Yang Wanqing was still crouching beside the bushes, reluctant to leave.
"Qingqing!"
"Coming, coming!"
The group headed toward the distant forest.
The forest was much denser than it looked from outside.
Once they stepped inside, the canopy overhead blocked most of the light. Only scattered patches filtered through the gaps between the leaves and fell onto the ground. The blue grass grew shorter and finer in the forest, its color several shades darker, almost a deep indigo.
The trunks were so thick that even two people together could not wrap their arms around them. Twisted patterns covered the gray-white bark, and a fluorescent green moss-like plant grew in some of the grooves, providing faint illumination in the dim forest.
"Wow, the trees here are even bigger." Yang Wanqing tilted her head back and turned in a circle.
Chen Siyao used her mind to raise the Recording Crystal, capturing a slow upward tracking shot from the ground to the canopy. The textures of the trunks, the glow of the moss, and the shifting colors of the canopy leaves unfolded layer by layer in the footage.
"The vegetation here is ridiculous." Chen Siyao reached out and touched a dangling aerial root. "Even the oldest redwoods on Earth are only a little over a hundred meters tall. These trees—"
She looked up and made an estimate.
"They have to be at least two hundred meters."
Yang Wanqing took out her phone to take pictures, trying four or five angles before crouching to pose beside an unknown fungus. Its cap was translucent pale purple, with strings of glowing droplets the size of pinpoints hanging beneath it.
"When I get back and post these on Moments, everyone's going to lose it."
"You have to get out first before you'll have a connection."
"But we've got