Chapter 1 The Twisted Woods

Twisted Woods, a place with a strange atmosphere.

The ecological environment here is completely different from the outside world, and stepping into it can even give people the illusion of accidentally falling into an alien forest. There are no green plants in the woods, and the leaves of all flowers, plants, and trees have a metallic, purplish-red sheen. At first glance, it is enchanting, but looking at it for a long time will make people feel particularly strange. Most of the forest plants grow tall and twisted, and some person-high bushes even grow in a spiral like flames. Under the bushes and in the thick humus, you can see strange fungi growing along the terrain, looking like a combination of mushrooms and moss: large patches of light purple fungal skin covering rocks or other plant surfaces, with umbrella-like structures growing abruptly on top. These fungi thrive in dark corners and are brightly colored, but it is unknown whether this world also follows the rule that "the more beautiful the fungi, the more poisonous." The woodland is covered with thick fallen leaves and other plant debris, and all plants grow wantonly according to the most natural laws, showing a primitive appearance rarely disturbed by humans.

Apart from those small plants that coexist with the forest, there is only one type of tree in the entire Twisted Woods: a tall, crooked broad-leaved tree with iron-grey bark, no branches in the lower half, and a trunk that grows in a slight spiral arc to the high sky, then suddenly bursts out with a large number of forks at an extremely high position. The crown is covered with purplish-red, oval broad leaves. These broad-leaved trees are all over the forest, and their shapes are almost identical. Apart from the difference in size, they are almost copy-pasted in terms of the twisting amplitude of the trunk, the shape of the branches, and even the distribution of each branch. Hao Ren immediately noticed the abnormality of these trees. He carefully observed the crowns of two strange trees far apart and finally confirmed that their branches were one hundred percent the same.

Now, the group is walking on the "official road" in the Twisted Woods. This road was opened up hundreds of years ago by the church at the cost of a lot of manpower and material resources. Many generations have devoted their lives to maintaining this narrow forest road. Now, hundreds of years have passed, and the ferocious monsters in the Twisted Woods have gradually become accustomed to the existence of this road and have taken the initiative to stay away from the outposts near the road: this road has become a part of the forest ecosystem, and the forest has retreated beside the man-made road.

This allows travelers passing through the forest to get the most basic safety guarantee, as long as they don't leave the boundary lines delineated by magic lamps on both sides of the road too far.

"These trees have no scientific name because they are only part of the huge organism that is the 'Twisted Woods,' like the fur on a beast, but mercenaries and adventurers have given them a common name of 'Spiral Trees,' which is quite descriptive," Becky noticed that Hao Ren's eyes were fixed on those strange trees, and took the initiative to introduce them. "All the trees are one. They grow together underground in a tangled mess, and the surface part is only used to receive sunlight. A group of elven scholars spent a long time in the Twisted Woods to determine this fact. It is said that the Twisted Woods was the goddess's back garden before the world was destroyed, and the elven magic emperor Lorissa stole the life factors of this forest and used the roots of the Twisted Woods to replicate the Tree of Life. But that Tree of Life has already been burned into a large area of coke in the flames of destruction, and I don't know how similar they can be."

"Well, you said before that this entire forest is one plant," Nangong Wuyue said, sniffing. The moisture in this forest made the siren girl feel much more comfortable. "But such a large forest... how big would its underground part be?"

"I don't know. It is said that the roots of the Twisted Woods extend westward all the way to the center of Lake Bein, and eastward all the way to the foot of the Dragon Spine Mountains. This entire piece of land is supported by the roots of the Twisted Woods. There is also a legend that more than a hundred years ago, a group of dwarven miners wanted to mine brilliant crystals in the Dragon Spine Mountains. They dug the mines too deep and dug out a huge black root in the mine facing the Blood Lake. Half of the miners went crazy on the spot—later, the church explained that the anger of the goddess when she destroyed the world was still suppressed under this forest and would take thousands of years to be digested by the root system of the forest, so they banned anyone from digging mines west of the mountains, and even digging a well required church approval."

