............

"It worked—" He whispered dreamily, reaching out the mechanical arm toward the nascent bright red.

The glass cover slowly lifted, exposing the brightness of its inner life to the air, and for a moment, it was as if the whole world had stood still. The other creatures on the ground who were twitching and struggling also stopped struggling, and collapsed in a daze, staring motionlessly at the extreme beauty not far away.

The robot seemed to have thought of this situation in advance, so it wore protective gear early and was able to observe butterflies "safely". If my prediction is correct, this experimental accident should be caused by the appearance of butterflies.

Since I made observations through oranges, the impact of receiving butterflies was minimal. However, the extreme beauty of butterflies is still reflected in my eyes and deeply in my mind. I couldn't help but get closer, to see the butterflies closer—

One step, two steps...... I was just one step away from the butterfly, and every detail of the butterfly was in my eyes. At that moment, I felt as if I saw something that I couldn't put into words—beauty itself.

Pure beauty.

This beauty transcends everything in the world, beyond everything in the world, beyond human language, beyond human logical receptivity. At that moment, it was as if the whole world had lost any meaning, and the wasteland did not exist...... Life and death have no meaning...... The truth doesn't make sense...... All of this is meaningless...... I just want to see this beauty in front of me, even if it's just one more second, even if it's just one more moment, I am satisfied, and I die without regrets...... It was as if my intellect had collapsed in an instant in front of me with the ultimate beauty that transcended all things, and I was fragile and shattered.

How beautiful is this......

It wasn't until I didn't know what to expect, the robot closed the frosted glass cover, and I came to my senses, like a big dream.

Although I didn't feel that I was affected by the butterfly's strange ability again—if I had been hit, I would have just stood still—but that unparalleled beauty still affected me across time and space.

When butterflies appear in the field of vision, the whole world seems to be eclipsed, leaving only that shocking red.

I took a breath and recovered from that involuntary state. The robot dismantled the container containing the butterflies with the base and carried it out of the ruins.

Well, ruins.

I looked at the remains of countless strange creatures around me, I don't know exactly how they did it, but they did create a creature of the wasteland, a butterfly, through biological experiments.

I pondered for a moment and walked out the way I came.

But because I didn't keep up with the robot, I couldn't find him when I chased him to the blackpool.

I could only pluck the orange and stretch my sore arm. I've been lifting for most of the day, and I'm really tired.

At this moment, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the silt pond where the dark sewage was accumulating, and something seemed to move.

In reality, that location is still the same as it was a hundred years ago, a swarthy sewage pond. A few black bubbles bubbled up in the pond, and a small piece of the pointed head of an unknown creature came out—

I was so shocked that I took a few steps back.

What's going on?

I still remember that this scene was almost exactly the same in the illusion given by the oranges......

Could it be that this creature has lived here for hundreds of years? Didn't even the infighting of "humans" and the war of Buddhist plants affect it?

I cautiously observed the exposed part of the other party, and suddenly realized that the other party might be a mouse.

It's the kind of rat that is very common but not very common in the wasteland.

......I took a deep breath, and it turned out to be just a rat, and it almost didn't scare me. My other hand even had a pollen in my hand ready to put in my mouth.

In this way, it is possible that this rat is not the one in the illusion of a hundred years ago, but only its descendants.

But – why is it here?

I've never seen a rat in the Source Realm. It stands to reason that the Source Realm has a huge group of huge urban ruins that the wasteland world does not have, and it is a good habitat for the rat species, and after a hundred years, those urban ruins should become a paradise for rats. But I've never seen a rat in those places.

It's a strange thing – it doesn't make sense.

Just as intelligent machines are born from the land of the wasteland, they naturally have "six pure roots and no distracting thoughts", so they have a unique advantage on the path of cultivating Buddhism, which is a very smooth and natural "common sense". If intelligent machines grow out of the ground, but like people, they have all kinds of desires and distractions, and end up becoming a person with an empty robot body - it is very "contrary to common sense".

If this "perverse" thing does happen, it means that something must be wrong.

Maybe you got something wrong, or maybe there's something hidden behind this that you didn't notice......

I looked at the rat in silence. Part of its body has also turned into strange flesh, and there is a ball of flesh bulging from its neck, which seems to have been partially alienated. Considering that it has been living in this kind of ghost place, the water it drinks is probably the sewage from this black pool - then it is very good that it can be alive, and it is normal to be alienated.

My thoughts didn't just drift out. It was clear to me that the butterfly must be the first butterfly in the world, that is, the butterfly was actually an artificial creature - and so on, were all the creatures of the wasteland "made" like this?

For example, this rat may be a test specimen in the experimental field, which escaped because of an experimental accident.

I was comparing the differences between the creatures of the wasteland world and the source world, and my attention gradually focused on the two major existences—

Raw sheep and meat ball monsters.

The proto-sheep is one of the few intelligent creatures in the wasteland world that has the ability to communicate, and lives in the holy city together with humans and intelligent machines. At present, the emergence of intelligent machines and human beings have a fairly high degree of closeness - the original intelligent machines are likely to be born by humans - and the origin of the sheep, the reason for its birth is not clear. The sheer size of the sheep is actually so unsuitable for the wilderness that it is now on the verge of extinction. How exactly were they born?

And the flesh monsters. It is suspected that it is an alien creature that has no intelligence and only knows how to chase and attack living things. It is known that creatures will turn into fleshy monsters when alienated by certain factors, but there are no such creatures in the wasteland - why?

Could it be that there is some kind of "source of alienation" only in the source realm?

According to the existing information, it can be known that the wasteland and the source realm are "interoperable", and Yanshi once said that "it is difficult to get from the wasteland to the source hell", that is, the source realm to the wasteland should be relatively easy - so why did this source of alienation not penetrate into the wasteland world through this channel?

I'm confused, although many puzzles have been solved these days, the fog of hiding the truth does not seem to have lifted, and there are more and more confusing questions.

I went back to the castle gate and pressed the orange -

In the distance, the protective shield of the urban agglomeration disappeared at some point.

"Hmm......" I looked back, and the castle seemed to have become a little "old", as if the time of the illusion world that the orange had given me had gone back some time.

Time seems to be moving at a high speed. Everything around us is changing dramatically.

In a few breaths, the urban agglomeration is in ruins, and everything is withering.

............