A Fall from the Tree
"Tom! Megaloceros! No! No, no, no!"
Jefferies, student number one in Third Squad 3A, fell from the tree.
--He was still in shock, and it was precisely in that moment when his mind inexplicably lost its composure.
It seemed that a powerful psychic energy surge had caused him to lose his balance and fall from the hidden observation post around the Aizong Mausoleum. Fortunately, there were no exposed rocks around the hiding place, only soft grass, so he was not injured after falling from the tree.
He quickly checked his equipment, first the explosive fuses in the weapon pouch, then the firearms for malfunctions, and then the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) markings and night vision equipment. The Summoning Bell was still in the receiving state, and he could receive messages from his comrades every five seconds.
Mr. Jefferies is an elite soldier of the Quick Knife unit and the squad leader of Group Third Squad, and he is fully responsible for the mission of tracking Judas.
But at this moment, his mental state was somewhat poor.
"--What am I saying?"
"Tom? What am I talking about? What was I thinking just now?"
His eyes were red and bloodshot, as if he hadn't had a proper rest in a very long time.
My mind is a complete blank; it seems I can't remember anything except for a small portion of the task-related memories.
Each group in the Third Squad was fully equipped when carrying out missions; their helmets partially concealed their true faces. Tom was the vanguard of Group A, Jefferies' right-hand man.
--As for that shout of "Megaloceros" just now, that's what really puzzled Jefferies.
Because the squad leader's name was too long and he often carried a tactical radio around, the group joked about it and called him Megaloceros, a long Latin word, because he had a pair of antennas on his head that looked like deer antlers.
Once they arrived in Shambhala, the team members only needed to ring the Summoning Bell with the letter M, and Jefferies would immediately understand that they were reporting information to him.
Over time, he acquired various short names starting with "M," such as Mr. M, and the medical and support staff liked to call him Mom. However, once the team members started making up names, he still preferred the name "Megaloceros" and even put a Velcro patch of a giant reindeer on his gear.
"Who am I calling out to? Me."
Jefferies was utterly confused. What had happened? Why did he suddenly call out his codename?
Why? Why exactly?
After shouting these nonsensical words, he fell from the tree.
"Squad leader! Are you alright?" Tom crept over from another sentry post; he was a spirited young Finnish man. Pulling off his goggles revealed a pair of bright green eyes, his gaze alert.
Jefferies then realized that the mission awaited him; the mission was calling him.
If Judas is hiding in this caravan, this is the perfect opportunity to end the war.
"Hey! Captain?" Tom asked with a grin, "I saw so many beautiful young ladies in Taiye! They were all dressed in traditional Chinese style, and their marriage standards were so low—just enough to eat. They were such pitiful people, being bought and sold like property. What do you think? After the war ends, should I take a wife back with me? I'm a kind person! I just want to save a few more girls!"
"Enter battle mode!" Jefferies roared. "You damned brat! Judas is right in front of you!"
"Check the watch! Check the watch! Check the watch! Send a message to Groups Three and Four, the six of us will sneak in! Tom! Be smart!"
"Received! Received!" Tom, having been scolded, immediately began ringing the bell to deliver the message.
Jefferies couldn't wait that long. He initiated the approach procedure ahead of schedule. The sun was getting increasingly scorching, and he asked his teammates to coordinate and provide cover as they slowly approached the boundary marker of the Aizong Mausoleum.
The architectural style of this place is very strange. Originally, most of the nameless villages and towns along the Mist River in Baibei Port District and Daoheng County were ancient civilization buildings from the Confucian cultural sphere. However, once you reach the area of Aizong Mausoleum, you can see simple tin shacks everywhere.
There is a very large construction team here, equipped with modern engineering machinery.
Looking towards the connecting road beyond the boundary marker, the village of Aizong Mausoleum is filled with lights. These lights are not from kerosene fuel; they are still bright under natural sunlight. This is a complete power system consisting of buried power lines.
He bypassed the official road where the boundary marker was located, and followed the target caravan further and further away. He waded through water and climbed up slopes along the damp bushes, and came to a haystack in a farm, where he found his next hiding place.
Jefferies was preparing to take a short rest, waiting for his teammates to advance in sync and each find a new observation point.
Just then, a little child ran out from the backyard of the farm—
--Those were natives of the area near the mausoleum of Aizong Mausoleum. Hearing the noise near the granary, they ran out with their cat.
She was a girl of about thirteen or fourteen years old, with the marks of Vita Imprint on her face. Judging from her facial features, she did not resemble the Great Xia people at all. She had heterochromatic eyes, one green and one black, and was of mixed race. Perhaps she was a bastard child left behind at the Aizong Mausoleum by foreign mercenaries from the Judas army.
