Chapter 300 - 287: Opportunity
A while later.
Walking in the middle of the group, Qin Yi frowned slightly as she surveyed the surrounding plants.
Unable to resist, she released a wisp of her ability.
Beside her, Qin Shi noticed her sister’s strange expression. She tilted her head and asked, "What’s wrong?"
Qin Yi frowned slightly. "The plants here feel a bit strange."
Zhang Wen, walking behind her, asked, "What’s strange about them?"
Qin Yi released her ability and focused for a moment before answering. "I can’t sense their auras."
"Are you saying these plants are all dead? That’s impossible." Zhang Wen glanced at the towering trees and lush water-reeds. "Even through all this white mist, you can still see hints of vibrant green. There’s no way they’re dead."
Hearing this, Qi Xiang, who was at the front, suddenly found the forest eerie.
She instinctively took a step forward, pressing close behind Gu Xi.
In doing so, she accidentally stepped on the Mutated Rat King’s tail.
The Mutated Rat King: "SQUEAK!" ’Dammit, a sneak attack!’
Qi Xiang silently moved her foot.
"Gu Xi..." She suddenly felt a pang of unease. ’I have this feeling... that something in the woods is watching us.’
Gu Xi turned back to remind everyone, "As long as you stay on the path, you’ll be fine." The reason Qin Yi couldn’t sense the plants’ auras was that a gluttonous creature had parasitized them, devouring their internal energy.
But this area was strange. Another kind of energy, similar to radiation, was also present, continuously nourishing the plants here.
So, even though their energy had been devoured, they maintained their original appearance thanks to this strange equilibrium.
But Gu Xi guessed that this balance would soon be broken. When that happened, only two fates awaited these plants: death or evolution.
「Half an hour later.」
Gu Xi, who was leading the group, suddenly stopped. Ye Junhan glanced back; the path they had taken was no longer visible.
Gu Xi estimated their location. They had to be on what was the reservoir dam before the apocalypse. Straight ahead was the reservoir itself.
Qi Xiang frowned, looking down at her protective suit. The air here was heavy with moisture. They hadn’t been in the woods for long, yet large droplets had already condensed on her clothes. The slightest movement sent them trickling down in rivulets.
"Miss Qi, that’s... a bit extreme," Zhang Wen said, glancing at her clothes before looking down at his own. He suddenly noticed that the moisture in the air seemed to have a special fondness for Qi Xiang, scrambling to condense on her.
’How weird.’
The others noticed it too.
Qin Yi considered this for a moment before hazarding a guess. "Maybe it’s because Qi Xiang merged with that plant’s root system? Perhaps she’s taken on some plant-like traits?"
Zhang Wen chuckled. "What kind of traits?" ’The ability to collect dew?’
’Now that’s a useful skill.’
Qi Xiang shot him a glare and ignored him. She looked up at Gu Xi. "Gu Xi, what are you...?" ’...looking at?’ she wondered.
Gu Xi waved her hand forward, and the white, moisture-laden miasma ahead suddenly parted like a receding tide.
Qi Xiang followed Gu Xi’s line of sight and was struck speechless by the view.
Not far ahead lay a gigantic vine covered in small, colorful flowers. It stretched out from an unknown point, its end out of sight.
It was the first time Qi Xiang had ever seen such a plant.
Its main stem was thick and sturdy, a pure, brilliant green, completely unlike the mutated wild plants outside. It looked incredibly vibrant in the ethereal mist.
"Look, underneath it." Qin Yi suddenly pointed to the base of the vine, her voice a mix of shock and doubt. "Are those... mushrooms?"
"They look a bit like mushrooms, but mushrooms don’t grow in water, do they?" Zhang Wen said, staring at the shimmering surface of the water beneath the vine.
Qin Shi retracted her senses, frowning. "The water itself isn’t deep, but what’s underneath—all those plant roots and sludge—goes down a long, long way."
She also sensed something else in the underwater muck. She had just tried to use her ability to solidify the sludge into hard earth, but it didn’t work at all.
That meant they had no way to cross this swamp and reach the center of the reservoir.
What’s more, she had sensed it carefully: her ability wasn’t being devoured. It was as if... the sludge was completely immune to her power.
Qin Shi had never encountered such a situation before.
After a moment’s thought, she walked over to Lin Yuan. "You try. See if you can separate the water from the sludge."
"Alright, I’ll give it a shot." Lin Yuan held his breath and focused, using his ability to try and separate the water from the muck.
But he soon discovered his efforts were futile. The moment he separated the water from the muck, the interwoven plant roots supplied the surrounding soil with even more moisture.
The plant roots were impossibly dense, woven together into a web that occupied the entire subterranean region. There were so many they were countless; never mind one Lin Yuan, even a hundred of him would be no match for them.
Lin Yuan turned and shook his head at the others. "It’s no use." ’It feels like...’ he thought, ’...the plants and the sludge have formed some kind of defensive pact.’
This was the power of nature itself, something far beyond human ability.
At that moment, Ye Junhan stepped forward, turning to Gu Xi. "Eighteen years ago, when the military was first conducting clearing operations near here, they discovered an anomaly and subjected this area to widespread, concentrated fire..."
But the results were poor. Later, someone else intervened, and the whole affair was eventually dropped.
Gu Xi shrewdly seized on the key point. "Did they use nuclear weapons?"
Ye Junhan’s gaze fell on the giant vine ahead. "There’s no military record of it."
’So they did.’
Gu Xi understood.
She remembered it well. A few years after the zombie virus outbreak, mutated flora, fauna, and zombies began evolving at an incredible rate. Back then, the only conventional weapons capable of dealing effective damage to High-level Zombies and mutant plants were nukes.
But the long-term consequences for the human habitat were clearly something humanity couldn’t bear.
But at the time, humanity had been pushed to a point where they could no longer afford to worry about such things.
Gu Xi remembered that many people back then had advocated for the use of nuclear weapons.
’...If we can’t survive today, what’s the point of worrying about tomorrow? We have to deal with the here and now, don’t we?’
Similar arguments became more and more common. The plight of human survivors at the time was truly dire, their living space shrinking by the day. After much deliberation, the authorities did launch a few small-scale nuclear warheads against a zombie horde.
The results were remarkable. A single warhead could clear an entire city of zombies.
But people quickly discovered that the nuclear radiation stimulated mutant plants, causing them to grow even more profusely. The city that had been cleared by a single bomb was completely transformed into a paradise for high-level mutant plants within just a few months.
After that, humans could never again set foot in those places.
Following that, opposition to the use of nuclear bombs grew.
Furthermore, the Abnormal Ability Research Institute soon succeeded in developing ability-based weaponry, which was effective against mutated flora, fauna, and zombies.
Only then were the voices advocating for the use of nuclear weapons completely silenced.
Gu Xi had never expected that nuclear weapons, banned for so long, would be used again by the military more than a decade after the zombie virus had vanished.
Clearly, the military must have detected something to have made that decision.
But for the matter to have been dropped in the end... ’It probably wasn’t as simple as just human interference.’
Gu Xi suspected that perhaps the existence of the Land of Death today was also due to that nuclear warhead from long ago.
"I want to stay here for a few days," Gu Xi said suddenly.
’For one thing, Ya Bao and that other creature will need a few more days to completely devour the miasma in this area. For another, this is a rare opportunity.’
’An opportunity that might allow my ability to finally break through its current threshold.’