Chapter 107: Bloodvine Arrives at the Base
In the dense forest.
Tang Ming stared at the ground for a while, then suddenly said, "Retreat, return to base."
Everyone was a little surprised, even confused.
"Captain, didn't the base commander ask us to look for the main body of the blood vine? We haven't found it yet. It would be bad to go back like this." Someone hesitated.
Tang Ming turned his head and looked towards the base. "I'm afraid we've been lured away."
He carefully recalled the situation along the way. Although it seemed difficult, it was not difficult for them to pass through when surrounded by so many blood vines.
Originally, Tang Ming thought that this was the reason why everyone improved their physical fitness and awakened their superpowers.
But thinking back, they could see that the deeper they went, the fewer blood vines seemed to be around.
Until just now, there were suddenly no blood vines around them.
Tang Ming's heart tightened, and his expression became even uglier. "Retreat, retreat immediately."
As he said that, he took the lead and ran quickly towards the base.
Everyone was also confused by Tang Ming's words of luring the tiger away from the mountain, but seeing his expression suddenly become so ugly, they had a vague bad premonition in their hearts and ran away as fast as they could.
Although they had been in the dense forest for more than half a month, they had not gone too far because they had to deal with the blood vines. If they ran at full speed, they would probably be able to return to the base in a day or two.
However, they had not walked far towards the base when blood vines suddenly broke out of the ground and blocked their way like dense trees.
If everyone was still skeptical about Tang Ming's guess before, then at this moment, everyone's faces turned ugly.
There was no need to think about it anymore. The meaning of these blood vines blocking their way back was self-evident.
Tang Ming's eyes flashed, and frost gradually covered the long sword in his hand. When he rushed towards the blood vines, he swung the long sword, covering it with frost, making the blade of the long sword even sharper and slashing at the dense blood vines.
The blood vines in front of him suddenly dispersed, barely avoiding Tang Ming's attack. The next moment, the blood vines rushed over at an extremely fast speed and wrapped around Tang Ming's hands and feet.
Tang Ming chopped the blood vines with one hand and grabbed the attacking blood vines with the other. He used his supernatural power and frost spread from the palm of his hand, quickly freezing the blood vines in his hand into an ice sculpture.
He kicked up, and the ice sculpture cracked, and dense cracks appeared on it. The next moment, the blood vine that was frozen into an ice sculpture shattered into pieces.
The group of people following Tang Ming also began to exert their strength. Everyone's superpowers were not very strong, so they basically attached their superpowers to their weapons to make the weapons exert greater attack power.
However, the steps of these more than a thousand people were still stumbled. The blood vines seemed endless. After they killed one batch, another batch appeared, causing them to basically remain in the same place without moving.
At the same time.
The interception point outside the base has been submerged by the overwhelming blood vines. From a distance, one can only see the blood vines as dense as a vast ocean, and the special team and the outbound team that are submerged in it are completely invisible.
Since the awakening of superpowers to improve physical fitness, the gap between the special team and the out-of-town team has been narrowed. Therefore, now those who are guarding against the blood vines at the interception point of the base are a combination of the special team and the out-of-town team.
But no one expected that the silent blood vine would suddenly make such a big noise.
There are too many blood vines. Even if these blood vines cannot hurt the members of the special team and the outbound team, they can entangle them and make it impossible for them to escape and report to the base.
At this time, the main body of the blood vine began to move underground after entangling humans with its dense vines, leaving those with special abilities who could sense the underground with no energy left to explore.
Unlike what Jiang Fusheng and the others had guessed, the main body of the blood vine was not that huge. It was very long, about three hundred meters long, but its diameter was not big, only about half a meter.
At this time, the main body controlled the vines to wrap around and block the humans, and had already sneaked into the vicinity of the base.
The closer the blood vine got to the base, the more excited it became. It could clearly feel that something in the base was attracting it, something that could make it stronger.
It can sense that as long as it obtains the things in the base, it can become the most powerful existence in the world.
Therefore, despite being frustrated again and again at the hands of humans, the blood vine did not give up. It even used its thinking after its second mutation to think hard, and finally came up with a way to trap the humans around the base and go to the base with its main body.
There is no doubt that its vines are so numerous that they have indeed trapped all the humans, and no one noticed that it has passed through underground and is approaching the base.
Closer and closer.
