Armed Train in the Apocalypse

”Bang bang bang!”

Four or five nearby fern plants exploded again.

Everyone secretly thought, this is bad.

Suddenly a hand appeared in front of them, then plucked the leaves flying in midair, as if those leaves had grown there in advance just waiting for him to pick them.

The group blanked out for a second, then saw a tall figure already standing before them, a few gleaming crystals hidden in his black long hair.

Liu Zi straightened up with a jolt. ”Conductor.”

”Mm.”

Su Huan responded, then opened his mouth and took a bite of the leaf in his hand. His sharp teeth and the leaf produced a teeth-grinding metallic scraping sound.

”Strange taste, but non-toxic.”

Su Huan tossed away the leaf that still bore his bite marks and said calmly.

Liu Zi and the others were stunned, not knowing what to say. It was then they noticed that the volley of leaves had somehow already fallen to the ground, and the surrounding mutant plants had gone quiet, as if the moment the Conductor appeared, the mutated plants in this entire area had all fallen into slumber.

What was even more chilling was that even the dense fog around them seemed faintly to be dispersing.

”Don’t step outside the area covered by the train. Once you’re done collecting, get back on board.”

After giving his instructions, Su Huan walked into the jungle, his pitch-black eyes gleaming with curiosity.

Wherever he passed, all the mobile evolved plants tried to retreat, assuming a humble, crawling posture. A few snakes, ants, and mosquitoes also emerged from hiding, fleeing farther away.

The ground was left completely empty, deathly still like an ordinary park before the apocalypse.

Su Huan ignored their reaction and walked on in the direction his perception indicated.

A rustling sound suddenly arose by his ear. He instinctively extended his fingers, hesitated, then drew them back again with a soft sigh. A stream of dim blue light spread out from under his feet, and before long crackling explosions sounded from deep within the Plant Zone.

He’d been a bit slow, but the effect was the same.

Su Huan walked up to a patch of humus and fallen leaves, waved casually, and a large swath of leaves was flung aside, revealing a bizarre creature over three meters long beneath.

At first glance it looked like a centipede, but its legs were much longer than its body, and on its head was a face disturbingly similar to a human expression. Even he felt his sanity slip a little at the sight.

It should be some evolved insect like a house centipede.

He had no idea how it had evolved into such a monstrosity, and there were quite a few of them. If he hadn’t come down, these things would already have begun hunting Liu Zi and the others.

Crackling explosions sounded ahead, and the bushes shook.

Clutching a Military Dagger, a mongoose with a vicious face burst out of the trees. Seeing Su Huan’s face, she clearly froze, her platinum-gold pupils tracking Su Huan’s position as her uncontrolled body flew right past him.

Before she even hit the ground, Su Huan had grabbed her and hauled her back.

The mongoose looked thoroughly dejected. Meow my ass, she was done for.

She’d been so focused on charging in that she’d forgotten her team.

She was the captain now, not just a squad scout!

”What happened, kitty?” Su Huan shook the mongoose in his hand.

Her shoulders slumped. Then something occurred to her and she struggled twice. ”I saw a tree.”

”There are trees everywhere here.”

”This one’s different. It talks. Should be the Traveler’s Tree from the files, but some of the features don’t match.”

”Oh?”

Su Huan stopped teasing her and set her down.

With his range of perception, there was nothing in this Plant Zone that could hide right under his eyelids.

He’d personally come down just to take a look at that tree with the strange energy signature.

He’d originally thought it was the Traveler’s Tree Lord Lian had mentioned. Looked like there was more to it.

”Let’s go take a look.”

Su Huan led the mongoose deeper into the woods.

Under the humus layer, a bunch of centipedes curled up like balls of yarn were dragged away by vines.

As they walked, Su Huan unexpectedly saw sunlight—a rarity. Only a few very faint beams, spilling down through the massive banyan canopy ahead and casting mottled patches of light on the twisted trunk.

Aerial roots hung down from midair, some as thick as an adult’s waist, others as thin as a finger.

The air carried a sickly sweet metallic tang.

On the main trunk five meters above the ground, the bark had naturally split open and proliferated, forming a half-relief outline resembling a female torso. There were no facial details, only two sunken eye sockets and a slightly parted mouth.

