The outer wall of Prison No. 7 had a massive breach, connecting the chaos within the Prison to the boundless desert outside.
Yuan Mei stood near the breach, the cold wind whipping up sand and making his police uniform flap loudly.
He wasn't in a hurry to leave; instead, he carefully observed his surroundings.
The scent of blood and gunpowder in the air was several times stronger than in the living quarters, and dozens of corpses, all in various states of death, lay both inside and outside the breach.
However, Yuan Mei's brow furrowed even deeper.
He closed his eyes, his mind rapidly recalling all the information he had gathered since his rebirth, and finally, the image settled on the words spoken by the blood-soaked man in the cell when he first woke up.
“Even if you manage to escape… it’s a dead end.”
Indeed, it was a desert.
The environment of Sand Mine Star was extremely harsh, and Prison No. 7 was built in the depths of a desolate Gobi Desert.
For these prisoners, who couldn't even get enough to eat, escaping the Prison was merely running from one hell to another.
Without food, without water, only death awaited them.
Since everyone knew that escaping was a dead end, why were so many people desperately trying to flee this place?
Shouldn't the instinct for survival drive them to find a safer place to hide and wait for the riot to subside?
This moth-to-a-flame behavior was completely illogical.
Unless… there was something inside the Prison that terrified them more than the boundless desert outside.
A chill ran down Yuan Mei's spine; he refocused his gaze on the corpses on the ground, this time observing them more closely.
In the dim night, he finally noticed something unusual.
The corpse closest to him lay face down in the sand, and on the exposed skin of its neck, there was an extremely abnormal grayish-green hue. Yuan Mei crouched down, his tactical-gloved fingers gently parting the tattered collar.
Beneath that grayish-green skin, dark green threads eerily protruded, rooted deep within the flesh, their ends even breaking through the skin to sprout clusters of fine, moss-like fuzz.
Yuan Mei's pupils constricted abruptly; he immediately stood up and quickly moved to examine another corpse.
This corpse lay on its back, eyes wide open, its face frozen in extreme terror, and its eye sockets were long devoid of eyeballs, replaced instead by two tangled masses of dark green algae.
Several delicate fungal hyphae oozed from the corners of its eyes, winding down the curves of its cheeks like two lines of green tears.
A smell of putrefaction mixed with the fishy smell of plants assailed him, and Yuan Mei frowned, enduring the discomfort in his stomach as he quickly scanned all the surrounding corpses.
Just as he suspected, none of these corpses were spared.
Every single one showed this plant-like mutation; the skin on most people's arms was completely replaced by tough vines, and their hands had become distorted, woody structures.
Some had their chests torn open from the inside, with several mushroom-like plants stubbornly growing from between their fractured ribs, their caps shimmering with an eerie phosphorescence.
Yuan Mei swiftly drew the long saber from his back; a cold glint flashed, and the heads of two nearby corpses rolled several meters away.
“So that’s it.”
He finally understood why those prisoners were frantically fleeing outwards.
Just then, a “shuffling” dragging sound came from not far away.
Yuan Mei immediately placed his hand on the gun hilt at his waist, held his breath, and turned to shoot directly at the source of the sound.
“Bang! Bang!”
Two bullets accurately struck a “corpse” that had been lying on the ground; it was slowly “growing” up from the ground in an extremely twisted posture.
The powerful kinetic energy made it stumble and fall backward, two bloody holes exploding in its chest. Green liquid surged wildly from the wounds, and countless tendrils and vines intertwined, already beginning to regenerate!
“Roar——”
A non-human shriek erupted from its plant-choked throat. The next second, it violently pushed off the ground, charging forward with astonishing speed!
Yuan Mei was startled. Seeing the opponent pounce again, he no longer aimed for the torso but decisively pulled the trigger, emptying the remaining bullets into the Skeletal Plantoid’s legs.
The bullets tore through the plant fibers on its legs, and the Skeletal Plantoid lost its balance, falling heavily to the ground.
Yuan Mei didn't give it a chance to regenerate. He lunged forward, reactivating 30% power assist; a flash of blade, and the Skeletal Plantoid’s head flew into the air. He then raised his long saber, its tip savagely gouging out its heart.
The opponent's body twitched a few times on the ground, then finally stopped moving.
Either decapitation or a strike to the heart.
To completely kill these monsters called Skeletal Plantoids, these two methods were necessary.
Yuan Mei had long heard of their notorious reputation; these species, originating from a parasitic civilization, were nomadic, living by parasitizing all things in the universe.
Once a planet was contaminated, if the situation wasn't quickly contained, the entire planet would soon fall.
He hadn't expected them to exist here on Sand Mine Star.
Yuan Mei dared not stop his actions; the plants on the surrounding corpses were constantly growing and spreading, already stirring.
But strangely, most of the awakened Skeletal Plantoids ignored him, a target so close, and instead, with stumbling gaits and clear purpose, gathered towards the western side of the Prison.
The living quarters?
Looking in that direction, a hint of doubt arose in Yuan Mei's mind. He decided not to get entangled with these minor enemies; he had to figure out the situation as quickly as possible.
Although he didn't know the extent of Sand Mine Star's contamination, these Skeletal Plantoids inside the Prison had to be cleared out, otherwise he wouldn't be able to sleep peacefully at night.
He sheathed his long saber, turned, and moved quickly towards the living quarters, maintaining high vigilance and avoiding the scattered Skeletal Plantoids.
After crossing a chaotic plaza, the entrance to the living quarters building was right before him.
Just as he was about to enter the building, a sharp whizzing sound came from above his head. Yuan Mei's pupils constricted; he instinctively dodged, then looked upwards.
A rapidly spinning fire axe flew over his head, but its target was not him.
The fire axe cleaved into a dangling vine, green sap splattering everywhere.
“Get out of the way!”
The voice was clear and cold, carrying a hint of suppressed anger.
Yuan Mei reacted quickly, with auxiliary power activated, he grabbed a water pipe on the wall and leaped, avoiding a rapidly approaching figure.
The other person cleanly dealt with a Skeletal Plantoid hidden on the ceiling, while Yuan Mei was also busy, starting with an American-style iaido with his left hand, stopping a Skeletal Plantoid that was chasing the person, then finishing with his long saber.
Silence returned to the hall. The figure from earlier wiped blood from her face and looked back at Yuan Mei, her blue-green pupils showing a hint of scrutiny and surprise.
She was tall, with neat short hair, and a refined yet stern face.
“There’s actually someone else?”
Yuan Mei was equally surprised; the other person was wearing a prisoner's uniform from the logistics department, but her skills were far from normal… “You’re not a Prison Guard.”
The woman's voice was as cold as an icy spring. She held a fire axe dripping with green sap, her chest rising and falling slightly.
Although Yuan Mei was wearing a Prison Guard uniform, she could feel that the equipment he wore was by no means ordinary, and his fluid movements were not something the good-for-nothings in the Prison could match.
Yuan Mei sheathed his long saber, turned around, the shadow of his cap brim obscuring most of his face.
He didn’t answer her question but retorted:
“You don’t look like a prisoner either, do you?”
...