Rotting Vine, the Clever Use of Search

[Target of Search: Barrett] [Current Cooperation Rate: 57%] [Current Searchable Scope: Intelligence, Items, Skills] [Search Target Confirmed: Skills (Lv. 1)] [Searching...] ... [Search Successful!] [Barrett Stuart (Parasitic State)] [Lv. 1 Skills]: Rotting Vine Vitality*, Rotting Vine Strength*, Rotting Vine Speed*, Rotting Vine Resilience*, Rotting Vine Digestion*, Locked*, Locked*, Locked*. [Lv. 2 Skills]: Locked [Note: Detected that the target of search is influenced by a special power, causing skill mutation. The Collector has marked this with an asterisk (*) as a warning. Collector agent, please take note: If you search and equip this special skill, you will be subject to equivalent effects.] [Note: Once Rotting Vine* is unlocked and equipped, the specific information of Locked* skills can be viewed.] ... "Why is it all Rotting Vine?" "Wait, is this... an infected entity?" When he first caught sight of the panel's information, Cheng Ye was still wondering what kind of Old Martial Arts system this man practiced, with skill names so neatly uniform. Moreover, unlike Chu Yunfeng's specialized skill tree, Barrett's panel crudely laid out vitality, strength, speed, resilience, and digestion in a raw list, giving off the aura of a pure stat monster. Yet in the next second, Cheng Ye suddenly snapped to reality. What Old Martial Arts practitioner was this? This guy was clearly a bona fide infected entity! Fuck! What was going on? The Collector could actually search infected entities, and could even extract mutated abilities resulting from infection?! Didn't this mean one could directly acquire special powers rivaling the extraordinary? Unfortunately, before Cheng Ye could even get excited, his eyes fell upon the note below. The four words "subject to equivalent effects" were like a bucket of ice water, instantly quenching every impulse. If the side effects brought by an infected entity were extracted in equal measure, why bother using the Collector to search for them? Wouldn't it be simpler to just let an infected entity parasitize him directly? "Wait, this function..." Cheng Ye's brow twitched as he suddenly realized another ingenious use for the search function. As long as a target's cooperation rate exceeded fifty percent, couldn't one determine at the root whether they were infected simply by running a search? This was a god-tier trick! In an instant, Cheng Ye thought of several scenarios where this function could be applied. For instance, on field operations, if he couldn't be sure whether a teammate was infected, all he had to do was search them. Or during inspections, if there was someone he wasn't sure about, running a search would yield the answer just the same. [Collector agent, please make a selection. If unable to select, you may cancel the search. Canceling will not refund charge value and will be deemed a failure, but you will receive double action points.] The Collector panel lit up with a prompt. Double action points! Cheng Ye's eyes lit up. He hadn't expected canceling a search to yield such a bonus. Without hesitation, he made his decision on the spot: "Cancel search." Granted, even without equipping them, searching the Rotting Vine abilities might add some information points, but he instinctively resisted such risky business. After all, if his mind slipped one day, or if he wasn't paying attention while switching skills and accidentally equipped an infected entity's skill onto himself, wouldn't he blow himself to pieces? "Unless I find a method to banish infection sources with absolute certainty one day, I can never touch these skills." Cheng Ye silently cautioned himself. Impulse was the devil. If he faced a life-or-death crisis without an infection source's power, he might still survive the dire straits through cool judgment. But once tainted by this mutated power, there was no telling whether a gambler's mindset of "trading a life for a life" might take over at a critical moment. When that time came, what seemed like an extra path would actually be shackling himself. [Search canceled. Action points returned: '4' (Lv. 1)] The panel information flashed by, displaying the refund before vanishing from Cheng Ye's sight. Although he had wasted a search attempt, he had stumbled upon an alternative way to identify infected entities, while also gaining action points in the process. Cheng Ye felt no disappointment. He immediately took several steps back, intending to recoup his losses from another angle. "M-My lord..." Barrett, leaning against the bars waiting to be questioned, had no idea what was happening. In his daze, a violent roar tore into his ears. The shockwave rattled his eardrums with searing pain, as though his skull were about to be blown clean off by the detonation. His skull? Instinctively, he reached up toward the painful spot on his