Chapter Forty-Seven: Super Life

"Indeed, it's wonderful," Liu Chang smiled, glancing once more in the direction where Li Qingshui and the little girl had disappeared.

...

Li Qingshui and the little girl's destination was the Fourth Municipal People’s Hospital, the largest hospital in the vicinity—a place where they were certain to find what they needed. Carrying the girl on his back, they walked in silence for nearly half an hour before finally arriving at the hospital entrance. Above the courtyard gate hung a massive plaque; up close, one could clearly make out the line of glowing neon characters: "Kaifeng Fourth People’s Hospital."

"This is the place." Li Qingshui set the little girl down, glanced at the now darkened neon lights, then at the deserted hospital entrance, and asked with some confusion, "Have you detected any dangerous lifeforms?"

"No," the girl shook her head.

"That’s odd." Li Qingshui rubbed his chin and continued, "Any signs of human presence?"

"None at all," the girl shook her head again.

"That’s even stranger." Li Qingshui surveyed the surroundings. "Logically, with all the medicine inside, even after the age of death, the place shouldn’t be this deserted. And you say there aren’t even traces of monsters? Isn’t that a bit too peculiar?"

"I don’t know either. In any case, let’s just be careful," the girl said, closing her eyes to sense the ambient energies. After a moment, she shook her head with certainty. "There’s really nothing here."

"Alright. Your detection has never failed before. We’ll proceed carefully, and if anything happens, we turn back at once!"

"Okay."

Having made up their minds, the two of them crept slowly through the hospital gates, step by cautious step. With each few paces, the little girl would carefully probe the area for any sign of movement—yet she found nothing.

And since Li Qingshui’s vision was no better than an ordinary person’s, he could only see things within about three meters. In his world, everything around him was a haze of blood-red; apart from the small patch of ground beneath his feet, he could see nothing at all.

Yet, following the path marked by the scattered gravel, they managed to keep to the right direction, pressing on along the hospital’s "road." Their progress was unimpeded and eerily quiet, until at last they reached the central courtyard—so smoothly, in fact, that it felt almost unnatural.

"No," Li Qingshui halted in the middle of the courtyard, "when things are this strange, something is amiss. It’s too quiet. We’re leaving."

"Alright," the little girl responded obediently. "But what about the supplies?"

"We’ll try another hospital. There are plenty in the city," Li Qingshui said, turning to take her hand.

But in the instant he lifted his foot, he found his legs weighed down as if by a thousand pounds; he could not move them at all. Alarmed, he looked down to see countless root-like vines silently and swiftly sprouting from the ground, snaking around his feet and coiling up his calves.

Without hesitation, Li Qingshui drew the small knife from his belt and bent down to cut the vines—but no matter how he slashed, it made no difference. The vines, though appearing supple, were as tough as steel cables.

Within just a few seconds, the frenzied vines had entwined his lower body, then ceased growing, fixing both him and the little girl firmly in place.

"What’s happening?" Li Qingshui looked at the girl in panic.

"I don’t know! I can’t sense any life from these vines at all," she replied, her expression even more terrified. The failure of her psychic sensing left her feeling not only afraid but deeply unsettled.

Just then, a voice rang out, heightening the strangeness of the scene—

"Hello, human."

It was an ordinary greeting, reminiscent of the classic lines in alien invasion films. The voice was ancient, echoing as though from the hollow of a tree. The accent was standard Mandarin, perfectly intelligible to both of them.

"Who’s there?" Li Qingshui looked around, and then saw a massive, towering specter before him.

The apparition loomed so high that, with his limited vision, Li Qingshui could not see its height or width—not even make out its form. If not for the sheer size of the shadow, blocking out the sunlight through the thick fog above him, he might not have seen it at all.

"Hello, human. I am a tree," the colossal specter spoke again, its movement entirely soundless. When it stood directly in front of Li Qingshui, it blotted out all sunlight overhead. Then it spoke once more: "By your reckoning, I am a willow tree—a mutated willow tree."

"A willow tree?" Li Qingshui’s mind flashed back to the enormous root system he had seen in the sewers a week ago—roots that spanned the entire underground world, the kind of roots that made him think of the legendary World Tree. He had taken a small piece of that root for study, and even now, a slender tendril of it remained in his pocket.

"Yes, a willow tree," the immense shadow replied. "You’ve seen me before—you carry a piece of my former root."

The hollow voice echoed, and Li Qingshui watched as a willow branch slowly extended into his line of sight, passing through the vines that bound him and slipping into his pocket. It withdrew, clutching the dried root he had collected.

"That was once a part of me," the specter said. With a twist and a squeeze, the willow branch pulverized the root. "But I have no need of it now."

"Are you truly a tree?" Li Qingshui stared at the dexterous, human-like motion of the branch and heard the almost human cadence of the specter’s words. Even with his background in biology and having grown accustomed to the strangeness of this ‘Great Age of Evolution,’ he found it impossible to accept.

"Yes, I am a willow tree. There’s no need to deceive you about that," the voice overhead replied with great patience.

"Then how can you speak?" Li Qingshui cried, his voice desperate, as if by shouting he could deny the impossibility of what he was witnessing. "Even an intelligent species couldn’t master human language this quickly, let alone understand every nuance. Your tone and phrasing are nothing like a novice’s!"

"It's as if... as if you were truly human!"

"That’s because, in essence, my intelligence is human intelligence, and my language is naturally human language," the specter replied. From above, another branch descended—this one dozens of times thicker than the last, composed of a countless number of fine tendrils intricately intertwined like a precision instrument.

Within this tangle, some tendrils were as thick as a finger, others finer than a human hair. They wrapped around a transparent, bowl-sized membrane of resin. Suspended within this clear membrane was a human brain.

The brain was fresh, its blood vessels still seeming to pulse with life, connected to a myriad of tiny, crimson, willow-like filaments that functioned like blood vessels, constantly delivering blood and energy.

Author’s Note:
(With the novel surpassing a hundred thousand words, at last the curtain begins to rise on the global evolution. Don’t be surprised by this chapter—there will be explanations later for this super lifeform, the willow tree. The world I’ve built in my mind is only just beginning to emerge; please give me time, and I will show you a truly grand world.

Many mysteries about this new world remain unexplained due to the order of the writing—such as why previously gentle animals became man-eaters, how the new food chain involving herbivores, plants, and carnivores is established, and the future path of human evolution. Many diligent readers have raised these questions in the comments. All I can say is, it’s not that I haven’t thought of these things—they simply haven’t come up yet. They will. Just as some readers once asked why humans weren’t evolving, and by now, they should understand the reason. So, rest assured, your questions will be answered in due course.

Because what I wish to create is a real world!

Thank you, sincerely, for all your comments, which have encouraged and inspired me greatly. Yesterday, it was thanks to one reader’s spark of insight that I was able to complete my mental ecosystem late at night. And some vigilant readers have pointed out my errors. For example, I mistakenly attributed the ‘giraffe theory’ to Darwin, when in fact it was Lamarck’s. This has since been corrected—thanks to the reader named ‘Dark Elf’ for the correction.)