“Impossible…”
His voice was as dry as crushed dead leaves.
“I raised it for three years. It’s mine…”
Just then, the King Flower’s bud suddenly began to writhe violently.
Everyone froze.
A thick, rotting stench poured from the gaps in the bud, mixed with a cloying floral fragrance, assaulting everyone’s nostrils.
Mu Yingying actually retched this time, bent over with her hands on her knees.
Little Frost’s face paled a few shades, but she didn’t loosen her grip on the rifle.
A sound came from inside the bud.
Not a flower’s sound—a person’s.
Hoarse, weak, filled with agonized moans.
It wasn’t one person’s voice—it was many voices layered together, like a chorus composed of screams.
Listening closely, the voices were speaking.
“It hurts… it hurts so much…”
“Let me out…”
“I don’t want to die…”
And one childish voice, twisted and distorted by pain.
“Mommy… Mommy…”
White Night’s soul body trembled violently.
She recognized those voices. They belonged to the people the King Flower had devoured.
Their consciousness hadn’t completely dissipated. They were trapped inside the bud.
They endured the eternal agony of being digested, yet they would never truly die.
They weren’t dead. They were alive.
Alive, being eaten piece by piece by the flower.
Lao Xing’s words—‘They aren’t dead’—had actually been right.
They really weren’t dead. But this was ten thousand times more terrifying than death itself.
Lao Xing fell to his knees.
He clutched his head with both hands, curling up like a frightened insect.
“Don’t say anymore… don’t say anymore…”
He didn’t know whether he was speaking to the voices in the bud or to himself.
A crack split open in the King Flower’s bud.
Black juice gushed from the fissure, dripping onto the soil with a sizzling, corrosive sound.
A stench ten times stronger than before erupted, dyeing the air a murky yellow.
An eerie golden light seeped through the crack.
In that light, White Night saw the inside of the bud.
It was packed with layers upon layers of human faces, squeezed together.
They were soaked in black juice, their faces frozen in expressions of agony before death.
Old and young, male and female—some eyes still moved, some mouths still opened and closed.
They were still speaking, but their voices no longer sounded human—more like bubbles bursting from the depths of a deep sea.
Little Frost yanked White Night’s basket back a few steps.
Her face was deathly pale, but her hands were steady as iron.
Mu Yingying had already retreated to the middle of the greenhouse, her back against an iron shelf, her Tang Dao held before her, her whole body trembling.
It wasn’t just disgust—it was also rage.
The two emotions churned together, making her stomach heave.
Gu Jiao didn’t retreat.
She stood still, staring fixedly at the faces in the crack, not blinking.
She was searching for familiar faces.
After a few seconds, she found one.
A young woman’s face, pressed against the outermost layer.
The left half of her face had been corroded beyond recognition, but the right half was still clear.
A round face, a flat nose, a mole above the right eyebrow.
That was Li Xiu, thirty-two years old, with a six-year-old son.
She was also one of the people Gu Jiao had personally tested as positive, personally checked off on the list, and personally handed over to the Grey Robes.
Gu Jiao’s knees suddenly went weak, and she nearly collapsed.
Little Frost caught her with a quick hand.
“Stand firm.”
Little Frost’s voice was soft, but hard.
“Now is not the time to fall.”
Gu Jiao bit her lower lip until she tasted blood, then steadied herself and stopped looking at the crack.
White Peace’s voice rang out in the greenhouse—soft, but everyone heard it.
“It’s about to bloom.”
Everyone turned to look at her.
White Peace stood beside the King Flower, barefoot on the black soil.
Her white hair hung like falling silk in the dim light, her pitch-black pupils reflecting the eerie golden glow seeping from the bud’s crack.
“Not three months from now, not one month from now.”
Her fingers tapped lightly against her thigh, exactly the same way White Night had seen her counting the heartbeat last night.
“Three days. At most three days.”
“It’s gathering its final strength. Once it blooms, the entire town will become its fertilizer.”
Gu Jiao’s voice was as hoarse as a cracked gong.
“How long?”
“As I said, three days.”
The air in the greenhouse turned bone-cold.
Lao Xing was still kneeling in front of the King Flower, trembling all over.
The roots on his fingers had already crawled up to his wrists, faintly visible beneath the gray robe’s cuffs.
A Jiu stood to one side, his left arm, which had woodified, hanging heavily at his side.
He watched Lao Xing’s back, his lips moving as if to call out Master, but in the end, the words wouldn’t come.
White Peace turned her head and looked at Lao Xing.
“Lao Xing, you have three days.”
Lao Xing didn’t lift his head.
