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The sky had just begun to brighten, and most of the Gray Wilderness was still in a daze of darkness. Hill, Qi Ji and his group were ready to set off, leaving the desolate and dilapidated ruins that looked like a lonely grave.
The formation was still that of Qi Ji leading the way in front and Hill standing guard behind, but today Hill's expression was much more serious than yesterday, as if he was lost in thought.
The shadow cast by the tree canopy occasionally swept across that pretty face that seemed covered with frost, making her temperament seem a little eerie.
"This girl is much quieter today...it seems that what happened last night has made her still thinking about it."
Qi Ji casually turned his head to glance behind him, then lightly withdrew his gaze and chuckled meaningfully:
"...Well, anyway, having problems is a good thing. It's better than having no problems at all."
Two girls who looked similar in age were walking through the lifeless gray forest.
As the sky gradually brightened, the gray light weakly sprinkled on the sick earth and vegetation. Hill, who was lost in thought, suddenly realized something unusual:
"Wait, why haven't you encountered the evil ghost yet?"
According to past experience, we have been walking for more than half an hour now, so we should have been attacked by evil spirits at least two or three times, right?
Why is there still no movement now?
This doesn't conform to the previous rule that "the further you go, the more serious the impact of rust will be"!
After looking around in confusion for a while, she discovered that the surrounding environment... seemed to have undergone some subtle changes?
"That's right! These trees... have been less affected by the rust curse!"
She soon realized.
Before they reached the ruins yesterday, the nearby trees were gradually mutating more and more due to the "Rust Plague" curse as they moved forward.
Now, the two of them had advanced for several kilometers in the original direction, but Hill found that the trees covered with reddish-brown rust... were becoming fewer and fewer.
Even if you look closely, you can see trees without any traces of reddish brown, as if...
Less twisted and morbid?
She didn't know if it was an illusion, but she felt that the trees that looked like ash were a little distorted and deformed compared to her impression.
How is this going?
Is it really because the concentration of the "Rust Plague" curse has begun to decrease?
What is in front...
The most primitive emotion of human beings is fear, and the most primitive source of fear is the unknown.
At this moment, Hill was still surrounded by the three nested halos, and his own spirituality continued to enjoy a five-fold increase.
But even with such blessings, she still felt unsure and was filled with anxiety and fear about the road ahead.
Qi Ji saw all of Hill's performance, and she could guess what the little girl was worried about.
Of course, Qi Ji knew the answers to all the questions that Hill was wondering about.
But she did not explain, and continued to walk ahead silently, moving step by step towards the location of the sealed space of the out-of-control angel and towards the direction of the "resting place".
It was not until noon, which was roughly equivalent to the time in the Order World, that the two were attacked by evil spirits for the first time.
"Ho ho ho!!!"
This was a monster with all four limbs on the ground, like a giant wolfhound. Its four claws were sharp and ferocious, and its shoulders were almost as high as Hill's chest. When it jumped out of the grass and bushes, the oppressive feeling was very terrifying.
"The Dawn of Flame - Thorns."
But facing the attack from such a murderer, the experienced Hill was not surprised. He raised his hand and cast the spell calmly, without any sign of the initial panic.
"boom!"
The ground beneath the wolf-dog demon suddenly exploded, and huge balls of flames seeped out from the cracks, instantly engulfing the monster as if it had life.
Then it quickly condensed and formed into strands of flaming ropes that seemed to be real, and in an instant tied up the wolfdog and the evil spirit like a dumpling.
“Ahhhhh!!!——”
It is really rare to see a pure killing machine like a ghost actually scream.
The wolf-dog-like monster was tightly bound by a dozen flaming ropes and pressed to the ground. The scorching flames burned its skin, causing wisps of black smoke to rise up, accompanied by a pungent smell of burning.
Under the burning flames, the wolfdog ghost quickly turned into a piece of charcoal, with black carbonization marks covering the reddish-brown rust.
"strangeness……"
After the flames were removed, Hill did not show any joy or relief of victory, but instead had a confused expression on his face.
"What's wrong."
Qi Ji walked up to her with a smile on his face and asked the question even though he knew the answer.
"Master 105, this filthy ghost... is too weak. In terms of physical strength and combat power, it is not even half as strong as the weakest of those filthy ghosts yesterday."
Hill pondered for a moment, stroked his chin with one hand, and said thoughtfully:
"Also, although some ghosts will howl and scream, they are all very mechanical and stiff screams, just like recording a sound and then playing it in a loop... But the sound made by this ghost before it died was a little different..."
Her thin eyebrows were twisted together, as if she was racking her brains to find a suitable description.
"You mean to say that it possesses some properties of ordinary creatures?"
Qi Ji looked at the piece of coke on the ground and said:
"An unclean ghost won't scream when it's dying, because this mechanism is meaningless for a killing machine. But ordinary creatures will have this reaction. The last sound the unclean ghost made just now was very similar to a real scream."
"Yes, that's what it means!"
Hearing her description, Hilton's eyes lit up, he clapped his hands and nodded:
"Lord 105, I suspect that the concentration of 'Rust' in this area is lower than in the previous areas, and even lower than where the Last Kingdom is located.
"So, the degree of mutation of the evil spirits here is much lighter, so much so that they still retain some of the properties of ordinary creatures!"
After saying this, her bright eyes were clouded with doubt again, and she muttered in confusion:
"Why...why did the concentration of the curse suddenly drop?..."
