38: Chapter 38 Strangling the Supply Line

When the Supply Team stepped into the Bell Line, Jiang Ming had already been waiting for them all morning.

Five people, three pack goats, and a two-wheeled trailer.

Piled on the trailer were six barrels of clean water—the one with a notched rim was also among them—two bags of lime, a box of arrows, a small bucket of kerosene, and a bundle of replacement patrol wooden plaques.

The Outpost supply list transmitted back by Ah Qiu through the mycelial network matched the cargo on the trailer in front of him one by one.

This was not a search party; this was a whole day's worth of blood.

They were walking along the new detour route—after the no-entry wooden plaques took effect.

The Outpost stipulated that all incoming and outgoing personnel must make a wide detour downstream of the water storage ditch, avoiding the junction area directly in front of the Black Tree Mouth.

The first half of this detour route hugged the edge of the gully, and the second half passed through secondary forest land and an old, logged Old Logging Camp, passing right through the middle of Jiang Ming's row of eroded old wooden stakes.

They thought they had bypassed the most dangerous place.

The team leader walked on the left side of the trailer, with a short crossbow and a signal whistle tucked at his waist.

Two guards were front and back, the vanguard holding a short spear and the rearguard holding a torch.

The fourth person led the goats, and the fifth person pushed the cart.

The configuration was very standard—perimeter vigilance, supplies in the middle, and firepower in the rear.

When the team leader walked to the edge of the Old Logging Camp, he lowered his head and glanced at the ground. The muddy ground beside the old wooden stakes had been turned over, and the edges of the turned soil still bore fine traces dragged by rootlets.

He raised his right fist to signal the team to slow down, but this deceleration was already too late.

A semi-alive infected badger crawled out from under the trailer.

Half of it had been swallowed before its death, and its remains were filled with spores and mycelia to form a semi-living entity, moving more smoothly than the infected goats.

Its four legs no longer moved independently, but crawled cooperatively close to the ground, with a Speed that was not fast but quiet.

The badger crawled from under the rear wheel of the trailer into the underside of the cart, its incisors biting the leather rope tied to the water barrel. With a hard tug, the nylon-blended rope strands snapped.

Two barrels of clean water rolled down from the side of the trailer, tumbling down the mud slope. The barrel bodies hit tree roots and bounced up, water spraying into a white mist from the gaps in the barrel lids, spilling all the way.

"The water barrels dropped!"

The goat-herder let go of the goat rope to chase the barrels. The person pushing the cart also dropped the cart shafts and ran toward the slope's edge.

The team leader didn't move. He stood in place, raised his crossbow, stared in the direction of the old wooden stakes, and roared, "Don't scatter!"

But the water barrels rolled too fast, and the two people chasing them had already run to the edge of the gully.

Right at this moment, the side door got stuck. The side door of the Outpost main tent was a wooden fence door that pushed outward, and the door axle was a sharpened hard wooden stick, which usually pushed open very smoothly.

When Ah Qiu was cleaning the firewood pile last night, he had leaned a spare wooden stake diagonally against the inner side of the door axle, with the bottom of the stake jammed into the concave groove of the drainage ditch.

The door could be pushed open a crack, but couldn't be pushed fully open—one could only squeeze out sideways.

Jiang Ming's instruction to him was: Steady the wooden stake when you hear the sound of water barrels.

Ah Qiu stood on the inner side of the door, his right hand pressing on the upper end of the wooden stake, his knuckles turning white.

In his consciousness, he didn't feel like he was intentionally sabotaging—he just felt that the door was too stiff and needed a forceful push.

Hearing the commotion of water barrels rolling outside in the Outpost, two people grabbed their weapons and rushed toward the side door.

The first person squeezed through the door crack sideways, while the second person got their belt stuck and twisted in the door crack for a long time before breaking free.

With a delay of a few seconds, the Supply Team outside the door had already fallen into the anchorage burst zone along with the trailer.

The old wooden stakes awoke from underground.

Eight places of old wooden stakes were activated by parasitic whiskers simultaneously. The wood fibers swelled and cracked within fractions of a second, and lateral roots that had been hidden for who knows how long broke out from the mud layer at the bottom of the stakes—not to pierce, but to entangle.

