81: Chapter 81 The First Night Behind the Door

Half of the broken gate was split, running diagonally all the way from the latch slot to the door hinge...

"Swoosh..."

Dark red slime hung on the wooden splinters at the edge of the fracture, congealing into a translucent film in the night wind.

The Red Wetland outside the gate did not push inward anymore, and the thick roots retracted a few feet from the breach.

But it hadn't retreated far—guards looking out from the breach could see the dark red root tips still pulsating slightly on the scorched earth, as if waiting for something.

Jiang Ming lowered the power supply of the inner-gate anchor point to the lowest setting.

The dark red tumor in the Drainage Shallow Ditch shrank to the size of a fingernail, clinging tightly to the depths of the nail hole in the door post, its pulsation frequency completely synchronized with the living land outside the gate.

Fragments of the broken latch were scattered along the ditch bank, with one piece stuck diagonally in the mud. The wood was soaked with sewage and bloody mud, and its surface reflected a very faint dark red wet light under the moonlight.

He tested the circuit—the signal from the inner-gate anchor point to the living land outside the gate had no delay.

Energy transmission from the inner-gate anchor point to the secondary tree core of Tree Nest No. 1 was smooth.

The structure of the Outer Ring behind the gate unfolded completely through the territory's neural surface.

He broke this area down into four parts.

Directly in front of the breach was the Assembly Clearing; the overturned lime-water basin and the trampled safety line were still in place.

On the left, leaning against the wooden fence, was the Wounded Partition Shed. Half of the tent cloth had been torn off, and inside it were crowded slightly wounded soldiers who had retreated from the door during the day, along with some old bedding that hadn't been moved away in time.

On the right were the ruins of the Small Storage Shed and the Camp Administration Room. Only a charred framework was left of the storage shed, but the Camp Administration Room was still intact, with the last few roster wooden plaques hanging on the door panel.

Further inside, a packed narrow mud path led toward the Central Main House, with some broken wooden boxes and empty sacks piled along the roadside.

Among the four areas, the Assembly Clearing had the most people.

Several guards who had retreated from the breach squatted at the edge of the clearing, their shield faces leaning obliquely against their knees and their spear shafts horizontal by their feet.

Beside the registration line, flattened buckets were scattered. A water-transporting apprentice squatted on the ground picking up fragments, his fingers still trembling.

"Nail it shut!!!"

A guard spoke up first.

A piece of his left shoulder armor had been scraped off by the wood chips, and the abrasion on his collarbone was still oozing blood.

"Take advantage of the fact that the roots outside have retreated, nail the breach shut with thick boards, and add two rows of iron nails. If we don't nail it shut, who the hell can sleep tonight."

"Even if you nail it shut, it will open from the inside."

Another guard opposite him didn't even look at him, just stared dead at the dark red wet mud staining the soles of his boots.

"Didn't you see it during the day? It wasn't smashed open from the outside at all; that ditch on the inside moved first."

"The latch was pulled off from the inside. No matter how many boards you nail, if it happens to you from the inside again, all the boards will end up nailed to our own people's faces."

"Then just leave it wide open like this?"

"Leaving it open is better than pretending it's fixed."

The water-transporting apprentice squatting on the edge slammed the broken bucket pieces onto the ground, stood up abruptly, and said, "That ditch was made by you splashing dirty water into it every day, and now you blame the ditch?"

No one paid attention to him.

After finishing speaking to himself, he silently squatted down again to continue picking up fragments.

Xu Baiheng stood behind the safety line.

The original safety line had long been trampled to pieces, and he used a charcoal pencil to redraw one further inward. This line was a full twenty steps away from the breach.

Outside the line was a restricted area, and inside the line was an isolation observation area temporarily delineated by him and Lin Qiu.

He was still holding that recording board, on which no new things were written, only those few big question marks drawn during the day.

He stared at the wood chips beside the threshold for a long time before suddenly speaking.

"Don't touch the threshold. Don't touch the edge of the ditch. Nobody go and fix the gate yourselves."

Lin Qiu was squatting nearby, cleaning a wounded person's sole.

When the wounded person retreated from the doorway, they stepped on a wooden splinter, cutting a large wound on the sole of their foot, with extremely fine dark red debris embedded in the edges of the wound.

She picked it out with tweezers, threw it into a small wooden basin filled with lime water, and asked Xu Baiheng without raising her head, "Not fixing the gate, just leaving it wide open like this?"