forehead, but what met his fingers was neither red nor white. Instead, a thick, dark green fluid was steadily pouring from a bullet hole, reeking with a nauseating stench of rotten putrefaction. I... What is... this... Chaotic thoughts exploded in his head. In this moment, he abruptly realized his vision had broken away from a first-person perspective, looking down at his own body from a third-person bird's-eye view. Where his head should have been was empty. From the jagged stump of his neck, clusters of green vines were erupting from the severed flesh like boiling asphalt, weaving and coiling in midair until they formed the contorted outline of a human face. I... I'm infected? The instant he realized this, memories sealed deep in his mind surged forth like a tidal wave. Inside the urban ruins under the setting sun. A battered Jinbei van barreled madly into a dead-end alley. The doors flew open, and eight people stumbled out in a panic, their terrified gazes snapping toward the alley's entrance. There, in the dying glow of dusk, a monster of green vines over ten meters tall slowly emerged. In the center of its massive form, a warped human silhouette flickered in and out of sight, like an insect trapped in a spiderweb, silently radiating sheer terror straight into the human soul! Everyone fired wildly. A dense storm of gunfire erupted, bullets raining down upon the creature, only to leave dark pockmarks in its tough, fibrous skin. The monster lashed out with python-like limbs. With every strike, it snatched someone cleanly from the crowd and ripped them apart in midair, raining blood and shredded flesh onto the pavement. Seven, six, five... As his companions died horrific deaths one after another, fear washed over Barrett like an overwhelming tide. When only he was left, beneath the vacant, despairing stares of his dead comrades, Barrett's legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees. He lacked the courage to pull the trigger and fight back, and he lacked the guts to end his own life; all he could do was prostrate himself before the beast, kowtowing repeatedly as he begged for mercy in a trembling voice. The monster paused for merely a moment before splitting off a tendril, which slithered into his body through his mouth and nose. Until this very moment, these memories had been tightly sealed away in the deepest recesses of his consciousness. He had only remembered miraculously escaping back, never realizing he had long since become a puppet of the beast. So... I was already dead? So... I was never human anymore? Fixing its gaze on Cheng Ye, who stood outside the isolation cell firing continuously, the fractured face suspended by vines in midair suddenly twisted into a sinister grin. As if answering a command, the sprawling vines surged wildly through the gaps between the isolation cell's bars. The other three people sharing the isolation cell with Barrett were scared out of their wits, but soon, they discovered green vines bursting through their own skin as well. Then memories surfaced. Over the past days of shared quarantine, they had long been infected by the Rotting Vine inside Barrett; the agonizing memories of being infected had simply been selectively repressed! "Dammit, why is this Rotting Vine so hard to kill?" Blowing the host's head off with a bullet seemed not to hinder the operation of the Rotting Vine's root system in the slightest. What was worse, one infected entity had suddenly multiplied into four, hundreds of vines squeezing through the cramped spaces between the bars in an effort to surge out. Fortunately, the isolation cell was solidly built. The bars didn't budge an inch; otherwise, Cheng Ye would have turned and bolted without a second thought. "What are you standing there for? Go call for backup! You watching a show?" Emptying a magazine, Cheng Ye reloaded with one hand and noticed Raven and Owl were still frozen on the spot. Jolted by his shout, the two snapped out of their stupor. Raven scrambled toward a nearby pillar, practically hurling his whole weight into pressing the alarm button. Owl was even more decisive, darting behind the corridor to snatch up a device resembling a fire extinguisher. "My lord, let me handle it!" Yelling at the top of his lungs, Owl twisted open the valve, clutched the nozzle, and sprinted forward. The moment his thumb clamped down on the trigger— Boom! A tongue of flame reeking of sulfur erupted forth. Orange-red fire licked at the green vines like a living beast; the roots that had just been wildly writhing through the bars instantly curled into charcoal, and the black droplets splashing out carbonized and smoked within the flames. An eerie sound of burning arose—not a typical crackle, but a brittle snap like cracking bones mingled with the hissing of expanding gases trapped within the vines, sounding as though countless