Chapter 46: Terrifying Botanical Garden

Chapter 46 The Terrifying Botanical Garden

Even with a jacket held over his head, the rain still came down, and what was meant to get soaked would get soaked.

As a firm opponent of rainy weather, Li Zhiyan detested this deeply and started to drag his feet.

He wanted to find a tree hole to hide from the rain.

Butterflies shouldn’t move forward in the rain.

After pulling back the escaping Li Zhiyan for the third time, Shen Ji was almost tempted to tie him up with a rope to drag him along.

Fortunately, Shen Ji wasn’t that far gone; he simply handed the sleeve of his jacket to Li Zhiyan, just as he had when pulling him out of the crystal forest.

Li Zhiyan took the sleeve, confused. "What’s this for?"

"I’ll pull you along," Shen Ji said. "You don’t need to look up; just follow my lead. Will that help make the rain less bothersome a little?"

Li Zhiyan tilted his head, thinking: How could it possibly help?

Wet is wet. Lowering your head doesn’t make you ignore soaked clothes.

But in the end, Li Zhiyan still took hold of the sleeve, allowing Shen Ji to pull him along.

The jacket was completely drenched, so wet you could wring water out of it, glistening on his fingers. Li Zhiyan watched for a moment, then lifted his head to look at Shen Ji pulling him forward. His blue eyes were intensely focused, as if burning the image of the person before him into his eyes.

He didn’t know what he was thinking, just watching calmly.

For once, he was quiet.

"What’s the difference between you two doing this and holding hands?" the system complained. "One protagonist, one antagonist, playing follow-the-leader."

'What else? I can’t just leave him behind, can I?'

Shen Ji was also helpless. 'Leaving someone behind doesn’t fit my character. I’m a compassionate shelter medic; how could I leave someone to fend for themselves?'

"...Shen Ji, I need to tell you a bit of common sense: Butterflies won’t actually die from getting rained on."

Shen Ji didn’t continue listening, instead focusing on figuring out which way to go as they walked.

The small mushrooms frolicked endlessly in the rain, like puppies let loose to run wild. They nibbled at everything around them while still reporting to Shen Ji whether the path ahead was clear.

After walking like this for a while, Shen Ji came to a stop.

Although he knew they were heading in the right direction, he still had no idea where Chu Ye was. Wandering aimlessly like this wasn’t productive.

Just then, a voice suddenly sounded in Shen Ji’s ear.

"Can you hear me?"

Shen Ji paused, glancing back at Li Zhiyan, who still looked listless. When he noticed Shen Ji looking, he merely lifted his eyelids in acknowledgment.

The voice belonged to Lu Zizheng from the earlier doppelgänger forest.

Lu Zizheng, an A-level Mutant, possessed the Talent "Mental Link." He could connect everyone in the team, forming a multi-channel mental domain for complex communication—a highly practical Talent on the battlefield and the reason Chu Ye had chosen him as his deputy.

"I’ve figured it out," Lu Zizheng’s voice carried more determination than before. "There must be a reason I’ve survived until now. If I keep wallowing in self-pity, I’d be letting down not just myself but also the captain. The captain must have never given up on me."

Lu Zizheng said earnestly, "Mr. Li, please allow me to guide you!"

After he finished his declaration, Lu Zizheng realized no one responded, and an awkward silence fell.

A few seconds later, he cautiously asked, "Mr. Li?"

"Hmm," Li Zhiyan responded listlessly. "Can you control the rain? The biggest problem right now is this rain."

Lu Zizheng: ...?

"Oh, the rain," Lu Zizheng said. "This is the daily irrigation. It’ll stop in 20 minutes. Just hang in a little longer, Mr. Li."

Li Zhiyan sighed, and Shen Ji calmly continued pulling him along.

"So, Mr. Lu, which way should we go?"

"Keep going straight, then turn left at the fork ahead," Lu Zizheng said. "The right path is troublesome—there’s a whole patch of morning glories there."

Shen Ji recalled what morning glories looked like. "What’s wrong with the morning glories?"

