Chapter 8
When Lu Yu lost strength in one of her legs, she fell to the ground. Yan Hong saw her suddenly sit down and hurriedly pulled her up.
"Why are you sitting here?"
"My legs are numb."
Yan Hong became anxious and angry after hearing such an outrageous reason. Just as she was about to pull Lu Shiyu up, she saw a thin vine wrapped around Lu Shiyu's ankle.
"Damn it," Yan Hong cursed, slashed the inconspicuous vine with her sword, and asked, "Can you stand up?"
Lu Shiyu pinched his legs and felt completely paralyzed.
"I can't get up. I don't have the strength to do it."
Yan Hong threw her a dagger so that she could protect herself. She gritted her teeth and faced the surrounding vines alone. She could not move because Lu Shiyu was unable to move.
"Damn! I can never finish cutting it!" Shaoxing Yang could hardly hold on any longer.
Tang Zeyu on the other side was farther away, and the vines had not yet climbed to his side, so he could clearly see that the two people were doing useless work. No matter how fast they chopped, they would eventually be buried.
Lu Shiyu picked up the dagger on the ground and tried her best to cut the thin vines crawling along the ground. Suddenly, a vine jumped out from the ground and jumped towards her face. Lu Shiyu grabbed it and cut it into pieces with the dagger, but the next second Lu Shiyu was forced to let go of the hand holding the vine.
Lu Shiyu could clearly feel that from the moment she grabbed the vine, a subtle sensation came from her palm, and then her palm began to go numb, the symptoms were exactly the same as her legs.
Realizing that something was wrong, Lu Shiyu quickly shouted, "Don't get hit by these vines!"
But it was too late. Shaoxing Yang and Chen Yunliang on the other side were eager to break through the encirclement and had an intimate contact with the vines. The result can be imagined. Both of them were paralyzed and lost their strength. They collapsed to the ground, unable to do anything as the vines crawled all over their bodies. Finally, the vines entangled the two of them and began to slowly drag them towards the flowers on the treetops.
Looking at the situation of the two people, Tang Zeyu roughly guessed what the consequences would be if they were touched by the vines. He wrapped his trouser legs into his shoes, tucked his shirt into his trousers, put on a hood and gloves, and wrapped his whole body tightly, leaving no inch of skin exposed.
"Captain..." Shaoxing Yang's voice was weak. He and Chen Yunliang were dragged under the tree by vines. If they were not rescued, they would probably turn into fertilizer.
Lu Shiyu's hand and leg were paralyzed, and Yan Hong was the only one who could resist the attack of the vines, and it was obviously beyond her ability. When Yan Hong was about to be entangled by the vines, the vines that were originally twisted wildly suddenly lost their vitality, fell limply to the ground, and were motionless.
Lu Shiyu was stunned when he saw the vines suddenly stopped. He looked for Tang Zeyu as if he had sensed something, and finally found Tang Zeyu wrapped up under the tree.
Tang Zeyu stood under the tree and the vines in front of him were cut off by his sword, but why could Tang Zeyu's sword make all the vines lose their ability to move?
After Lu Shiyu's observation, he finally found that the part that Tang Zeyu cut off was the connection between the □□ and the root. By cutting off from the root, the whole flower can be removed at once.
"Are you okay?"
When Tang Zeyu turned around, Lu Shiyu couldn't help laughing. The hood Tang Zeyu was wearing was a full-coverage hood, revealing only his mouth and eyes. He looked like a robber.
Tang Zeyu immediately took off the hood and said, "There's nothing we can do. We only have this style of hood."
"Don't worry about that for now..." Shao Xingyang, lying on the ground, weakly made his final accusation: "Pull me out first..."
Tang Zeyu gave Yan Hong a pair of gloves, and the two worked together to pull Shaoxing Yang and Chen Yunliang out from under the vines. As for Lu Shiyu, it was like losing a leg and an arm, and he could only sit on the ground and wait for the paralysis effect to wear off.
Yan Hong turned Shaoxing Yang over and let him lie face up to avoid getting a mouthful of dirt. Suddenly, she saw the red marks on his neck.
"Is this vine so strong?" Yan Hong touched it curiously and found that there was a bit of fine short fluff stuck on her gloves.
"The force wasn't very strong, but it was so uncomfortable," Shao Xingyang coughed twice before recovering. "My whole body feels numb and itchy wherever the vines touched it. Woo woo woo, please scratch it for me, it's so itchy."
"Is it really that serious..."
Although she said she was reluctant, Yan Hong still chose to help Shaoxing Yang scratch some of his not-so-private parts out of humanitarianism. Tang Zeyu looked at Lu Shiyu who was sitting not far away. She was also feeling a little itchy now, but it was not very serious. The degree was probably only as severe as being bitten by an ordinary mosquito.
"Is it itchy?"
"A little, but I can bear it," Lu Shiyu tried his best to restrain the urge to scratch: "It would be troublesome if the skin was broken."
Chen Yunliang, who was lying on the other side, looked up at the sky and sighed.
"Is there anyone who can take care of me?"
Unable to walk or carry anything, Yu could only sit on the ground and wait for his body's metabolism to return to normal, and boredly observed the flower that attacked them. From the results, although there were such huge flowers on several nearby trees, these flowers all belonged to the same plant, and they all died after Tang Zeyu cut them from the roots. Maybe they will grow again next year, but it is unknown how long it will take for them to grow to this size again.
Lu Shiyu noticed that several of the flowers were in bud form, while the one he wanted to turn into fertilizer was fully bloomed.
Are these unopened buds yet to bloom, or are there something hidden in them?
