There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

"Those poor miners remained in that position as they were swallowed by the mine shaft. Only when another unfortunate soul, unaware of what was happening, disturbed their eternal slumber would they glare angrily with their empty eye sockets and roar out in their desolate, silent skeletal cavity, telling their entire story!"

The father's expression remained calm, as if he hadn't noticed the terrified look in young Gotz's eyes. His gaze had pierced through the barriers of time, returning once more to that era filled with mysteries.

Not far from the pale, dark tombstones of old Yorkson lies the mine that swallowed the miners' lives and unleashed endless calamities. That entrance appeared countless times in Gots's dreams thereafter, bringing countless sleepless, agonizing nights.

Chapter 161 The Horn of Doom

"Gotz! Gotz!"

Gots, still half-asleep, heard calls that pulled him back to reality from his daze.

He opened his eyes and found himself neither in the open tunnel nor beside his father from his childhood. All he could see was a familiar horse's face and a large nose, preventing him from briefly escaping reality in his sleep.

This was a cruel thing for Gots. Once awake, he felt pain all over his body. This pain reminded him of his previous crushing defeat, his nightmares, and the curse he carried.

"Gotz, wake up. It'll be dark in an hour." Harris was checking the equipment in the room, making final preparations. "We need to leave early. You'll accompany me to the mine entrance. Can you move now?"

"Understood." Gotz remained taciturn, nodded silently, and checked his injuries.

The misaligned bones have been corrected and are no longer a problem. The dizziness and shortness of breath caused by blood loss have gradually subsided. Only the deep, bone-revealing injuries on his body still cause him a dull ache.

But these pains are not a big problem; for more than a decade, living with pain has become his daily routine.

“I’ll go with you.” Gotz stood up, taking a deep breath; the oxygen level around him seemed to have thinned.

“Don’t force yourself. Since two people can’t go in, then I’ll go in alone,” Harris said, shaking his head.

Gotz was about to say something when Harris interrupted him.

"You just need to tell me what exactly happened the day before yesterday. Sharing your experience with me is better than any other help."

Gotz paused for a moment, then tacitly agreed with his statement.

"Under the influence of the drug, I've forgotten what happened before. But this situation is absolutely different from before! I only remember that when I approached that monster, the blasphemous voice and the shadow of madness were stronger than ever before, almost reaching the great catastrophe that Old Man Hook had mentioned!"

"...Impossible. That was due to a large-scale memetic infection back then. Now, only the two of us on the island know about it, how could it suddenly increase!"

Gotz shook his head, avoiding looking at Harris's expression.

“Didn’t the spread back then also suddenly erupt? Old Yorkson had controlled it for more than ten years, but then, inexplicably, a sudden meme spread occurred.” Gotz said in a muffled voice, “I suspect that this meme theory is just Old Yorkson’s conjecture, which just happened to come true twice.”

Harris neither refuted nor affirmed, but calmly asked, "Then how do you explain Old Man Hook's success? He single-handedly averted disaster twice."

Goetz shook his head and said, "My father said it was a coincidence. I also think it was a recurring coincidence."

Harris's tone gradually turned serious: "Then you should tell me now, what did your father see back then?"

…………

Doranco weaved through the dense forest, the lush trees on either side transforming into wings, propelling him swiftly toward his destination.

If an outsider were to see this, they would be amazed by the speed of this faintly connected afterimage, which is almost comparable to the most agile deer in the forest.

But he knew that wasn't fast enough.

Unless he can exceed the speed of light, there will never be a way to stop this disaster.

When he returned to the town, his first stop was Little Hook's plantation. But the scene there was completely different from what it used to be.

The once thriving plants in the plantation have completely lost their appearance as a rational world should be.

The crops on the ground grew wildly and unruly, sucking up all the nutrients from the earth and completely enveloping the cold, damp ground. The serrated edges of the leaves looked fierce, excluding the originally not-so-delicate alfalfa, plantain, dandelion, and beggar-ticks from view. Finally, they merged and intertwined, devouring and tearing each other apart, turning into a rotten carpet of green juice.

The garden was filled with lush green trees, their needle-like leaves exuding a wild and robust strength, and the smell of their sap was intoxicating. Up close, the bark of the tree trunks was wrinkled and peeling, covered with cracks, and the crevices were filled with dark green moss, as glaring as dirt on a canvas.

