Chapter 481: Irresistible Instinct |
"In front!"
"They turned left, there are a lot of parasitized forms over there!"
Chen Na lay on Guan Tong's back, continuously sensing the spores' positions while directing him in pursuit.
Those little bugs moved extremely fast; Guan Tong could not catch up on foot, so he merged with Shadow and activated the Shadow Battle Suit mode.
If an exoskeleton armor can boost a soldier's strength and speed, then the ever-developing Shadow Battle Suit was essentially Guan Tong's own "exoskeleton."
Once it covered his whole body, his speed shot up dramatically, so much so that even Silver Fox had trouble keeping pace. Under normal conditions her speed always exceeded Guan Tong's, so this increase was conspicuously large.
At that moment the two spore worms deliberately ran toward where there were parasitized forms, trying to use them as protection. Guan Tong did not want extra complications, so he accelerated again; his eyes had already locked onto the insects streaking through the air.
He took the Silver Hunt out of his storage ring and fired a scatter shot.
The spore worms intentionally dodged and dove downward, but the next second Guan Tong was already above them — he had used Body Swap to exchange positions with a bullet.
Guan Tong spread his hands, and Shadow quickly wove into a closed cage that dropped down. The spore worms sensed danger and slammed into a passerby who could not escape in time.
"Ahhhh! My eyes!!!"
The passerby's eyes were pierced by the two swarms, the eyeballs instantly ruined, red and white fluids mixed and ran down his face.
The spore worms that had "possessed" the passerby almost instantly took over his body, opening its mouth to emit a roar that sounded like the word "Seli."
The moment that sound came out, palace scenes and figures flashed in both Guan Tong's and Chen Na's minds, exactly like the hallucinations experienced when inhaling spores under the Extraterrestrial Parasitism Rule.
But the warmth coming from the palms of both of them dispelled the illusion in an instant.
Chen Na cried out in delight, "It's the Mental Stability Anchor!"
Guan Tong reacted even faster. By the time Chen Na shouted, he had already used Shadow to bind the spore-possessed person tightly. Part of the shadow-formed cage clamped over the person's head, decisively preventing the two spore worms from escaping.
Once the spore worms were trapped, the nearby parasitized forms all went berserk, recklessly charging toward Guan Tong!
"You take out the bugs, leave the rest to me!"
Silver Fox drew a dagger. Facing these frenzied monsters, she did not take chances and pushed her ability to the limit.
Multiple "Silver Foxes" struck at once; their speed was so extreme that their afterimages seemed substantial — the peak of her strength.
"Brother Guan, I can feel the bugs crawling around inside your shadow. How are you going to eliminate them?" Chen Na was nervous; she had just witnessed how the spore worms possessed humans, and the vision had been terrifying.
"Try every method."
Guan Tong first activated the Title Ability of Civilization Observer to see if he could devour and absorb the spore worms, gaining experience toward upgrading the title.
But there was no response.
So these bugs had no intelligence?
Guan Tong felt somewhat surprised. He had assumed the spore worms and their parasitized forms shared some intelligence, which is why they would possess humans and use human hosts to become a leader-like "Prophet" to coordinate the parasitized masses.
Now it seemed the spore worms and certain special parasitized forms — and these spores themselves — existed solely with a single "spread" instinct. The so-called "leader ability" came only from their own traits plus the intelligence of the human host they inhabited.
Other than that they were ordinary, perhaps even much weaker in combat than many parasitized Ascendants; their only advantage lay in being able to receive information across distances from their parasitized forms, then using the host's intellect to pretend to be an all-knowing "Prophet."
Guan Tong thought: this communication likely occurs via the spores inside each parasitized form; those spores transmit information to the spore worm, which then uses the host's intelligence to think, analyze, and decide. But the spore worm itself remained bound by the instinct to spread.
That made him understand why it had broken its agreement with Han Qiu...
Earlier he had used Shadow to spy on the remote exchange between the Prophet and Han Qiu.
He was surprised by their covert cooperation and felt a faint chill.
Back then Han Qiu said that according to the original plan, once the Prophet finished speaking on television he should immediately leave Manchidon — if the Prophet had followed the plan, Guan Tong and the others would have been left empty-handed, only able to eliminate some ordinary parasitized forms.
