With a thud, his back slammed against the wall. Before Lan Bo could react, he was shoved against it. Bai Chunian kissed him hard, both hands holding his cheeks, covering the gills at the sides of his face, making him suffocate, dizzy and lightheaded.
“Let’s keep moving,” Bai Chunian said, breathing lightly.
Lan Bo laughed. His sharp fangs and claws shortened and rounded, returning to their original appearance.
Eris waded through the floor full of spore babies and ran over. “The elevator shaft is completely blocked by vines. Can’t climb down, and cutting them one by one would take forever. Hey, why are you two hugging so tightly?”
“Cut off her roots.” Bai Chunian let go and pointed toward the glass specimen cabinet at the source of the vines. The seed had undoubtedly taken root and begun growing here.
Without another word, Eris started chopping the tree. One strike from the ceramic bone blade cut deep, but the wound healed rapidly.
Bai Chunian separated a portion of Dead Sea Heartstone from his collar and forged it into a long-handled axe, swinging it in a full arc toward the trunk.
A deep gash cut into the trunk’s core and got stuck fast. Fine red sap seeped from the wound. The vines thrashed wildly in pain, blooming flowers crazily biting at everything around them. Bai Chunian could only keep leaping to dodge, looking for a chance to land a second blow.
One crazed vine suddenly bit down on Eris’s leg. Its meat-grinder-like sharp teeth rapidly wore away at his ceramic skin. The Puppeteer threw over the Sacred Clockwork. Eris raised a hand to catch it. The silver key mechanically transformed in his grasp into a pair of scissors. The blade snipped through the vine, and the severed end could no longer regenerate.
But this plant’s adaptability was terrifyingly strong. After being electrocuted twice by Lan Bo, it had learned to avoid high-voltage electricity. Its branches covered the entire area, except for the fan-shaped zone where Lan Bo stood, where no growth appeared.
“She’s intelligent,” Bai Chunian concluded. “Lan Bo, we’ll cut the tree. Force the tree core out.”
The stamina of all four of them was slowly being worn down, while the vines continuously absorbed nutrients decomposed from the spore babies, growing endlessly. Thick branches had already burst through the floor, leaving what had once been smooth ground riddled with holes.
Just then, a rat crawled up from a crack in the floor. A golden man-eating flower passed in front of it, not noticing it at first, but the rat had no intelligence and crawled directly into the flower’s line of sight.
The flower lunged instantly, wrapping around the rat’s head. After a crisp snap of a broken neck bone, the headless rat corpse fell from the air. The flower devoured the rat’s head, then quickly closed on the vine and withered, producing fruit—a tiny golden melon no bigger than a ping-pong ball. Meanwhile, the rat’s remaining corpse was swarmed and devoured by the spore babies, whose green nutrient-rich waste fed the vines with more power to continue growing.
“If this thing got improved a bit, we could transplant it back home to catch rats…” Bai Chunian gritted his teeth and yanked the axe free from the trunk. Taking a deep breath, he poured all his strength into another swing. During it, man-eating flowers lunged for his head, but Eris cut them apart midair. At the same time, they all had to stay constantly alert to keep their heads from being swallowed whole.
Sure enough, the trunk split open with a blood-spraying crack. Lan Bo seized the opportunity, his fish tail probing into the tree core as a surge of powerful electricity poured into the center. The entire trunk burst into blazing blue flames, branches crackling explosively.
The bark curled from the heat and opened like a rolling shutter door. Inside was unexpectedly a tiny space, and from the tree core stepped out a pink girl covered in blooming flowers.
The girl looked about four or five years old, wearing a dress whose skirt bloomed with densely packed flowers of every kind. Flowers also covered her sleeves and arms, even her head—clusters of blossoms replacing her hair. From the bridge of her nose upward, the top half of her face was hidden by flowers, revealing only a tiny mouth with vivid red dimples and a pale, slightly rounded chin.
The stems of those flowers were growing from her empty eye sockets.
This was a young girl-type alpha, Experimental Subject 0520: Brain Vine.
