Along the way, they captured every mutant butterfly, flying insect, squirrel, and wild dog they could take alive. They also detected more than a dozen edible mutant eggplants along the way, all of which Sang Luoluo put away.
Sang Luoluo followed behind them but found no Crystal Cores.
She was rather puzzled. The distribution of these Crystal Cores was so uneven. When she was lucky, she found several in quick succession; when she was unlucky, she could search diligently the whole way without finding a single one.
As they passed several large trees, Sang Luoluo noticed their thick trunks and that they did not attract many bugs. While the others searched nearby for mutant eggplants, she called Lei Qi over.
"Bro, help me cut down these trees. How about two pouches of nutrient solution per tree?"
An offer this good? Lei Qi immediately agreed. "No problem."
Lei Qi took his tools and set to work cutting at the base of the trunks with his laser arm.
Within just a few minutes, he had felled six trees.
Sang Luoluo gave him twelve pouches of strawberry-flavored nutrient solution.
Seeing how generous she was, Lei Qi asked, "Want any more?"
Sang Luoluo thought she could use them in the future. "Yes. The kind that don't attract bugs."
Lei Qi made an okay sign and hurried off to join the group searching for mutant eggplants.
Sang Luoluo put the trees into her space and wandered around nearby. She discovered a Crystal Core inside a flower bud in a patch of flowers beside her.
But the patch looked dangerous. There was no movement on the surface, yet Sang Luoluo simply felt that they were dangerous.
She waited a while until Lei Qi finished his work, then called him over. "These seem to be mutant honeysuckle. I need to take a few stems back. Those plants there will do. Be careful. I feel like something's not quite right with this patch of mutant honeysuckle."
Lei Qi said, "Okay."
Lei Qi approached cautiously and aimed his laser arm at the base of the honeysuckle. He had only just finished cutting one plant.
The thing Sang Luoluo had warned him about immediately happened.
The mutant honeysuckle vines began moving at incredible speed. In the blink of an eye, they wrapped around Lei Qi's lower leg and tried to keep climbing upward.
Lei Qi jumped in fright and quickly cut through the honeysuckle around his feet. Luckily, he reacted fast enough to avoid being dragged away.
"Holy crap, has this thing become a spirit?!" Lei Qi said. "The mutant honeysuckle I saw last time wasn't like this. It's only been a few months, and now it can attack people."
Mutant plants that actively attacked people were uncommon, but their methods of attack were all very basic.
This honeysuckle was clearly more formidable than ordinary aggressive plants.
Hearing the commotion, Yan Lang came over with the others. "What happened?"
Lei Qi told him about the mutant honeysuckle.
Sang Luoluo suggested, "Why don't we dig up a couple and take them back for research?"
There was no telling whether the cut mutant honeysuckle would lose its vitality. Taking whole plants back would allow for better research.
Yan Lang immediately made the call and had the others come over to dig up the mutant honeysuckle too.
With so many people working together, they soon secured the aggressive mutant honeysuckle with special binding straps. The plants swayed but could no longer attack anyone.
Sang Luoluo put them all into the time-frozen section of her space.
She had also noticed earlier that even with the bud containing the Crystal Core right in front of them, their detectors had not reacted at all. That meant the machines were not malfunctioning; rather, the base's detection equipment could not detect this kind of Crystal Core.
Though she did not know why, Sang Luoluo considered this a good thing. It made it easier for her to find Crystal Cores without being discovered.
Sang Luoluo dug out the Crystal Core with a tool. It was a bright yellow Crystal Core the size of a soybean.
She tossed it into her space, instantly unlocking thirty mu of cornfields.
Corn! This was carbs!
Tired from walking, Sang Luoluo found a place, took out a stool, and sat down to rest for a while. The others would call her over to collect any experimental specimens or food they found.
She took out a bottle of Spirit Spring water to drink. Once she had eased her fatigue, she used her mind to harvest the thirty mu of corn. The corn was not fully ripe yet, but at this stage, it was just right for boiling, with large, plump kernels that were sweet and juicy.
After harvesting it, Sang Luoluo planted another thirty mu of corn.
They had searched the entire eggplant grove and found nothing else edible. Mutant mantises, mutant snakes, and the like kept springing out, however, and they forced a path through with concentrated gunfire.
That night, the real danger arrived.
Chapter 45: Danger descended: if not to put food on the table, who would put up with his...
Sang Luoluo was startled awake from her sleep.
