Who hid My Corpse!

Yuri quick-stepped after his aide-de-camp to a corpse contaminated with pollutants, where many members of the Devil's Army had already gathered.

"Make way, make way, the captain has arrived."

The aide cleared a path for Yuri, allowing him to see the decaying remains of the human corpse.

The corpse's facial features were no longer discernible, and the body had mutated into components similar to the pollutants. At first glance, there appeared to be no difference from the pollutants themselves.

The only difference was the clothing on his body—it came from Night Star, a decade ago.

Indeed, just as the aide had said.

"We" had finally found "them."

Looking at the familiar yet strange uniform, Yuri felt a moment of realization but quickly composed himself and bent down to examine the body, asking his aide, "How did this body get here?"

The aide replied, "It was found hanging on another pollutant's body."

"Hanging on it?"

"Yes," the aide nodded, "it seems the pollutant consumed him, and then after we destroyed the body of the pollutant, it became exposed."

A pollutant is a monster with only the ability to feed, lacking the ability to digest or excrete.

It only grows larger as it consumes more and more, like a greedy snake, but when it reaches a certain size, it breaks down and decomposes, only to continue feeding as if its sole purpose was to eat.

"Has the identity been confirmed?"

As Yuri was asking and turning the corpse over, he looked at the sleeve insignia. Predictably, the insignia was too blurred to make out the name.

Sure enough, the aide's response was, "We have not yet found valid identification, only several broken pieces of equipment with names on them, but all the names are different."

Yuri also noticed several pieces of small equipment laid out next to the body, like a knife and a pocket watch, all badly damaged, but the names could still be faintly discerned.

He looked through the equipment, and just as the aide had mentioned, the names engraved were all different.

"This is the rule of Night Star," Yuri spoke softly. "Those who are to be left behind exchange one piece of their equipment with those who are leaving, so if there's equipment with different names, it means… there have been sacrifices."

"But all these names are different."

"That means there have always been sacrifices," Yuri said. "They didn't fall at the same time; rather, there have been continuous problems, continuous losses before such a situation could occur."

...Continuous losses.

Upon hearing this sentence, the atmosphere on the scene became more oppressive. Devils wearing heavy masks exchanged glances, seemingly unable to imagine such a scenario.

Yuri did not delve too much into the equipment and wasn't very interested in clarifying the exact identity since, after all, this man was surely one among the missing persons list.

More than confirming his identity, Yuri wanted to see if he could find something else on his person.

For example, the alleged "document from Affairs Officer No.44" from ten years ago, the evidence that Gerard always spoke of.

It was precisely because this document had always been missing that the mission of Night Star could not be proven authentic.

If that written document truly existed, it should be with these dead Night Star Knights.

Would they find it?

Just as Yuri was seriously searching, his hand was suddenly grabbed.

Yuri flinched, instinctively thinking it was his aide; but upon seeing the hand clearly, he froze completely.

The hand was pale, decaying, like the limb of a pollutant.

And its owner was... the corpse lying before him.

Yuri's gaze slowly moved upwards, then he saw this man, who should have been dead for ten years, "open his eyes" at him.

His eyeballs were long gone, leaving only two irregular holes as if they were gouged out with fingers.

Yuri realized soon enough they had been gouged out as another hand reached up, gouging out a mouth.

This sent chills up Yuri's spine.

This was definitely not something an ordinary pollutant could do!

While one hand was being held, he still reached for the Blazing Fire Sword at his waist.

No matter what, the pollutant had to be dealt with.

But just as his hand clutched the sword's hilt, the corpse in front of him made a sound with the gouged-out mouth.

"Who... are... you?"

These unexpected words almost stopped Yuri's heart.

Pollutants... can speak?

If it had not been for the already too many peculiar events he had witnessed today, Yuri would never have believed it.

Yuri forced himself to calm down.

He looked at the corpse in front of him and then did something he would never have done before.

He engaged in dialogue.

"Devil's Army, Yuri," he replied in a deep voice, then immediately followed up, "Do you remember who you are?"

He wondered if the corpse was a pollutant that had acquired the ability to speak.

Or... a surviving Knight of Night Star.

The distinction between these two possibilities was significant for Yuri.

"Devil... Army..." the corpse slowly repeated the term.

Yuri gripped the hilt tightly, sweat beads forming under his heavy mask.

"Yes," Yuri repeated the earlier question, "Who are you?"

"Who... are... you..."

The pollutant repeated Yuri's words again as if unable to answer his question, only capable of echoing Yuri's speech.

It seemed to be just a pollutant that inexplicably acquired the ability to speak.

Disappointed with this conclusion, Yuri began to draw the Blazing Fire Sword slowly.

There was nothing to discuss with a pollutant.

