Captive Breeding (Thanks to Nightfall Silverglow for the Grandmaster Certification)
Many traces of daily life were discovered along the way.
The water is mainly concentrated in the slightly elevated, recessed areas on both sides of the passageway, where water is less likely to accumulate and is suitable for settling down.
In the first recessed space, there was a moldy blanket, a rusty iron kettle, and several broken ceramic bowls.
Newspapers and rags were piled up in the corner.
The date is blurry, but it's clear it's recent.
Someone used to live here.
Beside these traces of life was a large patch of dark brown stain.
Bloodstains.
It extends from the corner of the recessed area to the main passage, then turns into the darkness.
Someone bled a lot here and was then dragged away.
The second place is further away.
It was also a recessed area, containing blankets and iron kettles.
But on the wall here, someone carved a few lines of words with something sharp.
The light shone on it...
The handwriting was crooked and messy, becoming increasingly illegible towards the bottom.
Someone has gone missing.
"Damn City Hall, they actually kicked us out?!"
The last line contains only two characters, with extremely deep engravings that almost pierce through the wall bricks.
"Help."
Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze.
Behind him, the veteran, missing half a little finger, muttered a curse.
No one responded.
These people Wanderer, residents seeking refuge from the collapse.
After the lighting system was destroyed by Ghoul, they were trapped in the completely dark Pipe Network.
Then, in the darkness, something else appeared.
Moreover, judging from the Carrion Fungus at the entrance at that time, even if they wanted to run away, it would have been too late.
Keep going.
The water here varies in depth, reaching ankle-deep at its deepest point.
The walls were covered with Carrion Fungus.
However, the fungal layer is almost invisible in the sections where the copper frame is intact, but it thickens immediately where the copper frame is broken.
It took about five minutes to walk.
The passage branched out for the first time.
Bolen placed his palms on the ground, and a flash of light appeared on his body and in his hands.
"Go to the right."
The team continues.
A while later.
At the edge of Lu Yuan's vision, the grayish-white text flickered.
[Environmental Perception: Weak Source of Pollution detected... number increasing...]
Lu Yuan raised his left hand.
Stop.
The light from the Sandworm Oil Lamp cast a swaying reflection on the puddles.
The surroundings were so quiet that the only sound was the flowing water.
Lu Yuan slowly raised the lamp higher.
The area of illumination has expanded.
Approximately fifteen meters ahead.
Something was stuck to the wall on the right side of the passage.
At a height of two meters above the ground.
A grayish-white outline.
The limbs were coiled up in a way that was completely contrary to human anatomy.
With knees pointing upwards and elbows pointing outwards, it resembles a giant gecko.
The spine bulges outward, with each vertebra protruding from the skin's surface, creating a jagged shadow under the light.
It didn't move.
Lu Yuan slowly moved the light over.
The light hit its head.
A face.
A grayish-white, wet human face.
The eyes have degenerated into two sunken pits.
But his mouth was strangely odd.
The mouth split open from ear to ear, forming a huge arc, and was densely packed with tiny, inward-curving teeth.
[Detection Target: Unnamed Aberrant (Pipe Network Adapted)]
[Status: A human Aberrant created after being Contamination in a dark, enclosed environment. Its limbs have softened and remodeled due to the Contamination by Carrion Fungus, adapting to climbing the tube walls. Its face retains most of the human skeletal structure and it has completely lost its fatal weaknesses. Note: It feeds on the bacterial flora of the tubes.]
[Weakness: Light source.]
[Forbidden Studies - Seeker: +0.1...13.1/100]
The moment the light shone on it, its mouth slowly closed slightly.
It seemed like they were shrinking back.
Moreover, under the light, it wasn't just one bird climbing on the wall.
Boer's lights swept to the other side.
Another one.
There are two more on the ceiling further away.
Four grayish-white Aberrant clung to the walls and ceiling of the passage, their limbs bent backwards, motionless.
Fragments of clothing remained on the torso of the second creature.
It was a thick cotton-padded coat so dirty that its original color was no longer visible, the cuffs were worn to shreds, and a rusty iron brooch was pinned to the front.
Former residents of the Pipe Network.
It turned into this thing in darkness and Contamination.
The third one was huddled in the vaulted ceiling.
Head down.
The mouth, split to the roots of its ears, was facing the passage.
If someone were to walk past underneath in the dark... it probably wouldn't recommend eating meat.
The fourth one is the smallest.
Its body size is only two-thirds that of an adult.
The pieces of clothing on his body were unidentifiable.
But judging from the skeletal structure...
Lu Yuan ignored him.
"Don't stop!" he hissed.
