Chapter 1 The Secrets of Lake Beinz

It seemed the secrets of Lake Beinz were more numerous than Hao Ren had initially thought.

The peculiar and enclosed ecosystem here, the shockingly massive biological system beneath the twisted woodlands, the mysterious power contained within the crimson lake water, and the countless legends surrounding it all—Hao Ren was convinced that most of these stories had a definite source—filled people with curiosity about this mysterious region.

"What kind of species would you say this twisted woodland is? Are you sure it's a plant?" Hao Ren switched through the holographic projections, finally stopping on the scan of the twisted woodlands. The massive underground root system gave him a chilling feeling. Just looking at those images, he could feel a sense of awe. He was standing above such an ancient and bizarre lifeform. Compared to this big guy, he was like a speck of dust.

"It is indeed a plant," the data terminal continued to strengthen the scanning signal to fill in the blurry or blank areas on the image. "Well… although examples of organisms evolving into this mode are relatively rare, it's not without precedent. You have to know the void is vast, anything is possible. The Mother Tree of the tree spirits can even take root and cover an entire planet, and what you see before you is just one form of 'gigantic plant.' The only thing that's puzzling is how it appeared here—this machine reverse-engineered the ecological evolution of this planet and found that even tens of thousands of years ago, this place was not suitable for the survival of such a giant conjoined plant. It… shouldn't be on this planet. It doesn't fit the laws of evolution."

Hao Ren was an amateur in biology, so he didn't overthink it too much. He just looked at the towering tree beside him with a lot of emotion, reaching out and stroking the rough, mottled dark bark, imagining that he was touching a miraculous organism that occupied an area of hundreds of square kilometers and had lived for tens of thousands of years. It was a pity that this miraculous organism was just a pile of roots. If it could talk, Hao Ren really wanted to know what happened to the world-ending event more than ten thousand years ago.

However, just as Hao Ren was lost in thought, a feeling of palpitation suddenly rose in his heart.

He stood up abruptly, looking around warily. At that moment, he felt as if he was being watched by something. It wasn't an ordinary "gaze," but a feeling of being scanned from top to bottom by something indescribable. The data terminal beside him immediately floated up when it saw this: "What's wrong?"

"No… maybe it's just my imagination," Hao Ren shook his head in confusion. "I feel like someone is watching us."

"There's no one nearby. I'd have alerted you if there was," the data terminal slowly floated back into the pot. "Let's go back and meet up with that mercenary girl, otherwise she'll really start to suspect you have kidney problems."

Hao Ren: "?"

Hao Ren saw Becky looking anxiously in his direction when he came back with the pot. Before he could greet her, she began to shout anxiously, "Why did you take so long?! Don't you know it's dangerous here?"

Hao Ren didn't expect the mercenary girl to be so concerned about her traveling companion and explained awkwardly, "Uh, you know, nature calls. Besides, I didn't see any magical beasts here."

"I was just wondering, it seems more peaceful here than when I came last time," Becky frowned in confusion. "I came here a few months ago, and although you couldn't see magical beasts walking on this road at that time, you could often hear their movements in the depths of the woodland, but today I don't know why it's so quiet here… Didn't the church elder say that it wasn't very peaceful near Lake Beinz before?"

"Who knows what's going on, anyway, it's always good not to have monsters." Nangong Wuyue comfortably took a deep breath of the humid air containing rich moisture and urged everyone to continue on the road with full motivation, "Let's go, let's go. This road is pretty easy to walk on. I guess we'll see Lake Beinz today!"

The team continued on the road, Vivian inconspicuously approached Hao Ren's side: "Did you find anything?"

"I'll let you watch a blockbuster when we get back," Hao Ren mysteriously pointed to the pot (the data terminal). "The underground of this forest is spectacular."

