Ch 11: TGCIR

Li Weilan sat up. The scene that greeted him in the room made him frown.

There were an old man and a young man who had just spoken. They were both as thin as skeletons, and from their clothes and emaciated appearance…were they researchers?

When they saw him wake up and open his eyes, both the old and young men seemed to be surprised, with the same look of astonishment on their faces.

Why were they surprised?

Li Weilan thought about it and guessed what had happened.

He had pretended to be nauseous earlier and held his breath when the green gas was sprayed. He didn’t inhale any of it. But if he had been affected by the pervasive smell of decay and relaxed his guard because he didn’t see any monsters on the second floor, would he have woken up now?

These two people looked like they had been here for a long time, living on what? He had heard that many ability users had gone missing in this supermarket. What role did they play in this process?

This dirty white robe stirred up Li Weilan’s darkest memories. He didn’t trust researchers.

The old man looked at him and saw that his eyes were clear and asked with a complicated expression of happiness and concern, “Young man, did you inhale the gas from the monster?”

Li Weilan didn’t answer. His clear eyes gradually faded away, replaced by fatigue, weakness, and exhaustion. His eyelashes fluttered slightly, and his gaze gradually became dull and blank. His lips moved and his voice was low and hoarse, “Where am I? What was that smell just now?”

“Teacher…” the younger voice whispered softly, “He doesn’t seem to be doing well.”

The older man didn’t rush to answer.

He observed Li Weilan for a while before saying cautiously, “You’re on the fourth floor. Speak a little softer, the monster is next door to us.” As he spoke, he gently pointed to the wall nearby.

Li Weilan’s face instantly showed fear: “What’s going on with me?”

“You probably inhaled the control gas from that creature,” the old man whispered, “the plant mutated. It was probably originally a carnivorous plant of the Nepenthes genus, but for some reason, it has now evolved to eat zombies, animals, and humans. Every time it eats, it can produce some control gas, which you probably inhaled.”

Shen Cheng looked at her own cub in front of the phone, clearly without any debuffs, and started to act fragile again. She didn’t quite understand what her cub was up to.

Without understanding the cub’s intentions, she couldn’t just disrupt his plan. As an ordinary person who thought her intelligence might not even match that of an AI, Shen Cheng just lightly picked up her cub’s slender fingers, even though she didn’t quite understand.

The little one’s head floated with a big question mark.

A confused look on his face.

Why is that person touching my hand?

Li Weilan’s heart trembled: he guessed that the person might still be around, but he never would have thought that the person’s way of saying “I’m still here, do whatever you want” would be to hook his fingers!

But for some reason, when he knew this, the few remaining worries in his heart disappeared, and instead a strange wave emerged.

Shen Cheng looked at him, clearly a tangled mess of emotions, but only showed a thoughtful and serious little expression. She also looked at the two people across from her with yellow symbols labeled “researcher”, and Shen Cheng couldn’t help but feel a bit strange. The group of ruthless little hooligans they encountered before were red and hostile, clearly unfriendly monsters. On the other hand, Xi Nan and their team started out friendly with blue, and later as teammates with green, even though they were holding knives at the beginning, they quickly turned enemies into friends.

This is the first time Shen Cheng has seen this yellow blood bar, and she’s a little curious: yellow? Is this the reason why her cub has been acting all along?

Just waiting for the plot to unfold on its own, Shen Cheng adjusted the camera to widen the shot a bit and looked around the floor to feel that her spirit had been contaminated.

Right next door to Li Weilan and the others, separated by a thin wall, countless swollen faces were stuck to the tree bark, like so many tumors that would make one develop trypophobia.

The tree was extremely huge, and veins on the trunk were bulging, expanding and contracting, causing the crown to break through the roof. The sunlight outside shone on the forest-green leaves, undulating in the sun. The trees that protruded from the walls outside Walmart were part of this strange tree. The faces on the trunk seemed to be sleeping with closed eyes and mouths, like warts growing on the tree.

“…” Ah ah ah! Shen Cheng almost dropped her phone! She was most afraid of these humanoid monsters, and why did she have to paint the original art of monsters so realistically while playing a simulation game!

