"Ahhhhhhhh!"
Creepy howls echoed from the end of the tunnel.
It was like a ferocious beast that had been skinned alive and was running on a rampage.
Very soon, a ferocious shadow rushed into the vision of Li Yao and the rest of them.
It was an officer of the Imperial Guards, too. Judging from the pattern on his shoulder, his rank was not low.
But his appearance could not have been more appalling. His head had expanded to more than twice the normal size, and quite a few protrusions that looked like tumors were rising high on his forehead and temples. The protrusions were pulsating and bouncing like hearts.
His eyes were so red that they were purple and black. A lot of colorful, suspicious pus was flowing out of the corners of his rotten eyes. His entire brain seemed to have turned into pus and spurted out.
Even so, he still boasted unparalleled strength. After a gentle wave of his hands, he tore two Imperial Guards who came forward to stop him into halves. Their internal organs flowed all over the ground.
If the vitality fields of the other Imperial Guards were like lifeless rivers that flowed at a uniform speed, then the vitality field of the mad officer was as violent as a colorful and surging vortex.
He killed almost five soldiers in a row before he crashed his head into a caterpillar truck brutally. He was even trying to overturn the truck that weighed hundreds of tons. His arms were creaking, and his legs were sinking deep into the ground. He did not even care that the bones of his arms were broken and protruded out of his elbows.
The officer had completely lost his mind.
The 'normal' Imperial Guards around were fearless. They took the opportunity to charge forward. After paying the price of more than ten deaths, they finally dealt a heavy blow to the mad officer.
The mad officer's vitality was unbelievably tenacious. His internal organs were almost entirely melted by the heat guns and the crystal railguns. A shocking hole appeared on his torso, but he still howled for more than half a minute before he gradually fell silent.
At this moment, his head had expanded to three times the normal size. The few tumors that looked like hearts on his forehead and temples were as swollen as grapes and could explode at any moment.
Immediately, a team of soldiers wearing special helmets who looked like anti-epidemic personnel stepped forward and dragged the corpses of the officers and the dead soldiers away, turning into an inconspicuous fork at the side of the tunnel.
The remaining Imperial Guards seemed to have turned a blind eye to such a terrifying scene. In just half a minute, they returned to normal order and continued to transport the crystal energy mechanically.
Li Yao and Long Yangjun looked at each other and said at the same time, "Follow them!"
Li Yao sent out a few crystal cameras and followed the 'anti-epidemic workers' not far away, before he crawled into the branch.
At the same time, he scanned the environment of the tunnel and the crossroads and constructed the structure of the crossroads in the crystal processor. When the quakes happened again, he drove the drill of mystic rays and drilled toward the crossroads.
In the end, he put on the Crystal Suit with Long Yangjun and Li Jialing and activated the stealth mode. The three of them melted into the environment like chameleons.
The branch was more than a thousand meters long. Carrying the bodies on the floating discs, the anti-epidemic soldiers walked for more than twenty minutes before they finally reached their destination.
At the end of the branch, however, was a gap that led all the way to the underground, from which flames and smoke were spurting out nonstop. It seemed that there was a magma pool very deep down below.
Huala!
The anti-epidemic soldiers poured the bodies of a few soldiers into the pool first. The bodies were immediately swept away by the flames and melted by the magma. Not a single cell would be left.
"Do it!"
The anti-epidemic soldiers were about to throw the body of the crazy officer into the magma, when Li Yao and Long Yangjun had already jumped down. The two of them summoned almost ten clones and controlled four anti-epidemic soldiers immediately, not letting them make any sound. They all collapsed on the ground.
For safety reasons, Li Yao still deployed an alarm rune array and a soundproof rune array in the branch in case the sound here spread out.
"Do you want to do it, or should I?"
Li Yao asked Long Yangjun.
"Let me do it. I know more about the so-called 'brainwashing' than you do."
Long Yangjun took out a few blades that were as thin as paper from her Cosmos Ring and bounced them on her fingertips.
Li Yao and Li Jialing helped her move all the other bodies down. They simply placed the body of the crazy officer on the floating disc and adjusted the anti-gravity rune arrays to adjust the height of the floating disc to Long Yangjun's chest, turning it into a simple operation bed.
Long Yangjun's fingers turned into ten streaks of brilliance as she operated on the officer's uneven head precisely. Very soon, the broken skull was removed and all the broken bones were picked out, but the brain tissue was not damaged at all.
However, although Long Yangjun's brain tissue was not damaged, the brain tissue of the crazy officer was as disgusting as chopped tofu in the first place. Had it not been for the support of Long Yangjun's spiritual energy, it would've been sprayed all over the ground.
