Care Guide to Raising a Max Level Leaf in Apocalypse - 77
Inside the stomach
The road ahead is devoid of any mutant, with the ground littered with animal bones. Occasionally, a few seemingly intact human skulls fall, and the path is very narrow, only allowing one car to pass. On both sides of the road were rows of closely spaced cement houses, without any gaps.
Several larvae could be seen as they emerge from the bone fragments, their shriveled skin folds rich, quickly disappearing into the damp soil.
“The road here doesn’t seem right,” frowns Si Yin Yuan.
This is their third day out, and according to the plan, they should have seen the high school after bypassing a small county.
Si Yin Yuan, propping up the car window, looks outside with some disdain. “The smell of blood is so strong.”
Using its fourth hand, Guan Yin chased away an larva. “These larvae usually like to parasitize in moist corpses, but here, there are only bones, yet so many insects.”
As the car accelerates forward, the pervasive stench does not dissipate.
This odor is not particularly strong for humans, but for delicate Ji Jiu and sensitive Awakened individuals, it is piercing.
Ji Jiu coverd his nose with his hand. “It smells like blood and something else fermenting.”
Not just the smell of blood.
Yu Feichen shoots a larva, annoyed. “I haven’t seen the source of the smell yet.”
Although they have a keen sense of smell, the smell is everywhere here, making it difficult to determine the direction.
The surroundings are eerily quiet, with no sound except for the occasional daring larva approaching them.
Si Yin Yuan steps on the brake, stopping the car.
“Boss, why did you stop?” Yu Feichen looks puzzled.
“The source of the smell is the ground beneath us,” Si Yin Yuan says casually.
The ground beneath their feet is not moist but rather fertilized by blood, fermenting into a sticky substance.
Yu Feichen is startled, pulls out his combat stick from his waist, and stabs the soil, stirring it. The soil seems to come alive and starts to ripple.
Feeling the movement, the iron combat stick immediately senses a strong suction force. Yu Feichen tightens his grip, preventing the stick from being sucked into the soil. If a person stepped in or other small creatures entered, the outcome would be evident.
Yu Feichen pats his chest in lingering fear. “Our car is fine?”
This place is like a swamp that devours humans. It makes sense why the larvae survive here; it’s a blood-soaked land.
Ji Jiu: “This land may be conscious. It can sense that the car is relatively large, judging it as a difficult prey. It chooses to exhaust our energy before swallowing us. If it were a lighter creature, it might have been directly eaten.”
He paused, looking at the owner for encouragement, then continued, “You can see it from these larvae. The land chose not to eat them but let them grow. Most likely, these insects, unlike the car, haven’t met its consumption standards yet. So, it plans to wait until they grow up before consuming them.”
He paused again, glancing at the owner, receiving a kiss.
After taking on so many tasks, Ji Jiu’s starting to think from a human perspective. Yu Feichen gets his IQ beaten, and now he’s being fed dog food by two people.
Guan Yin asked weakly, “Then can’t we speed up and leave this blood-soaked land?”
Wouldn’t it be more dangerous to stop the car?
Si Yin Yuan: “Did you guys notice that we’ve been circling around in the same place?”
The three people in the back seat were startled. Yu Feichen looked out of the car window, puzzled, “Boss, are you mistaken? There’s only a straight road here, how could we get lost?”
Guan Yin nodded in agreement, “Although the cement houses here all look alike, if you look closely, there are some differences. Look at the green window next to that cement house; the one we passed just now had a red window. It’s impossible to be in the same place.”
Si Yin Yuan tilted his head, and his golden eyes flickered. “How are you so sure that those rows are cement houses?”
Feng Chuyao’s expression changed, and without a word, she pulled out her fire whip and directly lashed the nearest cement house.
The moment the extended whip touched the cement wall, the wall came to life, swallowing half of the fire whip, squirming continuously, trying to engulf more.
Feng Chuyao decisively retracted the remaining half of the fire whip.
She wasn’t distressed; her fire whip was made up of abilities, not a physical whip. It was a flexible rope of fire.
Yu Feichen felt like he heard the sound of something breaking, the sound of his worldview shattering. However, he had gotten used to such things in the post-apocalyptic world and quickly patched up his shattered worldview, asking, “What do we do now? Are we in some kind of maze?”
After saying this, he chuckled at himself.
Guan Yin suddenly exclaimed, “A maze!?” Yu Feichen, looking confused, turned his head, “What’s wrong?”