"Well...it's possible, who knows, right?"
Qi Ji laughed a few times and said nothing.
"Let's keep going. Maybe if we go a little further... we can find the root cause of all this?"
With Hill full of worries, the two of them set out on their journey again after experiencing a little episode.
As the group went deeper and deeper, Hill's previous assumptions were confirmed:
The further you go in, the less distorted the surrounding trees become. In the back, the large trees with reddish-brown rust that you used to see from time to time are no longer visible.
In Hill's cognition, "trees" are originally pale, twisted, sickly and deformed, and "normal" trees only exist in the textbooks he came into contact with in his childhood.
Therefore, when she saw that the big trees were becoming straighter and taller, and the roots protruding from the ground were no longer crooked like maggots and poisonous snakes, and even the branches and leaves were gradually showing a hint of green...
Instead, she felt that the environment she was in was becoming more and more unfamiliar, and a sense of tension as if she had entered a foreign land arose spontaneously.
As the frequency of the appearance of the evil spirits became lower and lower, and their strength and power became weaker and weaker, the two of them no longer encountered obvious obstacles, and their efficiency in moving forward increased a lot.
Before the sky had time to darken, they had already reached their destination... the location of the sealed space of the out-of-control angel.
"this place……"
Hill looked at the scene in front of him and couldn't help but be secretly shocked:
"It's like...dead."
Chapter 482 The Nature of Rust Plague
Spreading out in the two people's field of vision was a grove of trees with a hint of green.
The trees stand in a disorderly pattern, and their thick trunks and branches are no longer completely monotonous and boring gray, but have a hint of barely perceptible but real brown.
As for the leaves on the treetops, they also exude a faint green glow.
Compared with the sickly big trees in other places that are purely gray and white, these trees are slightly smaller in size, and their shapes are more straight, slender and well-proportioned, and they are no longer covered with ugly and messy knots and nodules.
However, these relatively "normal" trees did not make Hill feel full of vitality, but instead revealed a hint of coldness and silence.
Because the color "green" itself is cold, and gray is even more lifeless, the two are combined together in such an awkward way...
It gets even weirder.
It's like a creature that looks like a human but is not a human appears in front of you. Instead of bringing a sense of familiarity, it gives people a creepy feeling.
"Besides, this place is too quiet."
Hill shuddered and couldn't help shrinking his shoulders. He looked around nervously:
"There's not even a single evil ghost..."
The gray wilderness is inherently silent, and so is this weird jungle before us.
It's just that in the former, at least a monster would jump out from time to time to "live up" the atmosphere, but here it was in absolute deathly silence.
There was no wind in the air, as if it was frozen. Combined with the cold and dull color of this place... it was driving people crazy.
Everything was just as Hill's initial comment: It was like death.
"We are not far from our destination."
Qi Ji probed into the storage subspace, estimated the distance to the sealed space through the Reed Mormon Mirror, and said leisurely:
"It's about ten kilometers. At this morning's speed, we'll be there in an hour at most."
After she finished speaking, she looked back at the nervous Hill:
"Why, do you need to rest? I can't guarantee that we won't encounter a battle after arriving at our destination."
"Lord 105, do you mean that place... might be dangerous?" Hill asked.
"I've already said that. I can't guarantee it."
Qi Ji spread his hands and spoke very frankly.
She was not lying. She was very clear about the situation around the sealed space. There was not a single evil spirit within a few miles. If the "Moon" lost control and the angels did not run out on their own, theoretically it was the safest place on earth.
The premise is... to guard against the contamination of divine power leaking out from the loopholes in the sealed space. This is not an easy problem to deal with. If Qi Ji does not take action himself, with Hill's strength... I'm afraid he will be in great danger.
"All right……"
Hill squinted at the sky and thought for a moment, then he exhaled and sat cross-legged on the ground:
"Then let's correct it, Master 105. You've been activating this aura all the time, so it's time to take a break."
As she spoke, she pointed to the three rings of starlight surrounding herself.
Qi Ji was not polite either. He sat down on a thick tree root. With a thought, he stopped maintaining the three halos.
Feeling the surging blessing disappear, Hill looked at the mysterious cloaked girl in front of him, hesitated for a few seconds, and asked in a very restrained tone:
"Master 105, you... should know the coordinates that the 'True Creator' sent me... what's going on, right?
"Well, if my question offends you, you don't have to answer it. I apologize to you and the True Creator."
"If you want to know, I can tell you."
Qi Ji glanced at her and thought that it was okay to reveal the information about the sealed space to this girl. After all, they were almost there, and it would be inappropriate to say nothing.
"You say."
Hilton sat upright, his face much more serious, like a good student whose teacher is explaining the key test points.
"At the coordinates my Lord provided you is a seal that imprisons an extremely powerful monster."
Qi Ji told the story with a very mysterious emphasis.
"Monster? Is it a demon? Or... an alien species, a demon beast?"
Hill raised a hand weakly and asked.
"It's not an evil ghost, nor is it an alien species," Qi Ji explained, "it's a divine creature that has lost its mind, fallen into madness and mutation. In terms of level, it is very likely on par with the 'Pure White Gate' that you believe in."
"God... can also go crazy?!"
Hill's eyes suddenly widened, with an expression of extreme shock on his face.
In her understanding, the "Pure White Gate" is a well-deserved god, just like the "True Creator", and the great existence that can be comparable to Him can only be a god.