"They have human heads," Lu Zizheng replied, frowning as he remembered what he encountered while escaping. "The stamens grow out of their mouths. When all the morning glories bloom, they’ll cry at you."

Shen Ji pictured the scene and silently turned to head left.

Fortunately, Lu Zizheng’s timing was accurate. Twenty minutes later, the irrigation system stopped on schedule, and the rain ceased.

Li Zhiyan finally took the jacket off his head.

He was drenched, his hair matted into clumps. Especially since he had white hair, it looked even more disheveled. He shook the water from his hair like a cat, but since he wasn’t a cat, not much water came off.

Watching him start tugging at his hair again, Shen Ji helplessly stepped in to tidy up that long white hair.

"Stay still," Shen Ji said, lightly patting his shoulder.

Li Zhiyan finally stopped moving. Feeling Shen Ji straightening his tangled white hair, he said with great satisfaction, "Doctor Shen, you're good at everything."

"It makes me like you more and more. Are you sure you don’t want to join the guard team? I’ll agree to any condition."

"It seems I shouldn’t have helped," Shen Ji snorted lightly. "Should’ve just let you find a tree hole to hide in during the rain."

"Please don’t. I’d be heartbroken if Doctor Shen ignored me."

A little blue butterfly appeared in the air. It flew around in this damp world for a while before, as if disliking the moisture in the air, landing on Shen Ji’s wrist. It shook its wings for a bit, then flew to Shen Ji’s cuff and crawled inside.

Shen Ji watched the butterfly’s actions curiously.

"Butterfly," Shen Ji said. "Why are you letting it out now?"

"To get some fresh air," Li Zhiyan replied, wringing water from his hair. "But they prefer you, so they gather around you."

"Don’t you like them?"

"It’s not that I dislike them."

Shen Ji thought silently: I’m just afraid they might suddenly get eaten by the nearby small mushrooms.

Fortunately, the small mushrooms were still immersed in the joy of the rain, crawling around everywhere, nibbling and playing, treating this botanical garden like a playground.

Li Zhiyan finished wringing most of the water from his hair. Though his clothes were still damp, he had no change of clothes and couldn’t change in a contaminated area, so he had to make do.

He reached out toward Shen Ji’s wrist, and the butterfly fluttering on Shen Ji’s cuff flew onto his fingertip.

"Lu Zizheng," Li Zhiyan said, "can you pull up the route to Chu Ye's location for us?"

"Huh?" Lu Zizheng was jolted out of his thoughts. "Oh, oh, probably?"

"But I only have the route from memory. I'm not sure if the gardener has moved the plants around or planted new ones."

*Wait, what's the relationship between Li Zhiyan and this Doctor Shen?*

Why is it so ambiguous?

Back when he was still alive, he heard Chu Ye complain about Li Zhiyan every day, saying he was a total weirdo who completely lacked any romantic instincts and was most likely gonna die alone.

But now it seems their Captain Chu is the one who’ll end up alone...

A rough map was projected into Li Zhiyan and Shen Ji's minds, finally giving them a general understanding of their current location.

The gardener's garden was enormous, with different sections for different plants. Only the Crystal Trees could be found in every area.

Crystal Trees were a defensive species cultivated by the gardener; they're like the security guards. And since there were guards, there needed to be a head of security—Chu Ye was the gardener’s chosen captain.

"It shouldn’t rain again, right?" Shen Ji asked.

"Not today. The garden only gets watered once a day. The next watering won’t be until this time tomorrow."

Li Zhiyan scoffed, "Normal plants would get root rot if watered only once a day."

"There are no normal plants here," Shen Ji reassured him. "They’re all hybrids of humans and plants. Maybe once a day is just right for them."

"Humans drink water through their mouths; watering them won’t help absorption," Li Zhiyan retorted. "So the gardener must have something wrong with his brain."

"Yes, exactly, the gardener has something wrong with his brain," Shen Ji agreed calmly.

Lu Zizheng: ...

For some reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a third wheel.

But for the captain’s sake, he’d be a third wheel.

Lu Zizheng continued guiding the two, telling them everything he knew as thoroughly as possible.

