Chapter 28: Underground Oasis
Wood-type elemental abilities had a much stronger affinity than plant-based ones. Just as Yan Zhou’s earth-type ability could exert its greatest strength in the desert, Li Xiang’s wood-type ability had to be in a forest.
Following the direction Jiang Ning pointed, Li Xiang controlled his perception and probed deep into the cave.
The information that came back from his perception was very complex. Not only were there abundant wood elements inside, but there were also some spiritual fluctuations of living creatures mixed in.
“There are mutated beasts,” Li Xiang said.
Ke Lai and Jiang Ning looked at each other. The four of them braced themselves and advanced in the direction from which the perception had returned.
The cave was unusually quiet. The further they went in, the stronger this eerie atmosphere became. After half an hour, a few ‘drip, drop’ sounds suddenly came from the depths of the silent cave, much like the sound of water droplets falling from a high place into a pool.
The sound of their footsteps mixed with the sound of dripping water, pushing the surrounding atmosphere into a state of tension.
Jiang Ning stopped. The ground under her shoes suddenly transmitted a slight vibration.
“There’s something moving underground,” she said, looking at the ground.
Hearing this, Ke Lai and Li Xiang followed her line of sight and entered a state of alert. Their perceptions simultaneously penetrated the ground.
Strange.
Their perception couldn’t detect anything underground, as if it were shielded by a layer of fog.
Just as the two were about to expand their perception and probe the surroundings, a problem occurred. A sharp pain suddenly shot through their brains, and their psychic energy was then forcibly terminated.
Jiang Ning and Ji Fan stepped forward and supported the two of them.
At this moment, the thing hidden underground finally revealed itself. A thick white tree root shot out from below. The main root split into three lateral roots and attacked them.
Even though they were prepared, they hadn’t expected to be attacked by tree roots.
The large cave space was filled with white tree roots. The intertwined lateral roots were like a dense net.
Fortunately, Jiang Ning reacted quickly and took out a light blade from her back to block the first attack of the tree roots.
She stared intently at the suddenly appearing tree roots. She thought her previous judgment was wrong. These caves were not dug out by mutated beasts, but by mutated plants!
Jiang Ning’s brow furrowed. She had read the historical records of Planet M412. This was the first time a mutated plant had appeared on this planet.
“Run inside!” Jiang Ning said to everyone with a serious expression.
The mutated tree roots had already blocked the way they came.
The “Research on Mutated Creatures” stated that mutated plants were more difficult to deal with than mutated beasts because their root systems were more developed and spread throughout the underground world, making it difficult to eradicate them completely.
As the saying goes, wildfire cannot burn it all out; it grows again when the spring breeze blows.
As long as there was a single trace of a root system left, the mutated plant could make a comeback the following year.
“What the hell is this stuff?” Ji Fan was running at the front. He suddenly regretted why he had come in with these three.
The Whip Parasite had already given him a huge visual shock, and now he had encountered tree roots that moved like snakes.
Seriously, can’t we have some normal mutated beasts!
The giant mutated tree roots were still continuously splitting. The speed at which Jiang Ning and the other two were killing them gradually increased, but even so, it was far from matching its growth speed.
Jiang Ning rotated the handle on the body of her light blade, and the light blade instantly extended, becoming a double-headed blade.
She rotated the handle in the middle with one hand, and the double-headed light blade spun like a propeller. Wherever the sharp laser blade passed, the roots couldn’t get close.
This was the common form transformation of interstellar weapons. A normal light blade had three forms. Besides the normal form and the double-headed blade form, the blade could be folded, disassembled, and reassembled into a semi-circular curved blade for use.
“I thought this form was very useless. I didn’t expect it to be so useful at a critical moment. I’ve wronged the designer,” Ke Lai was still in the mood to joke.
She still remembered that when the double-headed blade form was released, the StarNet was full of curses for its designer.
Not only was it inconvenient to use, but it was also easy to hurt oneself.
Neither Jiang Ning nor Ke Lai’s abilities were combat-type. The remaining one was the half-baked Li Xiang, whose psychic energy had not yet recovered, and he had never systematically learned how to use his ability to attack.
Fortunately, this was only one of the branches of the mutated plant. Besides being able to split infinitely, its own rank was not high.
As long as they didn’t encounter the main body of the mutated tree root.
As they were thinking this, Ji Fan, who was running at the front, suddenly stopped.
“Ji Fan, what are you doing? Why did you suddenly stop?” Li Xiang was dealing with the tree roots chasing from behind with one hand while shouting at the front. He now just wanted to see how long these mutated tree roots could grow.
Ji Fan turned around, his mouth slightly agape, a look of disbelief on his face. His heart was beating violently. He slightly turned to the side and pointed behind him.
At the end of the cave, a huge cavernous space appeared. Light shone through the cracks in the rock at the top, casting rays of light on a small island in the center of the cave. In the center of the island was a huge ancient tree that shot straight up to the sky. The island was surrounded by a pool of clear blue spring water.
Many ferns grew in the cave, and the green, dense, and ubiquitous moss on the ground indicated that this was an underground oasis world that had never been set foot in.
Seeing the scene before them, everyone was like Ji Fan, unable to believe their eyes.
This was a contaminated zone on a contaminated planet, yet an oasis with such a complete ecosystem was preserved underground!
