Invasion [To the Outpost] Chapter 27

Page 1 of 3

The two small things bumped their tips together, as though discussing who should go first. One of them swam toward him.

It was coming up.

Ni Ji desperately wanted to close his eyes. But he could not. In a situation like this, shutting off his vision would cause the emotional fluctuations brought on by touch and sound to be magnified several times over, making them even harder to suppress.

All he could do was watch helplessly as the soft appendage slowly drew near. Its tiny tip rose and curved, then prodded his face.

Do not move, Ni Ji told himself.

Do not be afraid. It is nothing.

It will not even hurt.

He held his breath and slowed his heartbeat as much as possible. A Sentinel’s powerful physical constitution enabled him to do all this, making him appear like a lifeless object devoid of vitality.

After a few tentative prods, its moist sucker pressed against his skin and began to crawl upward.

It climbed over his brow, its tip burrowing in to flick away the cloth wrapped around his hair.

Do not move.

It had climbed onto him. Slipping into his hair, it stroked and rubbed his head as though he were a child.

Do not move. Endure it, Ni Ji told himself.

At some point, the other one had swum to his ankle. Its cold touch coiled around him and began pulling off his sock.

Tentatively, it wriggled against the arch of his foot.

A faint, elusive itch passed through his skin, seeped into his bones, and burrowed all the way into his heart.

In the garden beneath the sea, the seaweed curled in unbearable discomfort.

This was worse than torture.

In the cold, silent depths, the orca formed from his spirit entity opened its closed eyes.

As the tentacles stroked it, the wounded whale let out a tiny, contented call.

A soft little cry escaped, then was quickly stifled.

Guides were naturally capable of soothing the spiritual wounds of Sentinels. Even such unconscious caresses eased the pain of the orca, whose tailbone was exposed.

It feels so good. I want it to touch me more.

Page 1 of 3

Page 2 of 3

The lonely whale radiated this thought, heedless of its master’s wishes.

Wounds to a spirit entity were exceedingly difficult to heal. At such times, a Sentinel would crave the nearness of a Guide more than ever.

The tentacle buried in his hair seemed to hear something. It suddenly sprang upright from the disordered strands.

Just now, it seemed to have heard a beautiful sound—a fluctuation belonging to a spirit entity. Yet, for some reason, the sound had vanished.

Confusion.

Incomprehension.

Call for more companions.

Deep beneath the sea, Ni Ji transformed into a half-human, half-whale form and reached out to cover his spirit entity’s mouth.

But it was already too late. Within the dim passage, one tentacle after another poked out their heads, appearing before Ni Ji’s eyes.

They writhed with curiosity, surrounding him and eagerly waiting to try their luck.

Each seemed to be only a short little length, joyfully twisting in place as its tiny suckers crawled and flexed. They appeared harmless.

But Ni Ji knew perfectly well that within the invisible, nameless space lay the rest of their bodies, not yet revealed—huge and terrifying, more than capable of pinning him down completely.

Ni Ji felt cold sweat trickling down his forehead.

Chapter 14

“You must be terribly upset, aren’t you?” The person speaking to Lin Yuan was a male Guide. “How pitiful.”

He dabbed at the corner of his eye with an exquisite handkerchief, elegantly and properly wiping away tears brimming with sympathy. “I simply cannot imagine what I would do if something like this happened to me.”

He was the fifth one today.

The fifth person to approach Lin Yuan at the banquet and say those words.

Lin Yuan realized that she could not even remember the Guide’s name. He might have been a former classmate from the Guide Academy at the White Tower.

She very much wanted to ask him seriously what sadness and grief actually felt like.

But she knew it would be inappropriate.

She was a Guide afflicted with emotional deprivation, and her memory was not particularly good. It had been a long time since she had experienced what ordinary people called sadness, anger, sorrow, happiness, or any of the other normal human emotions.

Other people would never understand.

Page 2 of 3

Page 3 of 3

The only thing she could do was disguise herself as best she could, striving to give the proper response whenever she was supposed to display a certain emotion.

Thus, Lin Yuan nodded in agreement. “Yes. It truly is heartbreaking.”

At last, the Guide left, satisfied, allowing Lin Yuan to return to her quiet solitude. She sat beside the windowsill and continued gazing absently into the distance.

The tentacles seemed excited by their new surroundings. Lurking in unoccupied corners, they explored in every direction. Their soft, fragmented whispers kept drifting through Lin Yuan’s mind.

Listening to those dreamlike murmurs, Lin Yuan gazed across the artificial lake at the water lilies. Their violet blossoms, shaded in varying depths of color, were slowly folding their petals beneath the night sky.

…

Jiang Yangshuo saw Lin Yuan sitting there beside the lake. The group of friends around him pointed her out.

“Look, there’s your former fiancée.” His friend deliberately dragged out the word former, his tone full of mockery and ridicule.

“Look at what she’s wearing. Does she look like a Guide?”

“I’ve always said Yangshuo should have broken things off with her sooner. What kind of circumstances does the Jiang family have? It isn’t as though a highly compatible Guide would be impossible to find. Why humiliate yourself by accommodating such a dull person?”

These people had made jokes about Lin Yuan in the past as well. Jiang Yangshuo had never thought much of it. Lin Yuan was indeed a strange, unpopular Guide.

But now that things between them were over, he could not understand why those words sounded so grating.

His former fiancée sat by a window near the lake, dressed in an excessively austere black gown. She wore no jewelry, and her small porcelain-pale face was bare save for a touch of red upon her lips.

Her delicate, porcelain-white wrist supported her chin as she stared blankly at the view outside.

She certainly did not dress as a Guide was expected to dress. She had always done exactly as she pleased, barely managing to maintain even the most basic courtesy.

And yet there was an unusual beauty to her—something Jiang Yangshuo admitted to himself. It was striking, impossible not to look at.

Jiang Yangshuo was a high-ranking Sentinel with extraordinary vision. With only a casual glance, he noticed that the indistinct gazes of several Sentinels in the banquet hall had settled on Lin Yuan, all of them looking eager to make a move.

Lin Yuan was very beautiful. He had known that from the first moment he saw her, back when he was still a boy.

At the time, his father had brought him to a banquet and pointed out a little girl sitting absentmindedly on the terrace.

“Go and give it a try. That child possesses exceptionally powerful spiritual strength. If your compatibility is high, she will become your fiancée.”