Vol 2 Chapter 55: Atonement: Faun (4)

They should be able to see the city of Anas on the fifth day according to their footsteps, but I don’t know why, dense forests spread endlessly around them, without any shadow of the city, not even a road. The GPS positioning in the soldiers' hands also failed, and the arrow marking them had been frozen at a certain place without moving. They tried to communicate with the nearest teams by radio, but they did not receive any response.
They did not dare to release the signal flares, worried that it would attract the attention of the corner people. In the end, they could not use the most traditional compass to locate, but they found that the magnetic field was chaotic. They were caught in a dilemma.
And at night, the weird singing still followed them like ghosts, and the occasional bonfire light flickered in the depths of the forest, like a ghost fire that attracts people into a trap. But as soon as he approached the fire, he found that the ground was empty, without any trace of a fire.
It wasn't until the fifth night when they reached the lake that things started to happen.
It was a small lake in the forest, probably formed by the gathering of snow water from the snow-covered mountain near the top of the mountain. The water of the lake was peacock blue, with some purple-red water plants floating underneath, occasionally I saw bubbles coming up, or some unclear fish in it churning on the water surface, disturbing the rhythmic ripples. They camped on the sandbank by the lake. In order to save the rations they carried, they took the water from the lake to catch fish, and baked them on heating stones that could be heated quickly without burning smoke. The lower lip of those fishes protrudes much more than the upper lip, with dense fangs, which looks a bit scary, but the taste is quite good. Everyone temporarily forgot the pain of losing their way, and planned to enjoy the rare delicacy during the march.
At this time someone suddenly said that his brother was missing.
The brothers Ethan in the team numbered 252 also knew that they were both in their early twenties. They were sent to the forbidden city by accidentally killing someone during a robbery and were called Little A and Little B. Little A said his brother went to relieve his hand before, but he hasn't returned yet.
Wilson called out the non-human positioning device. Although the GPS positioning function has been basically obsolete, the inertial tracking and infrared tracking functions can still be used. He quickly located the location of Little B which was 100 meters away from the camp. It did not touch the cordon of the collar, so it did not trigger the soldiers' escape warning.
Wilson scolded an and went to the woods to find someone with a cigarette in his mouth. Little A followed closely. However, not long after, a stern scream came from the forest, "No!!!"
Other soldiers and several inhumans, including Samuel, ran over. I saw that the dense bushes had been picked apart by Sergeant Wilson. A human body was lying on the ground, but his head was missing. The blood vessels, throat and trachea of ​​the neck were clearly visible in cross-section, and the collar that was originally on the neck was also dropped. In a pool of blood everywhere.
There were no signs of struggling around, and they did not hear any suspicious noises. It's so close to the camp, why is there no sound?
Everyone quickly rushed back to the camp, grabbed their weapons and stood in battle. Non-people who didn't see that kind of scene didn't know what happened, and thought that the horned man was about to attack.
Samuel grabbed Ethan, who was still sitting on the ground, "The horned man attacked us!"
"Huh?" Ethan quickly grabbed the knife he stuffed in his backpack and looked around. "Where?"
Yes, where is the horned man?
Everyone froze in the woods for a while, and went quietly around. Ethan suddenly realized that it was too quiet.
Even if there are no insects and birds, even if there is no wind, there is no such thing in nature, right? It was as if the sound was sucked clean by an invisible mouth.
After waiting for a long time, there was no movement, Wilson made a gesture, indicating that the crowd divided into three ways, and each soldier led one way to search in different directions. Derek stared at the thermal sensor screen carefully, but did not even see a beast bigger than a rabbit.
At this time, a female Alpha inhuman suddenly pointed to the spherical braid hanging on the tree and said, "I always feel that these things are not hung casually. Look, standing here, no matter which direction you look at, these takraw The positioning is the same."
