What... Are You

Without instruments to measure them, Huo Gu had no idea what the actual wind speeds of those giant tornado columns were. But he understood one thing deep down: the wind was fast. Very fast. Faster than any tornado on Earth.

The howling gale arrived in an instant, giving Huo Gu no time to respond. The first tornado to draw near engulfed part of the island. The lichens within that area were torn up by the roots, as if someone had lightly brushed dust off the surface of a table.

After that giant tornado column crossed the island, the island was not safe. This was only the beginning.

Because of their mutual attraction, the giant tornado column that had crossed the island met another giant tornado column. Their paths changed once more, and, tangled together, they swept across the coastline of the volcanic island.

Along the exposed coastline, after that entwined giant tornado column swept past at high speed, the rootlets growing out to either side of the main roots had vanished without a trace. Only bare main roots remained.

Even though they benefited from the rootlets that had dug deep into the rock layer and held them in place, keeping them from being lifted away by the giant tornado column, the main roots were not in much better shape. Their outer skin had been peeled off, as if scraped over and over by some sharp blade. The central axial hollow conduit at the very core of each main root, which served to transport resources, was now completely exposed.

After that endlessly tangled mass of giant tornado columns moved some distance away from the island's coastline, perhaps because the two tornado columns had been intertwined with each other, they soon exhausted their energy and dispersed completely.

However, the destruction they had caused did not vanish. Under their trampling, the island had been reduced to a complete mess.

The remaining tornado columns were still approaching. They seemed to have no intention of letting this poor island go.

Huo Gu could do nothing but watch helplessly as everything he had worked so hard to build was destroyed in one fell swoop.

He wanted to stop it, but he was powerless. His opponent was "wind," a mass of thermal cyclone. What was he supposed to rely on to defeat a cyclone?

The third tornado column made landfall. It crossed straight along the island's central axis, destroying the island's visual system, which had barely managed to avoid two tornado attacks, and even the tangled cluster of main roots was twisted apart by brute force.

Lightning kept surging forth, striking down from above into the harbor. A whole cloud of mist rose over the sea inside the harbor. It was hydrogen and oxygen formed by lightning ionization, carried by the airflow into the giant tornado column.

By sheer coincidence, the giant tornado column had already reached directly above the volcanic crater. Heat was constrained there, and flammable gases such as methane and hydrogen, having reached their ignition points, were instantly ignited with the addition of oxygen.

A fire tornado column formed!

This fire tornado column descended from the crater, plowed across a patch of battered main roots, casually spun around the island a few times, then dispersed after leaving behind a charred trace on the island like a madman's scrawl.

The other tornado columns, seemingly because of this fire tornado, all changed their trajectories toward the island. After sweeping across the sea near the island, they dispersed about three nautical miles away from it.

But the thunderstorm had not stopped.

Crackling lightning filled the air, falling along with torrential rain. Waves of mist rose, and then the hydrogen, oxygen, and the high concentration of methane mixed into the air were ignited by lightning, bursting into sparks, only to be doused by the torrential rain, over and over again.

The lightning was like a whip held in the hand of a god, and the volcanic island was like a sinner guilty of monstrous crimes, ceaselessly lashed by that whip and punished.

Huo Gu's heart suddenly lurched.

Huo Gu actually had not been worried about that disaster of wind and fire just now. At most, it only hurt to think of the resources needed for repairs.

The reasoning was simple. Wildfire could not burn it all away; with the spring breeze, it would grow again. The true core of the entire rhizome system was the nodular mass. As long as that place was fine, no matter how badly the rhizome system was damaged, it could be repaired very quickly.

But thunderstorms were different. Lightning could conduct, and the entire rhizome system was connected. As long as lightning struck, every cell in the entire rhizome system would be electrocuted.

One bolt of lightning was still fine. The rhizome system had enough mass to withstand it, so Huo Gu had not paid much attention to the lightning that had occasionally struck during the tornado columns.

But he had never imagined that after the giant tornado columns passed, the occasional lightning would actually escalate into a thunderstorm. If more than a dozen bolts struck at once, the rhizome system's mass was still far from enough.

It was like winning the lottery: someone who won a million-yuan jackpot won another million-yuan jackpot the very next day. Huo Gu was in exactly that sort of situation now, except the million-yuan jackpot was a case of heaven-sent fortune and a turn of luck, while he was under an unlucky star, with disasters coming one after another!

"Shouldn't my luck already have been used up when I transmigrated? Why is there still more?"

Huo Gu did not even know how to describe the current situation. When this sort of thing had not happened, one could still talk about probability. Once it did happen, probability theory was utter bullshit. He had seen that clearly now.

"No, this won't work. This absolutely won't work! If this keeps going, getting hit by lightning is only a matter of time. Now isn't the time to be afraid of trouble. I have to sever the connection between the rhizome system and the nodular mass immediately!"

Huo Gu could no longer sit and wait for death. He immediately issued an order to the rhizome system to sever the connection with the main roots.

But it was still one step too late. At the very moment he gave the order, lightning finally struck a main root, one whose outer skin had already been peeled open, exposing its axis.

The axis contained large quantities of metal ions. This meant that the axis had electrical conductivity no worse than mineral water. The power of the lightning transmitted at sub-light speed into every main root, every rootlet, and every cell of the rhizome system.

Huo Gu was horrified to discover that the lightning conducting through the rhizome system had overridden his command. The separation order from just now had not been carried out by the nodular mass.

After this strike, the intensity of the thunderstorm abruptly rose, and the hit rate also became extremely high. From not a single strike landing out of dozens, it became one strike landing out of every ten bolts, as if those bolts of lightning all possessed consciousness, summarizing their failed experiences like infants and moving toward success.

If someone in his previous life had told him that lightning was alive, that it possessed life and thought, Huo Gu would have subconsciously assumed the other person was a patient who had escaped from a mental hospital.

Huo Gu felt that he had definitely been alone for too long, affecting his judgment. Lightning was plasma produced by the combination of positive and negative charges in clouds. How could it have anything to do with life?

But reality was not a story. It would not talk to you about whether something was reasonable or not. In its laws, "existence is reason."

What happened next seemed to confirm Huo Gu's thoughts.

A short piece of information, so brief it could not be any briefer, was transmitted through the nodular mass's life field to Huo Gu, who was lodged inside the Titanium Snail.

[What... are you?]