Bamboo Forest

After rushing to Lin Chenxing's room, Gao Zheng immediately went to his bedside and watched as the doctors from the group's medical room busily examined him.

Gao Zheng immediately asked the doctor, "Doctor Mao, how is Chenxing?"

Doctor Mao shook his head and sighed. "We can only confirm that President Lin's bodily functions are all normal. As for when he might wake up, it's hard to say."

"After all, according to the examination results, President Chen's brain activity is very high right now. Under normal circumstances, he should be awake in this condition, but... I've never seen anything like this before."

"He might wake up in the next day or two. It's also possible he might never wake up."

Gao Zheng sat by the bed and slowly reached out both hands, wanting to hold Lin Chenxing's hand. But his hands began to tremble, and his voice wavered slightly as he said, "Chenxing, we had good news today, but why does fate have to toy with us like this?"

"You're one of the pillars of our group. Your Brother Chen and I won't let anything happen to you. You have to wake up as soon as you can. We're all waiting for you."

After holding Lin Chenxing's hand in silence for a while, Gao Zheng tucked it back under the covers. The long-absent expression of unassailable authority returned to his face.

"Lin Jin, what exactly happened before?" Gao Zheng asked, each word deliberate.

The old hands who had followed Gao Zheng since the early days of his business all realized that his anger was already becoming impossible to contain.

Lin Jin carefully reported to Gao Zheng, recounting their experiences one by one from the moment they had left the base.

It turned out that five days earlier, while the Third Exploration Team was exploring the various plants in the forest, they had come across a bamboo grove.

The bamboo grove was unusually quiet. It was nothing like the areas they had visited before, where nearly every patch of woods held a few wandering monsters that roared now and then to announce their presence.

Lin Chenxing had signaled for everyone to watch their footing and avoid stepping on dead leaves as much as possible, keeping their footsteps quiet so as not to disturb any monsters that might be in the bamboo grove.

All the team members had done as he instructed.

But even after searching nearly the entire bamboo grove, they hadn't found a single monster.

This left Lin Chenxing and the other team members puzzled, but also relieved.

After discussing it, they decided to use the bamboo grove as a rest stop and staging point for the team's further explorations.

The day before, January 26, they had fought a Tri-Horned Wild Boar, a Mid-level Beast Soldier—or, according to their own classification, a second-tier monster. They had successfully killed it and collected its three horns, but two team members had been badly wounded when the boar gored them. After making an emergency retreat to the bamboo grove, Lin Chenxing and the others decided to rest there and properly treat the two injured members before moving on.

When drops of blood splattered onto the ground, the atmosphere in the bamboo grove began to change.

A rustling sound swept through the entire grove, as if stirred by the wind. It was crisp and pleasant, and everyone gradually began to relax.

Lin Chenxing thought it was just an ordinary gust of wind and didn't pay it much attention.

Then, amid the rustling, a large number of bamboo leaves began to fall. Driven by the wind, they all swept toward the spot where the team was resting.

When a few bamboo leaves skimmed past a low thicket of thorns, one team member noticed that, although the leaves were moving slowly, some of the thorns had been sliced clean through after the leaves brushed past. He shouted, "Run! We need to get out of this bamboo grove! There's something wrong with the leaves!" Then he turned and ran toward the grove's edge, away from the direction the leaves were coming from.

Everyone was now highly sensitive to warnings like this. They scrambled to their feet and helped the two badly wounded team members out of the bamboo grove. Once outside, they turned around and saw that the bamboo leaves had scraped away an entire layer of earth from the spot where the twenty of them had just been sitting. The sight sent a chill through them.

Standing outside the bamboo grove, Lin Chenxing couldn't help but remark, "So the monsters aren't the most terrifying things after all. These plants, which we don't even know are alive or dead, are the real danger."

"I wonder why these bamboo plants, which didn't attack us in the past few days, suddenly acted today."

Qin Shuanghai, Lin Chenxing's enthusiastic admirer on the team, said excitedly, "Captain, you were so farsighted to have me train my reflexes. If we hadn't trained specifically for this, we'd all have been done for."

Another team member, Liang Yun, said, "When has the captain ever made a bad call? Still, this really did happen out of the blue. I never expected plants to change just as the captain predicted. But that also proves we were heading in the right direction. The natural treasures the captain talked about must exist, and they can help us rapidly improve our physical fitness."

Lin Chenxing deliberately coughed to interrupt their nonstop praise. "All right, enough of that. Let's figure out what's different this time compared to when we came before, and why it provoked the bamboo into attacking us."

Lin Jin asked, "Could the smell of blood from when we were treating their wounds have triggered it?"

Lin Chenxing glanced at the two badly wounded team members, then looked toward the bamboo grove. "That's possible, but there's a problem with that theory. When we came here to rest last time, we were covered in monster blood too. Why didn't the smell attract them then?"

Lin Jin hesitated before asking, "Could these bamboo plants react only to human blood?"

Lin Chenxing narrowed his eyes slightly and stared at the grove. "If that's the case, this bamboo grove poses a serious threat to us. But I don't think it is. If they reacted only to human blood, why don't other monsters come here?"

Qin Shuanghai said, "Captain, why don't we circle around the grove and see what's different inside from before?"

Lin Chenxing agreed with the suggestion and had Qin Shuanghai take three team members to investigate the area around the bamboo grove.

Nearly an hour later, Qin Shuanghai finally returned and reported to Lin Chenxing, "Captain, there are some monster carcasses along the edge of the grove. They're fresh. A little farther outside the grove, there are drag marks leading toward it. It looks like the monsters were dragged to the edge and then thrown inside."

Lin Chenxing was surprised by the findings. They only strengthened his resolve to destroy the bamboo grove.

"Let's go back first. We'll come tomorrow and destroy this grove."

Lin Chenxing then led the members of the Third Exploration Team back to the base, where they began preparing for the next day's plan.

The next day, January 27, all the members of the Third Exploration Team except for the two badly wounded ones were waiting at the base entrance early in the morning. As soon as Lin Chenxing arrived, they set off along the road they had cleared earlier, heading for the bamboo grove.