Escape Tunnel

By the High Wall.

A soldier stood straight, reporting to Captain Su how he had discovered this suspected Theseus Cell escape tunnel.

"This area is where the Tree-Cutting Sheep are active. They feed on tree hearts and ore."

"After the riot stopped, I took my squad on a routine patrol. In the past, when we patrolled this area, we never encountered a situation like this."

"But just today, we found that the entire forest was filled with blood and dismembered bodies left behind by a massacre."

"We followed the bloodstains here and found this opening. It looks like it goes straight outside the High Wall."

At this point, the soldier felt a bit nauseous and quickly took a sip of water.

Captain Su squatted down, glanced at the bloodstains, and then touched them with his bandaged hand.

"Still fresh?"

"Yes," the soldier replied.

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

The soldier pondered for a moment. "Yes, but their predators only feed on them. We've never seen such a brutal massacre. When we came yesterday, it was normal. It's unlikely to be something a natural predator did."

Captain Su shook his head and countered, "It could be 'overkill' behavior."

The soldier asked in confusion, "Ah? 'Overkill' behavior?"

"It's the act of brutally slaughtering an excessive number of prey using extremely cruel methods, without eating them or storing them. Like a cat playing with a mouse," Captain Su explained.

After listening, the soldier thought for a long time, but still shook his head. He took out his electronic screen and showed the captain a picture.

It was a goat with an incredibly ferocious appearance.

Like a low-quality AI-generated image, this goat had two huge horns, sticking straight up from its head like chainsaws, flashing with a metallic sheen.

Its fur was a grayish metallic color, somewhat coarse, like curled iron wire. Its eyes emitted eerie red light like cameras.

Electronic goat?

"This is a Tree-Cutting Sheep," the soldier explained, meeting Captain Su's skeptical gaze. "So general predators don't dare to 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 mud.

The soldier followed behind and continued, "The Tree-Cutting Sheep's own natural predators can only ambush old, weak, sick, and isolated individuals. They don't dare to attack the flock at all."

"Moreover, their meat is quite tough, so large predators wouldn't risk getting injured to provoke them."

Captain Su nodded and said, "Let's go look at the opening again."

Returning to the opening, its strange shape made everyone feel nauseous again.

The opening wasn't large, circular, about a person's height, located on the edge of a small dirt slope, connecting the inside and outside vertically.

The most horrifying thing was the constantly wriggling white oval long meat particles on the inner wall of the cave, resembling bee pupae.

There was a black dot at the tip of the densely packed meat particles, sensing the surrounding light and darkness like an eye.

The arrival of the group caused all the meat granules to twist towards the outside of the cave.

It was truly a nightmare for those with trypophobia.

Li Luo, however, was not afraid. She picked up a branch and poked it. Mo Ling wanted to stop her but couldn't.

Fortunately, after the meat granules touched the branch, they only twisted and pushed the branch inward.

Seeing this, Li Luo let go of her hand, and the meat granules, one by one, used the force to send the branch deep into the cave.

This scene made everyone look puzzled.

Next came several more attempts: stones, leaves, a dagger...

The cave accepted everything, sending whatever was put in deep inside, as if it had no self-awareness.

Li Luo searched the database, but it was empty, with no similar information.

Mo Ling looked into the depths of the cave. At the end of his vision, it was still the same meat granules, extending who knows how far.

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

A spider-shaped detector was placed in the cave and moved towards the depths of the cave, pushed by the meat granules.

Everyone watched the images transmitted back by the detector on the screen with anxiety.

The cave twisted and turned, always filled with dense meat granules. After several turns, the signal had become very poor.

They could barely still know the detector's position. As it moved forward, a three-dimensional map of the cave was automatically calculated on the screen.

The soldier watched carefully and exclaimed, "It's not going out of the High Wall, it's going down!"

But it seemed the cave hadn't ended yet. The detector was still going down, and the speed at which the meat granules were pushing it was getting faster and faster.

The image gradually became blurry.

Just as everyone thought the image was about to disappear, the detector suddenly collided with a black shadow coming towards it.

Crack!

After the black shadow knocked the detector around one hundred and eighty degrees, it continued to rush towards the top of the cave.

The screen went black.

The flashing signal of the detector's position on the screen also disappeared, and the three-dimensional map stopped abruptly halfway through its drawing.

Everyone looked at each other and quickly reacted.

"Quick, guard the entrance!" Captain Su shouted.

The soldiers raised their weapons and aimed at the cave exit. Some even directly placed traps at the cave entrance.

Everyone formed a circle, waiting for the black shadow to emerge from the entrance.

The meat granules at the entrance swayed slowly like seaweed, and before long, they began to contract.

The meat granules surged, and a gray, sticky liquid-covered furball was suddenly pushed out and landed on the ground.

They had expected some powerful beast, but it was just a furball?

This left the soldiers stunned.

The furball stretched out its curled body, revealing itself to be a young Tree-Cutting Sheep.

Although small, its muscles were perfectly formed, and the chainsaw on its head was sharp and tough, like a sturdy male goat.

This strange little Tree-Cutting Sheep stood up and stepped onto a trap set by the soldiers.

Bleat!

It wailed and fell to the ground.

Seeing this scene, the soldiers, who should have attacked, were instead confused.

But at this moment, Mo Ling noticed something was wrong—

Inside the little lamb's brain, there was actually a Red String Worm!

So, while the soldiers were still frozen in place, Mo Ling had already launched his attack. The chainsaw horns on the little lamb's body were instantly stripped away by Mo Ling.

Blood immediately gushed from the top of the little lamb's head. Trapped by the snare beneath it, it was in a difficult position.

Seeing that the little lamb had lost its ability to resist, the soldiers put down their weapons and took out a capsule, throwing it out.

The capsule broke open in the air, unfolding a hard alloy net that trapped the little lamb. Only then did everyone relax.

However, Mo Ling was still tense at this moment, because in his vision, the lamb's flesh and blood were healing rapidly, and there was an abnormal metallic liquid surging within its body.

Suddenly, the liquid burst out of its body, tearing through the alloy net, and rushed towards a soldier who was approaching.

Mo Ling tried to teleport the flying liquid, but the thing was flying too fast and he couldn't stop it.

The liquid sliced through with a "cha" sound.

The soldier remained in a state of shock, but his body had been cut in half at the waist!

Realizing what had happened, everyone quickly attacked again.

Seeing this situation, the little lamb actually showed a look of fear. A white light flashed, cutting off its trapped limbs. With a single kick, it flew back into the cave.

Mo Ling quickly followed the little lamb with his vision, continuously creating bloody holes on its body, but the lamb's healing speed was actually getting faster and faster!

Even if its head was cut off, it could quickly regenerate.

Mo Ling quickly calmed down, remembering the nature of the Red String Worm, and stopped attacking.

What was going on with this lamb?