The dawn on the north slope brought no light, only a thicker, leaden-gray haze.
Sheriff Brody stood fifty yards from the abandoned greenhouse, his face so grim it seemed to drip water. Behind him, six fully armed officers, riot shields in hand and heavy filter-type gas masks slung across their waists, stood. This kind of setup was unprecedented in Graycliff's history; it looked less like a search of a homeless woman's dwelling and more like a raid on some secret chemical plant.
"Sheriff, Hank's over there," Falkin pointed to the side.
The search and rescue dog that had been foaming at the mouth last night had been carried away, leaving behind a pool of glaringly yellowish-green vomit. Hank, the team leader, squatted on the muddy ground, pointing to the seemingly ordinary ferns in front of the greenhouse door, his voice hoarse: "Don't step on those leaves, Brody. The backs of those leaves are coated with a sticky mycelial extract. If your skin comes into contact with it, your central nervous system will feel like it's been burned within half an hour. That woman… she's turned this whole forest into her trap." Brody stroked Julian's diary in his pocket, his only compass. The diary recorded Julian's repeated attempts to send people to "clean up" the place, all to no avail. Now, the law had become the sharpest axe.
"Put on gas masks," Brody ordered, his voice muffled and cold behind the rubber masks. "Break down. Quickly, don't give the fungal spores time to spread." Six officers quickly advanced. Their heavy military boots creaked and groaned on the dark red mud. The red mud, thick and sticky like blood after the rain, clung tightly to everyone's shoes, as if the land itself was trying to hold back these uninvited guests.
"Bang!" With a deafening crash, the greenhouse door, barely held together by rotting redwood and rusty nails, was smashed to pieces by Hank's battering ram.
In that instant, the air, accumulated over decades within the greenhouse and brimming with countless highly toxic spores and the stench of decay, roared out like a visible gray hurricane. Even through his gas mask, Brody felt a physiological shiver.
"Go in!" Beams of flashlights crisscrossed into the darkness. This was no longer the sacred laboratory Rowan had known; to the police, it was a monstrous nest strewn with death bait.
The sight inside the greenhouse made everyone gasp.
Hundreds upon hundreds of glass jars were neatly arranged on a long, blackened wooden table, like a silent, ghostly army awaiting inspection. Some jars contained shriveled, human-shaped rootstocks; others teemed with writhing, purple, slimy mycelia; and still others were sealed with a powder that shimmered with an eerie phosphorescence.
"Good heavens…is she trying to poison the whole town?" Fakin cried out in terror. In extreme tension, his hands trembled uncontrollably, and his baton accidentally grazed the corner of the table.
"Clang!" A glass jar labeled "1982 · North Slope Rust Mud Extraction" shattered on the floor.
Dark red liquid instantly splattered all over Fakin's trousers, and a stench reminiscent of an old, rotting corpse mixed with concentrated sulfuric acid exploded in the enclosed space.
"Don't move! Don't touch those specimens!" Brody roared, but it was too late.
Panic spread like wildfire among the officers. In this unfamiliar environment, filled with the unnatural, their professional ethics were shattered by primal fear. A police officer, dodging the liquid beneath his feet, knocked over an entire row of shelves.
A series of shattering sounds echoed through the greenhouse. The natural crystals Rowan had spent fourteen years collecting from every frost and lightning strike, the precise toxicological balance, were all destroyed in the brutal human search. Multicolored dust danced wildly in the beams of flashlights, like a belated, toxic sacrifice.
"Sheriff! Look here!" Hank stood in the deepest shadow of the greenhouse, his voice brimming with the excitement of finding prey.
Brody walked over, stepping over shards of glass. In the far corner of the greenhouse, near a giant Venus flytrap, lay some deliberately folded fabric.
With his latex-gloved hands, he slowly lifted the top layers of withered grass.
A dark blue, pure wool baseball jacket bearing the Carter Lumber Mill logo was revealed.
The jacket was covered in mud, with obvious tears at the collar, and most glaringly, a dried, hardened dark brown bloodstain in the left pocket.
"It's Julian Carter's jacket," Brody muttered to himself, his voice cold and devoid of warmth.
At this moment, the logic closed.
According to Julian's diary, he entered the north slope on October 13th to "clear obstacles"; according to the jacket found at the scene, he did indeed enter the greenhouse and a physical altercation occurred. In legal terms, this was "ironclad evidence." The man who had laughed maniacally and fallen to his death in the mine now had a clear cause of death—lured and murdered by the owner of this greenhouse.
"Put it in an evidence bag," Brody ordered.
But he didn't look at the jacket; his gaze fell on a broken jar filled with dried blue flower petals. The petals were scattered in the red soil, rapidly withering and turning black.
It was the "Blue Queen" that Rowan had used to exchange for antibiotics in 1985. Brody suddenly felt a strange sense of absurdity. In this room filled with "murder evidence," he witnessed how an exiled soul attempted to construct her own logic. Every jar of fungus, every herb, was, in fact, her defense against this unjust world. And now, this defense had been utterly crushed by these self-proclaimed righteous people with their boots and battering rams.
"Sheriff, we still haven't found the woman," Falkin approached, his trousers still emitting wisps of white smoke, his voice tinged with lingering fear. "We've searched the entire greenhouse, but apart from this garment, there's not a soul in sight. Did she escape into the depths of the forest?"
Brody stepped out of the greenhouse and removed his sweltering gas mask.
The cold morning rain lashed his face, slightly clearing his head. He looked back at the dilapidated greenhouse, which now resembled the shell of a giant, gutted insect.
"She didn't escape," Brody said, gazing at the distant redwood forest shrouded in mist.
He knew Rowan was there. High above the canopy, thousands of feet above the trees, she looked down upon them, the intruders, with eyes that seemed to see nothing but death. For her, the stolen coat, the smashed specimen—perhaps not a failure, but a complete rupture.
"Sheriff, should we seal off the north slope?" Hank asked.
"You can't." Brody looked at the increasingly vibrant red mud beneath his feet, washed by the rain. "This forest is her body. You can seal off a woman's body, but you can't seal off the breath of a forest."
He touched the diary in his pocket again.
The diary was filled with details of how Julian premeditated Rowan's murder, while the bloodstained coat accused Rowan of killing Julian. The scales of justice swung violently at that moment, but Brody knew that the real trial never took place in a courtroom.
"Call to a halt." Brody waved his hand. "Take this coat. The forensic team needs to compare the bloodstains with the toxicity of those spores." The officers retreated with a sigh of relief.
As the last officer emerged from the greenhouse, the crumbling building let out its final, somber groan. A load-bearing pillar, weakened by decay at its base and the impact, finally snapped.
"Boom—" Most of the greenhouse roof collapsed, burying the remaining glass jars, the carefully cultivated poisonous plants, and Rowan's fourteen years of wilderness memories beneath the dark red soil of the north slope.
Brody didn't turn back.
But in his ears, he seemed to hear the ringing of the bell on that rainy night in 1979, and the faint yet resilient breathing of an eleven-year-old girl licking her wounds in the darkness.
Above the canopy, the wind howled, as if the entire forest was mourning the collapsed laboratory. And deep within the red mud, the shattered, poisonous spores seeped into the earth with the rainwater; they were not dead, but waiting, waiting for the next, even more powerful, natural immune response.