My Abyss Survival Diary

Chapter 81 Teacher

Gunshots rang out among the stone forest, and the bullets pierced the woman's forehead with pinpoint accuracy.

The woman's head snapped back, her cervical spine cracking as her head bent over her neck like a broken flower stem.

The swarm paused for a moment, but instead of dissipating, it went completely out of control. The dense black insects hovered in mid-air for less than a second before all their compound eyes turned toward him! A whole black cloud of insects rushed toward him, the buzzing of countless wings deafening!

Simon took a half step back. Faced with such a dense swarm of insects, neither mounted rifles nor explosive crossbow bolts could deal with it; he could only use fire to disperse them.

Just as he was about to turn around to get a fire, a burly figure blocked his way.

"This monster is called the Beekeeper," Charasu explained to him without turning his head. "The best way to deal with her is to keep a great distance from her, otherwise, once she dies, her swarm of insects will immediately fly over and attack you."

"Leave the rest to me."

Elder Chalasu's feet stomped on the ground like two stone pillars driven into the earth, and his back was so broad that it could completely cover Simon.

He raised his gray arms from his sides, clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and muttered something.

His breathing slowed down, then stopped. His chest stopped rising and falling, his shoulders stopped shaking, and all his muscles were tense. He looked like a stone statue forgotten in the wilderness.

The swarm of bees was less than three meters away from him, and the air currents from their flapping wings were already ruffling the stray hairs at his temples, but he remained as still as a mountain.

With the distance almost touching, he roared and threw a punch forward! The hard fist, carrying terrifying power, struck out instantly, distorting the surrounding air. At the same time, Simon seemed to see a familiar blue light!

The moment the fist was thrown, a surge of energy erupted! The dense swarm of insects was annihilated in the blue light, its existence instantly erased! The blue light flashed by, the energy vanished into the air, all sounds disappeared, the swarm of insects vanished without a trace, leaving only a deathly silence on the entire flower field.

There was no mistake, it was psychic energy. The moment the energy surged, Simon realized that its essence was psychic energy, only that Charasu had unleashed it in a special way.

Unexpectedly, this old man was actually a Spirit Summoner.

"Are you a Spirit Summoner?" Simon asked.

Chalasu frowned, clearly disliking the title. "Spirit Summoner is the title the Empire gave us. We call ourselves Spirit Mediums. We cannot summon psychic energy; we can only communicate with it and thus control a portion of it."

He walked to the beekeeper's body, squatted down, and straightened her crooked head.

The grayish-black organ protruded from the ruptured abdominal cavity, its surface covered with honeycomb-like pores, the edges of which were stained with a viscous, dark red liquid.

Simon walked over, pulled a dagger from his waist, and squatted down next to the corpse.

He skillfully used the tip of his knife to peel off the dark red, still slightly pulsating piece of flesh from the back of the beekeeper's neck.

The flesh chunks are slightly smaller than ordinary fungal carcasses, lighter in color, and covered with fine blood vessels. These vessels extend from the edges of the flesh chunks, embedding themselves in the gaps between the cervical vertebrae and connecting with the spinal cord.

These monsters are similar to fungal corpses, with the flesh of sin parasitizing their bodies, modifying their organs, turning their abdominal cavities into beehives, where monstrous wasps hatch and grow, surviving on their blood and internal organs.

When she is alive, the swarm obeys her commands; when she dies, the swarm goes out of control and attacks all living things in its field of vision.

He used the tip of his knife to sever several blood vessels, then scooped the flesh out from between the bones and held it in his palm.

"Why does the flesh of evidence of sin always parasitize the back of a person's neck?" Elder Chalasu asked casually.

"There's a reason why the flesh of the incriminating evidence parasitizes the back of the human neck." Simon held the piece of flesh up to his eyes, turned it over, revealing the broken hyphae at the bottom. "There is the largest neural pathway between the cervical vertebrae and the brainstem. By parasitizing here, the fungus can control the host's motor and sensory nerves through the shortest path."

"The fungal corpse can walk, attack, and learn because this piece of flesh is connected to the spinal cord. The beekeeper's abdomen was transformed into a honeycomb, also through the spinal cord. It doesn't need to modify the brain; it only needs to control the spinal cord to make the body grow any organ it wants."

Elder Chalasu squatted down beside him, listening quietly.

"You know a lot."

"I used to be a scholar." Simon placed the piece of meat on a flat stone and cut it open with a dagger, revealing dark red fibers and grayish-white mycelium on the cut surface.

He used the tip of his knife to part a layer of fibers, revealing dense, hair-thin nerve bundles underneath. "These hyphae from the abyss have replaced the original nerves. They are more efficient than human nerves and transmit signals faster, but at the cost of losing the ability to feel pain."

"Without the protection of pain, muscles will break and bones will shatter. The flesh of sin does not know how to conserve energy or take care of the body. It uses the human body like a machine until it is worn out and falls apart."

Chalasu remained silent for a long time. He reached out, picked up the half-cut piece of meat from the stone, and examined it in his palm.

"If we weren't enemies..." Charasu's voice was slow, each word seemingly ground out from the depths of his throat, "I would sincerely hire you as a teacher to instruct my son and grandson. They have no shortage of strength or courage, but they lack brains and knowledge. In this abyss, a scholar is more precious than a warrior."

Simon looked at him; there was no politeness, no flattery, only sincere sincerity in the old man's cloudy eyes.

"Yes," Simon replied. "If I had the chance, I would be a good teacher."

Elder Chalasu laughed heartily, but the smile quickly faded.

"But if we can't escape the abyss for the rest of our lives," the old man raised his head and sighed deeply with a solemn expression, "learning about the outside world will only add to our troubles. The more we know, the more desperate we will become."

He loosened his fists, his thick palms hanging at his sides, his cloudy eyes looking up at the rock wall above him, as if he could see through the rock wall and into the scenery beyond the abyss.

A gentle breeze swept across the flower field from afar, carrying the sweet scent of the blossoms.

Simon didn't reply; he intended to give the shrunken honeycomb in his abdominal cavity one last check.

Most of the killer bees in the hive had left the hive the moment the beekeeper died; all that remained were the corpses and remains of some killer bees.

Under his astonished gaze, a scorpion wasp weakly crawled out from the depths of the cracked hive.

The compound eyes of that monstrous wasp were white.