Epoch of Twilight

Luo Yuan stood on the branches and looked up at the sky; his mind absent for a moment. There was nothing in the sky except for a few stars dotting the canvas. Everything he had seen tonight had a huge impact on his soul; it felt like it was all but a dream.

After quite a while, he snapped out of his reverie and walked back to the cave, numbed. Wang Shishi was still sleeping and snored a bit. Luo Yuan who did not sleep throughout the night did not feel the least bit sleepy. He lay beside Wang Shishi and sat on the bearskin with a blank mind. He thought he needed to be calmed down.

What was the purpose of these aliens coming to earth?

Was it purely a scientific and technological research, or were they ready to conquer the earth? Was it a strange, unwelcomed guest, or simply a foe? Was this remotely associated with the recent years of insane mutating of plants and animals? Everything was unbeknownst to him.

Luo Yuan was not sure whether the Reconstruction Area had an inkling of this force from the outside world, but it seemed very unlikely.

This place was more than 600 kilometers away, and it was completely under the mutated beasts’ control. Human beings were restricted to enter this area, and even the robotic spy plane was rarely seen in this vicinity. In addition, this unknown outskirt appeared to be well hidden; its active time was late at night, so chances of discovering it was rather slim. If Luo Yuan did not come all the way here to look for the wisdom tree, he would not have been aware of it either.

If it was a spacecraft that existed in space, it would be extremely difficult to find it in the vastness of the milky way. It could very well just be hidden behind the moon. Even with technology, humans would have barely discovered it. Not to mention that the power that was demonstrated by this external force was much stronger than that of the earth. This was akin to a radar during World War II put up a miserable fight with a stealth aircraft of today. Even if a spacecraft had appeared directly outside the atmosphere, it would not have possibly been discovered.

Today, the Reconstruction Area had been equipped with very powerful technology, and it assisted in improving the strength of humans. Although the population now was less than one tenth of the population before the apocalypse, the military force had been several times more powerful. In fact, the battle between the humans and the mutated beasts had arrived a stalemate. The situation was rather balanced, as the mutated beasts could not enter further into the Reconstruction Area, whilst the humans could not reclaim their lost homeland.

And now, there was one more unknown outsider appearing...

The more Luo Yuan thought, the more pessimistic he was. The future of humanity seemed to be even more uncertain.

...

The sky was getting brighter. Luo Yuan rubbed his face and exhaled deeply. With 17 points of Will, he soon controlled his negative emotions, no matter how bad his day was going.

"Brother Luo, you have awakened." Wang Shishi was awake, as she sat up and stretched her body.

"Yes. Let’s eat something. After breakfast, we will need to depart," said Luo Yuan. He looked at Wang Shishi’s innocent face. He felt that ignorance was bliss. At least she did not have to bear such a heavy burden.

There was still some food leftover from dinner last night, except for the barbecued meat, which had hardened like a stone by now. The worm eggs were still edible. After a simple breakfast, they adjourned once again.

The cool early morning was the most comfortable time of the day. At this time, the high temperature had dropped, and when the wind blew, it felt like all their pores were finally breathing. As it was foggy last night, the ground was a bit damp, and when they walked the forest, droplets of fresh dew dripped down from the leaves above.

However, before the water droplets fell to the ground, they were suspended by an invisible force in the air. After a day’s worth of rest, Wang Shishi was now brimming with energy. Last night’s fatigue had all been restored, and throughout their journey, she enjoyed playing with the water droplets with her power of control.

The air felt a little saltier, which meant the sea was not far from here. Half an hour later, they could see that the road was covered with moss and vines, but there were no traces of civilization at all.

The few meter-thick layers of dead leaves had covered everything up. Without referring to the coordinates on the map, it was hard to believe that this forest was Mushi County, which was once a city populated by more than 200,000, a few years ago.

Luo Yuan flew into the air to identify it again and continued to move forward.

