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

Staying in a cave during an earthquake is unwise, so the two quickly ran out and surveyed their surroundings. Harris recalled that Mount Mads had never experienced such a severe geological disaster before, and the timing was so coincidental that there must be some special factor at play.

“Earthquake? No way.” Gotz shook his head firmly. His understanding of this mountain was far beyond that of ordinary people. The mysterious spatial distortion point underground caused the geological structure to be exceptionally stable. Even the bombardment of Harris’s space-based weapons would not have reached the town.

"What about the previous mountain accident...?"

After hesitating for a long time, Harris finally asked about the taboo subject that Gotz had long avoided.

"That's not a geological disaster..."

Gotz's expression darkened as he thought of his deceased wife and daughter. But only he knew what lay behind that mountain disaster.

As we stepped out of the cave, the view opened up before us. The morning glow had already risen, and a pale white light was appearing on the horizon. It was past midnight, and dawn was approaching.

But in the dim light, both Gotz and Harris saw that the cliff next to the hot spring house had completely collapsed, and a person was standing there blankly, with the ground around him shattered, as if something had been deeply smashed into the ground.

"Marcus, is that you? What are you doing there?" Harris looked at the person opposite him in surprise. The slightly thin figure was me, the one who had taken them to the cave and then left alone.

"I'm planting trees, can't you tell?" I replied lazily.

"Planting a tree?" Gotz did see a tall tree standing in the middle of the broken ground, but the tree was clearly stuck upside down in the ground. The broken roots were exposed to the air, and the lush branches and leaves were buried deep in the ground. How could anyone tell that a tree had been planted?

"You're going in the wrong direction, aren't you?" Harris hesitated for a long time, but still took on the responsibility of making sarcastic remarks.

"Don't panic, it's just a technical adjustment."

"It's obvious that not a single part of it, including the direction, is correct!"

"It's just a slight misjudgment." Harris's thinking is so clear, has he finally figured it out?

"Don't just look at the tree. Look at the hole I dug, isn't it professional?" I boasted to them. "Do you believe I can uproot this tree with one hand and then restore this collapsed cliff?"

"I don't believe it." Harris and Gotz shook their heads in unison, expressing their denial.

"Don't believe me? If you don't believe me, then hurry up and help me up! Do you want me to grow together with the tree?"

I roared at the two of them.

These two people have absolutely no sense of propriety!

Am I just chatting with them because I'm bored?

If I hadn't pulled all my muscles and couldn't walk on my own and could only stand by holding onto a tree, would I have needed to keep such a distance and tease them?

Upon hearing this, Gotz immediately put Harris down and came over to help me, but as soon as he stepped onto the broken ground around me, he sensed something was clearly wrong.

Countless cracks appeared on the ground, which not only shattered the soil but also shattered the rocks. The ground felt soft and spongy underfoot, indicating that the soil beneath had been reduced to dust by the immense force. It was only because the soil from the collapsed cliff top covered it that it appeared no different from the surrounding area.

The spot where the upside-down tree stood was the very pool that had been filled in by miners years ago. Perhaps the massive impact had cleared the blockage in the underground spring, and clear spring water was now slowly seeping out, forming a shallow pool.

"You were the one who caused that earthquake?" Gotz's eyes widened as he couldn't help but voice his bold guess to me.

My bones and muscles felt like they were shattered. I struggled to look up at the bright light in the sky and said lazily.

"I won't come again next time; I still have a lot of farm work to do. Fortunately, dawn came, and everything was over."

Chapter 201 Three Realities

At the Mineral Town Hospital, after Dr. Dort gave us a consultation, he closed the door and left so as not to disturb the patients' rest.

The doctor stated that these individuals suffered severe external injuries, including internal organ displacement and concussion. However, the hospital was severely lacking in medications for these injuries, and recovery would primarily depend on the body's natural healing processes; therefore, adequate rest was essential.

But for us, the events of last night far exceeded our expectations, with all sorts of bizarre and unusual events unfolding one after another. As witnesses, we simply couldn't calm down and sleep; our minds were filled with the desire to have a proper conversation.

Gray lay on the bed to my left, wrapped up like a mummy, with severe burns visible through the few patches of skin that were exposed. Bandages stretched taut across his face, making his voice stiff and strained: "Boss, did you really kill that monster?!"

I glared at him and scolded, "What monster? You should call him Uncle Doranco." Then I glanced at the embarrassed-looking Gotz, "Right, Gotz?"

“…You can call me whatever you want,” Gotz said hesitantly, then asked with concern, “Is Father really dead?”