"The garden is divided into the outer and inner sections. The outer section holds plants the gardener doesn’t particularly like or those grown for practical purposes. The inner section is his real domain."

"I know the outer area somewhat, but I’ve never been to the inner section."

"The captain is the central Crystal Tree chosen by the gardener. He’s in the central forest area now. If we’re too late, he’ll get assimilated by the crystal forest, becoming a plant controlled by the gardener, like the rest of us."

"The central Crystal Tree?"

The system had a sudden realization. "In the original story, Chu Ye’s contamination erupted, the Contaminated Seed germinated and was taken back by the garden. He must have retained some sliver of his consciousness. Since Crystal Trees are spread throughout the garden, as the central tree, he can control the crystal forest to some extent and sense what's happening around it."

"That’s how he was able to find Li Zhiyan and send him out."

Hearing this, Shen Ji frowned slightly.

So Chu Ye’s final smile wasn’t the author’s mercy—it was an act of utter helplessness.

He was unwilling but powerless.

Even if the story ended poorly, once it became reality, the logic of the world would fill in the gaps, turning it into this tragic tale.

'We have to save him,' Shen Ji decided after a moment’s hesitation.

Shen Ji's heart did soften a bit. After all, he was just a person, a journalist who reports the truth. Moreover, Chu Ye was his patient.

He had watched Chu Ye rush around for treatment, gritting his teeth through the pain during sessions, so desperate to recover, to return to the front lines, to find his missing teammates.

Shen Ji had already healed him once; how could he bear to see him trapped by fate again?

Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound.

The system sighed softly. "I knew it."

"Then I’ll prepare the 'fake death' plan in advance. Little reporter, if anything goes wrong, we need to get away from the story immediately. We can’t reconnect with the protagonist until we’ve bypassed the death timeline."

Unlike its usual joking tone, the system now sounded completely serious, its mechanical voice filled with chilling rationality.

"To ensure our story doesn’t end poorly again."

Shen Ji spoke very, very softly, "It’s to ensure this world doesn’t end poorly again."

Li Zhiyan turned to look at him.

His pale blue eyes held a hint of curiosity and confusion. Shen Ji noticed his gaze and looked up, meeting his eyes.

Li Zhiyan saw his eyes.

Since they’d been drenched by the rain earlier, Shen Ji had eventually taken off his glasses, revealing those beautiful black eyes.

Without the lenses in the way, Li Zhiyan felt like he could see straight into Shen Ji—mysterious, with a slyness he kept hidden, as beautiful as a black lily. After holding the gaze for a while, Shen Ji reached into his pocket and handed him a hair tie.

"The shop assistant gave it to me at the mall when you were changing. I just remembered it now."

Shen Ji said, "If your hair's in your way, tie it up."

Li Zhiyan wondered: How could this world have a bad ending? There are such beautiful people in it.

Following the route provided by Lu Zizheng, they soon spotted the crystal forest.

/

"Here," Li Zhiyan handed him the sleeve of his jacket. "Let’s do the same thing as before to get in."

Shen Ji reluctantly took the damp sleeve. "We can’t keep doing this. What if we get separated later?"

"It won't."

Li Zhiyan’s tone was both serious and casual. "You're too important to me, Doctor Shen. I'm not about to lose you."

Shen Ji: ...

He really says whatever comes to mind.

Shen Ji pretended not to hear. Clutching the sleeve, he stepped into the crystal forest, keeping his head down to avoid the forest's illusions.

To distract Shen Ji, Li Zhiyan kept talking.

"Doctor Shen, are you really unwilling to help me set up my garden?"

"Mr. Li’s garden should reflect his own preferences, not mine."

Li Zhiyan sighed, "But I always feel you are partly to blame."

"Why?"

Why indeed? Perhaps it was like father, like son.

"Because I'm very satisfied with Doctor Shen's taste. I believe Doctor Shen will definitely choose the most beautiful and most suitable flowers for me. How about I gift you some once they've bloomed?"

"Shelter staff don't accept bribes."

"Don't be so strict. A little bribery never hurt anyone; I promise I won't report you."

"Usually, people who say that immediately report the other party after they accept the bribe. You want me to get fired from the shelter so you can just invite me to join the guard team, right?"

