Chapter 270: The Queen

The torrential rain fell upon every leaf in the forest, the sound of the impact growing louder, yet the shallow grass growing in the sparse clearing remained dry, as if an invisible Barrier were shrouding this clearing.

Luo Qi raised his head—no, the Queen adjusted her line of sight. Luo Qi followed the Queen's perspective to look toward the tall Pyramid in the center of the shallow grass. The Pyramid was metallic; Luo Qi could be certain of that. The more carefully he looked, the more he felt this structure was actually more like a modern human building. That structure looked like a pyramid, and even more like the geometric, modernist architecture championed by humans.

Suddenly, Luo Qi's visual focus was fixed. He felt a bit irritable; he still wanted to concentrate on studying that Pyramid, but he was forced to follow the Queen's perspective.

In front of the line of sight that had been pulled back, a cross appeared in the focus. Luo Qi was startled, his attention captured once again. The cross stood right in front of the Pyramid, made of wood. With the excellent vision of the Alien, Luo Qi realized that compared to the Pyramid behind it, the cross could only be considered something whittled in passing. It was as if the owner of the Pyramid had taken materials from the surroundings and casually made this cross, planting it here to assert authority. And there was an Alien nailed to that cross!

Luo Qi had already witnessed the vitality of the Aliens, and now he was witnessing it once again. The Alien was nailed to the cross, and though it was unknown how long it had been nailed there, its body was still constantly writhing.

Luo Qi was observing carefully, secretly analyzing the meaning behind this performance art, when suddenly a violent rage scorched his brain. He was taken aback, struggling to control his emotions so they would not be affected by the Alien's resonant emotions. This impact on him was truly not small; he felt dazed several times. This situation was somewhat like the last time he entered the mental world of that special forces soldier, which was also an emotional shock. He hurriedly isolated his own emotions, but the emotional resonance in the rainforest world continued to intensify, instantly spreading throughout the entire Alien Mental Network. All the Aliens became enraged, and the anger of every single Alien prompted the anger of others to become even more intense.

The entire Mental Network turned into a tyrannical cloud of emotion. The emotion of rage made them brave, resolute, and charging forward; the emotion of rage also made them impatient to attack, sparing no cost, just for revenge, just for bloodlust.

Bearing the pressure, Luo Qi constantly reinforced his Barrier and kept lowering his ability to perceive emotions. The emotions of tens of thousands of Aliens were highly identical, and their goals were consistent, but such a network could not complete complex thinking together. The parallel, simple mental connections made their thoughts simple and crude; tens of thousands of "1s" added together formed a simple-minded behemoth. If the Alien Queen had not restrained their urge to attack, they would have already charged up in a fit of hot-bloodedness.

Luo Qi finally managed to catch his breath and began to think about the contradictions in the situation before him: since they were in the same Mental Network, why was it that when one Alien met with an accident, the other Aliens did not discover it until they walked nearby?

This also explained why the Alien Queen was so angry; her anger clearly and undoubtedly carried fear, but she selectively hid the fear and suspicion, passing only the anger that stirred up courage to the other Aliens.

Luo Qi weighed this situation, and it did explain one problem: he had thought wrong before; it seemed that Aliens were not incapable of lying, and the Queen's transcendent status was quite cunning.

Besides this, Luo Qi watched along with the Queen toward the center of the circular shallow grass, at that metallic Pyramid. He received the thoughts and reflections of the Alien Queen—this was a demonstration, and also a warning: the gods dwelling in the legendary temple had the power to isolate the soul world shared by her tribe.

In an ancient legend, the arrival of the gods would bring destruction. Her ancestors had survived destruction countless times, but that was truly too long ago. Even though she could admire the countenances of her ancestors in the shared soul world, share their wisdom, and observe their shining souls, she still could not remember what had happened in the past. Perhaps it was a plague, perhaps it was Lightning Technique, perhaps it was the destruction of the forest; perhaps all of these had happened. She could not remember; it was these gods who did not allow her to remember.

A new rage, a bone-gnawing rage, burned in the depths of her soul. That was the rage she had inherited; the rage of countless ancestors echoed in the Mental Network.