Jefferies was stunned for a moment. He hadn't expected to be exposed. The pheromone spray on his body was supposed to repel poultry and wild animals, so why had it failed?
In order to deal with all kinds of guard beasts, the scout team is equipped with a complete set of pheromone equipment to repel insects, birds, and scare away animals. When he saw the Vita Imprint on the girl's face, he understood most of the situation.
The concentration of Spirit Calamity in this place is quite high; even ordinary children with weaker constitutions will frequently develop Vita Imprint simply by living here.
The cat that had just sneaked into the storage room was the same. Its parents had been selected through the survival of the fittest and had adapted to the spiritual pressure of this awful place. They were not afraid of Jefferies' pheromones at all.
But this cat is so dark! It's even darker than the boss! It ran into a dark corner of the warehouse and vanished into thin air! It's unbelievable!
"Shhh"
Jefferies dared not make a fuss, as this was beyond the scope of the scout legion's mission. Quickblade naturally had a complete set of standards for dealing with civilians: if the scout legion was discovered by civilians, the mission should be suspended immediately to assess the worst possible consequences if the wartime intelligence were intercepted by the enemy.
The team leader's resolve is being tested.
He leaned against the ventilation window, his peripheral vision catching the target convoy getting further and further away, and his mind was completely overwhelmed by his obsession.
"Mama! Mama!" The little girl seemed to realize something and quickly ran out the door. Her Little Kitty, on the other hand, arched its body, revealing its fierce nature, and bared its sharp teeth at the uninvited guest in the granary.
Jefferies didn't hesitate; he pulled out a silenced pistol and shot the black cat dead.
He rushed out of the storage room, leaped over the haystacks, reached the farm's stone yard, and caught up with the little girl.
--The side door of the house on the first floor next to the open space was pushed open, and the lady of the house had already arrived.
Jefferies swallowed hard, his hands trembling. But the lives of five people from Team A and Team B were in his hands; he couldn't let these civilians ruin such a golden opportunity.
He is a team leader who can shoulder all responsibilities, and he will definitely be able to handle this kind of emergency.
Just a second before he was about to pull the trigger and shoot the girl, another bullet struck his helmet.
"Tom! What are you doing?"
Jefferies keenly pinpointed his teammate's position; judging from the direction of the shot—the bullet had come from Tom, in the vegetable garden fifty-six meters away.
"It wasn't me! Megaloceros!" Tom had just gotten up and returned from a crawling position to a half-squatting position when he saw a blurry figure covered in blood emerge from the vegetable garden.
Upon seeing the contours of the face beneath the helmet, Tom screamed in terror, "Oh my god! Why? Why are there two squad leaders?!"
The woman heard the muffler make a bullet-like popping sound; although it was muffled, it still produced about 100 decibels of noise. She quickly took out her secret weapon for guarding the house: the Polaroid camera that the Haoshou Tianzun had given to ordinary people.
The shutter clicked once.
Jefferies tensed up in fright and turned back to observe more closely.
"Does she have a weapon, Tom?! She's hiding behind the porch pillar! I can't see her!"
Tom, almost simultaneously ringing the bell to send the message, observed carefully. "I don't know! It looks like she's taking your picture?!"
"She's an enemy?" Jefferies had completely lost his mind. These inexplicable changes, along with the Inspiration Pressure coming from the eight o'clock direction, had clouded his judgment—that Inspiration Pressure came from at least a powerful cultivator in the Ascension stage, just like him.
As for the "two squad leaders" that Tom mentioned, Mr. Jefferies had no time to pay attention to it; his mind was completely lost in this ever-changing torrent of information.
On one side, the procession of carriages and horses gradually disappeared into the distance.
On the other side was a commoner girl who was about to retreat to her room on the first floor.
There was also a woman hiding in the shadows taking photos secretly; her allegiance is currently unknown.
What on earth is Tom doing? Two class monitors? What does this all mean?
He considered every gun-shaped object a high-threat target, and as for the bullet that had just hit him in the head, he assumed it was a signal munition fired by a comrade to alert his teammates in an emergency, completely ignoring Tom's words.
The distance was too great for him to see clearly what the woman was holding—and he couldn't believe the information Tom was conveying. If it were a camera, the shutter sound would have been like a bullet entering a chamber.
Until the second shutter clicked--
Jefferies felt dizzy.
His body underwent a complete inside-out transformation, with his internal organs and bones surging out and then completely enveloping his skin, clothing, and equipment.
The grenade's pin snapped open with the force, and shrapnel and flames tore him apart! The raging fire collapsed towards the center in an instant, churning and gathering with the seven-foot-tall man, causing the world to spin.
Jefferies vanished, completely vanished right before everyone's eyes, leaving not even the smoke from the fragmentation grenade, not a drop of blood, not a single piece of cloth.