But the Prophet disobeyed the plan and stayed in Manchidon. Han Qiu was puzzled, and so was Guan Tong.
Now he understood... the desire to spread and convert the tens of Ascendants and hundreds of ordinary people in Manchidon overwhelmed the Prophet; he could not resist the lure of the "spread" instinct.
"Everything for the sake of spreading," thought Guan Tong. That was the terrifying strength and fatal flaw of the parasitized forms.
Since the title had no effect, Guan Tong tried manipulating Shadow to change shape, attempting to shrink the interior of the Shadow Cage and crush the two spore worms to death.
But he soon discovered that part of the spore worms could "squeeze into" the shadow itself!
If so, fully compressing the space might not even kill those bugs.
Use the most powerful Small Space? Or...
Guan Tong glanced at his left hand and was certain — he had an idea.
He reshaped the Shadow Cage to reveal a slim passage. Since the spore worms had no real intelligence, driven by survival instinct they immediately crawled into the little passage, trying to fly out of the cage.
When they reached the edge of the passage, what awaited them was not freedom but a black hand.
More precisely, a glove made of a nano swarm.
A group of spore worms that could possess humans and create hallucinations versus nano insects that could decompose anything — the victor was decided in an instant.
Guan Tong saw the glove's surface twitch briefly, then quickly return to calm.
Simultaneously Chen Na exclaimed with delight, "They're gone! Brother Guan, the presence of those creepy bugs in the Perception Domain disappeared!"
Guan Tong breathed out in relief. "That means they were destroyed. Good."
He looked toward Silver Fox. In under a minute she had single-handedly wiped out over a hundred parasitized forms.
After the spore worms were decomposed and vanished, the madness on the other parasitized faces was replaced by a vacant bewilderment. Some continued fighting, some turned and fled, others froze in place like a computer that had crashed.
Seeing this, Guan Tong couldn't help feeling disappointed.
He had held onto a slim hope: if they could eliminate the parasitized leader Prophet, maybe other parasitized forms could revert to humans.
Now it seemed the transformation was irreversible, exactly as the Rule had said. The moment conversion completed, the human was already truly dead; these parasitized forms were merely in a dazed state after losing their leader.
Silver Fox, seeing her enemies in this condition and realizing Guan Tong had succeeded, felt exhilarated and shouted loudly, "Guan Tong, you eliminated the parasitized leader! Well done!"
Guan Tong opened his mouth to reply, but then a thought sprang up as he glanced at the nano swarm glove on his left hand.
...
The underground cathedral of Lianluo'an City.
Han Qiu stood before the now-dark large screen, pondering.
Your Holiness entered the room at that moment and asked, "Han Qiu, the Prophet hasn't returned?"
"Him? He won't be coming back."
"What? That isn't what we planned."
"I said the same. Guess what he told me?" Han Qiu turned, his expression half-smile, half-smirk. "Everything for the sake of spreading, he said."
...?
Your Holiness looked puzzled, not understanding why the Prophet did not act as planned, nor why Han Qiu wore that expression.
"Still not getting it, Your Holiness?" Han Qiu said. "Our Prophet is no different from the other parasitized forms. Their brains are ruled by the 'spread' instinct.
After the raid succeeded, he saw the dozens of Ascendants waiting to be converted and the hundreds of ordinary people. Rationality was suppressed by instinct, so he disobeyed the plan and chose to stay in Manchidon to lead the conversions."
Your Holiness was silent for a moment, his face grew grim. "If he converts them..."
"Don't worry. In my view, the moment he chose to stay in Manchidon, he was effectively a dead man walking; he won't last long. Do you think the Human Consortium will just stand by and watch him convert millions into parasitized forms? At any time, only the living can negotiate terms," Han Qiu said calmly.
"What about our plan?" Your Holiness asked. "Without the power of the parasitized forms, we'll face a huge gap in combat strength."
"You're not wrong." Han Qiu wiped his lower lip with his finger, looking thoughtful. "My earlier assessment — that the Prophet wouldn't be affected by the parasitized spread instinct — was a major misjudgment. Now I need to rethink and update my strategy."