The small vines that had not yet grown around the blood vine were trembling excitedly, and the vines that had already grown were trembling even more excitedly, so that the attacks on Tang Ming and the interception points became more fierce and crazy.
Outside the base.
An Qing opened her hands and let the wind take away the last bit of the leader's ashes. The wind blew her hair into a mess, and the ashes were blown away into the distance, dispersing and disappearing from sight.
Wei Xunyi stood next to An Qing, holding the jar containing Song Minguo's ashes in his hand.
The two stood in silence for a long time before An Qing spoke, "Let's go back."
Wei Xunyi hummed. Just as the two turned around and walked back, Wei Xunyi suddenly stopped.
An Qing looked over: "What's wrong?"
Wei Xunyi turned around and stared at the ground not far away, "There seems to be something underground."
An Qing's eyelids twitched, and a bad premonition surged in her heart. She quickly said, "Go back first!"
Wei Xunyi nodded and immediately protected An Qing. The two of them quickly entered the base and closed the door. After hurriedly returning to the base, they came to the monitoring room.
The base has surveillance equipment facing outside the base. When the two came to the monitoring room, the security personnel responsible for monitoring stood up and greeted them.
"Base Commander, Security Secretary."
An Qing nodded: "Is there anything wrong?"
The security personnel were somewhat bewildered, shaking their heads. "Everything around the base is normal, and there haven't been any incidents so far."
An Qing walked to the surveillance screen and looked at all the surveillance screens around the base. Indeed, it was calm outside at the moment and nothing was happening.
She thought for a moment and asked Wei Xunyi: "Did you feel wrong just now?"
Wei Xunyi is an earth-type mutant. He felt that there was something underground. An Qing immediately thought of the blood vines that were traveling underground, but the blood vines had been controlled before. How could it be possible that it ran directly to the vicinity of the base without alerting the interception point?
Or did something go wrong at the interception point?
An Qing frowned and thought. It had been more than half a month since Tang Ming and the others left the base, and no news had been sent back yet.
Wei Xunyi: "No, I clearly felt that there was something underground, but it was still quite far away at the time, so I wasn't sure what it was. Could it be a mutant animal that could travel underground?"
This is not impossible. An Qing thought for a moment and said, "You go ahead and make arrangements. The entire base is under martial law and ready for war."
Wei Xunyi: “Yes!”
At this time, underground.
The blood vine has arrived at the base. The outer wall of the base is very solid. The blood vine approached and touched it, but it felt too hard and difficult to break through.
But the base is indeed a huge sphere, with the ground and underground in the same shape. The blood vine circled around the base, trying to find a gap for it to drill into the base, but the outer wall of the base was tightly closed, and there was no place for it to drill into.
After circling around for several times, the blood vine finally became impatient. It twisted its body and drilled out of the ground more nimbly than a snake.
Not long after Wei Xunyi left, An Qing saw on the surveillance camera a long blood-red worm crawling out from the ground. There were many floating and shaking tiny hairs on its body. Those hairs seemed to be alive and kept twisting, which was creepy to look at.
"Hiss! Blood, blood vine?" The faces of the several people in the Security Department who were in charge of surveillance changed. In the surveillance footage, the blood-red thing that stood up like a snake was completely different from the blood vine they had seen before, but they could still tell that it was the blood vine.
Blood vine?
An Qing's heart sank. This blood vine was obviously different from the blood vine she knew. Could it be that this was the main body of the blood vine that she asked Tang Ming to find?
Before she could think deeply, the blood vine had already completely drilled out of the ground. The more than 300-meter-long blood vine flew up and hit the wall of the base like a whip.
boom--
The entire base shook violently as if it had encountered an 8.0 magnitude earthquake.
Many people in the monitoring room lost their balance and fell to the ground. An Qing also staggered a few steps to the side before she could steady herself.
Before the fallen person could get up, the blood vines outside the base attacked again.
boom--
The base was whipped with a rumbling sound, and the bottom of the sphere was about to leave the ground, like a ball about to be hit and fly.
An Qing stared at the images on the surveillance camera. As the blood vine whipped, several surveillance cameras shattered and became useless, and the screens went black one by one.
An Qing took out the communicator and called Wei Xunyi.
"Base Commander." Wei Xunyi was obviously running.
An Qing held onto the wall and said, "We can't let it continue to attack the base. Send people out of the base to fight it."
