Chapter 155: A Flower, A World

Upon seeing the willow tree sprout, Liu was so terrified that he instantly leaped away from the area. He had lingered there only because he had confirmed the willow was in a state of suspended animation; otherwise, given its terrifying capabilities, killing him a hundred times over would have been a matter of mere moments.

Yet, after leaping back, he did not completely depart. He kept a close watch on the willow's movements, a fierce curiosity anchoring his feet to the spot. From afar, he stood and watched as the willow's vines bloomed. Branch after branch unspooled before his eyes, primary branches spawning secondary ones, and secondary ones yielding finer twigs, until even the terminal tendrils were reduced to the thickness of a meter. Then, upon these ultimate tips, countless flower buds gradually welled up from within. Slowly, they blossomed, unfurling their vibrant red petals to expose the stamens.

Gazing at this magnificent spectacle of the willow in full bloom, Liu could well imagine what kind of world Zhengzhou City—and regions far beyond—had now become.

As the blossoms continued to unfurl, Liu summoned his courage and walked up to a particularly vibrant flower. He peered into the center of the bloom—right at that crimson core, connected by bright red veins. It was a human brain.

The human brain was fresh, evidently still engaged in thought and operation. These human-brain blossoms sat quietly and peacefully in the centers of the flowers. Standing right beside it and gazing at the brain within, Liu had no way of knowing what it was thinking, whether its former memories still existed, or if its past emotions remained intact—or if it simply served as a tool for calculation and imagination, positioned there to provide that supreme, formidable life form with an even vaster realm of intellect.

Within a single flower lay an entire world of thought.

Liu quietly watched all of this, gazing upon this awe-inspiring entity. Even though he knew danger was right before his eyes, he simply could not bring himself to leave. He wanted to converse with this magnificent life form and witness the peculiar results Li Qingshui had engineered within it. He remained rooted to the spot, plunged deep into thought, until a shrill, childish voice broke the silence from behind his ear—

"Let's go. Li Qingshui is dead, and the giant willow is about to wake from its dormancy." The voice belonged to an infant; the vocal cords were tender and shrill, yet every word was articulated with absolute clarity.

"Oh," Liu acknowledged with a nod. Looking out over the sea of tree-mountains and flowers before him, he murmured, "Li Qingshui was a great man."

"Mhm," the youthful voice remained high-pitched. "I will be greater than him. Let's go."

"Is the giant willow coming back to life?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"A feeling," the infant replied. "I can sense the breath of life within it. The breath of revival. Although it seems obstructed by something, making its progress arduous, that reviving force grows stronger with every passing second. If we don't leave now, we won't be able to leave at all."

"Is Li Qingshui still alive?" Liu continued to ask.

"Who knows? Even if he is, he has already become a part of the giant willow. He is no longer the person he used to be." The infant patted Liu's massive shoulder. "Trust me, I won't be any worse than him. Protect me, and I will help you."

"Very well." Liu nodded. "I hope that years from now, you won't forget today's promise."

With those words, Liu placed his hand behind his back, used two fingers to gently pinch Number Seventeen, and tossed the infant into his mouth. He then clamped his teeth shut, keeping his lips slightly parted to allow air to circulate within his cavernous mouth. He turned his head and fled from the flower-filled city in a single dash.

No sooner had he lifted his foot to leave than that holy city of blossoms began to slowly writhe. Those thick, sky-supporting willow vines grew once more, sprawling forward tendril by tendril—though not quite as overwhelmingly vast as when they had first arrived in Zhengzhou, they were moving nonetheless.

***

At the border of Henan and Hebei provinces, within the Labyrinth Forest.

Beneath the brush and undergrowth among the trees, Liu Chang slowly began to wriggle his body as he regained consciousness.

Opening his eyes in a daze, he was greeted by a piercing, all-over soreness. His head was clear, and the heavy, sluggish sensation had vanished. Liu forced his eyes wide open and pushed himself into a sitting position.

The first thing that met his gaze was a ground full of corpses right beside his legs—the carcasses of small lizards, interspersed with a few other bugs and small animals, though the vast majority were highly venomous lizards. Even in death, these corpses were nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding dead branches and rotting grass on the forest floor.

The sight of these carcasses instantly dragged Liu Chang's memories back to the moments before he lost consciousness: how he had been poisoned, surrounded by lizards drawn to the scent of his sweat, and subsequently torn apart and devoured.

At the time, his body had been paralyzed and his consciousness blurred before he passed out. Yet, what baffled him utterly was that he had somehow managed to wake up surrounded by a pack of venomous beasts, while the very creatures that had come to feed on him were now dead.

Picking up the carcass of a small lizard from the ground, Liu Chang examined the tiny creature. There were no wounds whatsoever on its body, yet its breath had completely ceased. Its eye sockets were bruised and dark, its body stiff and curled inward—it had unmistakably died of poison. At this realization, a thought stirred in Liu Chang's mind. He lowered his gaze to inspect his own body, scanning the areas where he had been bitten. Those large and small wounds were covered in tooth marks—the sharp lizard teeth had torn his clothes, punctured his skin, and left bloodstains behind—and then, the lizards had simply dropped dead.

"Is my body poisonous?" Liu Chang muttered in puzzlement, looking himself over. "That shouldn't be right. When I was with He Zhizhi and the others, none of them ever showed any signs of poisoning. Besides, this poison..."

He stared at the carpet of corpses on the ground, some of which had died with their teeth still snagged in his clothing.

"This venom is far too lethal."

Squeezing a droplet of blood from one of his wounds, he saw that it was clear, showing no signs of toxicity or self-poisoning. A mixture of confusion and profound fortune washed over him as he stood up from the ground. He retrieved some scent-masking and wound-healing ointment from his backpack's medicine kit, smeared it across his body, and—having cheated death once more—resumed his journey.

He dared not linger in this place. He had somehow miraculously escaped a calamity just now, but now that his mobility had returned, and with the scent of blood and corpses lingering in the area, staying put was out of the question. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder and hoisting his pack, he checked his compass and pressed on toward the north once more.

The journey was long and stretched boundlessly northward. Liu Chang had no idea how much farther he had to go, for the rumors in Nanyang had been unanimous: no one had ever successfully crossed this forest. Ever since the era of the red mist descended four years ago, this woodland had transformed into its current state within a matter of months. Liu Chang figured that even if someone had miraculously made it through, they would never turn around to come back.

The forest was simply too grueling to traverse, unimaginably vast, and filled with only a handful of tree species—each kind not only identical in color, but sharing the exact same shape.