The little girl saw them and tilted her head slightly. The flowers on her body trembled, petals scattering as a shower of pink blossoms fell through the vine-choked green room.
The seemingly gentle petals were actually invisible blades, silently sliding across human skin. In an instant, flesh split open wherever they passed.
Brain Vine J1 ability: “Brain-Eating Fruit Growth” — Any living creature within her sight would have its head bitten off by flowers, relentless until death.
M2 ability: “Flower Storm” — The scattered flowers carried anesthetic and painkilling effects. Targets would unknowingly bleed to death. After death, seeds parasitizing the flesh would sprout, flowers replacing rotting flesh and covering the skeleton.
Bai Chunian weaved through the dense flower storm, dodging, but the Puppeteer and Lan Bo lacked his agility. Wounds burst open densely across their bodies, blood pouring out.
“How can something only M2-level be this hard to deal with?” Eris wasn’t afraid of the flower blades, but the Puppeteer couldn’t last much longer. The less pain one felt, the faster death came.
Lan Bo finished charging electricity, and another net of lightning exploded outward from him. The vines retreated, but the delicate flowers ignited directly, flames landing on Lan Bo and scorching him painfully.
Lan Bo’s fish tail turned an angry red. He transformed into a streak of blue lightning and appeared beside the little girl. His claws grabbed her arm, and his blood-filled mouth lined with sharp teeth tore into her shoulder, ripping an entire arm off alive.
At the severed wound, a burst of petals exploded like fireworks.
The little girl was enraged too. Her arm regenerated rapidly, even more flowers blooming densely, while Lan Bo, so close to her, was sliced all over by the inescapable flower blades, blood covering him.
Bai Chunian turned back and shouted, “It’s an M2 in the deterioration phase—this thing is way too cursed, way too cursed! Nix, I saw silver nitrate in the medicine cabinet!”
The Puppeteer nodded and pointed to a spot. Eris first hacked through the vines and charged through the flower storm. Once he got into position, the Puppeteer activated Chess Piece Substitute, switching their positions. The Puppeteer appeared in front of the medicine cabinet.
He searched through it and found the silver nitrate Bai Chunian mentioned. Amid the overturned medicine cabinet, he selected sodium hydroxide, glucose, and ammonium nitrate, found a culture dish, then put on gloves and began working.
The Puppeteer’s expression remained calm, and not even the slightest tremble could be seen in his fingers. The vine flowers repeatedly grew toward him, attempting to bite and kill him, but Eris stayed guarding behind him the whole time.
Bai Chunian forged the Dead Sea Heartstone into a scythe and fought the vines, but every wave he cut down was quickly replaced by another growth. The rain of petals grew denser and denser, carving over a dozen wounds into his body.
Even more terrifying, the spore babies crawled over by scent, densely climbing up Bai Chunian’s legs. Their tiny crimson tongues licked at his wounds, sucking his blood, continuously producing nutrients to nourish the little girl who wore an entire garden over her body.
Lan Bo’s situation wasn’t any better. Consecutive electrical discharges had clearly slowed his charging speed, making him unable to drive back the vines again. Those spore babies clung to him and started biting, hurting him so much that he let out a sharp cry, crazily crawling all over the wall and violently whipping his fish tail. Electromagnetic vibrations hummed and shook the room, finally knocking all the tiny babies off him.
Bai Chunian shoved Lan Bo into a sterilization cabinet and shut the door to avoid the dense flower blades, while he himself leapt through the scattering petals and vines, dodging.
He kept stalling for time until the Puppeteer softly said, “Done,” and tossed half a culture dish toward him.
The bottom of the culture dish had already turned smooth as a mirror because of the silver mirror reaction. Bai Chunian caught the round mirror and charged toward the little girl through layers of flower rain, turning the reflective surface toward her face.
“You’re very pretty.”
The girl stared at herself in the mirror for a few seconds.
The vine blooming with golden flowers rose high behind her, then plunged down and bit off the girl’s head in one bite.