Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Chapter 721 24: "Tree" (Part 2)

Lin Lun led Sun Hang and Xue Yue further ahead, and Sun Hang clearly felt Xue Yue's grip on his sleeve tighten significantly.

The three passed through a corridor and arrived in front of an iron door—the door wasn't locked, and a rusted door knocker was crudely welded onto it.

Sun Hang clearly saw, the materialized negative emotions were like a black snake in hibernation, coiled around the door knocker.

Lin Lun reached out, passed through the phantom body of the black snake, grabbed the door knocker, and pulled it inward with force.

The edge of the iron door screeched with a harsh friction sound, and one by one, searchlights flickered on with a "pata" sound, dispelling the darkness, and at the end of this underground space, a bizarrely shaped "tree" appeared within Sun Hang's view.

It's hard to describe what type of eerie object this is, the trunk and branches of the "tree" seemed to be intertwined with bundles of animal muscles, with a deep red surface clearly outlined with muscle fibers, and a thin layer of white fascia covering it.

Yet its shape was indeed like a tree, a towering, flourishing perennial tree, rooted in a pool of blood-red soil, with the branches stretching upwards with all their might, seemingly trying to touch a sky that simply couldn't exist in this underground space.

Sun Hang felt that what he saw before him resembled a painter using graphic software to draw a dead tree in autumn or winter when the leaves had all fallen, then cropping out everything but the outline using the software's built-in cropping tool, and filling the outline with muscle texture, thus producing this "tree" possessing both plant and animal characteristics.

"Is this what you discovered?" Sun Hang asked.

"Yeah..." Lin Lun walked forward.

This tree was planted in a huge basin filled with a blood-red, soil-like substance, covered by an even larger glass dome, and around it, surrounded by a walkway that looked like a maintenance platform in a hangar.

The position where Sun Hang and the others entered was actually halfway up in this underground space, with spiraling metal staircases at both ends of the suspended walkway... For some reason, Sun Hang kept feeling that the dark red rust on the metal stairs looked like mottled bloodstains.

Lin Lun stood at the edge of the suspended walkway, resting his hands on the equally rusted railing.

"When I got it, it was just a small seedling." Lin Lun murmured, looking up at the "tree crown" towering over a hundred meters high, "But now, it has grown into a towering tree."

"When do you plan to tell the second half of your story?" Sun Hang asked, "I suddenly understand the pain of readers waiting for updates on web novels."

"Have you checked my personal file?" Lin Lun asked.

"I did."

"Can you find out how many times I left Chunming City?"

"Yes, a total of sixteen times, and without exception, for business trips." The main computer's voice echoed in his earpiece, and Sun Hang read out word for word, "Eleven of which were to negotiate the sale of Revival Pollution Control Company's technology to companies elsewhere, and the annotations for the other five were 'technical investigations.'

"It was during one of these 'technical investigations' that I discovered it a thousand kilometers away from Chunming City, on the Dada Grassland."

"The Dada Grassland?"

"The Dada Grassland is home to many nomadic tribes, living collectively in a tribal form—due to their geographical location, the impact of the first mysterious war on them was nearly negligible. And aside from extracting mineral resources from the Dada Grassland, the Federation Government rarely came into contact with these nomadic tribes." Lin Lun said.

"I found it... on the calendar it's the year 4710, July. At that time, you hadn't become the chairman of the Revival Pollution Control Company; you went to Dada Grassland as a representative of the company to investigate the desertification issue of the grassland. Back then, the days of the Revival Pollution Control Company were still tough, and the management intended to transform the company, sending you to the Dada Grassland to investigate to determine the direction and feasibility of this transformation." Sun Hang said.

"I stayed for three months on the Dada Grassland, during which I contacted five local nomadic tribes... The first four tribes were still relatively friendly to me, the outsider... In fact, they weren't really nomadic tribes anymore; the resources and subsidies provided by the Federation Government far exceeded what they could earn from herding. Many young people from these tribes had gone to modern cities, and those who remained often chose to work for mining companies, rather than continue herding."

Lin Lun continued, "Although their attitude was friendly, their attitude towards solving the grassland desertification issue was not proactive—for them, as long as the mineral veins beneath the grassland didn't run dry, their lives were secured. They didn't really care about the reduction of grazing areas caused by the shrinking of the grassland."

"After staying in the mining area for half a month, an old man from one of the tribes told me that there was another very mysterious nomadic tribe deep in the grassland, who always lived by the ways of their ancestors. If I wanted to collect folk stories, perhaps I could find them—the old man's hearing and understanding weren't very good; she always thought that I, with a camera hanging in front of my chest, was a journalist sent from some TV station."

"I felt as though a voice was telling me, leading me to the depths of the grassland to find that mysterious nomadic tribe... After some necessary preparations, the next day, I bid farewell to the manager of the mining area, and with some clues provided by the old man, embarked on the journey to find that nomadic tribe."

"It took me two weeks, relying on cattle and sheep droppings and traces of campsites, to find this mysterious nomadic tribe... To my surprise, when the tribe discovered me, they were extremely unfriendly towards me... A young shepherd even shot three arrows in my direction, strongly warning me."

"The three arrows landed less than five meters in front of me, seemingly telling me that if I took a few more steps forward, the next arrows would pierce my chest."

"But I didn't give up, because that voice told me that I was very close to my lifelong pursuit... So I kept following the tribe from a distance. Whenever they camped, I camped, and whenever they migrated, I moved too, following them for almost a month, until one day a herder rode up to me and told me in broken Chinese that there were no mineral veins here and I shouldn't waste my effort."

"I told him I wasn't with a mining company, but a journalist." Lin Lun smiled at this point, "I even took that camera that caused the old man's misunderstanding and took a picture of the herder."

"Though the people of this nomadic tribe were very insular, they were surprisingly naive; quickly, the herders believed my story... The children, who had never had their photo taken before, giggled and clustered around me, wanting me to take a picture of each of them."

"With these photos, I got along well with the people of the tribe, and they gave me a lot of jerky and cheese... But just when I was asking if I could follow them to document their everyday life in photos, a look of obvious hesitation appeared on their faces."