Wei Xunyi: "Yes."
After receiving the order, Wei Xunyi immediately sent people out from various exits of the base to fight against the blood vine.
With the special team and the outbound team holding them back, the blood vines finally had no time to attack the base anymore, and the base gradually calmed down. An Qing observed the situation outside through the remaining surveillance cameras, his brows furrowed tighter and tighter.
Thousands of people left the base to fight the blood vine, but there was no other way. The blood vine was too long and too big, and everyone's ability level was too low, so the damage caused to the blood vine was not much, so a large number of people were needed.
Just when she was about to subdue the blood vine, An Qing watched helplessly as countless tentacle-like vines suddenly grew out of the blood vine.
Those vines were like sharp swords, stabbing fiercely at the people who were besieging it.
Some people dodged nimbly and cut off the emerging vines with a knife. Some people failed to dodge but relied on the strength of their skin to resist the vines. However, they did not expect that the tip of the vine suddenly opened its huge mouthparts, revealing the dense serrations inside and biting the person's shoulder fiercely.
An Qing's face looked grim as she recalled what happened when Li Yu and the others entered the dense forest.
Now she could confirm that this blood vine was indeed the main body.
Moreover, the closer the branch vines are to the main body, the more powerful they are. Therefore, the branch vines next to the blood vines are the most ferocious.
She took a deep breath. Seeing that more and more people were injured, An Qing ordered people to rescue those who were seriously injured and unable to move, and then sent more people.
However, whenever the blood vine is about to be suppressed, more vines will grow from it.
An Qing has already seen that the fine hairs on the blood vine are not just hairs, but are all its branch vines. As long as it is controlled, these hairs can all turn into branch vines.
After seeing the main body of the blood vine suddenly open its bloody mouth like a carnivorous plant and swallow countless people in one gulp, An Qing's face turned completely ugly.
She originally thought that since everyone in the base had improved their physical fitness, doubled their combat power, and awakened their special abilities, the danger posed by the blood vine would be nothing at all.
The results were a heavy blow to her.
Indeed, they can now deal with the blood vine branches with ease.
But those can only be the branch vines that are too far away from the main body of the blood vine. Those that are close to the main body can still suppress humans, and the main body can even swallow a hundred or so people in one breath.
She stared at the surveillance footage, her mind frantically thinking about what to do now.
But what can she do?
In her golden finger, besides food, there are only pots, pans, and utensils. Even in the welfare shelf, there is nothing useful except the body-tempering spirit liquid and ability cards.
Even using the Body Tempering Spiritual Fluid and the Ability Cards still couldn't deal with the Blood Vine...
An Qing closed her eyes. The body-tempering spirit liquid and the ability card could not be used on the blood vine, otherwise wouldn't it strengthen the enemy?
etc……
An Qing's thoughts stopped.
Body-tempering spiritual liquid?
The process of strengthening the body with the Body Tempering Spirit Liquid is to break it down and reconstruct it. What if it is used on the blood vine?
But isn't this idea a bit too crazy? Bloodvine is a plant after all. What if the Body Tempering Spirit Fluid can't achieve the same effect on it?
In the dense forest...
The dense blood vines around them that could not be killed made everyone a little tired, and they were all panting with exhaustion.
Suddenly, all the blood vines shrank back into the ground like snakes.
Everyone was stunned.
Tang Ming frowned and looked at the ground warily.
Bai Wei squatted on the ground, supported herself with her hands, and carefully felt it. She said hesitantly, "Captain, the blood vines are gone."
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Although their physical fitness has been improved and they have superpowers, they are still mortal after all, unlike those blood vines that have no idea of fatigue.
If they continue to fight, they will most likely become exhausted and eventually devoured by the blood vines.
Tang Ming's expression grew increasingly grim. He gritted his teeth and said, "Go back, quickly! The blood vine has gone to the base!"
Everyone was stunned, and then they realized that these blood vines had been preventing them from returning to the base, but now they suddenly disappeared, which means they must have arrived at the base!
For a moment, everyone's face turned green. No matter how tired they were, they all followed Tang Ming and rushed back at full speed.
The situation at the interception point was the same as here. The blood vines that had been attacking them suddenly disappeared.
But this is not the first time. There have been many times before when the blood vine felt that it was not getting the upper hand at the hands of humans and retreated.