Hao Ren looked in amazement at the towering trees around him. From the surface, it was difficult for him to imagine how huge a life form was lurking under this land, and it only sprouted some tentacles from its body for breathing to form such a vast forest, but he knew that what Becky said should be correct, because the amazing similarity of those trees in appearance was difficult to explain by other means. This was not a naturally occurring phenomenon and could only be attributed to the fact that they were organs on the same organism.

"Wait, I need to leave for a moment." Hao Ren suddenly remembered something and ran to the side with his daughter's pot. Becky shouted from behind, "Where are you going?! It's dangerous outside!"

Hao Ren waved his hand and shouted, "I'll be right back, I won't run too far!"

Becky still looked a little worried. Lily saw this and explained for Hao Ren, "The landlord must be going to the toilet, his kidneys aren't good..."

Vivian was startled: "How do you know his kidneys aren't good?!"

"Didn't he have diarrhea in the mountain village a few days ago?"

Everyone: "..."

It turned out that this girl's thought circuit was still stuck at that time and hadn't turned around!

At this time, Hao Ren had already run outside the official road and found a place where Becky couldn't see him, but he didn't dare to run too far. On both sides of the official road, there were magic lamps made of divine crystal by the church. Outside the radiation range of these magic lamps was still the world of monsters. He opened his daughter's pot behind a bush, and Dou Dou immediately poked her head out and happily clapped her hands to greet Hao Ren.

Hao Ren poked the little guy's head to show his affection, and then greeted the data terminal: "Come out and scan, at high power."

"You finally have a bit of work ethic." The data terminal hummed and floated out of the pot, rising into the air in Dou Dou's curious gaze, and then a blue light shone around it.

High-intensity radar signals began to penetrate deep underground, analyzing the underground structure of this forest.

"Found an unprecedentedly huge plant root system. That little girl was right, the forest is one." The data terminal released a holographic projection, presenting a three-dimensional picture of the underground of the Twisted Woods. Hao Ren saw that the underground scene of this forest was indeed amazing: there were huge plant roots everywhere, tangled and crisscrossed, radiating many kilometers outward from the forest, and they grew into a whole underground, shaped like a flattened, grooved ellipsoid, or a crooked walnut.

Looks pretty disgusting.

The data terminal commented from the side: "If these roots disappear, a large cavity with a diameter of hundreds of kilometers will form underground in the Twisted Woods and a considerable area around it, enough to make everything here fall into the depths of the earth. You can imagine how large this thing is. Also, that little girl said something that wasn't quite accurate: the forest's root system extends west far beyond the center of Lake Bein. It has crossed Lake Bein and is about to grow to the crystalline plain on the opposite shore and the mountains further west, but it may be that there is a problem with the soil of that crystalline plain. A large area of the roots that extended over there have died and should not continue to grow."

"I didn't expect the underground part to be so much wider than the above-ground part." Hao Ren marveled. He wasn't marveling at the ancient "miracle," but at how ingenious nature was—as ingenious as Corvus 12345.

"In addition to the underground root system, this unit has also discovered something else, which should be of more research value," the data terminal suddenly said, "This forest... well, the entire ecosystem of Lake Bein is actually incompatible with the outside world."

Hao Ren didn't understand for a moment: "Incompatible?"

"This is the terrain of this area," the data terminal switched to a holographic image from a high altitude, "You can see that the entire Lake Bein area is actually a closed environment. The Dragon Spine Mountains on the east, the Mountain People's Holy Mountain on the west, a large rift valley on the north, and the ocean on the south. The rift valley and the ocean can more or less play a role in separating the ecological zones. Surrounded by this series of terrains, the Lake Bein area has formed a closed ecosystem. The plants that grow here—at least those detected by this unit—are not adapted to the external environment. They use nutrients in a very peculiar way, and only Lake Bein can provide them with this environment."

"Completely unable to adapt to the outside environment? Can't survive at all?"

The data terminal said decisively: "Can't survive at all."

Hao Ren became more and more curious about Lake Bein.

It is maintaining an ancient ecosystem. What is in the lake water?