Escape Tunnel

By the high wall.

A soldier stood at attention, reporting to Captain Su how he had discovered this suspected Theseus Cell Escape Tunnel.

"This area is where Tree-Cutting Sheep roam. They survive by gnawing on tree cores and ore."

"After the riot ended, I led my squad on a routine patrol. We never encountered anything like this when inspecting this area before."

"But today, we found fresh blood and severed limbs left behind by a massacre all over the forest."

"We followed the bloodstains here and found this opening. It looked like it led directly outside the high wall."

At that point, the soldier felt nauseated and hurriedly took a drink of water.

Captain Su crouched down, glanced at the bloodstains, then touched them with the hand wrapped in bandages.

"It's still fresh?"

"Yes," the soldier replied.

Captain Su stood and asked, "Do Tree-Cutting Sheep have any natural predators?"

The soldier pondered for a moment. "They do, but those predators only eat them. I've never seen such a brutal massacre. Everything was normal when we came yesterday, so it couldn't have been done by any natural predator."

Captain Su shook his head. "It could have been overkill behavior."

The soldier asked in confusion, "Huh? Overkill behavior?"

"It means brutally slaughtering far more prey than necessary without eating it or storing it. Like a cat toying with a mouse," Captain Su explained.

After hearing that, the soldier thought for a long while but still shook his head. He took out his electronic screen and showed Captain Su a picture.

It was an incomparably ferocious-looking goat.

Like a low-quality AI-generated image, the goat had two enormous horns jutting straight from its head like chainsaws, gleaming with metallic luster.

Its fur was grayish metal, somewhat rough, like curled iron wire. Its eyes emitted eerie red light like cameras.

An electronic goat?

"This is a Tree-Cutting Sheep," the soldier explained under Captain Su's suspicious gaze. "So ordinary predators don't dare provoke them."

Captain Su nodded, gradually understanding.

He walked to the massacre site and dug up hard gray fur and broken Chainsaw Chains from the dirt.

The soldier followed behind him and continued, "Even the Tree-Cutting Sheep's natural predators can only ambush isolated old, weak, sick, or injured individuals. They would never dare attack the flock."

"Besides, their meat is rather tough. Large predators wouldn't risk getting injured to provoke them."

Captain Su nodded. "Let's take another look at the opening."

Back at the opening, its bizarre appearance once again made everyone feel sick.

The opening was not large. It was circular and about the height of a person, set at the edge of a small earthen slope and connecting the inside and outside vertically.

Most horrifying of all were the white, oval, elongated flesh pellets constantly wriggling along the inner walls of the tunnel, like bee pupae.

At the tip of each densely packed flesh pellet was a black dot, like an eye sensing the surrounding light and darkness.

Everyone's arrival made all the flesh pellets twist toward the outside of the tunnel.

It was a nightmare for anyone with trypophobia.

Li Luo was not afraid. She picked up a branch and poked it in, and Mo Ling had no way to stop her.

Fortunately, after the flesh pellets touched the branch, they merely writhed and pushed it inward.

Seeing this, Li Luo let go. The flesh pellets used the force to send the branch deeper into the tunnel.

This sight left everyone looking puzzled.

Then came several more tests: stones, leaves, a dagger...

The tunnel accepted anything that came its way and sent everything inside, as though it had no self-awareness.

Li Luo searched the Database, but it was empty, without a single similar record.

Mo Ling looked deep into the tunnel. At the end of his vision were still the exact same flesh pellets, stretching away to an unknown destination.

"Did you bring the detector?" Captain Su asked the soldier behind him.

A spider-shaped detector was placed into the tunnel and pushed deeper by the flesh pellets.

Everyone anxiously watched the images transmitted by the detector on the screen.

The tunnel twisted and turned, filled all the way with densely packed flesh pellets. After several bends, the signal had already become very weak.

They could barely track the detector's location. As it advanced, the screen automatically calculated a three-dimensional map of the tunnel.

The soldier studied it carefully and exclaimed, "It doesn't lead outside the high wall—it goes downward!"

Yet the tunnel apparently had not ended. The detector continued descending, and the flesh pellets were pushing it faster and faster.

The image gradually became blurry.

Just as everyone thought the feed was about to disappear, the detector suddenly collided with an oncoming black shadow.

Crack!

The black shadow knocked the detector spinning one hundred and eighty degrees, then continued charging upward through the tunnel.

The screen went black.

The flashing detector location signal vanished as well, and the three-dimensional map stopped halfway through its rendering.

Everyone looked at one another before quickly realizing what was happening.

"Get to the opening and hold it!" Captain Su shouted.

The soldiers raised their weapons toward the tunnel exit, while others directly set traps at its entrance.

Everyone formed a circle and waited for the black shadow to emerge.

The flesh pellets at the opening swayed slowly like seaweed, then began to contract before long.

The flesh pellets churned, and a gray ball of fur wrapped in viscous fluid was suddenly pushed out and dropped onto the ground.

They had expected some powerful beast, but it was only a ball of fur?

The soldiers were all stunned.

The fur ball unfurled its curled-up body, revealing itself to be a Tree-Cutting Sheep lamb.

Though small, its muscles were perfectly developed. The chainsaw atop its head was sharp and tough, making it look like a burly billy goat.

The bizarre young Tree-Cutting Sheep stood up and stepped directly onto a trap laid by the soldiers.

Baa!

It wailed and collapsed to the ground.

At the sight of this, the soldiers who should have attacked instead fell into confusion.

But Mo Ling noticed something wrong at that moment—

There was actually a Red String Worm inside the little lamb's brain!

So while the soldiers were still frozen in place, Mo Ling had already attacked. The lamb's chainsaw horns were stripped away by Mo Ling in an instant.

Blood immediately poured from the lamb's head. Its body was trapped by the snare beneath it, leaving it unable to advance or retreat.

Seeing that the lamb could no longer resist, the soldiers lowered their weapons and took out a capsule, throwing it forward.

The capsule split open in midair and unfolded into a sturdy alloy net, trapping the lamb inside. Only then did everyone relax.

Yet Mo Ling remained tense, because in his vision, the lamb's flesh was healing at tremendous speed, while abnormal metallic fluid surged within its body.

Suddenly, the fluid burst from its body, tore through the alloy net, and shot toward an approaching soldier.

Mo Ling tried to teleport the flying fluid, but it was moving too fast. He failed to stop it.

The fluid flashed through the air with a sharp swish.

The soldier remained frozen in a shocked pose, but his body had already been severed at the waist!

The others reacted and hurriedly launched another attack.

The lamb unexpectedly showed a frightened expression. A flash of white light cut off the trapped limb, and with one push of its remaining foot, it flew back into the tunnel.

Mo Ling hurriedly followed the lamb with his vision, continuously creating bloody holes in its body, but the lamb's healing speed actually grew faster and faster!

Even if its head was severed, it could regenerate rapidly.

Mo Ling quickly calmed down. Remembering the properties of the Red String Worm, he stopped attacking.

What was going on with this lamb?