entrapped souls were shrieking in the fire. "It's not a water hose, it's a flamethrower?" Cheng Ye stared in surprise. This defied all common sense. What maniac installed a flamethrower indoors? "This is... the emergency incinerator for Plan Three..." Owl turned his head and grinned, baring his teeth. Yet right at the moment he turned to explain, a thorn-studded vine violently whipped out from between the bars, darting up and down through the flames like a viper. By the time Owl noticed, the tip of the vine was less than three meters from his chest! Damn it! This thing isn't afraid of fire? "Get down!" Without time to think, Cheng Ye lunged forward half a step, sweeping his leg out like an iron whip to take Owl off his feet. Simultaneously, he snatched the falling nozzle, threw himself into a roll across the ground, and as he came up, pumped power into both arms to slam down on the trigger. Whoosh. A blazing tongue of fire burst from the side, licking toward the barbed vine like a giant python. Who could have guessed that its fire resistance was utterly absurd? It wasn't until it bent and lunged within two meters of Cheng Ye that sparks crackled across its surface, cracking into black charcoal from tip to root. Had it been faking earlier? Pretending to fear fire and be suppressed by it? Cheng Ye's pupils contracted sharply, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. His understanding of infected entities deepened once again. These damn things were far more terrifying than the books recorded. And they truly were evolving in directions beyond human prediction. No wonder Brother B had said that being cautious would keep one alive far longer than knowing the rules. Da-da, da-da-da... With the alarm blaring, over a dozen guards stormed in, the deafening blasts of concentrated rifle fire instantly filling the corridor. Seeing this, Cheng Ye shut off the flamethrower—its fuel nearly spent, its flames already dwindling—and hauled the terrified, limp Owl off the floor, retreating quickly. The moment the fire died, he caught sight of the vines struck by gunfire healing at a rate visible to the naked eye. Green fluid surging from the ruptures mended the wounds like a tide, even sprouting denser fibrous tissue around the bullet holes. Good grief, where did this Rotting Vine come from? It was actually learning and evolving through contact, developing immunity to the kinetic impact of bullets. Still, the farce ended here. If ambushed by an abruptly erupting infected entity out in the open, the guards might have been slaughtered one-sidedly. But taking down an infected entity trapped inside an isolation cell was as simple as could be. Cheng Ye turned and walked out. Behind him, concussive blasts roared unceasingly, but within less than a minute, calm returned. "Reporting to Lord Inspector! The infected entity designated 'Unknown' has been successfully neutralized!" "The station has dispatched containment personnel; cleanup is expected to begin in ten minutes." Raven stepped out, reporting while glancing out of the corner of his eye at Owl, who sat at the entrance of the warehouse looking utterly soul-drained, having clearly been scared out of his wits. "Designated Unknown?" Cheng Ye pondered quietly. He hadn't expected that not only were there no records of "Rotting Vine" in the Survival Library's books on infected entities, but no one in Happiness City had ever seen this infection source before either. Was this thing a newly evolved infection source, or had it migrated from elsewhere? "Congratulations, my lord. Unknown infection sources always yield substantial contribution point rewards. Given the attack power of those green vines just now, you'll get at least forty points to start." "Is that so?" Cheng Ye gave a slight nod. For an inspector, compared to exploiting rule loopholes and skimming profits, killing infected entities was the most direct way to make money. And... it was fucking thrilling. Firing at stationary targets was one thing, but shooting at the Rotting Vine was completely different from shooting normal targets. Especially at the end when he hoisted the flamethrower, that surge of skyrocketing adrenaline was something Cheng Ye still couldn't help savoring, feeling somewhat intoxicated by the rush. "My lord, I'll go take care of the follow-up matters first." Raven respectfully took his leave, not showing the slightest inclination to probe into how Cheng Ye had determined Barrett was an infected entity after just a few words. To low-level personnel at the checkpoint like them, all he saw was Cheng Ye stepping forward at the critical moment to save Owl's life. Of the one hundred and fifty inspectors in the station, those who would do that could be counted on one hand. Treating them as human beings, rather than cold, disposable tools. That alone was enough for them to lay down their lives!