When she said this, everyone noticed the strangeness. Ethan looked at the front. There were three on the left from near to far, the middle one looked slightly smaller than the other two, and two on the right side. He turned his head to look at the left again, there were also three on the left and two horizontally on the right. He looked at the back and right again, the same layout. As he walked forward, he found that with the help of vegetation, the layout has remained unchanged, and it would not be visible if it were not broken.
Derek reached out and grabbed a sepak takraw ball and said, "I remember that in ancient times on the earth there was an Asian country that had something called a gossip array. It used walls or furnishings to create a certain visual illusion. It is said that it creates subconscious hypnosis for people, and makes people never go out in one place. Very interesting."
His relaxed tone, which is as cool as a breeze, makes many non-people very dissatisfied. Tai Feng asked, "So the reason why we get lost is because we are confused by these things? But how can the horned people know what the ancient earth people are?"
"Maybe it's not a gossip array. They researched it themselves?" Derek shrugged. "I don't understand, don't ask me. But if you give me a computer, I might be able to write an artificial intelligence program to analyze it. "
"Don't talk about that useless." Samuel glared at Derek with warning.
Wilson cursed, "Damn it, you don't need to pull them off!" As he said, he stretched out his hand and yanked. Other non-humans followed suit, and the sepak takraw ball nearby was dragged clean. They intend to go all the way and drag it all the way, until the annoying things are cleaned up.
Until the female Alpha just turned her head, her eyes widened suddenly, showing an expression of extreme horror.
Seeing her expression, Ethan and Samuel also looked back, focusing on the last inhuman at the end of the team.
The non-human didn't realize it, just looked at the three people staring at him inexplicably, and opened his hands and asked "What?"
However, before the two syllables were finished, his words stopped. He had never seen it. One of the twisted trunks of those static corals just moved. The color gradually faded and turned into a disgusting fleshy gray. The wrinkled body was like an old pumping pipe, round and round. At the top of the team was a small hole surrounded by more folds, and landed quickly and silently on the head of the inhuman at the end of the line.
When Ethan and the others turned their heads, they just saw the small hole at the top suddenly expand and open rapidly, and the dark red mouth was covered with layers of sharp teeth like a meat grinder. The thing wrapped the inhuman's head like a pocket, and then the top quickly tightened again. Everyone on the scene heard a clean sound that would be made when cutting semi-frozen meat with a sharp knife.
Everything happened in an instant, and the huge worm quickly retracted into the canopy of the tree. The non-human headless body instantly collapsed to the ground, and the collar rolled into a pool of blood. The whole process lasted less than three seconds, without hearing any screams, and without any struggle.
The three people who witnessed this scene froze until the female Alpha suddenly screamed.
"On the tree! They are on the tree!"
Obviously Wilson also saw the scene at the last second and shouted with a pale face, "Everyone get down! Pay attention to the top of your head!" Another soldier had fired several shots at the place where the worm had retracted. The sound of gunshots was in the woods. There were countless echoes.
Wilson kept calling the other two teams nearby, and received some responses one after another. But judging from the chaotic voice of the other side, they also encountered a similar thing.
"There is something like a snake on a tree that can eat people!" The voice of another female Sergeant Alpha who led the team was also a little unstable.
"All squads return to the base!" Wilson ordered loudly. Ethan quickly got up from the ground, turned and ran back with the rest of the people. Suddenly he was slammed by Samuel, and he fell to the ground, only to find that a big mouth of blood like a meat grinder was closing. He almost became a headless corpse like those two inhumans!
Ethan's heart beats wildly, cold sweat broke out on his back. Samus grabbed him and climbed to his feet, rushing back with all his strength. The worm-like thing continued to probe from the tree, quickly ate the human head and retracted it. Wilson and the other two soldiers had been shooting. The sergeant seemed to have hit the thing with one shot, and a pool of foul-smelling dark green liquid dripped down, just in the face of the man who was almost eaten. He only heard a heart-piercing scream from that person, and a burst of smoke rose from his face, and the blood turned out to be corrosive.
The original squad of 13 people quickly reduced to 8 people, but at this time there was an abnormal movement in the forest, and the bushes were shaking violently. All the inhumans stopped abruptly and raised the cold weapons in their hands. The three soldiers also raised their guns and aimed at the place where the disturbance came.
