Chapter 18: Seizing

Almost at the same moment the golden giant tree suddenly opened its single eye, making Chen Chong’s hair stand on end.

Rumble…

Like an earthquake erupting, the ground beneath Chen Chong’s feet began to tremble clearly, as if something unknown was turning over underground! Then, including the bone pool, all the ground within his sight cracked open, and at the same time, root tendrils as thick as a child’s arm burst out of the earth, whipping wildly in the air like pythons!

Patches of soil were turned over as the root tendrils pulled out, and large amounts of earth and stone sank down because of them. In just a few blinks, the golden tree that originally exuded a sacred aura suddenly seemed to transform into a raging demon from hell, sending chills down one’s spine!

“Is this some kind of tree demon granny? Like something out of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio?”

Facing the golden tree that seemed ready to devour someone at any moment, Chen Chong, after a moment of initial terror, instead quickly calmed down. He assumed a stance ready to fight at any time, yet also ready to flee at a moment’s notice. He truly never expected that following the restless guidance of the Main God Light Sphere would lead him to encounter such a bizarre thing!

Whoosh whoosh whoosh…

At this moment, although dozens, even hundreds, of root tendrils as thick as a child’s arm had drilled out around the golden tree, they did not immediately attack Chen Chong. Instead, its single eye stared fixedly at him, and a mass of root tendrils whipped wildly in the air, as if trying to intimidate and drive him away.

“Hmm? It seems to be threatening me, trying to force me to leave…?”

At the edge of the bone pool, Chen Chong’s heart stirred:

He now realized that all the root tendrils he had encountered before were not independent individuals. Nine out of ten, they were all aerial roots of this giant tree. These aerial roots were extremely long, likely spreading and covering a distance of hundreds of meters! And the Mist was created by the giant tree to hallucinate creatures entering the fog zone, making them lose their ability to resist. Then the root tendrils were responsible for capturing prey, absorbing nutrients, and delivering nourishment to the main trunk. This was the hunting mechanism of this bizarre creature!

Chen Chong already felt that this single-eyed giant tree possessed animal-like instincts compared to purely plant-based life. And now, its way of waving all its main root tendrils in a threatening manner looked exactly like a wild beast whose Territory had been invaded.

“These root tendrils look scary, but they are slow to react. The most bizarre part of this tree’s hunting mechanism is the Mist-induced hallucination, but unfortunately, it’s useless against me. As long as I don’t get entangled by a large number of root tendrils at the same time, I can run away at any time!”

“In the end, aside from its single eye, this demon tree is just a carnivorous plant with low intelligence. Without the hallucination effect of the Mist, it’s just intimidating to look at.”

“The question now is, what exactly is it that attracted the Main God Light Sphere?”

The man and the tree maintained an extremely bizarre standoff. Chen Chong narrowed his eyes and fearlessly stared at the fist-sized, eerie single eye on the tree’s trunk, his heart suddenly stirring.

This eye…

Chen Chong finally felt it clearly and unmistakably: whenever he stared at the single eye on the giant tree’s trunk, the Main God Light Sphere in his mind transmitted a strong sense of restlessness and an instinctive desire!

Could it be this?!

Chen Chong tightened his grip on his tactical knife and licked his lips.

His gaze swept back and forth as he pondered what to do.

The current situation was obvious: for some unknown reason, the golden tree seemed extremely wary of him. As for Chen Chong, his current state was not at its best. These hundreds of root tendrils, as thick as a child’s arm, were clearly not easy to deal with. If he was careless and got entangled by them, he would undoubtedly be taken down on the spot, becoming fertilizer for this one-eyed demon tree and joining the ranks of the skeletons here.

But every time the thought of retreating arose, an unwillingness faintly stirred in Chen Chong’s heart, as if he would miss out on something very important to him.

However, regardless of how Chen Chong pondered at the edge of the bone pool, the golden tree, which had been madly waving its root tendrils to intimidate, seemed to discover that its threat display was ineffective, and the enemy was still eyeing it covetously nearby. It finally lost its patience!

Swish swish swish!

As the tree crown trembled, in the direction facing Chen Chong, densely packed root tendril tentacles wound towards him from all angles. Even beneath Chen Chong’s feet, a large number of root tendrils that had been lying in ambush suddenly burst out of the ground, twisting upwards!

For a moment, as far as the eye could see, terrifying root tendril tentacles blotted out the sky and covered the earth, so dense there was nowhere to hide.

“You think I’m afraid of you?”

Seeing the golden tree actually attack him first, and recalling the earlier scene where he was nearly turned into fertilizer, a violent rage surged in Chen Chong’s heart. Instead of retreating, he advanced, using the thin blade in his hand to clear a path as he fiercely lunged towards the main trunk of the one-eyed tree demon!

Chen Chong had no intention of getting entangled with these root tendril tentacles. He wanted to head straight for the vital part of the golden giant tree’s main body while he still had sufficient stamina. Otherwise, he might be slowly worn down and die here.

But although Chen Chong’s target was extremely clear, the golden tree’s root tendril tentacles blocked his advance path every moment, firmly protecting the golden tree’s trunk.

Snikt! Snikt! Snikt!

Compared to the clumsy and sluggish root tendril tentacles that only relied on numbers, Chen Chong’s movements were undoubtedly agile to the extreme. With his speed and ferocity, almost no root tendril tentacle could keep up with his movements. As Chen Chong dodged left and weaved right, the cold gleam of the tactical knife flashed continuously, and root tendrils were severed cleanly in the middle, spraying out pale red sap, like the golden tree’s flowing blood.

And every time one of these child-arm-thick tentacle root tendrils was cut, the golden tree’s crown seemed to tremble slightly.

“These thicker root tendrils must be branches of this giant tree’s main roots! When the branches break, it’s getting hurt too!!”

Dodging and weaving, getting closer and closer, Chen Chong keenly noticed the golden tree’s bizarre trembling after a large number of root tendrils were severed, and a thought arose in his mind.

Perhaps due to mutation, these root tendrils used for capturing prey and sucking blood and flesh were not woody, nor hard in texture. Instead, they were as fragile as flesh and blood, offering almost no resistance against Chen Chong’s extremely sharp tactical knife.

In just a few minutes, during Chen Chong’s perilously fierce charge, a large number of thick root tendrils were directly cut off. Pale red sap splattered everywhere, and the golden tree also shook violently as if it had suffered a severe blow, causing countless leaves to fall in profusion. In this hellish place of white bones, it held an indescribable, eerie beauty.

Finally, when Chen Chong had swept away most of the root tendril tentacles around the golden tree, the remaining ones became extremely withered and listless, no longer able to block the fiercely aggressive Chen Chong, who was now in a killing frenzy.

Whoosh!

Chen Chong leaped over the last defensive line formed by the root tendril tentacles, his figure shooting like an arrow to the front of the golden tree’s trunk. Without any hesitation, he fiercely gouged his knife towards that fist-sized, eerie single eye!

With a squelch, Chen Chong, who originally thought he would encounter some obstacle, actually gouged out this so-called “single eye” without any effort at all!

Although it was called a single eye, what Chen Chong actually scooped out was a hazy gray ball of light. Inside the light ball was wrapped an irregularly shaped, unknown object, making it hard to see clearly.

Then, before Chen Chong could even feel a surge of joy, this ball of light gouged out from the golden giant tree, as if attracted by a magnet, violently slammed into his forehead and silently merged into it!

In this instant, Chen Chong only felt as if something had merged into the Main God Light Sphere in his mind, as if they were a single entity from birth.