“What are you standing there for? Go down,” Jiang Ning pushed the few who were standing there in a daze and walked towards the oasis below. Only then did they react and look at the tree roots attacking them from behind.
The mutated tree roots stopped attacking after reaching the entrance of the cave and retreated back into the original cave, as if their purpose was to force them here.
“Is this the main body of the mutated tree?” Ke Lai looked at the tree in the middle thoughtfully.
The color at the bottom of the tree trunk was very inconsistent. Dark and light blue occupied the main part, while the remaining area was a gradient from earthy yellow to light green, like a giant, crouching mutated tree frog.
A faint sense of unease rose in Jiang Ning’s heart. The tree frog’s appearance was lifelike, and the two tree burls that served as its ‘eyes’ were closed. But Jiang Ning always had a feeling of being watched.
“Look there!” Li Xiang looked up and pointed to the top of the giant tree. “The top of this tree leads to the outside. We can get out from here.”
Everyone looked up. The place where one of the tree trunks extended was the location of the cave wall.
“But I haven’t caught a B-rank mutated beast yet,” Ke Lai said hesitantly, still thinking about her assessment.
Her perception had never been wrong, but after walking for so long, besides the low-level mutated tree roots she had encountered in the tunnel, there were no other traces of mutated beast activity.
Ke Lai released her psychic energy, and her perception once again spread around.
The mutated beast’s activity had disappeared as if out of thin air!
Ke Lai frowned and, not believing it, expanded the range of her perception again, but the result was the same.
Her perception could no longer detect anything around her.
A belated sense of fear and unease swept over her heart.
What was clearly a quiet and peaceful healing landscape now seemed extremely strange in their eyes.
“Why don’t we go up first? Maybe there’s a B-rank mutated beast outside the cave,” Ji Fan suggested with an awkward smile. Even if his reaction was slow, he had also sensed that something was wrong with this underground oasis.
This time, no one objected. Everyone tacitly agreed to leave first.
With Li Xiang in the lead, he took large strides, his shoes stepping into the water, and headed for the giant tree in the center of the island. Following closely behind were Ji Fan and Jiang Ning, with Ke Lai bringing up the rear.
This team order was the result of a unanimous agreement among the four.
Li Xiang was a wood-type ability user, so it was most appropriate for him to scout the way. Ke Lai was the strongest among the remaining three, so she took the initiative to be at the back and be responsible for their safety.
The four of them smoothly approached the island.
The trunk of the giant tree was not smooth; it was covered with large and small tree burls. The vertically cracked bark was either deep or shallow, sparse or dense.
The front of the tree frog at the base of the tree was slightly concave, and the layers of tree rings were like its wide-open mouth. The few of them took a look and quickly walked to the back.
“So fucking disgusting!” Li Xiang looked at the dense ‘fleshy bumps’ on the back of the tree frog with disgust. For a moment, he was somewhat unable to start.
“A tree burl is a tumor-like structure formed by disordered cell division caused by local over-nutrition after a tree has suffered physical damage,” Jiang Ning said with a blank expression, explaining to him the principle of tree burl formation.
“Of course I know,” Li Xiang met Jiang Ning’s gaze and took a deep breath.
Knowing the cause was one thing, but his body instinctively found it disgusting was another!
Under everyone’s watchful eyes, Li Xiang bit the bullet and climbed towards the largest tree burl he could reach. The sticky and moist feeling was transmitted to his brain through the touch of his hands.
Tsk, even more disgusting!
Not only was the visual effect nauseating, but even the touch was so bad.
“Can you do it or not? If not, let me go first?” Jiang Ning thought she was relieving Li Xiang’s psychological burden.
But in Li Xiang’s ears, he only felt that Jiang Ning was mocking him for being difficult again. The veins on his forehead throbbed. “Just shut up!”
“Oh,” Jiang Ning shut up.
Li Xiang held his breath and struggled to climb past the area with dense tree burls. He finally felt a slight sense of relief in his heart.
“You guys can come up now,” he waved to the few people below.
The three people at the bottom of the tree began to climb up one by one in the order they had first discussed.
When it was Ke Lai’s turn, a thick pink vine silently wrapped around her calf. The tip of the vine was hollow, and it was covered with a circle of sharp hooked teeth.
The vine dragged her downwards.
“Ah—”
Ke Lai lost her balance, and her hand holding the tree burl lost its grip. Her entire body was pulled down from the tree by the suddenly appearing pink vine.
Seeing this, Jiang Ning let go of her grip on the tree trunk. As she leaped down, she took out her light blade and plunged it into the vine.
The pink vine felt the sharp pain, and the vine wrapped around Ke Lai loosened.
She took the opportunity to carry Ke Lai and dodge to the side.
After steadying themselves, the two looked at the source of the pink vine.
It was the ‘mouth’ of the tree frog they had seen before!?
The two tree burls at the top of the tree rings, which served as eyes, had miraculously opened their eyes. Its ‘foreclaws’ moved, and it twisted its body slightly to the side, its dark eyes staring at the two on the ground without blinking.
The tree frog was connected to the tree itself. As it moved, the entire tree trunk trembled twice.
Li Xiang and Ji Fan, who were still on the tree, could only hug the tree trunk tightly to prevent themselves from falling.
The four of them felt their scalps tingle.
The giant ‘tree frog’ at the bottom of the tree had actually come to life.