Mutation

"Then shall we go?"

Jiang You gave Furry Face a few instructions, then turned and patted Da Zhuang on the head.

"Are you scared?"

"Meow!!" Scared of what?!

The civet cat's golden slit pupils were filled with disdain. It directly stepped over Furry Face.

The vicious cat's face carried an unstoppable momentum, as if it were a fearless warrior who feared neither Heaven nor Earth.

Just like that cat from back then, which had been chained up yet still brimmed with ferocity.

But at that heroic moment, Furry Face, who had been lying on the ground, suddenly brightened. As if he had spotted something, he abruptly reached out.

"Hey! Two huge furry peaches! Give me one!"

"Meow!!!!" I'll curse your ancestors!!!!!

In that instant, Furry Face's delighted shout and the Monkey Divine Beast's shrill cry blended together.

Da Zhuang bared his teeth and screamed as he leaped up, diving headfirst into the abyss.

Furry Face, clutching the two furry peaches, was dragged in as well. Seeing this absurd scene, Jiang You hurriedly grabbed Furry Face's leg. The three of them vanished into the crack in the ground, headfirst and feet-first.

Beside the crack, Manshi and the people of Black Moon Village looked at one another.

"What do we do now? Go back first?"

"Didn't the city lord tell us not to guard this crack?"

"But I think this crack is a good thing. So many people came into the mountains before because of it! Only good things get fought over! It feels like a loss to just hand it over now!"

Xiao Lan lazily leaned against a tree and yawned.

"I think this crack is a good thing too. Look, it hasn't appeared for long, yet all the plants around it have already mutated."

She casually grabbed a stalk of foxtail grass from the ground and yanked it hard.

As its roots were pulled from the soil, the foxtail grass's roots began writhing wildly. They looked like countless flexible tentacles.

"Look, this foxtail grass is just like a little ginseng spirit. I wonder if it's edible."

At that moment, no one knew whether to classify the grass as an animal or a plant.

Xiao Lan stared at the struggling roots in her hand, hesitation flashing through her eyes. To eat or not to eat—that was the question.

However, in the eyes of the mountain people, there were only two kinds of things in this world.

One kind could be eaten directly. The other had to be processed somehow before it could be eaten.

In the past, Xiao Lan had been somewhat afraid to eat unfamiliar things. But after eating the fruit of the man-eating tree, she had grown bolder, and there were more things she dared to try.

After a brief moment of thought, Xiao Lan wiped the struggling roots against her trouser leg, then opened her mouth and bit down.

"Ptooey!"

"It's bitter!"

Her expression changed. She spat out the grass roots with a grimace, then threw the foxtail grass onto the ground. Its remaining roots quickly burrowed back into the soil.

"These plants are close to the crack, so they mutated the fastest. If we stay near here, we might mutate too." Xiao Lan grimaced as she spat out the bitter juice in her mouth.

"How about we just live here in Red Fruit Gully? Maybe we can become the first batch of mutated people! By then, won't all those old monsters from Longshan be completely obedient under our hands?!"

Xiao Lan said this with a grin, the foxtail grass dangling from her mouth.

Manshi hesitated. "If staying close to this entrance really has benefits, the city lord wouldn't have told everyone to leave such a good opportunity alone. I'm just worried that too much too soon won't be a good thing.

"When anything happens too quickly, it's never good."

Manshi failed to notice that when he said the words "too quickly isn't good," one of the mountain people was staring at him gloomily.

Xiao Lan nodded indifferently. She pulled a wild sweet-potato vine from the ground, but unexpectedly dragged out a sweet potato the size of a Hami melon.

"Wow, what a sight! This sweet potato actually mutated to such a huge size! We should plant some crops here another day. Maybe they'll grow ears taller than people!"

Laughing, she dragged the sweet potato away with the others.

No one noticed that someone's gaze remained fixed on the giant sweet potato dangling from Xiao Lan's hand.

That night, a furtive figure appeared beside the crack. After looking around and confirming that no one was there, he immediately took off his pants and lay down on the ground.

"Heh heh heh heh, the soil near the crack must have mutated. The sweet potatoes growing in it are so huge, and the grass roots even look like ginseng spirits.

"Heh heh, if I bury it in the soil for a few days, maybe I won't need to drink tiger-whip liquor anymore...

"The witch doctor's tiger-bone liquor isn't effective either. I've drunk so much of it, and it still hasn't done much.

"Heh heh, maybe this is my opportunity. This mud must be incredibly nourishing!

"...Plant it in there, heh heh... If... if it could move on its own like a ginseng spirit, that would be even better. Heh heh heh heh... You dead old hag, this time, just wait and see if I'll stab you or not!"

The lecherous voice vanished into the silent night. Aside from the small animals nearby, no one knew that another person had appeared there.

This self-proclaimed clever fellow would never have imagined that every living thing near the abyssal entrance would suffer DNA disruption and imitate one another. The thing he poked into the soil was being copied without him realizing it.

Before long, an inconceivably enormous tree would press his dignity into the ground and trample it.

No—that wasn't quite right. Someone did know.

The clever Monkey King had been watching the crack all along. After discovering the human's strange behavior, the Monkey King fell into deep thought.

Not long afterward, Black Moon Village noticed that mountain monkeys were appearing near the crack more and more frequently.

And it wasn't only mountain monkeys.

The news that the abyssal entrance had opened spread out of the Hundred Thousand Mountains like it had grown wings, reaching every corner of the world.

The weak survivors treated it as conversation fodder.

The powerful ability users, however, set out at once. Some traveled alone, while others went in groups.

The Hundred Thousand Mountains instantly became a topic on everyone's lips.

The protective suits developed by Number Nine City were in short supply.

Wang Qichuan urgently added a hundred production lines and established a sales outlet in Black Moon Village.

Black Moon Village was closest to Red Fruit Gully. Buying protective suits there was far more convenient than traveling thousands of miles to Number Nine City.

Although the protective suits were expensive, they were a necessity!

Several large trees beside the abyssal entrance were hung with all kinds of grotesque mutated creatures, specifically to warn everyone.

A snake with nine heads, a wild chicken covered in toad-like lumps, a bald mountain goat with eyes all over its body, a split-mouth fish covered in long red worms, and earthworms as thick as arms...

All kinds of mutated creatures that challenged the limits of human physiology hung there in plain sight. Someone specifically explained that they had all been affected by the abyss's radiation.

If people didn't want to turn into monsters like these, they were advised to put on protective suits.

Not to mention the various creatures hanging there—even the several large trees beside the abyss had undergone obvious mutations.