A creepy and horrified expression appeared on Guan Yin’s face immediately. After swirling its four hands around its head for a while, it said, “I’ve seen a mission about a maze before, and the description is very similar to what we are experiencing now. It’s called ‘Mouth and Belly Maze.'”
Ji Jiu, opening a bottle of strawberry-flavored nutrient liquid, licked it and, upon hearing this, widened its eyes slightly. “That name is strange. Why is it called Mouth and Belly?”
“Because…” Guan Yin reluctantly spoke, “We might be inside the mouth of a certain mutant, and its stomach is a naturally changing maze.”
With a crisp sound, Ji Jiu was so scared that it dropped its nutrient liquid.
Being an omnivore who had eaten countless mutants, he never expected that he would also be eaten one day.
Feng Chuyao couldn’t accept it either. “Are you saying we are now in the stomach of some mutant, and its stomach is a maze that changes naturally?”
Guan Yin’s expression was faintly desolate. “Yes.”
Si Yin Yuan, soothingly, stroked Ji Jiu, whose hair was about to stand up, and turned his head. “Read me the details of that mission.”
Guan Yin: “That mission has been hanging there with no one taking it. I was just curious and took a look. It involves an extremely massive mutant that hides itself based on the surrounding environment. It doesn’t hunt actively; it just keeps its mouth wide open, waiting for prey to enter its stomach. Its stomach is a vast maze.”
Yu Feichen’s expression revealed recollection. “I remember, ten minutes ago, we passed through a tunnel to get here. It turns out that wasn’t a tunnel; it was its wide-open mouth?!”
He remembered marveling at the two lamps above the tunnel. Now, thinking about it, those weren’t lamps; they were the monster’s eyes.
His sanity value suddenly plummeted upon learning the truth.
Feng Chuyao rubbed off the goosebumps on her body. “Fortunately, there’s no sticky fluid inside this monster.”
From a visual perspective, it was challenging to distinguish that everything here was fake.
These cement houses and blood-soaked soil were, in fact, part of the monster’s interior.
Ji Jiu picked up the dropped nutrient liquid, eating it while feeling afraid. “I want to get out.”
He showed a pitiable, helpless yet still-eating appearance.
This sense of fear probably dated back to when he was just a seed. Unable to sprout, he could only roll around, almost being picked up and eaten by a passing bird.
After losing the protection of its owner in the early days of the apocalypse, Ji Jiu had always been afraid of being eaten. This was the first time witnessing Ji Jiu being afraid of a mutant, showing a significant resistance to the idea of being consumed.
Si Yin Yuan, feeling a bit sorry, gently rubbed Ji Jiu’s small tuft of hair, softly comforting, “Alright, I’ll take you out immediately.”
Yu Feichen fired several shots towards the open car roof, but the bullets were swallowed up as soon as they touched the “sky.”
Even the sky was fake.
He lowered his hand, saying, “We can only find the exit again, but the maze’s terrain changes as soon as we move, so we can’t return the same way.”
Si Yin Yuan extended his hand, and a golden flame flickered in his palm, “No need for that trouble. We can break through the belly and get out.”
The golden flame, sensing the owner’s anger, surged even more, exuding a fierce killing intent.
Force could solve everything.
However, before the golden flame started to seize control, everything around them began to shake violently.
More precisely, only the environment around them was undergoing continuous transformation.
In just a few seconds, they were no longer in the same place but inside a magnificent and dizzying tent.
Ji Jiu, astonished, let out a small exclamation, temporarily forgetting his recent grievances. He took a few steps forward, looking at the colorful lights.
Even though there were no lamps, countless color spots floated in the air, seemingly close at hand but out of reach.
The tent, at some unknown point, began to rotate suddenly. The colorful lights disappeared for a moment, and a huge white spotlight suddenly illuminated the center of the stage.
A tremendous roar of applause came from behind.
Ji Jiu turned around and found that, at some point, there were many spectators sitting in the tent. They all lowered their heads, and their faces were not visible. They wore luxurious and elaborate medieval European noble attire.
Except for the applause, there was no other sound, giving a strangely uniform feeling.
He subconsciously wanted to grab the hem of the owner’s clothes, but he grabbed empty space.
Only then did he realize that he was no longer in the car, and there was no one around him. He stood alone on a vast stage.
Suddenly, on the centrally lit spot, a tall figure appeared.
The figure gracefully raised a hand adorned with white gloves, and the surrounding applause quickly stopped, plunging the surroundings into complete silence.
“Oh my, oh my, look at this little lamb that wandered in from somewhere.”
The drawn-out tone was somewhat seductive.