However, just as Yuri was about to fully draw the Blazing Fire Sword, the corpse suddenly "remembered" something, summoning strength from nowhere, and stood up abruptly, then directed the gouged-out mouth toward Yuri. Yuri saw the mouth continuing to rip and expand rapidly.

Then, Yuri heard a deafening sound piercing through the mask, reaching deep into his brain.

"Leave this place!"

"The source is the contamination!"

"Survive!"

The words that delved deep into Yuri's brain jolted him awake.

When he came back to his senses, the corpse had returned to its previous state.

The face was a blur, unrecognizable... but now without missing eyes and mouth.

It was as if everything had been an illusion.

Yuri stared blankly at the corpse, feeling that something was not right, yet he couldn't quite pin it down.

But then he heard a "click-click" sound coming from his neck, growing more and more urgent.

Yuri snapped back to reality.

An emergency device?!

He immediately reached for the emergency device on his neck.

Then he discovered that the spring on the emergency device was wound to its final coil; if it continued to turn, in less than five minutes, his head would fall to the ground.

While breaking out in a cold sweat, Yuri also realized a greater discrepancy.

How had his emergency device wound down to the last coil?!

How long had he been watching here?!

And why had nobody warned him?!

Yuri abruptly lifted his head to find that his subordinates still maintained their initial positions, with not a single reaction, like frozen statues.

But their neck-mounted emergency devices were not stopping, and in fact, were speeding up.

Yuri immediately stood up and bellowed at his subordinates,

"Wake up!"

"We've been contaminated!"

Splat, splat, splat.

The moment his words fell, three heads hit the ground.

The spraying blood added a shockingly crimson stain to the grey and white world.

That splash of red also made Yuri aware of something he had neglected.

That was, they were not yet prepared to actively enter the deepest part of the Polluted Land, the Abyss.

But the Abyss was already advancing towards them.

...

"Why come here?"

Gerard stood in front of a processing plant, with the steel bridge that connected to the Fifth Zone in the distance.

"Why not come here?" Bai Wei said languidly, "You know what place this is, right?"

Gerard hesitated, but nodded, "Source oil factory."

"From your reaction, it seems like you've never been here?" Bai Wei said, "Isn't this what you used to do? Drilling for oil."

"Oil? What's that?"

"I meant source oil," Bai Wei said airily, "You must have heard wrong."

Gerard didn't care much about whether Bai Wei misspoke; he simply said, "Making source oil is indeed Night Star's primary task, but we're only responsible for transporting the refined source oil back to the Fifth Zone; from there, technicians from the source oil factory haul it back... just like that."

As they spoke, a specially designed gear train rolled across the bridge from the Fifth Zone, stopping in front of the factory. Then workers from the factory began moving the black barrels from the train into the facility.

Bai Wei asked, "What will these barrels of source oil be processed into?"

"Many things," Gerard replied. Though he wasn't responsible for the further processing of source oil, he knew some of the basic procedures and answered, "Power source oil to fuel gear trains and other large machinery, living source oil for people's daily needs, and some by-products are converted into lubricants and the like."

"Ah, that sounds quite interesting," Bai Wei said with a smile, "Take me in for a tour, will you? I've never seen such a processing plant before."

Bai Wei's relaxed tone could not make Gerard feel at ease.

He had thought Bai Wei would take him directly to a sector's spire to tell him who was the problem, who was with the New Chaser Association, and urge him to take action quickly.

But Bai Wei brought him here to the source oil factory.

As Bai Wei had mentioned, it was closely related to his former work.

"I can try to go in," Gerard said after scanning the surroundings, "The security here isn't tight... but I want to know something."

"Go ahead."

"Do you think there's an issue with the source oil factory..." Gerard asked slowly, "or with the source oil itself?"

"Hehe, you're quite sharp, aren't you?" Bai Wei wasn't surprised by Gerard's reaction; after all, they had come all this way, "As the captain of the Night Star, you should know how source oil is made, right?"

"Of course," Gerard replied, "From the bodies of Pollutants."

"How exactly?"

Gerard hesitated for a moment but still said, "By completely pulverizing the bodies of Pollutants into liquid, that becomes source oil."

"In other words, squeezed into juice, right?" Bai Wei asked with a smile.

Although Bai Wei's description felt odd, Gerard had to admit it was vivid and nodded, "Yes."

"So once turned into juice, do they die?"

Gerard's pupils narrowed slightly, but his expression didn't change much; he simply said gravely, "We've conducted many experiments, the source oil itself is not contaminated, nor does it possess any vitality."

"Is that so?" Bai Wei asked indifferently, "Where do the results of these experiments come from?"

Gerard's eyes widened instantly.

He lifted his head and looked again at the factory in front of him.

The workers dressed in black uniforms were moving source oil barrels into the factory one by one.

Expressionless, they resembled precise components or,

Ghosts lingering in the Polluted Land.