I shook my head: "Although I broke your father's central axis, this monster's vitality is astonishingly tenacious, and it escaped using only its two hands. Your wish for your father to die has not been fulfilled."

"Stop talking... You used three different names for me in one sentence, it feels like you're even insulting me..." Gotz covered his face helplessly.

He had long since recovered and was able to follow my instructions to go up the mountain, retrieve the unconscious Gray, and take him to the hospital together.

Gotz is able to lie here openly thanks to his quick thinking in grabbing his left arm with his right hand and dislocating it.

"What will happen next? Won't they come out again?" Gray said with lingering fear, still very wary of the Deep Ones' lethality.

I looked out the window at the sky, where warm sunlight streamed into the room, slanting across the pure white mattress. Fine dust particles shimmered in the light, creating a dreamlike scene.

"No, you can go to the mine in the center of the lake and take a look. It's just an ordinary mine now. In the future, apart from the abundant mineral resources, nothing terrible will be mined out again."

"How is this possible?!" Gotz exclaimed, his eyes wide with disbelief. "What's inside is..."

Gots stopped halfway through his sentence, not daring to reveal any more information about the "final catastrophe" to us; this sense of secrecy had been ingrained in his very being for many years.

"Whatever was there, it's gone. Your father ran into the hot spring mine and was taken away from this world with it, never to return. Otherwise, why do you think I let it run into the mine? Did you really think I couldn't kill it?"

I lay on the bed like a corpse, feeling completely listless and unable to muster any energy for anything. But when I saw Gotz's tense yet expectant expression, like seeing a student waiting for exam results, I felt a little sorry for the man and said a few more words.

"Do you remember Old Man Hook's plan?"

“That plan… failed…” Gotz’s eyes flashed with the image of the stubborn and arrogant old man, and he recalled his aged figure boarding a boat at dusk, abandoning the ranch he had run for half his life, leaving the town he had stayed in for many years, and his dejected figure as he left.

"Old Man Hook failed back then. But last night, Old Man Hook truly succeeded. He pried up the foundation that terrifying being anchored to this world and threw it into an abyss from which they would never meet again."

Gotz was momentarily speechless, somewhat swayed by my confident words, but years of experience had already cast a shadow over his heart, making it not so easy for him to feel at ease.

"Don't believe me?" I smiled. "Then go and see for yourself. Go back to the Mads Mountains, which you know so well. Walk along every familiar mountain path and look at every dark corner. See that mine, the walls without flesh and blood, the disillusioned world. You can also look for the eerie shadows that used to terrify you, to see if they still exist in this world."

"I believe that in the future, Mount Madras will be a paradise for climbers and a haven for leisure seekers. You have been burdened by the curse for too long, and now you can finally let it go completely."

Gotz's eyes suddenly turned bloodshot, and his face became frighteningly gloomy, like a wild beast ready to devour its prey. If it weren't for the incredibly vivid expression on his face, I would have suspected that he was about to turn into a giant seafood, and then Gray and I would have torn him apart.

"Dong dong dong."

A series of light knocks sounded, and Ellie, dressed in a nurse's uniform, walked in from outside the ward, carrying a tray of milk and bread. She said with a hint of dissatisfaction, "I told you all to rest properly, why are you still chatting here?"

I quickly put on an innocent expression, looked at the mummy-like Gray, and said, "It's all Gray's fault for talking to me!"

Gray, wrapped in layers of clothing, trembled slightly and looked at me with a complex expression that conveyed a very clear meaning: I only said two sentences from beginning to end, boss, don't you feel any guilt at all about shifting the blame?! Doesn't your conscience hurt?!

I replied with my eyes: No, I even felt a little amused.

"Huh? I remember Dr. Dort said that Gotz was also hospitalized, so why is there no one in his bed?" Ellie said to me while setting out breakfast.

I pretended to be innocent and said, "Dr. Dort must have taken too much medicine and misremembered, right? Gotz was admitted to the hospital the day before yesterday, and today it's just the two of us."

"Really?" Ellie looked at him doubtfully, glancing at the open window. She didn't press the matter, told us to get some rest, and left the ward.

Gray and I held our breath for a long time, listening to her footsteps gradually fade into the distance until we could no longer hear them, before we finally felt relieved.

After a moment of silence, Gray asked first, "Boss, where was Gots going when he ran out just now?"

I said calmly, "Of course Madsshan will confirm the situation. He won't believe it easily until he sees it with his own eyes. Let him go, and let Harris go if he wants to. It's their right."

Gray was also full of doubts. Having entered and exited the scene midway, he only had a superficial understanding of many things. However, he participated in the whole melee out of trust in me.