"Tang...Tang Zeyu," Lu Shiyu pointed at the flower buds hanging on the tree, "Can you help me take those flowers down?"
Tang Zeyu looked up at the flowers, and without much hesitation, he climbed up the tree and threw the flowers down from the tree. Picking one flower was not enough. Tang Zeyu climbed several trees in succession with agile movements. It only took him a few seconds to climb up the trees, as if it was effortless. He was so fast that he had almost picked all the flowers in a short while.
"That's enough, no need to pick any more."
Lu Shiyu was worried that picking too many flowers would affect the local ecology, so he hurriedly asked Tang Zeyu, who was immersed in climbing the tree and picking flowers, to stop. Only then did Tang Zeyu reluctantly come down from the tree.
Tang Zeyu picked up the flowers on the ground, piled them in her arms and handed them to Lu Shiyu. She couldn't help but ask curiously, "What do you want these flowers for?"
"I just want to confirm my guess."
Lu Shiyu first picked up a blooming flower. Although it did look similar to the Rafflesia, fortunately it did not have any strange smell. It was just that the pattern on it was really ugly, and the center of the flower was covered with a layer of mucus.
Lu Shiyu picked up the flower bud. Since he could only use one hand, he weighed them separately. It was obvious that the other bud was heavier.
Lu Shiyu wanted to cut the flower bud, but he only had one hand and the bud rolled around, making it difficult to cut. Tang Zeyu took the initiative to hold down the rolling bud and let Lu Shiyu cut it.
The short knife sank into the flower bud, and the feeling was similar to killing a cabbage. However, when Lu Shiyu wanted to insert the knife deeper, he encountered obvious resistance. Lu Shiyu didn't know what it was, so he could only carefully avoid the things inside and cut the flower bud from the center. Because the knife was too short and the flower was too big, it was no less difficult than cutting a watermelon with a peeler. In the end, Tang Zeyu had to rely on his bare hands to completely separate the flower bud.
The contents of the bud surprised them both: a curled-up bird resembling an eagle and a chicken. Even stranger was its snake-like tail. Two creatures, naturally considered enemies, had merged into one. This biological distortion was truly absurd.
"Why is there a chicken in there?" Lu Shiyu pulled the snaketail chicken out of the bud and asked, "Could it be possible that a chicken can grow out of a flower?"
"I don't think so," Tang Zeyu interrupted her outrageous speculation: "It's more like it was preyed upon by this flower, but it just didn't have time to digest it."
Lu Shiyu checked the chicken's breathing and confirmed that it was still alive, but its breathing was very weak.
In order to verify their point of view, the two of them cut open several other flower buds in succession. Without exception, there was something inside each of them. The difference was that the contents were different, but they were all almost digested, leaving only some bone frames with residual flesh and blood.
"That's how they handle it," Lu Shiyu couldn't help but marvel at the wonders of the deformed creatures. "I thought the vines would bind the creatures until they died, and then their bodies would fall to the ground and be broken down, entering the soil and eventually being absorbed by the plants. It turns out they're being digested directly by the flowers. This way, it's definitely much more efficient."
The paralyzing effect brought by the vines began to subside, and Lu Shiyu tried to stand up with the help of Tang Zeyu to make sure he could move normally.
The other three also came over one after another. Shaoxing Yang and Chen Yunliang still had a lot of hair on their bodies because they had close contact with the vines. Although the paralyzing effect was gone, it still made people feel itchy.
Seeing that several people were not in good condition, Tang Zeyu chose to take a break and wait until they recovered.
Lu Shiyu boiled a pot of hot water, soaked a towel in the hot water and wrung it dry, and asked Shaoxing Yang and Chen Yunliang to wipe their bodies with the wet towel. The fluff was naturally cleaned away, and the two felt refreshed.
"It feels good, it's finally not itchy anymore."
Shaoxing Yang felt relaxed all over, but his stomach was rumbling.
"Uh, I'm hungry." Shaoxing Yang looked at Lu Shiyu eagerly and asked, "There should be some rabbit meat left. Can we eat it now?"
"It's not too early now, why don't you cook now."
After asking Tang Zeyu's opinion, Lu Shiyu took out kitchen utensils from his bag and began to prepare cooking, without any intention of looking for ingredients.
Shaoxing Yang was looking at the road from behind when Yu took action.
"Lu Shiyu, what are we going to eat tonight?" Shao Xingyang glanced at the vines all over the ground and said, "Are we going to eat these?"
"No, we don't eat that," Lu Shiyu said, looking at Shao Xingyang with a smile, "We eat this."
When Lu Shiyu mentioned the snaketail chicken, Shao Xingyang's eyes widened instantly: "Chicken? Where did you get it? Why didn't I see any chickens nearby?"
Lu Shiyu looked to the other side with a guilty conscience: "Haha, don't worry about where it comes from, it won't taste bad anyway."
Lu Shiyu had already memorized the steps of scalding chicken feathers, and was very familiar with it. First, he sharpened the knife to ensure it was sharp. The water needed to be boiled in advance because the water for scalding chicken feathers could not be too hot. It also needed to be cooled after boiling. Then he could slaughter the chicken. He grabbed the head of the snake-tail chicken and pulled it back to make the neck protrude for easier bleeding. After the bleeding was drained, he could start scalding the chicken feathers.
Lu Shiyu plucked the feathers of the snake-tail chicken from its feet to its head very quickly. It was so clean and neat that everyone else couldn't help but be amazed. In the blink of an eye, the chicken went from being furry to bald, with feathers scattered all over the ground.
Shao Xingyang looked at the snake-tailed chicken that had become a hairless chicken in just a few minutes and said, "The chicken was already in hell before it even knew what was happening."
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