“In three days, either you kill it yourself… or I kill it for you.”
She paused.
“But by then, you’ll die along with it.”
Lao Xing’s body gave a violent shudder, but he still didn’t raise his head.
White Peace stopped looking at him. She turned and walked toward the greenhouse door.
She stepped barefoot on the black soil, and as soon as her shallow footprints fell, they were gradually smoothed over by the writhing flower roots.
White Night followed her out, but glanced back once.
Lao Xing was still kneeling there, his hand pressed against the King Flower’s stalk.
Roots spread from his fingers into the stalk, the two connected together.
It was impossible to tell whether he was touching the flower or the flower was grabbing him.
Inside the crack of the King Flower’s bud, the eerie golden light flickered.
The faces inside still opened and closed their mouths, but their voices had become indistinguishable.
Yet White Night knew what they were saying.
They were saying, Save me.
Outside the Forbidden Area, the night wind brushed against their faces.
The wind carried the ordinary, homely smells of the town: cooking smoke, soil, and the aroma of stewed meat from some distant house.
These normal, living scents—after the horror of the greenhouse—almost made one want to cry.
Gu Jiao leaned against the outer wall of the Forbidden Area, gasping heavily.
Little Frost’s hand gripping the rifle was still trembling slightly.
Mu Yingying crouched on the ground, her usual joking manner gone, her expression solemn.
White Night curled up in her basket, the light of her soul body dimmed to its lowest point in days.
White Peace stood off to the side, staring at the iron gate of the Forbidden Area, expressionless.
A Jiu walked out through the iron gate and stood at the entrance in silence for a long time.
“Sister Gu, I’m sorry.”
Gu Jiao looked up at him.
“It’s not me you owe an apology to.”
A Jiu’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“I know. But I still wanted to say it.”
“This past year, I helped him deceive too many people. Every single positive that was sent in passed through my hands.”
“I told myself that since they were going to be driven out to die in the Wilderness anyway, they might as well die in the greenhouse—at least they’d leave some fertilizer to save more people.”
He let out a bitter laugh, his smile bloodlessly pale in the moonlight.
“What a laughable excuse.”
A Jiu rolled up the sleeve of his left arm.
His entire forearm, from wrist to elbow, was completely woodified.
The skin had turned into grayish-brown bark—dry, rough, stripped of all elasticity.
His fingers were stiff and curled, with clear wood grain visible at the knuckles.
The whole arm looked like a withered branch grafted onto his shoulder.
A Jiu’s voice was flat, as if he were talking about someone else.
“Three months ago, I snuck into the greenhouse. I wanted to cut the King Flower’s roots.”
“Before I could even touch it, its vines wrapped around me. I fought like hell to break free.”
“But this arm—it drained me dry.”
He tapped his woodified forearm with his right hand. It made a hollow thump—dry and empty.
“If I hadn’t forced the woodification with my Flower Planter ability and sealed off the blood vessels, I’d already be grown together with the King Flower.”
He dropped his sleeve, hiding the dead arm.
White Night asked softly, “Then why aren’t you afraid now?”
A Jiu looked at her, then tapped his left arm again with his right hand.
Harder this time. The hollow thump carried far into the night wind.
“Because this arm told me I’ve already died once.”
His voice was as calm as if he were stating a fact unrelated to himself.
“The woodification spreads upward every day. In at most half a year, I’ll turn into a tree.”
“Since I’m going to die anyway, at least let me die like a human.”
The night wind blew through the Forbidden Area’s iron fence, making a whoosh sound, like someone crying in the distance.
White Peace suddenly spoke.
“After we go back in, are you still going to follow?”
Everyone turned to look at her. White Peace looked at Gu Jiao.
“You’ve seen what’s in the greenhouse. You’ve seen what the people you sent in have become now.”
Her voice was calm and flat.
“What are you going to do about it?”
Gu Jiao straightened up from the wall.
Cold sweat still clung to her face, and the bite wound on her lip was still oozing blood.
But her eyes had changed.
No longer the fear from the greenhouse, nor the guilt she’d shown toward A Jiu.
It was a resolve—a will that wouldn’t retreat no matter what lay ahead, whether a mountain of blades or a sea of flames.
“Three days.”
Gu Jiao said.
“You said it will bloom in three days.”
“Yes.”
“Then we have three days.”
Gu Jiao glanced at Little Frost and Mu Yingying, then finally at White Night.
“Within three days, I’ll gather every able-bodied fighter in the town.”
Her voice wasn’t loud, but every word carried weight.
“And then—destroy that flower.”