chsdbacks Chapter 36 Helios did it, the loving father did it, and Andy did it too.
Chapter 36 Helios did it, the loving father did it, and Andy did it too.
"Waaah—"
The roar of the engine of the bottom-nest happy car stopped at the edge of the acid swamp.
Andy looked out the window through the bulletproof glass, and the blue light in his electronic eye flickered.
Something is wrong here.
Something is very wrong.
The acid swamp used to be deathly silent, except for the occasional burst of poisonous bubbles and the whistling of the wind blowing through the rusty iron frame.
The beaked doctors usually hide behind the black defensive wall, scrutinizing every creature that approaches with indifferent eyes. If a patient is penniless or worthless, they will immediately be sent to talk to the flesh puppet.
But today, it's unusually lively here.
At the entrance of the camp, several huge cooking pots were set up.
Underneath the pot, crackling chemical fuel blocks burned, while inside, a thick, eerily pale green broth simmered.
Hundreds of ragged refugees, covered in sores, stood in a long line, holding broken bowls and wearing a kind of blissful smile that was almost idiotic.
Beside the large pot, those usually menacing-looking doctors with bird-beaks were surprisingly not wearing gloves today.
With their hands covered in pustules and festering red spots, they personally used spoons to distribute soup to the refugees.
While sending the message, he was muttering something to himself.
Andy turned on the microphone outside the car.
"Drink it, it will make the pain go away."
"This is a gift from a loving father."
"Feel the rhythm of life, and praise the great cycle."
Gamma-9, who was sitting in the passenger seat and had been fiddling with his automatic gun, shuddered when he heard the sound, and the gun in his hand almost went off accidentally.
"Heretical... heresy!"
The Gamma-9's voice has a distinct vibrato.
"My sage, there's...an ominous smell in that soup!"
Andy didn't say anything, but silently increased the magnification of the vision sensor.
He saw clearly the condition of those refugees.
An old man had a huge gangrenous wound on his leg, deep enough to expose the bone.
After taking a sip of that green soup, the wound did not heal.
On the contrary, the granulation tissue in the wound began to grow wildly, turning into a constantly wriggling pink ball of flesh that quickly filled the wound and even overflowed.
The old man seemed to feel nothing was wrong. Instead, he threw away his cane, laughed loudly, and danced in circles, shouting that his leg was healed.
Andy sighed.
To harbor filth.
The evil god who governs disease, decay, death, and rebirth among the four Chaos Gods is affectionately known as "Father of Mercy" by believers.
The doctrines of Nurgle are bizarre, and arguably the most deceptive.
He didn't care about killing or conspiracy.
He only cares about life itself.
To Nurgle, decay is not the end, but the beginning of another kind of life.
Maggots growing on corpses and bacteria multiplying in wounds are all vibrant new life.
When a person is struggling in despair, begging to live no matter what, to stop the pain no matter what, Nurgle will cast his gaze upon them.
He takes away your sense of pain, grants your body immortality through decay, and allows your spirit to attain bliss through the pleasures of the virus.
For those living in hell like those in the bottom nest, this "gift" is simply irresistible.
"It seems the mess caused by the Helios Group is bigger than I imagined."
Andy opened the car door, his khaki hazmat suit fluttering in the wind.
Helios's activities at the bottom of the nest destroyed the ecosystem, forcing the Rust Brotherhood to run out of food and the Bird-Beaked Doctors to run out of medicinal herbs.
To make matters worse, Andy emptied their huge chemical raw material warehouse.
Under extreme resource scarcity and survival pressure, these doctors, who dealt with corpses and viruses every day, broke down.
In their search for a way out, they conducted reckless experiments in this cesspool of radiation and toxins, inadvertently responding to the whispers of the warp.
"Uh, it seems we can't blame it all on Helios," Andy said somewhat awkwardly. "I did some too..."
Thinking about it carefully, in the past month, the shelter's convoy has almost emptied 80% of the raw material reserves in the acid swamp.
In return, Andy delivered the full quantity of finished antibiotics and purified industrial chemicals on time. Today, Andy even brought a batch of newly refined medicines. This made Sisyphus, the capitalist who was hiding underwater, very satisfied. After all, he exchanged hard currency that could be sold at exorbitant prices in Shangchao for a lower cost.
In Sisyphus's view, this is undoubtedly an industrial upgrade and a win-win situation in trade.
But he overlooked one point.
These doctors on the acid lake are not businessmen.
Andy had taken all the raw materials, leaving them with nothing to practice on and no work to do. All they did every day was deliver goods. Coupled with the deteriorating environment, it was "reasonable" for them to seek other solace in their spiritual emptiness.
Since Sisyphus has been satisfied with Andy's supply, the old fox hiding underwater is probably not yet corrupted by Nurgle. His desires have been satisfied through commercial profits, and he doesn't need the Warp God to interfere.
However, we still cannot let our guard down.
If Andy comes back alive, the first thing he should do is go into the water and check on Sisyphus's condition.
"get off."
Andy got out of the car, and Gamma-9 followed closely behind him, barely daring to breathe the outside air.
A doctor with a bird's beak saw Andy and immediately came to greet him.
The doctor's black coat had become greasy and was covered with yellowish-green slime.