"We can't fix it."

Xu Baiheng turned the recording board over, drew a sketch of the Outer Gate and the drainage ditch on the back with a charcoal pencil, and heavily poked a dot at the location of the ditch.

"During the day, it moved from the ditch first. When we were fighting it outside the gate, it was already inside the gate, dammit."

"You nail the door panel, and it will flip over at you from the ditch again. You fill the ditch, and it will crawl out from under the threshold."

"You burn the threshold, and it will change nail holes. For every step we fix, it changes an opening."

"Right now, having everyone stay a bit further away from that broken gate and that ditch is much more useful than nailing boards onto it."

Lin Qiu wrung out the linen cloth, wiped the blood from the wounded person's sole, stood up, and said to the several Handymen waiting behind, "Everyone who retreated from the doorway—"

"Take off your shoes, soak them in lime water, and check for wounds on the soles of your feet and calves."

"Anyone with red stains on their shoe soles is strictly forbidden from wearing them back into the sheds. Nobody is allowed to fetch water by the ditch tonight."

The routine was still turning.

Although slow and shattered, it hadn't completely stopped after all.

Jiang Ming did not interrupt this messy routine.

He was just counting people.

The Handymen washing the ground were squatting behind the safety line, soaking the wood chips picked up from the edge of the ditch into the lime water basin. Their fingers had soaked white, yet they didn't dare to pick them up.

The people carrying the wounded—two laborers used a shoulder pole and old hemp rope to make a simple stretcher, carrying the guard whose leg was injured by wood chips during the day toward the Medical Shed.

Passing the entrance of the Camp Administration Room, they stepped out two rows of deep footprints in the muddy ground, the lines on the soles of their feet embedded with dark red wet mud.

The water-transporting apprentice passing buckets and boards back and forth—running back and forth between the Assembly Clearing and the pile of buckets for I don't know how many trips, he had just received an empty bucket from Lin Qiu's hand.

Lime water was still dripping from the bottom of the bucket, and the soles of his shoes were stained with sludge from the edge of the ditch. With every step he ran, he left a faint red print on the ground.

These people were the blood vessels of the Outer Ring.

The ones washing the ground touched filth, the ones carrying people touched wounds, the ones transporting water touched buckets and shoe soles—the movement route of every single one of them was bringing the mycelium and spores of the inner-gate anchor point deeper into the camp.

Late at night, the fractured door frame on the inner side of the half broken gate absorbed the bloody filth of the day.

As well as the splashed lime water, under the moisture and low temperature, the wood fibers began to ooze a very faint dark red wet light.

It wasn't flesh-turning, but the wood itself was being soaked through bit by bit.

Embedded at the bottom of the door frame was the latch minced meat splashed up when it was snapped by roots during the day; the minced meat had already dried and turned black.

But under the moistening of the midnight dew, it became damp again, sticking tightly to the wood fibers.

Jiang Ming tested the mycelium activity at this location—there was a reaction, very weak, but much higher than the surrounding ordinary damp soil.

It wasn't just the drainage ditch that could hide things behind the gate.

Any corner that had been soaked in blood for a long time, was damp, and no one dared to squat down to look closely at could become the next bud point.

The Red Wetland outside the gate did only one thing all night—lift lightly, press low.

The thick roots squirmed slowly a few feet outside the breach, their charred shells expanding and contracting under the moonlight.

The rhythm was frighteningly steady.

Anyone inside the gate could see that piece of land moving outside from the breach, but couldn't clearly see which direction it was moving.

The guards didn't dare to get too close to the breach, yet they didn't dare not to stare at it.

Everyone was waiting for it to rush in, but it just wouldn't move.

There was still movement in the Camp Administration Room in the second half of the night.

...

Ma Shoucai didn't sleep, or rather, didn't dare to sleep.

He had people take the last few roster wooden plaques off the wall.

Along with the account books and half a box of hemostatic powder, they were moved into a small storage room in the direction of the Central Main House.

The laborers carrying the things ran several trips from the Camp Administration Room to the Central Main House, their shoe soles stepping out return wet prints on the narrow mud road.

Jiang Ming recorded all the directions and frequencies of these wet prints.

The Camp Administration Room was still turning, and Xu Baiheng and Lin Qiu's routine was also turning.

"..."

But what should really be bitten off first was that room that was still moving wooden plaques and hemostatic powder like a rooster crowing in the middle of the night!