Then a man rushed out, the chief guard.
Immediately behind him were Chen Zeng, Jia Wen, Hui Mao, and several unfamiliar inhumans. These people were not numbered by them, so when the team started, they kept marching separately. But at this time, looking at them with gray-headed faces, their clothes are covered with grass leaves and leaves, and there are scars on their faces. They are no better than them, and most of them have also encountered the incident of getting out of control.
"My own! My own!" Jarvan shouted loudly.
Wilson recognized the captain of the guard, ordered the guns to be put away, and frowned and asked, "Where is the Corporal Powell in your team?"
Gray Mao cut in coolly beside him, "I have eaten my head and suffered heavy casualties."
Wilson looked very depressed and snarled, "What the is that! I have served on this broken planet for three years, but I have never heard of such a thing in the forest!"
"Sacrifice..." Ethan whispered, "I heard your soldiers say before, saw those horned men performing living sacrifices?"
Wilson glared at Ethan, "So what!"
Chen Zeng sighed, "Using a living person to sacrifice is mostly to summon something. After all, we don't understand this planet. Who knows what kind of creatures are hidden, maybe it is a monster awakened from hell. "
Some inhumane shivered behind him, obviously too scared.
"Don't talk nonsense! Now the first thing is to go back to the lake and meet other people!"
They had just walked a few steps, and suddenly they heard the surrounding bushes shaking and the wind rustling. I didn't know if it was the other team who got lost again, but suddenly I saw a ray of silver light passing by in the forest. Wilson yelled, "Oh! It's a horned man!"
The gun had just been raised, before it had time to fire, an agile figure suddenly shot over and threw Wilson to the ground. The people who came were silver-white, slender and slender, with strong arms and long legs bent backwards like reindeer. They were wearing heavy short tops and tight-leg pants. Wilson saw a pair of slender purple pupils staring at him coldly, with a short knife across his throat.
At the same time, about a dozen horns pounced on the panicked non-people. They jumped as high as cats, almost like falling from the sky, accurately throwing non-people to the ground one by one, or using their hard feet to push people on their backs. Samus wrestled with a horned man. The opponent was stronger than he imagined. However, his iron fist was not in vain. He found a chance to punch the opponent in the jaw, and then took the short knife in his hand. Inserted into the opponent's chest without any hesitation.
The horned man wailed, and his body twitched violently on the ground, as if it was overcharged. She died soon after. Samuel's head was dizzy and his ears were buzzing with the punch that the man in the horn had just hit. He immediately looked around for Ethan, only to see an extremely chaotic fight. Some non-people were pressed to the ground and cut their throats, while others were beaten to death by pressing the horns on the ground. He noticed that a man with an extraordinarily tall horn was carrying Tai Feng up, the latter struggling with all his strength, reaching out to him for help.
Samuel rushed up and knocked down the horned man who was one head higher than him. The opponent was knocked over by his brute force and Tai Feng rolled to the side. The horned man let out a terrifying roar and fisted. Samus tried to block it with his arm, but the opponent was too strong to be able to block it. He felt his entire mind fall to the ground as soon as he was blindfolded. The next moment the horned man was already on top of him, with one hand stuck in his throat, and the other hand raised a barbed sharp knife to pierce him. Come down. He reached out and grabbed the opponent's wrist, but his strength was greatly reduced because of lack of oxygen. The blood filling his face made him feel that his head was about to burst open. Seeing that the tip of the knife was getting closer and closer to his eyes, Samus knew that the sharp object would traverse his brain in the next instant.
Suddenly, the horned man's eyes widened suddenly, a purple sharp blade penetrated his throat, and blue blood dripped down the blade on Samuel's face. Samus pushed the dead body away, and then saw Ethan staring at him in a daze and horror, his glasses were splashed with blue blood, and his mouth opened, panting like a lack of oxygen.
This is Ethan's first murder.