My Notoriety Spreads Throughout the World-Chapter 422 - 362: Parasite—Prologue (Part 1)

After receiving the emergency notification from the guild, the onlooking players quickly teleported away, and Bai Youyou also received a message from the Order Court at that moment.

Seeing the words clearly, the girl's expression slightly shifted, and she looked somewhat reluctantly at Angelina and Xu Xiaoyou not far away; the latter's state of being wanted happened to be lifted.

Outside Oasis City, she couldn't act as freely as she did in the city, so she had to let it go.

"Don't let me catch you next time."

Bai Youyou turned around, warning Xu Xiaoyou coldly, leaving a dangerous and deep gaze before being enveloped by the light of teleportation, disappearing into thin air.

With the crisis relieved, just as Xu Xiaoyou turned to leave, Angelina grabbed her by the collar from behind, expressionless: "Are you using me?"

"Hmm?" Xu Xiaoyou was a bit surprised.

"It's about the guild honor points." Angelina said neither lightly nor heavily. "You obviously know..."

"I'm sorry."

The girl's answer took Angelina by surprise, and for a moment she forgot what she was going to say, but then she saw Xu Xiaoyou looking at her seriously, suddenly letting out a light laugh.

"Anya, didn't you already realize I was deceiving you?"

"I was just repaying the favor you did for me a few days ago." Angelina said. "Don't get too full of yourself."

"Then you owe me a lot of favors." Xu Xiaoyou said, "Whether it was the siege of the Special Sixth Class on Siren Island or the troubles with the association, I helped you solve both."

Angelina's eyes gradually filled with frost, just as she was about to end the conversation and leave alone, the girl's voice came from behind.

"But as for the matter of the Corrupt Nest City, that was my fault. I'm sorry, Anya, I shouldn't have tried to control you when we met again, even though you did intend to kill me at the time." Xu Xiaoyou said seriously.

"If you want to leave me, to gain true freedom, I can give it back to you anytime, it's by no means charity."

Angelina stopped, and after a long while, she responded ambiguously.

"The next time something like this happens, you should make things clear with me, I don't like being kept in the dark."

Angelina was never very good at expressing her ideas. Perhaps it was from walking alone in the world for too long, or maybe she actively closed off her heart to avoid being swallowed by coldness and numbness.

When she truly wanted to open the tightly shut door of her heart, to reveal a bit more of her true self, she found that the door seemed to be rusty, the door hinge making a long creak, and the words she wanted to say changed at the tip of her tongue, each word coming out awkwardly.

Clearly, these were not the shallow words she wanted to convey.

Even someone like the other party would take the initiative to apologize.

"Do you need me to call you Angelina?" Xu Xiaoyou asked.

"As you please, as long as you're happy."

"Then I won't change it, okay?"

"Sure."

Watching Angelina walk away, Xu Xiaoyou's gaze became calm, resting on the world copy notification window in front of her.

Just right, she planned to take this opportunity to spread the fame of the 'Light Chasing Garden'.

...

On the city wall, creeping vines grew rampant, the gaps between the bricks were a paradise for these climbing plants. The girl's slender fingertips caressed these roughly textured stones; the city wall of this city was relatively primitive, stacked with huge stones, as if carved out with an axe, the cross-section staggered.

The cold and damp feeling came from her fingertips, Sevia looked up along the towering city wall. The evening was drawing near, dark clouds gathered over the city, looking strange and chilly.

The dense moisture in the air gave a premonition of rain, a heavy storm was coming soon.

Sevia shook her head.

Unexpectedly, she encountered a civilized city in the Wastelands.

Rather than calling it a city, it might be more accurate to call it a small kingdom. On the way here, she saw many villages and lord's domains, with populations concentrated around four to five hundred people, and some larger territories with comprehensive production facilities, including pastures, farmland, windmills, iron smelting shops, and more.

However, one thing puzzled the girl.

Whether it was the villages and domains she passed along the way, or this Royal City before her, they all seemed to be shrouded in a kind of... eerie silence.

As a Starry Singer, she is particularly sensitive to this kind of deathly silence.