"Captain?!" Tom could hardly believe it, and quickly clutched his helmet. Under the influence of this strange and inexplicable psionic phenomenon, he was on the verge of madness.
He glanced at Captain Jefferies, who was only five or six meters away from him and covered in blood.
"Megaloceros?"
Who the hell are you?
The Great Rift of All Things provides detailed descriptions of various astral creatures and a method for identifying mimicking calamities. However, at this moment, Tom couldn't distinguish between the two captains—whether from their spiritual pressure characteristics, their elemental abundance, or their pheromone levels, the second Jefferies seemed to be injured. With an open wound and blood as proof of his Homo sapiens form, Tom dared not fire rashly.
"There's no time to explain, Tom," Mr. Jefferies, number two, said with a gloomy look in his eyes, as if he had encountered many obstacles and overcome numerous difficulties to return to this place.
On the other side, the number one Megaloceros, affected by [Mobius], fell from the tree again. He coughed up blood, his body covered in wounds, and an offensive grenade had nearly killed him.
"Ouch! Ah! Ah! Oh my god, it hurts so much!"
He had a horrific, gruesome laceration on his side, an area that the light bulletproof armor couldn't cover.
He quickly found the first-aid kit, took out tweezers and alcohol, cleaned the wound, and removed the shrapnel.
As he texted the front desk, he murmured to himself, "Check the clock. Check the clock, Megaloceros, you have to hold on Megaloceros."
His astonishing will to live enabled him to complete the surgery and heal himself with Universal Elixir. When he got up, he realized it was just dawn. The original plan was to begin the approach at nine o'clock, but the timing didn't match up.
It seemed as if he had returned to around 8:40, and the sun had returned to the low hills upstream of the Mist River, just peeking over the mountaintop.
The watch seemed to have lost its function; Jefferies quickly sorted these things out in his mind—
He was trapped, imprisoned in this time cage by a strange psychic technique.
If I continue to wait here, I'll bump into my next self! But...
"I didn't see anyone. After completing the task assignment for the observation post, I proceeded with the approach procedure."
"If I'm discovered, this doesn't match what I experienced before. No, no, no! This is a soul power attack! I've been attacked by a soul power attack! I can't change what's already happened!"
A strong sense of crisis enveloped Jefferies. If he were to alter the course of events, it would only bring greater chaos to the team—the scouts couldn't possibly explain this complex Soul Power quality in a few words by simply ringing a bell!
Jefferies showed no intention of abandoning the mission; Judas had to die.
This obsession has locked him in place. Now that he's the only one affected, he must ensure the other team members remain unaffected by this strange psychic energy and continue the mission.
With that in mind, he headed straight for the farm, intending to lay an ambush.
Once he got to the vegetable garden, he suddenly realized that he had no time to clean himself up, and the strong smell would still attract that wretched house cat.
Moreover, as he pondered it carefully, a kind of inexplicable, chilling, and terrifying fantasy gradually began to take over his mind.
The activation condition for psychic energy is likely the strange ritual of taking a photograph.
--That woman put me back on a tree outside the boundary marker road; I fell from the same tree last time.
Jefferies, think it over carefully. You need to make this clear.
If we seize the initiative and kill her prematurely, preventing her from taking pictures, then Mr. Megaloceros will never be able to return to before 9 o'clock. Without Megaloceros before 9 o'clock, there will be no me as I am now.
I will kill myself. If this continues, I will kill myself.
From the perspective of causality, without this spiritual ritual, I should not exist at all.
In the main room of the house, there are two Polaroid cameras. These are the statues of the deity given to the people by the White -Haoshou Tianzun. These magical objects can ward off evil spirits and disasters, send away wild animals that invade crops, and seal away bandits who rob people on the road. They take a picture of the villains and wild animals, and then take another picture of the picture. These two pictures become an endless Mobius Ring, like a purple-gold gourd, which can subdue demons and monsters.
Jefferies didn't have much time left to think.
He watched helplessly as another version of himself crept into the farm, then leaned against the side window to observe the convoy.
Then the black cat appears, and the little girl calls out for her mother.
Jefferies's overwhelming will to survive prevented him from making any rash moves.
--Is there another way to resolve this predicament? Or perhaps a way to achieve the best of both worlds?
The sight of the number one Megaloceros chasing after the cat from the granary and shooting it to death was simply unbelievable to the number two Megaloceros!
"Was I really such a cruel person?!"
"Why? Is this really me?"
"To kill Judas? Jefferies, would you shoot a child who hasn't even grown up yet?"
He began to doubt himself; these things were happening too fast—
--It's difficult for normal people to carefully observe their own behavior from this perspective.
In a state of combat readiness, the No. 1 Megaloceros's reaction shot was too decisive and fierce.