The bird-beak mask on his face also cracked, revealing the lower half of his face covered in fungal fuzz.
"Ah, the Yellow-Clad Messenger."
The doctor's voice sounded slurred, as if he had a lump of phlegm stuck in his throat.
"Are you also here to receive the blessings of the Father?"
The doctor reached out and tried to pull on Andy's sleeve.
Andy subtly took a step back, avoiding the dripping hand.
"I'm here to see the surgeon."
Andy's voice remained a cold, synthesized electronic sound.
"I need to go to a factory, and I need a submarine. The surgeon knows how to arrange it."
The doctor paused for a moment, his cloudy eyes darting around as if trying to understand the meaning of the words "factory" and "submarine".
Now their minds are filled with viruses, plagues, and hymns, and their logical thinking abilities have severely deteriorated.
"Oh... a submarine."
The doctor grinned, revealing a mouthful of rotten, black teeth.
"The surgeon is inside, cultivating a new garden in the sanctuary."
Andy ignored the madman and strode towards the black spire.
The refugees around him pointed and whispered, but no one dared to approach him because the steel balls hanging around Andy's waist looked rather unfriendly.
Step inside the spire.
That familiar chemical smell was gone.
Instead, there was an intensely sweet and cloying aroma, the smell of fatty acids decomposing after a corpse has decomposed to a high degree, mixed with the earthy smell of mold spores.
The hall that was originally filled with glass jars has now undergone a complete transformation.
The liquid in those glass jars turned pink.
What was originally suspended inside were just stitched-up pieces of internal organs.
Now, those chunks of meat are alive.
They pulsated slowly in the liquid, their surfaces covered with bloodshot eyes and tiny mouths filled with fine teeth.
Some of the fleshy pieces even had small green tentacles growing out of them, which were patting against the glass wall.
The surgeon was standing in front of the largest jar, staring intently at the lump of rotting flesh inside.
He had taken off his hazmat suit, revealing his upper body covered in pustules.
Hearing footsteps, the surgeon turned around.
"Look! Mr. Andy!"
The surgeon's tone was extremely excited.
"Look at this vitality! Look at this perfect mutation!"
"In the past, we put a lot of effort into cultivating bacterial strains, but the survival rate was less than 30%."
"We don't need to anymore!"
"Just add a little of this green holy water, and they will grow and evolve on their own!"
"This is a medical miracle! This is the ultimate answer to life!"
Gamma-9 stood behind Andy, the aperture in its electronic eye shrinking rapidly.
He saw the piece of meat in the jar, and suddenly opened one eye, staring intently at him.
"vomit--"
Gamma-9 could no longer hold it in and turned to the corner to dry heave.
Andy watched this scene coldly.
On the STC analysis interface, the subspace radiation index in the environment is slowly rising.
In other words, this place is turning into a den of iniquity's backyard.
If the people in the court were here, they would have already called for orbital bombardment.
Although Andy did find it quite disgusting...
However, given the strength of Iron Man's body, as long as proper isolation measures are taken, the corrosion from filth poses no threat to him.
Moreover, the state of Sisyphus underwater is still unclear, and it's far too early for them to turn against each other.
Andy was also counting on them to take him to the underground entrance to the Helios factory.
"Indeed...very energetic."
Andy gave a perfunctory reply.
"But my business is more important."
"Take me to the submarine dock, right now."
The surgeon seemed disappointed by Andy's indifference, but even though his mind was a complete mess, he still remembered Andy's terrifying fighting prowess.
The muscle memory of being slapped away is still there.
"Okay, okay."
The surgeon grumbled and reluctantly left his precious jar.
"Mortals can never comprehend great truths."
A few minutes later.
Andy stood in front of a submarine.
Gamma-9 absolutely refused to go down; he would rather face the laughing refugees outside than crawl into this iron coffin that might already be covered in tentacles.
"Gamma-9, unload the stuff for Dr. Birdbeak, then drive back immediately."
Andy didn't intend to take him down either.
In such a high-risk environment, bringing along a priest who only has an automatic gun would be a burden.
"There's no need to let the shelter know what's happening here until we've confirmed Sisyphus's condition."
After handing over his work, Andy squeezed into the narrow hatch alone.
The inside of the submarine is even more humid than last time.
The driver was a half-mutated bird-beaked doctor whose hands had become fused with the joystick.
"Drive into the underground river."
Andy commanded.
The driver made a muffled gurgling sound and started the engine.
"Click click click..."
Accompanied by a tooth-grinding mechanical screech, the submarine slowly descended.
The murky green acid flooded the observation window.
Andy sat in the dimly lit cabin, the light growing dimmer as they went deeper.
Just as the submarine was about to enter the entrance of the underground river.
Andy saw it.
In the thick silt at the bottom of the river, formed by thousands of years of industrial waste and corpse remains.
Something moved.
That wasn't a water monster, nor was it an ordinary mutated creature.
The silt seemed to come alive, slowly rising and gathering into a huge, smiling face that was over ten meters wide.
That face had no features, only a smiling outline made up of countless festering, hollow holes.
It lay quietly at the bottom of the acid lake, giving Andy a kind yet chilling smile.
Andy pulled the sunshade of the observation window shut without expression.
"You have a nice smile, but don't smile like that next time."