A solemn, slow female voice appeared in both their minds.

”Outsiders, who are you?”

At first glance it matched the Traveler’s Tree appearance described by Donghuang Heavy Industry quite well.

”Isn’t this just the Traveler’s Tree? What’s wrong with it?”

The corners of Su Huan’s mouth lifted. In his pitch-black eyes two utterly different worlds appeared: in a vast, shadowy space, seven or eight thick banyans were twisted together, black viscous liquid flowing down their bark. Beneath, the bark was covered in vein-like raised patterns, pulsing rhythmically.

The surrounding aerial roots had hundreds of various corpses hanging from them—some animal, some human, and some neither one nor the other.

All of them had been drained into bare skeletons.

And those aerial roots were hollow inside, each one containing a centipede-like creature extending its antennae. The largest of them was sprawled on the trunk, staring at the two of them with twisted greed, while the surrounding aerial roots had silently crept right up to their feet!

”Something’s off. The wind’s wrong, the smell’s wrong, everything’s wrong...”

The mongoose said warily, the fine fur on her face already standing on end. Her five fingers clenched and unclenched around the Military Dagger.

”And the baleful aura here is very heavy!”

Su Huan suddenly remembered the mongoose’s Tier Two skills: ”Deterrence,” ”Hidden Wind,” and ”Solemn Slaughter.”

”Deterrence” pushed an Evolver’s aura to the limit. Even someone stronger than her would be startled if caught off guard.

It counted as a combat skill.

”Hidden Wind” not only let her merge into the wind, it also carried the meaning of hiding one’s edge. It could retract killing intent and presence, like a cat or tiger before a hunt.

The last one, ”Solemn Slaughter,” was a bit uncanny. As Su Huan understood it, it restrained certain kinds of negative Energy.

So even if she couldn’t see it, the mongoose could still sense the abnormality here through her various keen senses, though a trace of confusion kept flickering through her eyes.

If she could advance to Tier Three, besides the god-tier skill ”Nine Lives,” she’d gain another Ability called ”Pierce Illusion,” which would let her instantly break free of illusions and see the scene before her as it truly was.

As for Su Huan, what he saw was only Energy.

The more fundamental level.

This bizarre banyan held a lot of Energy that didn’t belong to it, like several yolks crammed into one egg. That was why Su Huan could sense the obvious anomaly and come over.

Otherwise an Evolutionary Life that was only Tier One would have been ignored by him outright.

”What are you supposed to be?”

The banyan clearly felt some dread toward him, and Su Huan simply played along, probing for more information.

”Nothing more than a failure who has stepped once again onto the road of evolution.”

The banyan spoke slowly, its tone bearing the vicissitudes of a sage.

”Knows quite a bit,” Su Huan thought, then continued aloud, ”What do you mean, a failure?”

”Tens of thousands of years ago, countless Lives stepped onto the path of evolution. Only you humans walked it to the end and became the lords of the world. As failures, our consciousnesses are trapped in the chaos, needing hundreds of years just to piece together a single thought. Yet you humans can learn to desire in mere infancy...”

The banyan was like an old man steeped in time, recounting a grand history.

The aerial roots around them grew more and more agitated. Horrific centipede-creatures converged from all directions, their antennae almost poking into the two’s faces.

The mongoose’s platinum-gold pupils shrank now and then, a clear flicker of impatience in them.

As for Su Huan, a gentle smile never left his face, though inside he was already a forest of blades.

If he hadn’t met Lord Lian, hadn’t seen those pale demons and the like, he might well have believed this banyan’s spiel about ”evolution.”

That giant to the west, the pale demons across the ocean, and the eight-horned figure he’d seen on the throne—none of them could be explained by mere evolution.

They were clearly Outsiders!

As for this old tree, who knew where it had picked up that half-baked story to try and con him!

”Nice story you made up. Shame I hate stories the most.”

The aged voice paused. ”What?”

A streak of ghostly blue lightning lit up the entire dense forest, casting a grotesque scene onto the thick fog.

From all directions, grotesque forms bristling with tendrils hurled themselves madly at the two human figures standing at the very center.