xin was silent for a moment, then said: “Shouldn’t I pay after the problem is solved?”

Mechanic: “No.”

Mechanic: “Whether you can solve it or not, I’ve already given my advice. It’s worth the money.”

Mechanic: “The main reason is, don’t underestimate these small components. If they can affect a pollution field, they definitely weren’t made by an ordinary faction. I don’t want to offend any of the few factions capable of creating such a field. Frankly, brother, I don’t think you should offend them either. This is beyond what a single person, or even a single high-wall city, can handle.”

“So…”

Mechanic: “I suspect you might not get the chance to transfer the money to me *after* solving it.”

“Smiling face. Hand reaching out emoji.”

“…”

Looking at his reply, Lu Xin felt only a brief internal struggle before transferring the money.

Then he slowly put down the communicator and looked up.

Now, many of his doubts had been resolved, but at the same time, greater questions arose. Especially the Mechanic’s final words, which weighed heavily on his heart. Now that he was aware of the crux of the problem, what could he do?

Determining the function and purpose of these instruments was one problem.

Finding and eliminating these instruments was another problem entirely…

Lu Xin sighed deeply. The feeling of powerlessness in his heart hadn’t actually lessened much.

This pollution field was too vast; its radiation area was unknown.

The few components he had found were just a tiny part of it, insufficient to destroy the field.

But in this vast wasteland, how could he find the other components?

Without finding these instruments, the field couldn’t be destroyed, and anyone entering would face danger.

Not just ordinary people; even if Ability Users entered, Lu Xin didn’t know if they could resist this pollution. Even if they could resist, discovering these instruments meant there were other unknown enemies in this wasteland. If only one or two Ability Users came in, their fate probably wouldn’t be much better than that of ordinary people entering this wasteland.

But without reinforcements, how could he solve such a huge problem alone?

Looking up at the seemingly infinitely deep night sky, Lu Xin felt somewhat vacant inside.

An indescribable sense of loneliness seemed to envelop him.

Even though he was familiar with this loneliness, it felt particularly oppressive right now.

…

“Mr… Mr. Lone Soldier… do you… need help?”

Just as Lu Xin stood in the light rain, sighing tiredly, a voice suddenly sounded.

Lu Xin turned his head and saw the Captain with half his head missing.

Four team members followed behind him, all dead but not yet mutated.

“Help?”

Lu Xin looked at them, slightly stunned.

“Yes.”

The Captain slowly puffed out his chest.

It was impossible to describe his expression accurately with words; one could only see that his look was extremely determined:

“Mr. Lone Soldier, we… we don’t know what happened to us, nor what will happen next. But… but just waiting there is too painful. So, we’d rather… hope we can do something to help you.”

“…”

Looking at their expressions, a smile gradually spread across Lu Xin’s face.

“Alright.”

He suddenly extended his hand towards the Captain, smiling. “Thank you for your help.”

Seeing Lu Xin’s hand, the Captain was clearly embarrassed, glancing down at his own palm, covered in bloodstains.

But amidst Lu Xin’s smile, he slowly reached out his hand.

“No need to thank us. This was originally our job.”

“…”

“Yes.”

Lu Xin’s smile was sincere and happy.

The lingering sense of oppression and loneliness suddenly vanished amidst the vacant gazes of these soldiers.

Who said he was alone in this wasteland?

He still had a whole team!