Li Zhiyan: ...

He fell silent for two seconds before suddenly realizing, "I hadn't even thought of that!"

Shen Ji: ...

So you hadn't even thought of that layer.

"Then I should definitely bribe you more."

"I won't accept them."

If getting caught in the rain was Li Zhiyan's disaster, walking through the Crystal Tree forest was Shen Ji's disaster, especially now that the hyphae were out.

He closed his eyes to see through the hyphae's eyes, but his hand was being guided by Li Zhiyan. The hyphae tried to pull their master toward the direction they preferred, while Li Zhiyan chose relatively stable paths. Back and forth like this...

After getting pulled off course by the hyphae for the third time, Li Zhiyan finally tossed his coat aside and directly grabbed his wrist.

"Stop going that way," Li Zhiyan frowned, his tone filled with exasperation. "What's over there? Why are you so determined to go there?"

Shen Ji remained silent. Probably... a lot of pollution.

The hyphae were whining and wailing noisily in his ears, complaining that he was following the big butterfly instead of them.

They were mourning that their master had been stolen by the big butterfly and didn't like them anymore.

Sigh, it's so hard dealing with these kids.

He coaxed them for a moment, promising them that all the pollution in the entire botanical garden would be theirs in the future. Fortunately, these little things were easy to please. The moment they heard there was so much pollution to eat, they perked up and happily went back to guiding Shen Ji.

So Shen Ji had to get pulled in different directions again.

But this time, since Li Zhiyan was holding his hand, he didn't wander off course.

After walking like this for a while, Li Zhiyan suddenly stopped.

"Wait."

Shen Ji looked up at him.

Li Zhiyan's blue eyes were filled with caution as he scanned their surroundings.

"Something's wrong. Chu Ye isn't here."

"This isn't the heart of the Crystal Woods at all."

Li Zhiyan tightened his grip on Shen Ji's wrist and quickly headed in the opposite direction. "Lu Zizheng was deceived."

They didn't know about Lu Zizheng before his death, but after death, Lu Zizheng was a doppelgänger born in a forest. Created by the gardener's plants, he had long been changed without anyone knowing by the gardener.

What he thought was the heart of the Crystal Woods was merely the area the gardener wanted him to know.

/

In the Crystal Woods, the gardener burst into cheerful laughter.

It circled around Chu Ye, admiring as the roots kept piercing his body.

"How could it be? Did you think I'd be that careless?"

"This is my most precious central tree species; how could I let you find it so easily?"

"Grow big and strong. My tree species, sprout quickly!"

Chu Ye's pupils constricted slightly. He opened his mouth slightly, wanting to say something, but he lacked the strength to get a single word out. In the end, he could only conserve his energy and remain silent.

In his ears, Lu Zizheng's words repeated over and over again. That person had used up his entire Talent on this before his death.

He couldn't let Lu Zizheng's sacrifice be in vain again.

The branches in his chest were growing, the roots piercing through his body and embedding into the ground. Foliage was slowly unfurling, and the seed deep within Chu Ye's heart bloomed into a flower, a vivid, blood-red.

Chu Ye stopped struggling.

He no longer mobilized his Pollution Talent to resist, allowing the seed to grow along his blood vessels. As a result, the seed sprouted faster than before.

Amid the pain so intense it was nearly overwhelming, Chu Ye began to faintly sense the foreign pollution inside his body.

Find him, find them...

An alarm suddenly blared from Li Zhiyan.

He pulled the life detector out of his pocket; the numbers on it were rapidly dropping. Chu Ye's life signs were fading.

"Chu Ye..."

A wind gusted through, making the leaves of the Crystal Trees rustle. Shen Ji and Li Zhiyan looked up simultaneously.

They realized the illusion had vanished. All the Crystal Trees were all pointing their branches in one direction, as if pointing the way for them.

"Chu Ye has given up resisting!"

"He's merging with the central tree! To guide you!"

"Warning! Subject's life value has dropped 67%!"

The life detector in Li Zhiyan's hand emitted a piercing shriek.

"Warning! Pollution level has increased by 85%!"