"Raise your lights, walk together, and stay away from them!"
These things are sensitive to light.
They dare not move as long as the light remains on.
Lu Yuan had no intention of making a move, because judging from the text prompt, this thing seemed difficult to kill, and most importantly, it didn't pose much of a threat.
The six people compressed their formation and quickly passed through the center of the passage.
The grayish-white figure on the wall curled up slightly as the light passed over it, emitting a very faint hissing sound.
But not one dared to come down.
After passing through, Lu Yuan glanced back.
The light can't reach that far anymore.
But on the edge of darkness, those figures began to move slowly.
I changed my position and stuck myself back against the wall.
Keep moving forward.
The path begins to descend, at a gentle but continuous angle.
The water level dropped, and the water flowed down the slope to a lower area.
The surrounding Carrion Fungus are thinning.
The copper frame went from appearing occasionally to appearing continuously.
The putrid smell in the air was diminishing, replaced by a cold, metallic scent.
Continue moving forward for a while.
The walls on both sides of the passage began to change.
There was something grayish-white embedded in the cracks between the bricks.
It's a finger.
Human fingers.
Grayish-white, withered fingers emerged from the cracks in the brickwork.
Only one or two finger bones are exposed, the nails have fallen off, and the skin at the fingertips has fused with the surrounding fungal layer.
As the light swept across the walls, there was one every few meters on both sides.
Some are fingers.
Some are half a hand.
Some had small patches of grayish-white facial skin squeezed out from between the bricks, with sunken eye sockets and shrunken lips.
Those were human faces embedded in the wall.
Lu Yuan stopped, and the light slowly swept across the right wall.
One, two, three.
At a height of half a meter to one and a half meters above the ground, there were more than a dozen gray-white faces densely packed together.
Most of it has been completely petrified and has become one with the wall.
But there are a few...
One face still has its eyeballs.
Two grayish-white spheres, without pupils, are embedded in sunken eye sockets.
The moment the light shone on them, their eyeballs moved.
They turned towards the direction of the lights.
At the same time, a grayish-white arm suddenly stretched out from the crack in the brickwork.
He spread his five fingers and reached for the calf of the nearest young Night Watcher.
Get out of the way!
Lu Yuan reacted quickly, pulling the young man towards the center of the passage.
The grayish-white fingers grasped at nothing in the air, paused for a second, and slowly retracted into the crack between the bricks.
[Detection target: Wall-Born Aberrant (passive type)]
[Status: Human remains permanently fixed in the tube wall structure by Carrion Fungus. The Fungal Hyphae have penetrated and replaced the nervous system, giving some limbs extremely limited autonomous responsiveness; they are unable to move and only exhibit a grasping reflex when they sense the presence of Living.]
[Weakness: Flame.]
[Forbidden Studies - Seeker: +0.1...13.2/100]
"What the hell is this thing?"
The young Night Watcher was clearly quite frightened, and a somewhat restrained voice echoed through the pipes.
"Captain, should we get rid of this thing?"
"That's when Boer said it."
Clearly, the individual pieces of the Wall-Born Aberrant on the pipe walls in front of him left Boer at a loss for what to do.
"Ignore it, this thing poses very little threat, not even as much as the others we saw earlier."
"Besides, we don't have enough stuff to clean up all of this. Stay in the middle, don't bump into the walls, let's go."
After Lu Yuan finished speaking, he walked at the front.
Bolen and Karl stayed quietly behind Lu Yuan.
The six of them jogged along the middle of the passageway.
Behind him, the grayish-white fingers slowly retracted into the brick seam.
Those eyeballs without pupils continued to stare in the direction where the light disappeared in the darkness.
Only then did those lifeless, decaying eyeballs return to their original state.
Passing through the region of the Wall-Born Aberrant.
A large space appeared ahead; it was either Water Collection Chamber or some kind of maintenance junction.
This Water Collection Chamber is about ten square meters in size, with an opening in each of the three walls.
They came in from the left.
The main passageway continues directly ahead.
The opening on the right is smaller and narrower, and the sound of running water can be heard coming from inside.
Just as Lu Yuan was about to signal to continue through the main passage, he caught something out of the corner of his eye.
It refers to the walls surrounding the entrance to the passageway.
Something was clinging to the wall.
A slender, moist vine spread out from deep within the passageway.
They spread outwards along the edge of the passageway, clinging tightly to the brick and stone surface.
The surface of the vines was wet and covered with a thin layer of sticky sap.
At the tips of some vines...
Lu Yuan saw it.
Eye.
Not human eyes.
It was a pea-sized, grayish-green sphere embedded at the tip of the vine, slowly rotating.