Two thick roots entangled the spokes on both sides of the trailer and twisted in opposite directions.

The wheels made a creaking sound before snapping, the axles deformed, and the trailer overturned sideways.

The third pack goat was tethered to the cart shafts.

The overturning of the trailer dragged it down to the ground as well. It struggled to stand up, but the more it struggled, the tighter the rope became.

All the clean water barrels capsized, the lime bags smashed onto the muddy ground and split open, and lime powder flew up, forming a vast expanse of whiteness.

A kerosene barrel rolled to the roadside and hit a stone; the barrel body didn't break, but the lid loosened, and a pungent kerosene odor oozed out from the gap.

"Light the torch!"

The team leader turned back and roared at the rearguard.

The rearguard thrust the torch into the lime powder—he wanted to use the torch to burn the roots, but the torch thrust into the mixture of lime powder and wet mud not only failed to ignite.

Instead, it kicked the lime powder up into a dazzling grey-white smoke screen. The lime stung their eyes.

The rearguard and a nearby guard began to cough violently at the same time, tears streaming from their eyes, and their weapons fell into complete disarray.

Jiang Ming's Root Spike pierced out from the smoke screen with two consecutive strikes—the first spike pierced into the rearguard's calf, and the second spike grazed the guard's ankle.

The toxin traveled through the lymph instead of the blood vessels, taking a few seconds slower to take effect than intravenous venom, but lasting much longer.

The rearguard knelt first, the torch in his hand dropping into the thick mud with a hiss as it went out.

The guard still wanted to back away, but the muscles in his calves had already begun to twitch uncontrollably, and his feet slipped, causing him to fall beside the overturned trailer.

The Outpost side door was finally crashed open, and the Old Administrator rushed out of the fence with a sentry. Running at the very front was the sentry who had squeezed out of the door crack.

When Ah Qiu came out of the side door last, he straightened the wooden stake and put it back in its original place—then used his foot to kick last night's misaligned water barrel toward the doorway once more.

The water barrel rolled to the exact center of the threshold, blocking the footing of the people rushing out.

Running halfway, the Old Administrator saw clearly the scene around the overturned trailer.

The muddy ground had been turned over, all the old wooden stakes had come alive, and black roots were wrapping outward and upward from under the bottom of every single stake.

The goats were dragged into the gully with their legs entangled by roots, the trailer fell apart, and a kerosene barrel was coiled by a single black root rolling deep into the woods.

"Burn! Burn them quickly!"

The Old Administrator shouted until his voice cracked.

But the torches had already gone out, and both the rearguard and the guard were paralyzed and slumped beside the trailer.

The goat-herder was tripped by a lateral root, and was crawling backward while propping himself up on the ground with his hands.

The person pushing the cart leaned his back against the overturned trailer, desperately using a short axe to chop at the fine roots entangling him.

Jiang Ming activated the Tree Realm.

It was not a complete form—the complete form consumed too much energy, and it would also envelop the people rushing out from the Outpost; a medium-sized Tree Realm was not needed for the time being.

Three semi-living nodes, cooperating with the lateral root network of the Outer Ring wooden stakes, pulled up an irregular trapping-and-killing zone around the trailer.

The height only reached an adult's chest, but the density of the root network was even higher than that of the complete form.

The trailer was supported from the bottom by the root network and flipped into a sideways position, becoming a natural barrier within the trapping-and-killing zone.

The remaining four people of the Supply Team and the two goats that hadn't been dragged away were all compressed in the narrow space between the trailer and the root network.

The two people rushing out from the Outpost were isolated outside the trapping-and-killing zone. Their axes sparked as they hacked at the roots, but for every root chopped, another grew in its place.

Jiang Ming's harvesting order was very clear.

The first to be consumed was the messenger—that young Clerk responsible for carrying the patrol wooden plaques. He was clutching a package of wooden plaques tightly wrapped in oilcloth, shrinking in a triangular gap formed after the trailer overturned.

A Root Spike burrowed in from the crack in the trailer's floorboard, pierced through the oilcloth, and stabbed into his ribs.

