Chapter Sixty-Two: Blossoms Bathed in Blood

"Alright." Liu Chang nodded and stood beside Zhao Yue with the little girl, Li Qingshui. After informing the soldiers about the road ahead, Zhao Yue led the group, taking a detour around the flower field.

With Liu Chang at his side, Zhao Yue used the fog lights and compass, winding through the blossoms. He dared not stray too far from the flowers, for fear of losing his way, nor too close, lest the flowers attack. Thus, they moved slowly, calibrating their direction from time to time, their marching pace much reduced.

"What a vast flower field! At this rate, we might not reach Zhengzhou before nightfall," Liu Chang said anxiously, walking at the front of the group. "Captain, can we go faster?"

"Yes, we should speed up. This flower field is even bigger than I imagined." The captain nodded and quickened his pace after checking their bearings.

Just then, a gentle breeze carried the scent of pollen from the flower field.

"These flowers do smell wonderful," someone behind Liu Chang remarked, brightening the mood. "I've never smelled anything so fragrant. This tranquil, delicate scent is better than any flower from the old era. With their vivid colors, they'd fetch quite a price back then."

"Sadly, in this era, perhaps their scent is the fragrance of death," Li Qingshui frowned. "Let's hurry. In nature, flowers and their scents were never meant for humans to enjoy. In the past, flower scents attracted insects to spread pollen; now, they might lure other creatures into their trap."

"And after all, flowers are just the reproductive organs of plants. What's so beautiful about someone else's reproductive organs?" Li Qingshui frowned. "Many people even like to bring them to their lips and sniff—it's disgusting."

"That's disgusting, too," someone in the group laughed at Li Qingshui's words. The mood lightened, and everyone picked up their pace.

After another half hour of winding around the flower field, their detour gradually aligned with the direction of Zhengkai Avenue. Just as they thought they’d finally bypassed the strange flower field, an odd sound suddenly erupted from within the group.

"Aaaaaah––!"

A blood-curdling scream, abrupt and piercing, as if a moment before they were laughing, and the next, someone had been stabbed in the gut. It was sudden and shockingly intense.

"What happened?" Zhao Yue immediately prepared for combat, shining his fog lamp behind. Liu Chang saw the soldier who had screamed.

"Was he attacked?" The soldier's face contorted in agony, veins bulging on his neck, his features twisted together in a chaotic mass—clearly, he was enduring immense pain. His weapon lay discarded on the ground, his fingers rigid like claws, and Liu Chang noticed his body had begun to convulse.

The soldiers nearby, seeing his state, raised their guns and scanned their surroundings in alarm—but they found nothing unusual in the air or on the ground.

"Could it be some kind of ambush, like the parasitic dodder?" someone shouted.

"It's possible," several people responded, pinning down the soldier whose mind was lost to pain, tearing open his clothes. Though his muscles knotted and his skin was flushed red, his body showed no visible wounds.

"He looks poisoned," came a woman's voice—it was Doctor Huang. She frowned as she examined the fallen soldier. "Hyperactive parasympathetic nerves, excessive sweating, drooling—it seems like a neurotoxin?"

"Poisoned? But he didn't eat anything," Zhao Yue stepped forward to check, "Could he have been scratched by a poisonous plant?"

He examined the exposed skin on the soldier's arms and ankles, the areas most likely to be scratched, but found no marks.

"What’s going on?"

"It must be the flower field—the pollen is toxic," Li Qingshui's pupils contracted sharply, as if a realization struck.

"Impossible, none of us show symptoms, so why..." Zhao Yue began, but his tongue suddenly twisted mid-sentence, his words turning to guttural murmurs. Liu Chang watched as Zhao Yue, who had been frowning and speaking a second before, now stared wide-eyed in agony.

His symptoms matched the soldier’s—he lost all sense, his skin reddened and sweated, bloodshot eyes appeared, and then he howled in pain.

"The pollen really is poisonous!" Liu Chang cried out, quickly holding his breath and dragging the little girl away from the flower field.

Some of the soldiers caught on, and once word spread about the toxic pollen, everyone desperately fled. A few soldiers close to the captain tried to drag him away, but in his frenzied state, he couldn't be controlled. When two or three failed to move him, they ran off as well.

Then, a terrifying scene unfolded beside the flower field.

As the group fled, the captain and the afflicted soldier, screaming in agony, charged straight into the flowers. Their bodies seemed unbearably hot and tortured—they tore at their clothes and exposed skin as they ran. With their evolved strength, their sturdy combat uniforms were shredded to rags in seconds. Still unsatisfied, they clawed at their own flesh.

Their fingers dug into their skin, ripping it apart with horrifying screams. It was as if a maddening parasite burrowed inside them, driving them to scratch and gouge at their own flesh. Their faces split open, exposing bone, but they didn't stop. They plunged their fingers into their abdomens, reaching for their organs... Skin was torn in strips, their bodies twisted in pain, blood and flesh spraying over the vibrant flowers, staining them an even more brilliant hue.

Liu Chang watched from afar, stunned into silence, only stopping when he and the others reached a place where the flower scent could no longer be detected.

"What do we do? Did everyone get poisoned?" The survivors regrouped, fear etched in their eyes.

Only Li Qingshui remained calm.

"Doctor Huang, how do you treat neurotoxins?" he asked, frowning deeply, his gaze fixed on the group’s only adult woman.

"There are countless kinds of neurotoxins—I've never seen this kind of pollen toxin before, I don’t know," Doctor Huang said, covering her face in terror. "And without medicine, there's nothing we can do!"