Dolanco witnessed firsthand how this tree, in its wild growth, foolishly and ignorantly struggled and expanded outwards, tormenting itself from its wrinkled bark, colliding with each other, and finally letting out a final, desperate howl with the sound of a branch breaking.

Doranco's hair stood on end, expressing an instinctive disgust for this primal savagery. It was as if he were defying the very existence of his own reason.

The most dramatic change occurred beneath a large tree. The tree's aerial roots, undulating like snakes, twisted and constricted themselves around the roots that had nurtured them, like a fool choking himself, engaging in a struggle akin to Hercules strangling himself.

Dolanco could see that the xylem of these plants had gone mad, and the order etched into their genes had vanished. The proliferating xylem had forgotten its mission to bear weight and transport nutrients, and began to proliferate blindly, even plundering nutrients from other parts, transforming the plants into indescribable brown monsters.

The fallen leaves had lost their original beautiful angular structure, their unbridled imaginations transforming them into all sorts of nauseating shapes. One leaf was withered and thin, like the dead skin of a frail old man, while the next had multiplied haphazardly into a succulent, oozing pus-like sap.

A hand reached out with difficulty from among the layers of disgusting leaves.

The muscles in that hand were so distorted, like they were sculpted from clay, displaying an extreme degree of unconventional creativity. Beneath the skin, worm-like blood vessels flowed, leaving trails on the surface of the limb.

Doranco didn't know whether this was the capillaries beginning to take over the dominant position, or the blood itself forming an army. But these terrifying changes had been going on for a long time, and it seemed the poor fellow would never return to normal.

This town is finished.

Doranco watched the town engulfed in flames with despair, feeling a sense of impending doom. The messengers of defeat had arrived on this land, sounding the clarion call for its disintegration.

That hand struggled for a long time, but unlike those plants, it did not completely collapse into an indescribable monster. It stubbornly struggled and refused to stop.

Dolanco then rushed forward as if waking from a dream, and dug the victim out of the plant hell.

Little Hook's eyes, which always radiated skepticism, were tightly closed, blood flowing from them. Most gruesome of the damage was the gaping, bloody hole between his eyebrows.

But Little Hook was still muttering to himself in an incomprehensible language, seemingly praying to some unknown being.

"Hooker! Hooker! Wake up!"

Little Hook finally broke free from his extremely painful delirium and began to murmur as if in a dream.

“It’s here… I saw it… the floating black clouds… the undying filth…”

“I finally saw it… Old Yorkson was right… I caught it…”

"But Fomalhaut... that door that blocks the ultimate terror... is about to open..."

"I will be torn apart by a supernova... I will be annihilated in the constellation Perseus..."

"I will live forever..."

Chapter 162 The Street Child

In the dense forest, the twilight light was no longer enough to illuminate the branches and leaves, and it receded slowly like a weak tide, leaving only the strange trees and rocks to reveal their true forms.

The once vibrant leaves drooped in disappointment, closing slowly but surely, huddling together to prepare for the cold, dark night in the dense forest. Countless migratory birds also flew back from the woods, disappearing into their nests and no longer daring to move, only daring to peek with blind, ignorant eyes, wary of any danger lurking somewhere.

Harris led the way, cutting through the undergrowth and following Gotz's established route, quickly approaching their destination. They had to arrive before it got completely dark.

"Gotz, what are the chances that we can successfully drive that thing away this time?"

Harris managed to steal a moment to talk to Gotz. Although the impending unknown was incredibly stressful for him, he didn't want to burden others with that pressure. Gotz had already suffered a setback and was exhausted; another bout of despair would be devastating for him.

Gotz walked behind in silence, and after a long while, he finally spoke: "The holy seal I drew only temporarily delayed its progress; in the end, it still leaked out. I don't know if it will be effective next time. This time it came too suddenly..."

"Yes...it was so sudden..."

Harris whispered in the tunnel.

Who do you think was infected with the meme?

“There are too many suspicious people. Dart has been here for a long time and is used to these things, but he always keeps his distance and doesn’t make any further contact. However, we can’t be sure if his personality will change drastically after his wife’s death.”

"And then there's Sebala. He and his grandson are of unknown origin. Even the Navigators' Alliance can't find out their identities before they came here. If they have ulterior motives, they can easily hide in the fog."