Before he even had time to scream, the wooden plaques in his arms slipped out and scattered across the trailer's floorboard.

The wooden plaques could not be lost—they contained the Outpost's recent patrol records and the markings of the Black Tree Mouth no-entry line.

Rootlets coiled around the wooden plaques and dragged them under the mud.

The second to be consumed was the goat-herder.

After being poisoned, he desperately crawled outward with his hands toward the outside of the trapping-and-killing zone, but the Paralysis Toxin had spread to his lumbar plexus nerves, and both legs had lost the strength to push against the ground.

A Root Spike pierced in from the back of his neck.

The team leader was still fighting.

He was the only one among the five people who hadn't been swept by the lime smoke and Root Spikes.

With his short crossbow nocked, he leaned against the side panel of the trailer, aiming his crossbow bolt at the densest part of the root network—then hesitated.

He didn't know where to strike; there were only three arrows left, and every single one was precious.

The sideways-fallen trailer behind him began to be dragged into the mud by the tree roots, its wheels leaving the ground, and the entire cart was being slowly pulled into the soil.

He threw away the crossbow, drew the short spear at his waist, jumped onto the top of the cart, and thrust downward toward the direction where the tree roots were densest.

The spear tip pierced into a thick root, causing a small piece of Lignified Skin to fracture and split. The rootlets twitched slightly but did not loosen.

Jiang Ming bent down three main branches from the canopy layer.

The first one knocked away his spear, the second one wrapped around his right arm, and the third one looped around his chest, lifting him up from the top of the cart.

Mid-air, he was still kicking with his legs, the soles of his shoes striking the branches with a muffled thud.

A main Root Spike pierced in from directly below, penetrating his diaphragm. The moment the branches loosened, he dropped into the bottom layer of the root network.

The person pushing the cart was the last one.

He had no weapons left; his short axe was jammed in the gaps of the root network and could not be pulled out.

He leaned his back against the remains of the trailer, holding up a wooden board snapped off from the cart with both hands.

The root network tightened simultaneously from three sides, squeezing him between the wooden board and the trailer, unable to move at all.

A Root Spike pierced in from the soles of his feet. Devoured.

All three goats were dragged deep into the gully. The trailer was dismantled, the metal parts were thrown into the swamp separately, and the wooden parts were swallowed.

The clean water seeped into the mud layer and was directly absorbed by the root system—not converted into energy, but stored inside the tree trunk as a backup water source.

The kerosene barrel was completely buried in the deep wet mud, label facing up, and its position marked on the node map of the forest will, perhaps to be of use in the future.

The salt bags were torn open, and after the salt grains dissolved into the soil, they were absorbed by the ion channels at the tips of the root system. The salt concentration inside the tree trunk finally reached a delicate equilibrium point at this moment.

Two complete bags of lime were left behind and dragged into the Wooden Cabin ruins for standby use.

[Killed five members of the Supply Team, obtained 570 evolution points. Devoured three pack goats, obtained 90 evolution points. Comprehensive gains: Maximum Health +220, Maximum Energy +180, Strength +25, Agility +12.]

[Devour trait extraction: Supply Material Management memory fragment—obtained passive ability "Supply List Olfaction", which can identify the types and approximate quantities of human standardized supplies within a radius of one hundred meters.]

At the Outpost doorway now, only half a broken plank from the overturned trailer and a few deep traces dragged into the woods remained.

There were also a few fragments of patrol wooden plaques scattered on the ground, and an empty water barrel turned upside down beside the threshold.

The Old Administrator stood inside the Bell Line, watching the direction where the Supply Team had disappeared. There was no fear on his face, only a calmness as if his entire plan had been calculated.

"Close the door."

He said.

Ah Qiu pushed the side door shut from the inside, the wooden stake still leaning diagonally against the side of the door axle.

No one noticed that he had placed the empty bucket in the wrong position last night, nor did anyone notice that he had spent significantly more time than usual steadying the wooden stake just now.

He sat by the edge of the bed board, feeling irritable and restless.

He didn't know why this was.

He only felt that he was getting more and more tired, and more and more obedient.