Kidney Mountain was three to four kilometers away from Mushi County. It was neither populated nor had any sign of human habitation within the radius of a few kilometers. Before the apocalypse, there was only one dirt road that could lead to it. Today, the road was impossible to be seen, so he could only rely on his eyes to distinguish it.

On the map, Kidney Mountain simply could not be found. The name was created for one of the barely-seen hill peaks among this massive mountain range, and not a soul would have ever known about this, except for the locals.

Before the apocalypse, it was a deserted mountain with sparse greenery. However, it was now abundant with plants. The plants were all hundred meters in height and it would undoubtedly increase the complexities if one were to hunt for Kidney Mountain. The hill peaks were almost the same, so it was too good to be true to find the mountain purely based on its name.

If he wanted to ever succeed in finding the mountain, he could only follow the waterfall.

Actually, it was no arduous task. With his sharp hearing ability, Luo Yuan had picked up the rumbling sound of the waterfall. But according to the ranger, the migration was six months ago, when the sea level had only just begun to rise. It was still an in an arid zone.

With the salty taste in the air, he could see that this place had already become coastal with its humid climate and abundant rainfall. Due to the gap between the mountains, there were numerous waterfalls nearby. Based on what he could sense, there were at least seven to eight waterfalls. Fortunately, he only needed a little time to do so.

Luo Yuan checked everywhere, and when he came to the fifth mountain with a waterfall, it was already close to noon. He took a look and was surprised. This mountain was not high, and the gap was about three or four meters. The weird thing was the shape of the mountainside, which was actually just a little hollow. If he were to remove the plants for clarity, it looked exactly like what the ranger called a ‘Kidney Mountain’.

The waterfall cascaded from the bottom of the hill and was splashing down with immense force. It was a waterfall formed by an underground river. The amount of water was not abundant and the gap was not high, thus, it took Luo Yuan some time to find this waterfall as it was indiscernible.

Luo Yuan asked Wang Shishi to stay put. After all, it was not safe to go forward. It was at least a level six mutated beast which was able to scare the Hui clan away. Even if they had wanted to migrate somewhere else, it was still plausible if it were to be a level six mutated beast. However, if it was a giant level-seven mutated creature, a simple leap could easily cause widespread destruction. Should he ever chance upon this kind of creature, only then would he go all out to fight with them, and would simply neglect Wang Shishi.

He carried his Zhanmadao and departed again. The mountain terrain here was extremely steep. A few mutated vines were quietly spreading like a snake, attempting to eat Luo Yuan, but he chopped them all off.

Several huge piranha flowers were growing under the shade of the trees. They were all colorful with a sweet smell, but remains of bones were seen surrounding them. Somewhere not far away, there was a 100-meter-tall giant plant moving slowly. Every step it took, a thick root pulled out from the ground and probed back into the ground deeply, causing the ground to tremor slightly. On the trunk, there were cracks everywhere, and it looked like a face of an old man. With every single movement, its expression changed accordingly.

All the plants here have been humanized. Even for the rarely seen humanized tree, at least three would be found here.

Luo Yuan listened to the sound of the waterfall and accelerated his speed to move forward. After a few minutes, He hopped onto a boulder and the waterfall was already in front of him. The terrain here was relatively flat, with oval stones of various sizes everywhere on the ground. The height of the waterfall was only 10 meters. The water fell into the pit, and eventually formed a 10-meter-wide river, flowing into the bottom, along with the pebbles.

The strange thing was that the plants here were quite sparse and relatively smaller in size. At first glance, he could only see a few scattered trees growing on this rocky beach. Apart from those, he could barely see anything, even vines and grass were also tough to find.

And there was a 50 to 60 meter-high quirky plant near the lake, clearly standing out in this low bush. The sarcoma-like lump of its spherical roots, the sparse foliage that looked greatly distorted, the trunk that resembled a wrung towel, and bearing fruit that looked like a baby skull, had clearly revealed its identity.

‘Wisdom Tree.’

Luo Yuan’s eyes brightened, as he panted heavily.