Shen Ji and Li Zhiyan simultaneously took off running in the direction the branches pointed.

Crystal Trees were the most common species in the botanical garden, almost everywhere. Nearly every tree swayed in the wind, acting like signposts, shrouded in a faint pollution aura.

Chu Ye's consciousness was fading fast.

He thought: If Lu Zizheng knew about his choice, he'd be furious.

However, beyond being their captain and Chu Ye, he was also a high-ranking officer at the Pollution Prevention Center, a soldier dedicated to protecting people from pollution.

He shouldn’t run away or act selfishly. Behind him were the lives of countless households; he had to do what he had to do.

If death was unavoidable, he would try to do something for those who came after.

Li Zhiyan—

You must take out the Gardener.

Transparent branches and leaves gradually enveloped Chu Ye’s body, and the brightly colored flowers slowly turned translucent, like a layer of glass.

That was the Crystal Heart, a pollution fruit condensed from Chu Ye’s life.

"What an excellent incubator," the Gardener marveled as it watched the blooming flower. "It’s sprouting so quickly. Soon, very soon, it will grow into a massive tree!"

"Among all the Crystal Trees I’ve planted, this is the most perfect one!"

The Gardener stared obsessively at the sapling, like a human watching their pet give birth to a litter of kittens.

Just as it reached the peak of its excitement, a sudden gust of wind blew by, and the surrounding Crystal Trees made faint clinking sounds.

The Gardener looked up.

"Wind?" it wondered. "Why is there wind in my grove?"

Before it could figure it out, a little blue butterfly suddenly appeared before its eyes. It stared at the blue butterfly, and by the time it realized what it was, the butterfly had already exploded right in front of it.

An intense pollution aura forced it back three meters.

"What?!" the Gardener exclaimed in shock, looking around. "How did they find their way here?"

Then, as if finally understanding, it looked at the wind in the sky and then at Chu Ye, who was now completely covered by branches and leaves.

Its eyes widened. "...You used my Center Tree to send them a message?!"

Through the gaps in the foliage, Chu Ye slightly parted his lips. Gritting his teeth, he managed to form a pained smile, his agonized gaze replaced by one of mockery.

He couldn’t make a sound, but the Gardener understood his meaning from the shape of his mouth.

He was saying: Serves you right.

The Gardener had been betrayed by its own plant.

The feeling of being stabbed in the back by its most beloved creation drove the Gardener nearly insane. Its pupils shifted from green to blood-red, and a thick pollution aura surged out wildly. The surrounding Crystal Trees couldn’t withstand such intense pollution and rapidly decayed, clearing a ten-meter radius in just seconds.

It reached out toward Chu Ye, who was impaled at an angle in the ground, its eyes filled with hatred.

At that moment, more butterflies came flooding in, shielding Chu Ye. They spread their wings and charged at the Gardener. The Gardener crushed one, but even more butterflies appeared.

Li Zhiyan finally arrived, positioning himself in front of Chu Ye. His pale blue pupils reflected the Gardener’s form.

"I’m late," Li Zhiyan said.

Chu Ye couldn’t speak, but the moment he saw Li Zhiyan, a sense of relief washed over him, and the tension he’d been holding slowly escaped.

He was so exhausted. It really wasn't intentional; he just wanted to rest.

"Don’t sleep."

Another voice sounded in his ear.

Shen Ji grabbed the branch through Chu Ye’s heart and exerted a slight force, the pain making Chu Ye’s eyes snap open.

Terrified, Chu Ye’s eyes met Shen Ji’s.

What?!

Faintly, he noticed strange silver patterns in Shen Ji’s eyes. Little things seemed to be poking out from Shen Ji’s damp hair. Chu Ye’s foggy mind could barely make out what they were.

Were they… bits of fallen branches?

"This is going to hurt," Shen Ji said, locking eyes with Chu Ye. "But after the pain, you’ll live."

He spoke the exact same words he’d used when treating Chu Ye before.

"Don’t worry. If I can’t save you, I’ll get you a coffin. What kind of coffin do you prefer?"

Shen Ji asked gently, "How about an ice coffin?"