BXBX NOVEL Chapter 76 - High Wall
With more light shining through, the bright beams dispersed the black mist inside, and everyone saw clearly that it wasn't a face but a flower. It was just the combination of light and shadow, along with the insufficient lighting, that created the illusion of a human face.
However, even under the bright light, if stared at for too long, one would still feel as if they were looking at a human face.
It was a large flower.
Its pistil was mostly white, with delicate petals on both sides. The petals gradually transitioned from white to pink from the inside out.
In the dim world of the Inverse Universe, this color appeared eerie no matter how you looked at it, especially with the thick tips of the petals, which grew something resembling nerves or blood vessels, making it unclear whether it was a plant or a creature.
Underneath the eerie flower was a thick rhizome, with both ends hidden in the wall. On the jet-black plant rhizome, there were crimson growths resembling tumors, which would occasionally pulsate and emit some kind of fluid-like sound during their contraction.
A hoarse, dense, and somewhat surreal voice emanated from the pistil of the eerie flower. The filaments around the pistil seemed to be swaying up and down due to the vibration of the air.
From a distance, it looked as if the white face was speaking, emitting an inexplicable sense of strangeness.
Everyone exchanged glances.
Ji Yu hugged her chest with both hands. "What do you think it is?"
Tianyang blurted out, "A communicator."
Ji Yu nodded in agreement. "That's what I think too. It seems that something is using this plant to transmit information. Perhaps the Black Prince wasn't here by chance."
"Are you suggesting that it received some kind of instruction here?" Han Shu rubbed his rough chin. "If something is using these plants to communicate, then as long as we follow the roots of these plants, we should find something. We might even find that Prince."
Ji Yu nodded. "That's what I think too."
Han Shu immediately decided, "Let's go. I'll have Lao Xu bring the cars over. The scanning device on the car should be able to find the roots of these plants and see where they lead."
A few minutes later, two Falcon light assault vehicles arrived nearby. Han Shu boarded one of them and activated an interface on the control panel.
He activated the scanning function, and a cylindrical 3D laser scanner rose from inside the top of the vehicle. The top of the device opened like a flower bud, emitting hundreds of beams of light.
As they scanned the surroundings, the control panel screen displayed a transparent model of nearby buildings.
Han Shu adjusted the accuracy of the model and quickly found the weird plant hidden in the wall, marking it in red.
From the screen, it could be seen that the roots of that thing extended underground and stretched southeast toward the town.
"Let's go!"
At Han Shu's command, the two vehicles began to move, following the roots of the plant underground.
As they delved deeper into the town, the model of buildings on the control panel showed more and more similar plants. Some even broke through the ground and entwined around skyscrapers like snakes.
These eerie plants bore flower-like faces. Tianyang looked out the window of the car and felt as though cold, expressionless faces were coldly overlooking the town.
When the vehicles stopped, the road ahead was blocked. Thick, twisted black roots emerged from the ground and buildings, intertwining to form a high wall. On this wall made of plants, remnants of cars, parts of buildings, and miscellaneous items like lamp posts hung from the roots, as if when the plants emerged and grew crazily, they brought along everything along their path to become decorations on the high wall.
Seeing the impassable high wall, Han Shu gestured, "Let's go; let's see if there are any other paths."
The two vehicles returned to a crossroads and chose another direction to move, but unfortunately, the high wall cut off all passages. It seemed to have enclosed a part of the town.
When the vehicles stopped again, Han Shu clenched his fists and thumped the car door, grunting, "It seems we only have one choice left."
Everyone looked at him.
Han Shu squinted at the high wall outside. "We're going over it!"
The wall, woven from plant roots, was about four stories high, which posed little difficulty for Han Shu and the others.
After a brief inspection, Han Shu led the way, still accompanied by the team of four Sublimators, moving along the street.
Lao Xu and the soldiers stayed behind to watch over the vehicles and provide support when needed for the team's retreat.
Arriving at the base of the high wall, Tianyang realized that the thick stems of the plants here were covered with black, densely packed short hairs. They seemed to be some kind of plant fiber, distributed unevenly, giving the high wall the appearance of having patches of diseased black spots.
"Disgusting," Han Shu muttered as he put on a pair of gloves and touched the short hairs. The furry things immediately shriveled up into a ball.
Cang Du had already started climbing. He held a pickaxe in his hand and carried a coil of rope on his back. In places without footholds, the young man used the pickaxe to stab into the roots and then climbed up.
His climbing skills were excellent. In less than 10 minutes, he had climbed to the top of the high wall. After firmly embedding the pickaxe into the roots and tying the rope, he descended.
It was simple for the others to climb up with the help of the rope. In five minutes, they reached Cang Du's vicinity.
Instead of immediately climbing over, they laid flat on the edge of the wall and looked down. Below, scattered fire pits dispersed the black mist.
Tianyang then saw that almost all the buildings inside the wall had been flattened, leaving only six or seven buildings in the middle.
The high-rise buildings formed a circle, and it seemed they were not randomly left behind but were selected for some purpose.
On a pile of rubble laid a twenty-meter-long oily corpse. Its twisted and horrifying body was almost indescribable. The cursed thing, which should not exist in the world, was decomposing.
The viscous fluid, dripping slowly from the corpse, flowed along the rubble and formed a black puddle on the ground.
The stark white bones protruding from it, as well as what appeared to be hind limbs, bore many similarities to the body lying on the two-story building.
This indicated that they were the same kind of dark creatures.
If that were the case, did this giant corpse also have similar placenta-like organs and gave birth to another Black Prince?