When the gun was pointed at the farmer's little girl--
Jefferies didn't hesitate to switch to a medkit and fire a shot.
White Lady's freeze-dried powder created a cloud of mist when tapped onto the bulletproof helmet.
"Tom! What are you doing?!" the number one Megaloceros shouted casually, thinking it was a signal from a teammate.
Just then, Tom also emerged from the vegetable garden and followed closely behind the class monitor.
"It wasn't me! The Megaloceros!"
"Oh my god! Why? Why are there two class monitors?!"
Does she have a weapon?
"I don't know! It looks like she's taking your picture?!"
"She's hiding behind a pillar in the porch! I can't see her!"
"She's the enemy?"
Two shutter clicks followed, and Jefferies watched helplessly as he gradually transformed into a twisted ball of flame from a grenade explosion, disappearing completely from this Timeline.
Jefferies muttered incoherently, "That's right, yes, that's right."
Tom, his teeth chattering, aggressively pointed his gun and demanded, "Who the hell are you?"
Jefferies: "No time to explain, Tom. Continue with the mission."
Before she could finish speaking, the farm's mistress rushed into the inner room in a panic, looking for the man of the house to help.
Jefferies followed Tom inside, intending to destroy the strange psionic artifact and, while ensuring the safety of civilians, completely silence the family.
But when they followed them to the pigsty at the back gate, they saw a strong, middle-aged man dressed as a farmer, looking exhausted, holding a camera with two photos in his hand, and pointing the lens at the two of them.
At the last moment, Mr. Jefferies got a clear look at the man's face.
The male homeowner had a thick beard and looked to be in his thirties. He held the Polaroid camera with the standard, upright posture of someone aiming for a gun, and his features were completely unlike those of a typical Asian man from the Great Xia.
What the team leader could never forget was those eyes, which were a light green like jade.
Before they could pin the grenade on their companion, Tom Crad and Jefferies Robinson turned into two chaotic vortexes, swirling inside and out. Guided by the spirit power of Lord Feather, the Megaloceros could never reach the reality of death.
Tom Crad didn't "die" on the spot; the guy was in a daze and had no idea what had happened.
He woke up at another hidden observation post with seven broken ribs and wounds all over his body from explosives. As a vanguard soldier, he was equipped with defensive grenades with greater explosive power.
Fortunately, only one shell exploded, and it didn't kill him immediately.
Unfortunately, only one exploded, and it didn't kill him immediately.
He was completely unable to move; his right arm had vanished from his elbow, and he was constantly vomiting blood. He couldn't even reach for Universal Elixir in the first-aid kit, move his neck, or bite through the medicine pouch in his close-fitting clothing.
He couldn't tell if it was day or night; the massive bleeding quickly robbed him of his sight.
Until a woman's voice reached his ears, she helped him up, took out Universal Elixir from his bag, and injected it into his tattered body.
"Can you hear me? Can you hear me?!"
Tom gradually regained consciousness, and the intense tinnitus gradually disappeared.
The woman asked urgently, "Can you hear me, little brother?"
A muddy, pungent smell of fern leaves wafted into Tom's nose.
He moved his fingers, forcibly prying open his eyelids that were stuck together, and looked around at the world.
Before me was a Great Xia woman of about seventeen or eighteen, who had just returned from picking ferns on the east bank of the upper reaches of the Mist River. She had walked a long way along the mountain path, her clothes were covered in mud, her face was pale, and her eyes were full of anxiety and tension.
Tom casually replied, "Oh, he's not dead."
"Tom! Megaloceros! No! No, no, no!"
Jefferies, student number one in Third Squad 3A, fell from the tree.
--He was still in shock, and it was precisely in that moment when his mind inexplicably lost its composure.
It seemed that a powerful psychic energy surge had caused him to lose his balance and fall from the hidden observation post around the Aizong Mausoleum. Fortunately, there were no exposed rocks around the hiding place, only soft grass, so he was not injured after falling from the tree.
He quickly checked his equipment, first the explosive fuses in the weapon pouch, then the firearms for malfunctions, and then the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) markings and night vision equipment. The Summoning Bell was still in the receiving state, and he could receive messages from his comrades every five seconds.
Mr. Jefferies is an elite soldier of the Quick Knife unit and the squad leader of Group Third Squad, and he is fully responsible for the mission of tracking Judas.
But at this moment, his mental state was somewhat poor.
"--What am I saying?"
"What am I saying? What was I thinking just now?"
His eyes were red and bloodshot, as if he hadn't rested for a very long time. His whole body was covered in nerve pain from the psychic shock, and in this eerie Spirit Realm where he could never be reincarnated, he could no longer remember anything.
A new Mobius was born, one that became far more complex, almost a dead knot.