But he wasn't the type to pry, so he finally managed to squeeze out one question: "So... Boss... what you just told him was all true, right?"

I nodded, said nothing more, and looked up at the bright sunshine. I saw a butterfly flying joyfully into the sky, dancing gracefully in the clean air, tracing beautiful curves. But not long after, a swallow, eager to feed its chicks, snatched the butterfly in its beak and flew back to its nest.

The butterfly's joy is real, the swallow's eagerness is real, and the cruelty between them is real.

What I said to Gotz was true, of course, and what I didn't say was also true.

So let some things remain in the third kind of truth, between the truth and the truth.

A gentle breeze brushed against my sleeve. Through the opening, I could see a strange mark on my arm, serenely etched beneath my skin, telling a story unknown to anyone else.

Chapter 202 Aren't you going to say anything?

Let's rewind to the moment I fell off the cliff.

This cliff is less than ten meters high and is a relatively gentle cliff face in the Mads region. It is a clay cliff that was formed by chance due to geological activity.

However, during my uprooting of the tree, the roots were forcibly torn apart, inadvertently creating a fracture at the junction with the cliff. Ultimately, this fracture was completely crushed during the second blow, causing a minor landslide.

I relentlessly pursued it in mid-air, using the length of the tree trunk to firmly lock the Deep One within my attack range. The moment I landed, the powerful kinetic energy, combined with the full force of the charged mode, slammed into the ground, striking the Deep One squarely in the chest!

The immense power poured recklessly onto the monster, then penetrated its body and struck the thick ground, triggering a small-scale geological disaster.

All I could hear were the monster's wails mixed with a jumble of noises, all swirling around my ears. Although the trees cushioned the fall, most of the force directly impacted my body. An ordinary person striking a rock with a hammer would suffer a numbing, cracked arm and hand; in severe cases, it could even lead to muscle tears and internal organ damage.

My act of challenging the Earth with a tree is truly a unique example of courting death.

"System notification: The colonist's body has been severely damaged. Counterattack mode deactivated, charge mode deactivated."

The system's voice rang in my ears instantly, and then I felt my body go limp, almost collapsing to the ground.

The surrounding fragmented ground and huge crater both testify to the fact that I have done something extraordinary.

Just as I was checking my character attributes and seeing where I was injured, a strange sensation came from beneath my feet.

The Deep One, covered in wounds, actually survived my fatal blow and struggled to escape from the pit!

The Deep One who survived such a brutal battle was covered in wounds, large and small. One of his eyes had been blown out, and his arm bones were broken. He could only crawl on the ground with difficulty using his elbows.

The most serious damage was to his lower body. His once strong and powerful lower limbs, with his long vertebrae broken by the tree trunk, showed no signs of recovery. His lower body limbs dragged on the ground like a tattered sack, his legs curled up limply, resembling a pitiful person who had been paralyzed from the waist down for many years.

But the will to survive drove the Deep One to climb out of the pit. No matter how much dirt it ate or how many times it fell, it resolutely crawled toward the mine behind the hot spring house. In its heart, it decided to stay away from these crazy and irrational humans!

I could almost see its highly anthropomorphic face saying to me, "You didn't expect this, did you, Marcus? This is my escape route!"

I gripped the tree trunk with my remaining left arm and slowly stood up, wanting to continue the pursuit, but my body wouldn't obey me at all. The strength I had managed to gather was quickly dissipated by my misaligned muscles and bones.

"Damn it, was this part of your plan? If Gray were still here..."

I watched in despair as my efforts were about to fail, and I was about to let the island's greatest enemy escape. Suddenly, a person emerged from the cave and gently placed a hand on the Deep One's ugly head, rendering it immobile.

A sinister smile gradually emerged from the cave. This person was dressed in a priest's robe, holding a uniquely shaped cross in his hand. He supported the Deep One's head with one hand and placed the cross on the top of the Deep One's skull with the other.

The enormous monster seemed to be hypnotized, instantly collapsing to the ground with a faint breathing sound, and then remained motionless.

"Thanks to you, Marcus. Otherwise, I don't know how I would have ended up like this."

Father Carter's unscrupulous smile was still so familiar, his lazy demeanor infuriating. My last impression of him was still that stumbling block on my life's path; how did he suddenly transform into a wise and sage-like figure?

"Father, what are you doing here!"

I stared at this person in surprise, the question blurting out, but I immediately regretted it. Asking so many questions in this situation would most likely lead to my downfall because of the argument that "you know too much."

So I immediately added, "It's okay if you can't tell me. You guys are busy, I'll go now."