This wisdom tree was apparently larger than the one he previously discovered, and its color was different. The trunk that he previously found was in yellow and purple, while this one was completely dark purple. Obviously, this wisdom tree was higher in grade than the previous one.

However, although he was anxious, he did not act rashly. He carefully looked around his surroundings. There was no sign of any mutated beasts nearby, not even an insect or a bird tweeting. Everything just seemed unusual.

He carefully felt the air, and it seemed to have some suppression. Luo Yuan scowled.

He hesitated, tightened his grip onto the knife slowly, and moved forward. At the same time, he had expanded his Perception to its maximum limit, as he carefully searched the vicinity for movements. But alas, he did not sense anything uncanny. He stepped forward quickly, and his Perception had already covered the whole pool.

He thought that the mutated beast was inside the pool, but it was not.

The pool was not deep. Its diameter was only three or four meters and was less than 100 meters in height. There was no trace of any dark holes underneath. There was absolutely nothing except for a few several meters long of ‘small fishes’ in the water. In the apocalypse, creatures this size could only be referred to as a small fish.

Luo Yuan exhaled. It had seemed to be a false alarm. The mutated beasts here might have died or had been abandoned here. In this very cruel world, even the powerful mutated beasts might have faced accidental misfortune, should there be any carelessness.

The bones under the wisdom tree looked a tad bit strange, but he failed to notice that from afar. Every bone under the tree was very large; one of the femora that lied on the ground measured up to ten meters long and five meters thick. The bones were even larger than the soul-eater mutated beast, and similarly sized bones were scattered everywhere on the ground.

It was still acceptable if there was only one or two, but it was everywhere. The bones piled up like a mountain, near the wisdom tree. The entire bone mountain was about four meters thick and occupied 10,000 square meters. Luo Yuan noticed that the skeletons underground had been disintegrated into powder. He did not know how many strong mutated beasts had been buried underneath.

His mind suddenly felt a little uneasy. The entire bone mountain would not have been caused by the Hui clan. Any one of the mutated beasts could easily extinguish the whole clan.

He could also vaguely smell a trace of blood. He gently sniffed around, and cautiously looked towards the bone mountain. His face suddenly turned pale. There were numerous translucent-like cocoon filaments growing from the trunk of wisdom tree, and it camouflaged the tree well.

The corpse was obviously quite fresh, indicating that the murder just happened not too long ago. It was most probably placed there only since yesterday.

His heart was getting heavy. This mutated beast did not go away yet but probably went somewhere else to hunt. Apparently, this was not a normal mutated beast, as it was capable of building a bone mountain with its own ability. It could pass off as a level eight mutated beast.

He looked at the wisdom tree not too far away and hesitated for a moment. He then hopped over and stood next to the trunk without further delay, as he did not know when the scary mutated beast would return.

Luo Yuan brandished his Zhanmadao and chopped off the trunk with all his strength. Immediately, there was a burst and a banging sound ensued. With the fall of this giant tree, the trunk also started to tumble down fiercely.

A large number of bones were flying in the air. The fierce wind blew harshly, almost uprooting the nearby trees. Just like cold water being dripped into boiling oil, the bone mountain was churned up like a pot of thick porridge, paving a way to a series of explosive sounds like rolling thunder. Some of the smaller trunks were half a meter thick and some were even one meter thick. More than thousands of them were trembling fiercely and even engulfed the sky. The movement of the wisdom tree before it perished was even more violent than a level seven mutated beast.

As time passed Luo Yuan could only stand somewhere far away to wait patiently. The fruit of the wisdom tree was useless to him. The one thing that was useful to him was the Heart of Wisdom.

However, in order to form the Heart of Wisdom, many conditions have to be met. Only when the tree was fighting against brutal damage, most of the nutrition would shrink from the trunk to a core part in the body.

This was equivalent to having a seed waiting after a crisis. It would sprout again on the original plant by gathering the nutrients to be alive again. This was the survival skill of the wisdom tree.

But it would need to take some time. No matter how anxious Luo Yuan was, he could only wait patiently until the tree triggered this protective mechanism.