Thankfully, Li Yao and Li Jialing were both brutal men who killed without blinking, or they would've vomited a long time ago.
Focusing her attention, Long Yangjun peeled off the rotten brain tissue one by one. It took her three minutes to find what she was looking for.
"Do you see? This piece of brain tissue is out of control. The brain cells are proliferating and expanding crazily, thousands of times faster than the normal metabolism. As a result, tremendous heat is released and serious internal bleeding is caused."
Long Yangjun pointed at the abnormally swollen brain tissue with a pair of forceps and said, "This is the reason why his brain has expanded by three times and why he went on a rampage."
Li Yao nodded, indicating that he understood.
The officer's symptoms were not rare among the trainers. Many typical mental derangement could cause similar problems.
The cells inside a human body, both the body cells and the brain cells, were dying and regenerating every day. On average, all the cells inside the body would be renewed every seven to ten days. It was a process known as "metabolism".
Metabolism was an indispensable function to ensure the exuberant vitality of human beings.
For both the Cultivators and the Immortal Cultivators, one of the most important methods of training was to absorb tremendous spiritual energy with special arts to accelerate the metabolism and the renewal of cells in a certain area or the whole body.
The renewal of all the cells inside the body was called "one cycle". The experts of training, with sufficient resources, could perform dozens of cycles after only a few hours of meditation and renew their cells dozens of times. That was why they boasted techniques that were far more advanced than the ordinary people.
However, a high metabolism was not necessarily a good thing.
It was because the renewal of cells would consume tremendous resources and spiritual energy. A lot of waste would also be generated and discharged, including the dead cells, the blood, the pus, and even the excess heat that covered the dead cells.
The waste had to be absorbed by the capillaries, transported to the skin, and discharged through the pores.
Therefore, when one cultivated it to the extreme, there would be phenomena such as "steaming white smoke spurting out of one's body and secreting extremely stinky black mucus" and so on.
If the speed at which the body discharged the waste could not keep up with the speed at which the waste was generated, the highly toxic waste would gather inside the body and block the veins and nerves, interfering with the normal circulation of spiritual energy and body fluids, resulting in severe damage and even serious consequences such as mental derangement.
That was exactly what happened to the officer.
His brain had performed too many cycles in a short period of time and replaced the brain cells in certain areas countless times. Also, the dead brain cells and the pus were not discharged in time. Also, the heat released during the metabolism pressed and tore apart the normal brain tissues and cerebral vessels. Even his skull was squeezed apart. Finally, he was mentally deranged and went on a rampage.
"How did it happen?"
Li Jialing could not help but scratch his head. "Such an abnormal expansion of the brain usually only happens when one practices powerful arts or breaks into a new level, right? How did the officer suddenly become mentally deranged when he was carrying out a mission? "
"It was not 'out of the blue'. Look, it was the brain tissue that was abnormal. Many brain specialists and Meditation Healers believe that it is the area that governs memory, or the so-called 'memory cells'," Long Yangjun said as she used her chopsticks to soften the abnormal brain tissue.
Long Yangjun opened the aberrated brain cells with a pair of tweezers and said, "Concentrate your spiritual energy and adjust the resolution of your eyes to the highest. See what's here."
Li Yao took out a pair of bright yellow lenses from his Cosmos Ring and gave them to Li Jialing. Li Jialing narrowed his eyes and observed carefully through the lenses. After observing for a long time, he remarked in surprise, "Bleeding points. There are so many dense bleeding points!"
"Yes. Those bleeding points were not formed in a short period of time but because somebody stimulated the area of the memory cells repetitively in the past few days or even months."
Long Yangjun said, "The officer's memory cells have been ravaged into a mess. They are even more fragile than the memory cells of ordinary people. The slightest disturbance will trigger the repair genes in the memory cells, resulting in abnormal expansion and internal bleeding, and eventually mental derangement."
"The human body boasts a very powerful self-repair mechanism in the first place. The recovery function of the trainers is even more powerful."
Li Yao explained, "When the memory cells of the officer were stimulated and wounded repeatedly, his brain sent a special instruction to the cells, asking them to repair the damaged cells and breed more new cells. However, after the instruction was carried out too many times, it went out of control and turned into an infinite crazy repair and breeding. That's why it ended up like this.
"In fact, such a phenomenon of tissue proliferation often happens on ordinary people too. It's the scars left after injuries. However, for the trainers, the speed of metabolism and cell repair is dozens if not hundreds of times higher than that of ordinary people. Once the cells go out of control, the consequences will be even more severe."
"Not just the memory cells, but here too."
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
