Chapter 54

Su Ran was stunned for several seconds.

He stared blankly at the scenery in front of him. The moment he came to his senses, he put the flower bud against the window again, carefully recalling and identifying it.

But, it’s gone.

Everything, from the tall sacred trees to the small green bushes, had vanished. They had become nothing more than dead vines and dry branches that fell around them, blending in with the deep, ravine-like earth.

Just then, he heard two beeps from the intercom behind him.

Su Ran turned around and saw that Si Chengyan had woken up. He frowned and contacted Triana.

"Hello, this is temporary camp P232."

"Si Chengyan," he said, "help me retrieve the latest aerial view of the Shenshu area."

"Okay, got it."

Seeing Si Chengyan hung up the phone, Su Ran started to sob. He was extremely anxious, but there was nothing he could do. He could only grab Si Chengyan with his little leaves and shake him non-stop, but he couldn't say a word.

"What should I do?" Su Ran raised the flower bud. "In the deep tree area, the altar and the big tree are gone..."

"Let's choose a landing spot first."

Su Ran was still holding the colonel's sleeve. From the plane, his home looked just like the cave before. After climbing up the rocks, he saw that it was full of animal corpses and burnt vines.

Could it be that his friends also...

Su Ran exclaimed softly, "Elder Rose!"

The other roses were able to escape, but the elder had difficulty moving and had to rely on a cane every time he went out.

It seems that if he were in danger...

Su Ran couldn't even imagine it.

He used to cry and whine when he encountered danger, but now, he has become a small mature rose. After a brief period of sadness, he forced himself to be strong and began to search for traces of the rose clan.

They landed on a flat ground. Unlike the lush greenery in the past, the vines around them had been burned black and were swaying slightly from side to side, twisting into distorted shadows.

"I'll look for it first, maybe there's some clue." Su Ran took out the flower bud from the colonel's pocket, "Please let me go, don't worry, I won't run around."

"Be careful." Si Chengyan said.

Su Ran nodded again. He and Guji were placed on a flat ground. Compared with the huge ravines in other places, the cracks here were relatively smaller. There was also a small stone slope where he could stand and see the soldiers and the colonel in formation around him.

Su Ran began to explore very seriously.

It seemed as if every place here had been burned, but strangely, only burnt vines were left. The huge sacred tree and many large trees seemed to have been moved away, leaving only pits of earth covered with strange long nematodes.

Those insects opened their dozen or so white eyeballs and stared at Su Ran, as if at this moment, those hundreds of eyeballs had found their next prey.

Su Ran took a small step back.

After retracting his gaze, he said to Si Chengyan: "I don't seem to feel the breath of the Rose Clan."

"Not even one?"

Su Ran shook his head.

He bent the stems and touched a little soil. "Even though I can't feel any scent, I don't think the roses want to leave."

"We're not the kind of people who like to move. If we encounter danger and flee, our roots will leave traces in this damp soil." Su Ran said, "I don't see any traces, so something must have taken them away."

What exactly is it?

Su Ran didn't know.

But he understood one thing: what happened here must be a thousand times more terrifying than the beasts he had encountered before.

Just as he was pulling Guji's hand and trying to climb the small slope on the other side, a thick fog surged up from the gap.

Su Ran was stunned for a moment.

The moment I came back to my senses, the whole earth began to shake violently.

The sky turned scarlet, and the clouds surged rapidly, as if tearing the entire sky apart, and a lot of unknown black liquid fell. They fell rapidly and densely, hitting the ground heavily.

There was a lot of noise around. Su Ran tried hard to find the colonel's back, but there was fog all around and he could not see anything at all.

He became anxious and called the colonel several times, but there was no response.

Even Guji was gone.

So Su Ran hurriedly jumped down the slope and walked forward towards the sound, but the noisy sound lasted for a few seconds and then quickly became quiet like a cloud, and finally returned to dead silence.

Su Ran: "...Yes, is there anyone?"

As soon as he finished speaking, an even more violent earthquake occurred, erupting along with the fog, like an outburst of the earth, with a magnitude greater than any previous one.

Su Ran was knocked unconscious. He rolled down the ravine onto a flat slope, where gravel hit his buds several times. After an unknown amount of time, the pain gradually subsided and Su Ran finally came to his senses.

He looked around and saw that everything around him was gray, except for a long crack above his vision, winding and extending into the distance.

Memories of his previous time in the military came to his mind.

Judging from the earthquake that just happened, the thick fog that came out, and the cracks that are now opening up, another large distortion of magnitude 6 or above should have just occurred.

Si Chengyan had once told him that small-scale distortions were manageable, as they were regional in nature. However, large-scale distortions were different. The entire world would be reorganized, and all order and creatures would gain new abilities, like a complete reshuffle.

——What will happen?

Su Ran didn't know about this.

He could only climb up slowly along the edge of the crack through the small gap that extended out.

The changes in this world are really a huge topic for him, a rose.

However, he did not want to hurt the many partners he met in his rose career, whether they were plants or humans.

In addition, he has two most precious ones - his human colonel and Elder Rose.

Su Ran climbed much faster.

He moved up little by little, and the leaves turned gray again, and even had some small cracks on them.

But he turned a deaf ear to it. At this moment, the purpose of finding the colonel and the elder was more important than anything else. Only in this way could he gather with the 1312 troops as soon as possible and bring the elder back.

Just then.

A wild beast roared in the distance.

In the thick fog, the appearance of the monster could not be seen, it was simply beyond description. Even though the roar was heard and the earth was shaking, it was very close, but nothing could be seen. In the dead silence, there was only the faint sound of the wind, blowing eerily towards them.

Su Ran rolled up the leaves in fear.

Everything here smells of death, without even a hint of life.

It seems that this great distortion has brought about earth-shaking changes in the entire world.

A rose with half of its leaf broken off appeared in Su Ran's eyes. It was bent over, with only one leaf left. It was holding a half-broken crutch and jogging forward stumblingly, as if it was trying to use all its strength to escape from here.

Su Ran stood there in a daze.

The old figure in my memory overlaps at this moment——

This was the only and most important Rose Elder in his life. Every day she played with his little seedling, told him stories, and taught him the rules of survival.

Su Ran rushed towards that place regardless of everything.

He had just taken a step and hadn't even opened his mouth to call out "Elder" when the figure took only a few steps and then tumbled heavily to the ground, never to move again.