Chapter 1083: The Anticipated Reveal
Is it really that simple?
Bohemia looked at the [Nostradamus Card] in her hand, lost in thought.
Just a while ago, she and the Descartes Spirit had spent nearly ten minutes racking their brains, rejecting three or four proposals. She had been struggling to come up with a way to deceive Lin Sanjiu. Later, she got annoyed and patted Lin Sanjiu's shoulder, "Hey! Give me your Nostradamus Card; I can use it."
"What are you going to use it for?" Lin Sanjiu seemed a bit hesitant.
Bohemia had no words to say and simply rolled her eyes, "Why do you care so much? Can you fill your belly with it? What if I burn it? I'll tell you later."
Her usual unreasonableness seemed more credible and natural than the excuses she might make up. Surprisingly, Lin Sanjiu handed the card over to her.
"Very strange," the Descartes Spirit muttered in Bohemia's mind, "She's become the Servant of Truth, so why is she so unguarded? Doesn't she realize that we might be planning to deal with the spores in her brain?"
"Because she's naïve," Bohemia whispered in response.
"But be careful not to misuse it," while the two of them muttered to each other, Lin Sanjiu warned, "I remember there are some apocalyptic elements absorbed from previous worlds inside it. If you release them casually, it could cause..."
Before she could finish her sentence, Bohemia cut her off with a shout, "I'm going to reveal it now!"
"What?" Lin Sanjiu was clearly startled, "Right now..."
The second part of her sentence was drowned out by a sharp sound of air being torn apart—behind her neck, the bush-like creature that looked like a clump of shrubs suddenly emerged from its camouflage. Several branches appeared in the air, extending upwards, and then it swung down heavily toward the back of her head, creating a sharp piercing sound.
"Wait, just one branch is enough!" Bohemia panicked, and those seven words were spoken at lightning speed.
Unfortunately, she spoke a bit too late. While the bush-like creature promptly retracted several branches, more than one of them still landed on the back of Lin Sanjiu's head. Accompanied by her painful scream, a flurry of blood specks suddenly filled the air. Bohemia tightly shut her eyes and shrunk her shoulders.
"Someone really hates her," Descartes also uttered a shocked gasp.
Blood began to ooze from the wound, but the hair on Lin Sanjiu's head quickly absorbed it all. Fortunately, due to the limited number of branches hitting her head, her scalp was not shredded like those of the villagers. She was left with two long, deep vertical wounds that resembled cracks in the earth, hidden beneath her thick black hair, which opened her skull.
Even someone as tough as Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but turn pale in the face of such a blow. Her eyes lost focus, she swayed a few times, and then fell unconscious on the table.
Striking the brain so carelessly, even if she survived, wouldn't that make her even more foolish in the future?
Bohemia was in a state of panic, and even though she knew what to do next, she couldn't help but act in haste, her breath held. She quickly extended her Higher Consciousness forward and pressed on Lin Sanjiu's head wound. After the bush-like creature had retracted its branches, this was the only way she could use to stop Lin Sanjiu's bleeding.
"There is indeed Higher Consciousness protecting her brain," Bohemia was very sensitive to the flow of Higher Consciousness. She breathed a sigh of relief, "Where did I put the card—"
The [Nostradamus Card] had already irresponsibly released the apocalyptic elements it had absorbed into the exam hall. After all, this was a Pocket Dimension, a sealed space. She placed the card on the back of Lin Sanjiu's head, watching the empty battery icon on the card, her nerves tense.
This card could only absorb apocalyptic elements, but she couldn't be completely sure whether this world was genuinely in an apocalyptic state. If the spores were only controlling this particular area... then the card would be useless.
Both Bohemia and Descartes stared intently at the card. As time passed, Bohemia's heart grew heavier. The battery icon on the card remained unchanged. Lin Sanjiu had indeed granted her usage rights, and her method of using the [Nostradamus Card] was correct. But since the card hadn't absorbed anything, it meant... were the spores not apocalyptic elements?
Could this really not be an apocalyptic world?
What should she do to help Lin Sanjiu regain consciousness?
"Don't rush," even the Descartes Spirit noticed her anxiety, "just... wait a little longer."
"My master says," the Pocket Dimension host's voice startled them coldly, "that you didn't go far enough with this opening."
If it weren't for the fact that the other person was a Puppeteer, Bohemia really wanted to lash out. What time was it, Lin Sanjiu had two deep gouges in the back of her head and couldn't suck out the spores that turned her into a Stupid Truth X—seeing as it was almost the end of the mountain, and Puppeteer was still picking on the fact that the opening wasn't thorough enough? Might as well let her kill Lin Sanjiu now, then, and give her a pain in the ass -
Eh?
Bohemia suddenly cocked her head.
She poked her head over, enduring the discomfort of rolling over, and glanced into the back of Lin Sanjiu's cracked head. In the clumps of black hair soaked with blood, she could barely feel that Higher Consciousness was flowing vaguely below the fissure - like glimpsing the lava rolling underneath after cracking open a volcano.
With such a protective shell in place, it didn't seem possible to call it a complete 'opening.'
"Hey," she asked, turning sharply to the Descartes Spirit, "you know a lot about spores, so let me ask you, is it possible that it's protected by this layer of Higher Consciousness, and that's why it can't be sucked out?"
But this guess had its irrationalities - if the spores were really blocked by Higher Consciousness to get out, then how did they get in there in the first place?
But she didn't realize that this question, with its fluky implications, called the Descartes Spirit into deep thought.
"When you put it that way, it does seem..." it whispered, "Well, do you know about wave-particle duality of light? This thing, the spore, is somewhat similar in nature. It has both a material and a spiritual side... The material carrier facilitates propagation, but after invading the host, it can't rely on matter alone to have an effect on the mind and spirit..."
In other words, Higher Consciousness can stop foreign matter, but it can't stop foreign 'thoughts'?
Bohemia's golden-brown eyes brightened as she thought about this.
"I told you so," she rolled up her sleeves with vigor, "the strength of this layer of Higher Consciousness Defense is about as strong as a piece of paper in my opinion!"