“Old Kai’s grandson has also been making moves recently, independently taking control of a ship and starting to operate routes. They are the last contract survivor family on the continent, and they could be infected by memes at any time.”

Harris listed these suspicious individuals, but ultimately couldn't confirm anything.

Gotz shook his head: "You forgot about Marcus too."

Harris thought about it carefully and shook his head, saying, "Marcus is an exception. Coming from outer space, he should be the least likely person to have contact with these things, but he seems to vaguely know something. When we contacted him last time, he clearly stated that he had no interest, so he was a good choice."

“It seems he was just an unlucky witness to the incident,” Gotz said as he traversed the cliff.

Harris laughed loudly, "Gotz, you don't still suspect that Marcus followed you to the lake, do you? In that situation where you fell into the water and sank into the lake, even I couldn't find you. How could he have hit you so easily?"

But as he spoke, Harris sighed, "But I really hope it's Marcus who's infected with the meme. If it is, the problem will be solved after I give him the Perrin potion."

A tunnel, like a horrific wound, lies deep in the valley opposite the lagoon. The entrance layer of the mine, as if subjected to a combined internal and external blast, is laid bare under the moonlight. The overturned soil remains barren to this day, perfectly preserving the traces of twisted, massive limbs scraping, striking, corroding, and penetrating it.

Only that black and white tomb remains, standing still, watching coldly.

As they spoke, Harris and Gotz gradually stopped, standing before the valley under the pale moonlight, gazing at the thorny open tunnel, and taking a deep breath.

"Old Man Hook, what exactly did he do back then...?"

…………

A wanderer will wander for life.

Little Hook once stole a decent set of clothes and came to the police station claiming to be a lost child.

Naturally, his vague descriptions made it impossible for him to find any relatives, so he was naturally placed in a welfare home.

All of this was part of his plan.

It wasn't until he learned the concept of "home" in literacy class that he felt a sense of unfamiliarity. Other abandoned children said that their earliest memories were of home. Children who grew up in orphanages said that this was their home.

But young Hook couldn't understand. In his memory, was the filthy, chaotic alleyway of the slum home? Was this place, where so many children had died under false pretenses and cruelty, home?

So, during a typhoid outbreak, little Hook escaped from there amidst the chaos.

My memories after that are all jumbled up. Was I first sold to the mine by human traffickers, or was I tricked into the mine by that bastard?

Anyway, by the time he came to his senses, he was already sweating profusely in the Trust Group's mine, surrounded by these insignificant adults.

Antonio always bullied him, and when he couldn't win an argument, he would beat him up to vent his anger. But if any outsider bullied him, he would fly into a rage and fight back against everyone.

Dolanco always did his job at a leisurely pace, ignoring what was happening around him. But when he saw young Hook struggling to swing his pickaxe, he smashed his own pickaxe and made a smaller one. He mined for two days, his hands covered in blood, to do so.

Browning was a cowardly and honest man who dared not offend anyone. It was said that he surrendered on the battlefield without firing a single shot and was subsequently sold into the mines. But whenever Hooker went down the mine in the same shift as Browning, he would find that his ore basket had quietly been filled with extra ore.

Smuggler Kai joined the group midway through his journey. Originally from the sea, he suffered from severe acclimatization problems from his first day at the mine, vomiting and having diarrhea, becoming almost emaciated. But he persevered and joined this scumbag gang. Using his cunning methods, he would occasionally procure contraband such as cheap cigarettes and coarsely filtered beer for everyone.

But Old Yorke is not included in this category.

This old man joined the team the latest, but he eventually gained everyone's unanimous approval and became the team leader.

This person is clearly just a liar!

The way he spoke in a low voice was like a drug peddler selling illegal drugs on Rat Street. And the way he passionately formulated his plan was like a teacher in an orphanage luring a little boy into a room.

Therefore, Hooker Jr. did not believe a word he said.

Whether it was the plan to escape the mines, the blueprint for overseas expansion, or the brilliant achievements in Mineral Town, he always coldly observed Old Yorkson's every move, using the most vicious words to undermine everything. Even when his companions were thrilled by one victory after another, he stubbornly held fast to the fortress called prejudice, refusing to yield an inch.

This dedication has lasted for decades, during which my hair has turned gray and my skin has become covered with wrinkles.