The next stretch of the journey was uneventful. The group moved forward quickly on the quiet, wide path through the forest. They didn't encounter any magical beasts, nor did they encounter the legendary carnivorous hybrid monsters that were said to be between plants and animals. This twisted woodland, which had been rumored to be very evil, seemed as safe and harmless as an ordinary peaceful forest. Hao Ren felt that he had walked almost half the distance, and the largest carnivorous beast he had seen along the way was the husky jumping around him…

But Becky seemed more and more uneasy in this peaceful environment. She knew that this forest shouldn't be so quiet. If a large number of flesh and blood monsters jumped out and she had a big battle, she would feel much more at ease. The current overly quiet situation could only mean one thing: something unprecedented had really happened in the forest.

"Wait," Vivian suddenly shouted anxiously, stopping everyone as the team was moving forward at full speed. "There's something ahead!"

Becky, on the other hand, breathed a sigh of relief: the promised little monsters had finally come out.

Everyone immediately entered battle mode. Becky drew her enchanted longsword, Vivian spread her bat wings and floated into the air, Hao Ren unfolded his shield, and Lily rubbed her ice and fire twin blades to create water vapor. Nangong Wuyue squatted on the ground with her head in her hands—anyway, everyone's battle form was different.

Almost as soon as they were ready, an unusually heavy footstep suddenly came from the south side of the road!

The footsteps seemed to be mixed with the sound of another group of smaller creatures running.

Hao Ren immediately walked to the front of the team with his shield raised and waited in battle formation. Soon, a large group of black shadows appeared among the trees to the south.

First, a group of twisted and bizarre black creatures came into view. They seemed to be the mutated terror beasts that Becky had mentioned, which lived in the twisted woodland. These black creatures were about two meters long, but it was impossible to tell what species they were. They looked like a long, strip-shaped meatball with six pairs of tentacles, or like a deformed, mutated squid living on land. These black, grotesque creatures had no facial features, not even a distinct head. The only thing that could be seen was that they had two tentacle-like organs filled with sharp teeth that were swinging wildly in the upper part of their bodies as they ran. These things had such a twisted and disgusting appearance that anyone who saw them for the first time would probably be able to keep their legs from shaking, and now there were about twenty of these twisted terror beasts rushing towards Hao Ren and his party like they were in a supermarket scramble!

Even Hao Ren, who had been prepared, was frightened by these extremely ugly and grotesque creatures. Lily, who was next to him, even had her fur standing on end: "Ah! What are those things?!"

"Those are flesh beasts, monsters that eat anything!" Becky's blade was burning with blazing flames. "Don't let them bite you, these guys' teeth have a poison… eh?"

Becky was surprised and said "eh": not long after the flesh beasts ran into everyone's sight, another, even larger and unheard-of strange creature ran out from behind the distant trees!

It was a tree… strictly speaking, a giant with the appearance of a giant tree.

It was nearly ten meters tall, shaped like a towering ancient tree with limbs. Its huge forked roots and two branches were its legs and arms, and in the upper part of the giant tree, the criss-crossing bark even vaguely outlined the pattern of a face. This giant tree giant was running behind more than twenty flesh beasts, and the earth-shattering heavy footsteps were made by it.

The flesh beasts were just being chased by this giant—and now this group of guys, who didn't look easy to mess with, were running like crazy towards Hao Ren and his party!

Of course, everyone didn't intend to face them head-on when they saw this formation, but just as they were about to slip away, they noticed an extremely bad situation: whether it was the giant tree giant who was deliberately driving them, or the flesh beasts who couldn't forget lunch while running away, these evil stars were running straight towards Hao Ren and his party!

Hao Ren jumped up on the spot: "After fighting the mountain giant, we're going to fight the guardian ancient tree. Did we poke the night elf's nest?!"

Becky quickly added a few simple spells to herself to increase her combat power, and rushed towards the flesh beasts with her fiery magic sword: "Anyway, let's fight them first!"

Hao Ren gritted his teeth, turned on all the shields on his body, and rushed straight at the flesh beast closest to him: "You son of a bitch!"

Although his taunts never worked to attract monsters, he still insisted on shouting "You son of a bitch" before every charge—this could give him a psychological sense of shield wall.

On the other side, Izhaks strode towards the "Guardian Ancient Tree" that looked the most difficult to deal with.