Chapter 15 I Knew I'd Find the Right Place

The moment that stench permeated the air, Hao Ren knew he'd found the right place.

A normal Long Child would never emit such a smell—in fact, aside from the faint scent of the origin blood itself, Long Children emitted no odor, including their various internal organs. But the stench emanating from behind that thick connective hide was unlike anything Hao Ren had ever smelled.

The instant that pungent, acrid smell hit him, Hao Ren almost believed it was the combination of all the evil in the world. He felt a visible wave of it crashing over him, followed by the thought: this makes ao xiang smell good by comparison!

Anyway, Lily threw up on the spot.

"Holy… I let my guard down…" Nangong Sanba said, clutching his nose, his voice distorted. "That was totally unexpected, it came so suddenly… Little sis, hurry and put up a barrier!"

Nangong Wuyue was already scrambling backward, covering her nose, when she finally reacted. She quickly waved her hands, summoning a gust of moisture-laden magical wind. The powerful water mist barrier went into full operation, finally suppressing the deadly stench. Once it was down, she immediately rushed to Lily's side to administer first aid—the poor husky girl, usually accustomed to sucking in a breath of cold air to calm herself, was basically incapacitated, her eyes rolling back as she bounced around…

Hao Ren fanned the air in front of his nose, his face a picture of distress. "Forget corruption, that smell is lethal…"

"Smell? I'm afraid it's not as simple as that," Galazur was also affected by the stench, but being an old hand, she managed to remain calm. She lightly covered her mouth and nose with one hand and pointed at the others with the other. "We have various races present, and each race has a different sense of smell and sensitivity—at least I know that sirens, as elemental creatures, have almost no sense of smell, and a dragon like me should have hundreds of times the tolerance for foul odors as a human. Yet we all felt the same disgust and… well, disgust. It's the biological instinct at work: there's some extremely evil and negative power within, and the aura it emits is harmful to all life."

Hao Ren was stunned. He hadn't expected so much to be going on with just a smell: his only thought was that it was too overpowering, almost burning his eyes… But he quickly realized Galazur was right, that "stench" wasn't just a simple odor.

Because Dou Dou, who was bouncing around on the ground, had no reaction at all. When the stench hit, the little one simply looked up curiously at the "surgical site," then continued to bounce around with concentration. Dou Dou's sense of smell was similar to humans, but even more acute, and Hao Ren was sure the little one didn't have a cold, so there was only one explanation: her life-level suppression was at work again.

She didn't feel the "smell."

Hao Ren frowned and ordered the autonomous machines, "Continue, continue."

The autonomous machines responded with a series of beeps and whirs, and then several mechanical tentacles waved again, cutting beams continuing the cutting operation on the outside of the brain core’s connective tissue with dazzling speed, precise and swift.

The thick connective tissue was peeled away layer by layer, revealing the internal tissue chambers. Inactive origin blood soaked a sphere that emitted a faint red glow. The sphere was about two meters in diameter and emitted a powerful mental fluctuation: it was Yggdrasil's brain core.

Galazur curiously observed from the side, then suddenly waved her hand. "Wait, there's something behind it."

As she spoke, she walked forward, using her magic to create steps as she went to the cutting point. One of her arms gradually became covered with a layer of fine, sturdy golden scales, and her fingers transformed into sharp claws with prominent tendons and bones. After making thorough safety preparations, she reached out and touched the sleeping brain core.

The brain core was flipped over, revealing black, vein-like fibers.

These fibers had a nauseating black sheen, and a faint light constantly traveled between the fiber bundles. Some of the stronger fiber bundles pulsed like muscles, and the parts of the fibers that were soaked in origin blood constantly released a black substance. These substances were gradually contaminating the origin blood, but at the same time, the origin blood was constantly purifying the spreading black liquid.

Vivian's expression turned serious in an instant. "I'm afraid this is it… what is this thing?"

"Keep cutting," Hao Ren waved his hand. "Slow down, don't touch those fibers. Data terminal, prepare more sedatives."

The unprecedented "surgical operation" continued. After the connective tissue around the brain core was completely peeled away, the autonomous machines turned off the cutting beams and began to use tractor beams to drag the brain core and the "foreign object" connected to it out of the cavity. Their work encountered a small problem: the black fibers entangled on the brain core clearly had something larger behind them.

So one of the autonomous machines had to reach into the cavity and pull out everything below as well.

"I don't think I'll need to eat for a week…" Nangong Sanba watched the process from the side, very grateful that he had already thrown up once when the stench hit—otherwise he would have to throw up again.

Finally, the suspicious "foreign object" that was symbiotic with the brain core was taken out, or rather, its main body was taken out. The true form of this thing left Hao Ren speechless.

It was another brain core.

It had the same size and shape as a normal brain core, but it was completely black. The life force of the origin blood had completely faded from this organ. Its shriveled and ulcerated surface was covered with morbid spots, and wisps of fibrous tissue grew out of this festering organ, which reeked of stench and ominousness, piercing into the thick skin of the healthy brain core like blood-sucking tubes.

And on the lower half of this "black brain core" were many more robust black fiber bundles, which were still connected to the base of the core organ: the autonomous machines dared not pull them out forcefully, because these fiber bundles were growing together with the external tentacles!

This "black brain core" had seized control of the tentacles through direct connection of biological tissue!

Nangong Sanba couldn't help but mutter to himself when he saw this scene: "I don't think I'll need to eat next week either."

"This is… Yggdrasil's 'corruption'?" Hao Ren muttered to himself in astonishment. He suddenly realized that this was his biggest discovery in the Nine Kingdoms so far: Long Children could truly be "corrupted"!

All along, he had never discovered a "corrupted" Long Child—admittedly, most of the Long Children in the Dream Plane had gone mad, turning from guardians of life into destroyers of life. Their mad behavior inevitably made people associate them with "corruption and depravity," but Hao Ren knew very well that, physiologically speaking, the facts were not so. "Madness" and "corruption" were different concepts. Mad Long Children were simply twisted on the mental level, but they were still no different from their healthy brothers. Anatomically, the Long Child specimens from Holleta were exactly the same as the biological tissues of Thrum.

Or rather, all the Long Children Hao Ren had discovered so far lacked the attribute of "lesions."

But Yggdrasil had indeed undergone pathological changes. It had given birth to a… dark brain core.

Or was there a dark brain core parasitizing inside it?

Various conjectures and hypotheses suddenly popped up in Hao Ren's mind, and some of these hypotheses could soon be disproved.

The data terminal tested the tissue fluid extracted from the black brain core, and after comparing it with the healthy brain core, it ruled out the possibility of an exogenous parasite: "They are of the same origin. Although this black thing has mutated severely, it is indeed part of Yggdrasil."

"So what exactly is this black thing?"

"This unit does not know how it came to be, but one thing is certain: this thing is fighting with the healthy brain core for control of Yggdrasil. A war is breaking out inside these fiber bundles, and two forces are fighting fiercely. The cycle of continuous pollution and purification between the origin blood and the black polluted liquid has probably lasted for more than two thousand years."

Competing for control!

In an instant, Hao Ren thought of the strange "distinct separation" between the corrupted tentacles around Nidhogg's lair and the healthy tentacles of the other major kingdoms. Now this situation seemed to be explained.

Galazur's right arm gradually returned to its normal shape. She glanced at the black, diseased brain core with disgust. "So this is the source of corruption. We have to give it a name… how about the Heart of Darkness?"

Hao Ren thought for a moment. "Actually…"

Everyone else immediately said in unison, "We all think the Heart of Darkness is pretty good!"

Hao Ren spread his hands innocently. "I wanted to say I think it's pretty good too…"