She had been sleeping soundly when she suddenly became unbearably tense and jolted awake from a dream. Everyone around her was sleeping peacefully, and even the people keeping watch outside had dozed off.
Sang Luoluo could not describe the feeling, but it left her deeply unsettled.
With her sleepiness gone, she suddenly heard Zhang Yunyun shouting outside.
"Wake up! Mutant animals are invading!"
"Everyone, wake up! Stop sleeping! The mutant animals have crawled right into our camp!"
It was still dark. Hearing this made Sang Luoluo even more alarmed, yet there was no sound of anyone around her getting up.
Sang Luoluo took out a flashlight, got up, and headed over. Zhang Yunyun shared her tent, but everyone inside was sleeping so deeply that they could not get up at all.
In the neighboring tent, Yan Lang and the others immediately went on alert at the noise. Unfortunately, the situation was worse than they had imagined.
The two people responsible for keeping watch outside the tents had collapsed at some point and were now completely unresponsive.
Sang Luoluo had an even worse feeling.
"Where is everyone? Wake up!"
Yan Lang shouted into the tents.
Unfortunately, only Zhang Yunyun, Lei Qi, and Sang Luoluo answered him.
As for the others, they were either unconscious or had large chunks of flesh bitten off by mutant animals.
When Yan Lang and the others saw their teammates' bodies in the light, they were too shocked to speak.
Lei Qi was also shaken by how close it had been. He had never encountered anything like this before.
Once he calmed down, Lei Qi quickly assessed the situation. "Mutant animals have already invaded this place. There's no telling how many people are still alive."
Sang Luoluo said, "I saw a few people who were still alive when I came out, but I couldn't wake them."
Zhang Yunyun added, "Yes, I saw people still alive too."
Lei Qi speculated, "Could some poisonous substance have drifted in? Maybe the few of us have stronger constitutions, so we're fine?"
The moment Lei Qi finished speaking, Yan Lang and Zhang Yunyun both collapsed.
Sang Luoluo took a frightened step back and covered her nose and mouth. She pointed at a cloud of pink mist behind Lei Qi, signaling for him to look quickly.
Lei Qi turned and saw the pink mist Sang Luoluo had pointed out.
After a moment's thought, Sang Luoluo took out several layers of masks, wet them with water, and put them on. She took out another set for Lei Qi to wear as well.
Whether it helped or not, they needed to cover their noses and mouths first.
"It's just the two of us left!" Sang Luoluo said. "What should we do?"
Lei Qi made a circuit of the group. No one else was awake. He thought they were in trouble now. He did not dare act rashly on his own in this situation and could only request help from the base.
Unfortunately, the signal suddenly disappeared.
Sang Luoluo tried her own wristwatch. It had no signal either.
Lei Qi said, "Let's gather them together first. Some mutant animal might have slipped in. We need to watch over them until they wake up."
Sang Luoluo nodded and held her laser gun, watching their surroundings warily as Lei Qi moved everyone together one by one. The inspection revealed something grim: apart from Zhang Yunyun, Yan Lang, An Ping, two other Evolved Humans, and three ordinary people, everyone else had died.
Only ten people were still alive now.
And only the two of them were awake.
Lei Qi checked the protective electric fence and discovered that something had actually gnawed a hole through the bottom. Some mutant animal had crawled in through it.
"We need to find a way to patch this hole," Lei Qi said. Seeing this, Sang Luoluo found a large rock of a suitable size in her space, took it out, and blocked the hole.
Lei Qi gave her a thumbs-up.
A thorough inspection with the flashlight revealed that, at some point, a thick mass of vines bearing pink flowers had climbed all over the outside of the electric fence. They were releasing pink mist in their direction.
It was this pink "mist" that had left the people here unconscious.
That was not all. Lei Qi found several burrows outside the tents. Mutant animals had emerged from them and bitten the sleeping people to death.
Otherwise, with Zhang Yunyun's keen evolved hearing, she could not have failed to notice something was wrong.
Sang Luoluo watched him seal the openings in the ground. Only then did she relax a little and ask, "What should we do next?"
Holding his laser gun, Lei Qi sat down in front of the gathered people and sighed. "There's no good solution. The situation's too serious. We need help from the base. We'll have to wait for a signal."
It was still dark, and neither of them dared venture out rashly.
Sang Luoluo suggested, "Should we pull out those pink vines?"
Lei Qi stopped her. "Don't be rash. If that thing could climb up here overnight without any fear of the electric fence, we still can't be sure it isn't aggressive."