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

She couldn’t bear to look anymore and decided to watch just the cub to wash her eyes.

Shen Cheng honestly turned the camera back to Li Weilan. The cub was now half lying down in exhaustion, and would probably have fallen to the ground if not for the support of his elbow.

As his eyes slowly opened and closed, it was clear that he could hardly hold on any longer. The old man said to him, “Take a break for a while. When that monster comes over, we will wake you up.”

Li Weilan mumbled hoarsely from his throat, “Okay.”

Even though she knew her own cub seemed to be acting, watching this scene made Shen Cheng’s heart rise to her throat. They couldn’t even find the bones of an ability user in this supermarket, and the tree was covered in faces. Did all the ability users become the nourishment for the tree? Looking at the dense lumps on the trunk, she didn’t know how many ability users were harmed. They couldn’t even defeat this tree, was her own cub really capable?

The cub really fell asleep.

After a while, the elder of the two researchers stood up and walked over to lightly tap on Li Weilan’s face with his toe. He first lightly touched it and then pressed down hard. Seeing that the other party didn’t even flinch, the elder’s yellow bar almost instantly turned red. He turned around and coldly commanded the younger person, “Take him to the next room.”

“!!!” The first time witnessing an NPC in the game tearing off their clothes and turning from neutral yellow to hostile red left Shen Cheng stunned.

This was really impressive!

But how did her own cub know that these two people had a problem? Even from her god’s perspective, she didn’t see it, but her cub was able to see through the act of these two scheming individuals with just one glance. Impressive!

There was a hidden door behind the seats where they were sitting, and the young man picked up Li Weilan, passed through the hidden door, and placed him in front of a giant tree covered in gnarls.

The elder skillfully took out a small bottle of pink liquid from his clothes and poured it slowly onto the leaves of the tree. He looked at the countless eyes on the tree that instantly opened, sighed softly, and turned to the young man, saying, “Give him to the Tree God.”

The young man put down Li Weilan.

The giant tree slowly lowered its branches and used an extremely thick giant hand to flick Li Weilan before slowly opening the coarse bark on the giant hand, revealing a layer of tender, soft, pink tissue that looked like a flower. It slowly reached out towards Li Weilan’s position.

The pink tissue slowly wrapped around Li Weilan.

The elder’s face unconsciously showed a slight smile. He looked at the trunk of the tree and turned to the young man, saying, “Today, our Mana will be coming soon…”

His voice was filled with joy, but just as he closed his eyes to wait for the next moment, he suddenly heard a cry of pain and anger from deep within the tree!

He quickly opened his eyes, wondering what was going on.

However, Shen Cheng could clearly see through her phone: just as the elder spoke these words, Li Weilan unsheathed ‘Thunder’ in his hand, and with a flash of purple lightning, he slashed off the most vulnerable part of the plant, completely severing this tender pink tissue from the trunk!

My cub is awesome, Shen Cheng praised her cub.

Li Weilan slashed down with his sword. Thunder seemed to have become a part of his body, following his every move as he wielded the blade with ease. With a single thought, the lightning skill sealed within the sword burst out and combined with his strength, the force of the strike electrocuted the tree’s extended claw into complete blackness.

Perhaps because this monster was inherently evil, it had almost zero resistance to lightning skills. With this strike, not only was its weakest point completely cut open, but the green aura that flowed from the tree’s body also vanished completely. The layer of emerald-like color faded away, leaving behind a putrid smell.

“Stop!” The old man rushed over like a mad tiger upon seeing the severe injury to the tree, but Li Weilan kicked him away and held the young man’s neck with his sword.

He said coldly, “What’s going on here? You better explain it to me.”

“Don’t don’t don’t don’t kill me…” The young man’s voice trembled. He couldn’t piece together how things had gone from being in his favor to the current situation. But he knew one thing for sure: at this point, if he confessed everything to the person in front of him, maybe they would spare his life in exchange for information about their research product.

He understood that the wise man puts his own life first. Facing the person’s blade and the fact that the experimental subject they had cultivated was obviously no match for this person, the only thing he could do was to recognize the situation and act accordingly.

“This is a plant in our research institute. It was originally our primary research subject,” he said, trembling. “After the apocalypse, it mutated.”