Many people were injured at the interception point, but none of them were seriously injured. However, they were all very tired and sat on the ground to rest.
When Tang Ming and others arrived at the interception point exhausted, it was already completely dark. The people at the interception point were muttering that the shift change time had passed a while ago and the people who were supposed to be on shift should have arrived long ago, but no one had come yet.
They were really tired today, so tired that they didn't even want to move a finger. Many of them were whispering to each other about what was going on.
Suddenly, they saw someone coming from the direction of the dense forest. Everyone was stunned and stood up, looking over warily.
Only when he realized that it was Tang Ming and others did he relax.
Tang Ming took a look at the current state of the interception point, asked about the situation, and then briefly stated his guess.
But this was just his guess after all, so the people at the interception point could not be transferred at will. He only asked them to hold on and continue to guard here to avoid other situations, and then hurried to the base with his men.
At the base, An Qing discovered a situation.
The blood vine that had just grown on the main body of the blood vine did not wither after being cut off. Instead, it attacked people like a new small blood vine. Once it bit a person and absorbed the blood, the broken blood vine would grow bigger.
However, although these blood vines have separated from the main body of the blood vine, they are still controlled by the main body.
So, the blood vines that are too far away from the main body will wither and disappear after being cut off, but the blood vines that are close to the main body will still survive and have attack power after being cut off?
An Qing called Li Yu and others and gave them some instructions.
Li Yu immediately led people out of the base, approached the main body, and tried to find a way to cut off a blood vine from the main body and bring it back to the base.
In the underground research institute, when An Qing brought the blood vine over, she found that the institute was extremely busy.
The structure of the base was very solid. Although the previous whippings by the blood vine had caused vibrations in the base that were almost as strong as an 8.0 magnitude earthquake, the building did not collapse.
However, something happened to the bottles and jars in the research institute. Some were broken, some instruments were smashed to pieces, and even some important chemicals exploded after being broken, causing the research institute to become a mess.
An Qing finally found Jiang Fusheng, who was directing people to organize the research institute.
When Jiang Fusheng heard An Qing's voice, he turned his head and saw An Qing and the blood vine that An Qing was holding tightly in her hand but was still twisting and struggling.
He was stunned for a moment, "Base Commander, what are you doing..."
An Qing: "This is a branch of the blood vine. I need you to help me do an experiment."
Jiang Fusheng walked over quickly.
The blood vine tightly wrapped around An Qing's arm, as if it wanted to break her arm with its strength.
However, the blood vine was cut off by Li Yu as soon as it emerged and brought back. It was a very thin and small piece, and it did not have much strength. It entangled An Qing's arm but did not cause much damage to An Qing.
But the sharp serrations in its mouthparts can cause great damage, so An Qing pinched the back of its mouthparts tightly, as if pinching the snake's vital point.
The blood vine opened its mouth wildly, and the sharp, cold-gleaming serrations inside looked even sharper under the bright lights of the research institute.
Jiang Fusheng looked at the blood vine in her hand. "Don't blood vine branches wither after being separated from the main body? What's going on with this one?"
An Qing told Jiang Fusheng about her discovery.
Jiang Fusheng's face turned grim upon hearing this. "Has the main body of the blood vine arrived at the base?"
An Qing nodded. "Yes, and it's very difficult to deal with. It can swallow a hundred or so people with one mouthful, and its serrations can easily penetrate human flesh..."
Jiang Fusheng took a deep breath. He knew that An Qing had asked him to do an experiment at this time. She must have had a method to deal with the blood vine in mind, but she was not sure whether it would work. That's why she came to him. "What experiment do you want to do?"
An Qing took out a bottle of body-tempering spirit liquid and said, "I need to know if the blood vine will be broken down and reorganized after taking this, thus losing its combat effectiveness."
Jiang Fusheng was stunned. He didn't expect that An Qing actually wanted to use the Body Tempering Spirit Liquid to deal with the blood vine. However, when he thought about the pain that people would suffer after taking the Body Tempering Spirit Liquid, it could be said that anyone would lose their combat effectiveness in the process of breaking down and reassembling. If the same was true for the blood vine, then this was indeed a solution.
Plants and humans are different after all, so this is indeed an experiment that must be done.
Bai Feng and others who had conducted the experiments previously had already left the institute, and it just so happened that the laboratory was currently the best preserved.