They were watching their group.
But the vines did not extend beyond the entrance of the passage.
They stopped at the edge, as if something was preventing them from entering the Water Collection Chamber.
It's clearly copper.
The entire frame of the Water Collection Chamber is made of copper.
They were blocked in that passage by copper.
We were just observing from a distance.
[Environmental Perception: Abnormal biological activity detected... It is recommended to stay away...]
"Biology?"
Lu Yuan remained silent.
He simply moved the light away from that direction slowly.
Then gesture to everyone, telling them not to look in that direction and not to make a sound.
Take the main passage.
Boer didn't see the vines.
But he saw Lu Yuan's gesture.
Without saying a word, he turned and walked towards the main passage.
The six people silently passed through the Water Collection Chamber and entered the main passageway directly ahead.
No one looked back.
Behind them, deep within the passageway, the gray-green eyeballs atop the vines slowly closed in the darkness.
The main channel continues downwards.
The slope has increased.
The water began to flow.
A faint stream of water flowed from behind.
After entering, Bolen kept his distance from the right-hand wall, his fingers never leaving it.
Let's continue on this path for a while.
[Environmental Perception: A small amount of Source of Pollution detected...]
At the same time, strange figures appeared ahead.
It was the sound of claws scraping against a copper surface.
Sizzle... sizzle...
Lu Yuan lowered the lights.
Everyone crouched down against the left wall of the passage.
The sound was getting closer.
Then, at the edge of the dim light from the Sandworm Oil Lamp, a figure emerged from the darkness.
On all fours.
The size is similar to that of a large dog.
But that wasn't a dog.
The torso is human, elongated and flattened, with each vertebra protruding from the skin.
The limbs are also human arms and legs, but all the joints are bent in the opposite direction, adapting to quadrupedal walking in a strange posture.
The palms and soles of the feet became wider and thicker, the nails fell off, and in their place was a thick layer of keratin, which made a hissing sound when stepped on the copper surface.
It lowered its head and sniffed something along the right wall of the passage.
Then it raised its head.
The light shone on his face.
A human face.
A complete human face.
It grows on a canine-shaped body.
His expression froze, devoid of any emotion.
Only its mouth can move.
His mouth was slightly open, his tongue was sticking out, and he was panting like a dog.
It saw the light.
They didn't pounce.
Frozen in place, his degenerated eyes squinted.
Then it turned its head and made a sound into the darkness behind it.
It wasn't a dog barking.
It was a human cry squeezed from deep within the throat.
The sound was intermittent, as if the vocal cords had forgotten how to produce sound normally.
Lu Yuan realized it the moment it howled.
What is this thing trying to do? Fire the Revolver.
"Bang!"
The Silver-Plated Bullets precisely pierced a hole in its head.
Black blood mixed with other unidentified liquids splattered.
But this thing didn't fall down; instead, it revealed a fierce look on its face.
Meanwhile, outside the dark pipes, it was met with even more similar sounds.
It came from the darkness ahead.
Two sounds, three sounds.
And it's not just the strangeness in front of us.
Further away, mixed in with the crying, was another sound.
Hiss...
There are also Ghoul.
[Detection Target: Unnamed Aberrant (captive/social)]
[Status: Humans deliberately Contamination, their brains damaged to the point of only retaining hunting instincts; their facial bones, due to their higher hardness, have retained the most human characteristics, and they live in groups.]
[Weaknesses: Holy Light, Bronze Weapons, Neck.]
[Forbidden Studies - Seeker: +0.1...13.3/100]
"Open the fire on the neck! Turn on the lights first!"
At Lu Yuan's command, the Revolver was pulled again.
This time, the bizarre thing in front of him suddenly exploded in his neck, letting out a whimper before collapsing to the ground.
But Boer reacted extremely quickly, spilling Sandworm Oil on the copper surface and throwing away a match...
Boom.
The pale white Flame spread out, leaving nowhere to hide in the narrow pipe.
Three eerie creatures with human faces, followed by two Ghouls.
Unlike the skinny skeletons found on the ground, these two were enormous, with intact grayish-red fleshy membranes and covered in a layer of red keratin.
Inside the enormous mouth, three layers of teeth gleamed with an eerie luster.
It's Great Ghoul!
Moreover, there is no shortage of "food" in the Pipe Network; the people who once lived here were their "food".
But that's not the key point. The key point is that Lu Yuan saw it.
The eerie creature with a human face in front of them, now resembling a "domestic dog," was lingering beside the Great Ghoul.
"They are wise!"
Lu Yuan's heart tightened as he suddenly realized what the gray-white prompt meant.