Crows caw hoarsely overhead, households have locked doors and windows tight, even the city gates are closed...

The shadow of death hovers above the entire nation, has something happened here?

At this moment, a 'squeak squeak' sound comes from by her feet. Sevia looks down to see a large, filthy-furred black rat with blood-red eyes scurrying past her leg, darting into a crevice at the foot of the city wall, disappearing from her sight.

Sevia blinks, thinking she must have seen it wrong.

That rat was almost as big as a grapefruit. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Dark clouds creep coldly across the sky, and Sevia swallows the bitter taste in her throat, planning to first take a look at the nearby village. Although she doubts the villagers will take an interest in her paintings, surely there's something she can help with—turning the soil in the fields, molding bricks for the kiln—anything to earn herself a bite of food.

With this in mind, Sevia ventures along the city outskirts for about an hour, and the sky has completely darkened.

A thin drizzle envelops the canopy above the forest, with a light mist hovering in the mountains.

The muddy path stretches beneath her feet, the wet earth soaking through the toes of Sevia's boots. She pulls her thin shawl tighter and continues forward, moistening her cracked lips.

The gentle patter of rain strings down upon her, the cold wind cuts through, chilling her skin. As the forest soil absorbs the rain, a buried scent is released, drifting past the girl's nose.

Like the severely decomposed flesh of some animal, the proteins breaking down to release hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and methane—a pungent odor that instinctively instills fear.

This smell seems familiar to Sevia, though initially it's overwhelming in its putridity. After barely a moment's discomfort, her tightly knitted eyebrows gradually relax.

"Whoa, giddy up! Giddy up!"

Sounds of horse hooves galloping through the forest, paired with the shouts of soldiers. By the flash of torchlight, Sevia glimpses a troop of soldiers riding their mounts, driving along the post road towards the depths of the woods.

From afar, the flaming torches held high by the soldiers connect into a path of light leading deep into the forest. The faint glow lets Sevia see the carts pulled behind the horses and a small part of a filthy rod-like object exposed beneath the dust cloth—was it... a human arm?

Various flies spin above the carts, plump maggots bouncing along the dust cloth from the journey's jostling.

Were all these carts carrying human bodies?

Sevia thought.

What on earth were they doing?

With such curiosity, Sevia emerges from the bush, stealthily following the road of light through the forest.

Soon, she follows the soldiers into the forest depths, the air thickening with that grave stench—this seemed to be the source of that persistent rotten odor.

Sevia hides behind a tree, observing the soldiers' movements through a gap in the path.

She sees the soldiers stopping in front of a hillside. Their heads are covered with protective hoods. As soon as one of them gets off, he clutches his stomach and starts coughing loudly. The sound echoes through the entire forest, growing more hasty and violent until finally collapsing to the ground in the thick black darkness, silent.

The other soldiers, seemingly accustomed to this, toss both their comrade's body and the ones from the carts down the hillside. One of them nearly tumbles all the way down when flipping a cart, drawing laughter from the surrounding soldiers.

But, perhaps laughing too hard, a soldier lets out a dry cough and the atmosphere suddenly plunges into dead silence, quiet enough to hear a needle drop in the forest, with only the echo of laughter hanging in the air.

The soldiers clean out all the bodies they transported, leaving for home.

Sevia treads lightly forward, peering over the edge of the hillside at the scene below, her pupils contracting sharply.

Bodies...

Tens of thousands of bodies!

They're not just piled into a Corpse Mountain, the corpses almost fill the valley below!

Shocking and hideous...

People's hands intertwined like snakes, bodies laden with black bumps like a toad's back, pale bones protruding from flesh, swelling faces such that expressions were indiscernible. The piled corpses clogged rivers like churned driftwood, spilling into the valley, touching the cliff faces, becoming a breeding ground for maggots and flies. Rain coursed over the surface of Corpse Mountains, emerging beneath as a thick, turbid yellowish liquid, these deadly pathogen-laden waters converging into streams, snaking downriver towards villages and towns.

Sevia instinctively steps back two paces, turning to leave when suddenly a noise comes from behind.

Turning back once more,

a bloody, rotten face fills her view.