After the blood vine was fed with the body-tempering spiritual liquid, it was tightly tied with a restraint belt and covered with a container used to imprison mutant animals and plants. Then, infrared rays were used to observe the condition inside its body.
Jiang Fusheng and An Qing both stared at the infrared image.
The inside of the blood vine is completely different from that of humans. It has dense and thick fibers inside, but it is not just fibers. It has a mouth with dense serrations inside, and a digestive tract more than ordinary plants. Except for the lack of excretion outlets and bones, it seems to be developing from a plant to an animal.
Suddenly, the blood vine struggled violently. An Qing saw in the infrared image that the thick plant fibers of the blood vine were broken bit by bit, which made its struggling and swinging movements seem big, but in fact they did not have much strength.
An Qing suddenly breathed a sigh of relief: "It seems that it is possible."
Jiang Fusheng stared at the speed at which the blood vine plant fibers were breaking. Just like human bones would be shattered, its plant fibers were also being crushed and reorganized. Of course, they were still in the crushing stage.
He watched the time and pressed a button when the plant fibers were completely crushed but had not yet begun to reassemble.
A high-temperature flame suddenly spurted out of the vessel, burning the blood vine.
The blood vine had been silent for a long time, but when it was burned, it let out a strange scream, not like that of a beast or a human, a very strange scream.
It struggled in the flames.
As the flame burned it, the image presented by the infrared rays remained on the screen.
They saw that the speed at which the blood vine's body was reorganizing had actually accelerated. If it had been reorganizing at a normal speed before, when it was burned by flames, the speed at which the plant fibers in its body were reorganized had actually increased by more than ten times, and its body surface had also become fire-resistant.
You should know that among the samples extracted from Qiongjing before, the blood vine was not fire-resistant.
Jiang Fusheng and An Qing both fell silent.
"It seems that although the Body Tempering Spirit Fluid can temporarily weaken the Blood Vine's combat effectiveness, it also helps it to make up for its weaknesses." Jiang Fusheng said with a wry smile: "The Blood Vine was extremely difficult to deal with before its second mutation. If it can't be burned with fire, even if it is chopped into pieces, it will not die and will slowly grow again..."
An Qing looked at the blood vine in the flames. Not only was it not burned to death, it also completely absorbed the body-tempering spiritual liquid and its body instantly grew several times larger.
It seemed to realize that it was stronger and more powerful, and it swung its body wildly to break free from the restraints and hit the vessel hard.
The vessel made a banging sound and seemed to be about to break.
Fortunately, the restraints were still tightly wrapped around the blood vine, and no matter how it swung, it couldn't break free at all.
Jiang Fusheng frowned, "Base Commander, what should we do now?"
The body-tempering spirit liquid cannot deal with the blood vine, but instead makes it stronger. Now they don’t know how to kill this branch vine. Once the branch vine runs away, the base will be finished.
An Qing bit her fingers unconsciously and frowned in thought.
She opened the system panel. During this period, she had gained a lot of happiness points and bought things from the welfare shelves every day, but nothing could deal with the blood vine.
An Qing frowned, "001, is there nothing in the system that can deal with the blood vine?"
001 was chewing on a sausage in the system and shook his head when he heard this: "I don't know either. How about refreshing the welfare shelf and giving it a try?"
An Qing: "..."
I knew I was asking in vain.
She glanced over the items she had purchased from the welfare shelf during this period.
In addition to the normal rice, cabbage, eggs and flour, the only things she bought from the welfare shelves during this period, besides the body-tempering spirit liquid and ability cards, were toxin decomposition liquid.
But this thing can only decompose toxins...
Suddenly, an idea flashed in An Qing's mind.
Why do mutated plants and animals contain highly toxic substances? Could it be that the substance that caused them to mutate is itself a toxin, and then a chemical reaction occurs after intermingling with plants and animals, ultimately causing the highly toxic substances in their bodies?
An Qing felt that her imagination was a bit out of control, but when she thought about it, she couldn't control her thoughts and instead felt that her idea was really possible.
If it is really as she guessed, then if the toxin decomposition fluid is used on the blood vine to decompose the toxins in its body, will the blood vine die or regress to its state before mutation?
boom--
The base was hit again, and the huge vibration could be felt even in the underground research institute.
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