54: Chapter 54 The Death of Shen Kui

Shen Kui squatted in front of the empty box for a full two minutes!

Perhaps having a premonition of his own impending doom...

He first felt the cut of the broken rope.

Then he traced a circle along the edge of the ruts with his finger!

Finally, he stood up, flipped open the box lid, and looked at the moisture marks on the inside.

"The dry rations aren't damp; the box has been abandoned here for less than half a day!"

He glanced in the direction of the collapsed hunting pit.

The broken bones in the churned-up mud over there still carried the scent of fresh bone marrow, and a few Grey-haired Rats were slipping away from the edge of the pit!

His danger intuition must have been sounding alarms repeatedly in his mind!

But every trace on the ground was saying the same thing: the attacker had just gone strong for a while and had now left.

Therefore, he did not retreat.

He split his team into three layers: four vanguard members holding shields to probe the ground, poking with long poles at every step;

the middle section protected himself and the second-in-command carrying the channel stone;

two Fire-Oil Handlers and two crossbowmen anchored the rear, with torches held low and crossbows notched.

The twelve people advanced like a caliper.

Stopping every ten steps, the second-in-command marked a line on the wooden board with charcoal.

Jiang Ming made the middle-layer traps move first!

"Rustle, rustle!"

A few steps from Anchor Point No. 1 toward the stream channel, two shallow secondary roots twitched weakly beneath the fallen leaves.

Their surfaces still bore scorch marks from being licked by fire.

The vanguard's probing pole poked one of them, and the root retracted extremely slowly, like a muscle spasm after injury.

The two shield-bearers exchanged a glance, and one of them raised his foot to step on the retracting root.

And pinned it down with the tip of his spear.

"Pfft!"

The root broke, and dark green sap oozed from the cut. The amount was very small, and it coagulated after flowing a few drops.

The vanguard turned back and nodded at Shen Kui — — there were injured roots with very slow reactions.

Shen Kui did not rush forward, instead telling the Fire-Oil Handlers not to set fire for the moment.

"There are signs of living activity ahead; let's see if we can force it to expose itself first!"

His intuition was sounding alarms, but his experience told him that an injured beast was more worth chasing than a healthy one.

What Jiang Ming wanted was precisely this: to let experience override intuition.

After the team crossed Anchor Point No. 1, a section of shallow roots by the roadside retracted from the gravel crevices.

The movement was even slower than the previous one, and it even got stuck halfway, revealing a half-whitish wooden cross-section.

The vanguard immediately raised their shields and pressed forward, poking twice with their spear tips; the second poke pierced into the soft soil, splashing a small stream of sap.

Shen Kui walked forward seven or eight steps.

To see clearly the spot the shield-bearer had poked, and to bring the entire section of the road into his direct line of sight.

He officially stepped into the strangulation line between Anchor Point No. 2 and Tree Nest No. 1.

Jiang Ming did not strike Shen Kui first.

Two half-alive mutated corpses simultaneously rolled up from the side slope and beneath the fallen log.

The one on the left was propped up by stuffing fungal hyphae into the remains of a mutated badger, its front paws replaced with several curved old roots.

Its crawling posture resembled a struggle after being injured.

The one on the right was even more fragmented, a half-section of a roe deer's torso mixed with spore clusters, rolling out from the shadow of the fallen log to crash against the edge of the rear guard's shield.

The vanguard instinctively split their forces — — two held shields to pin down the badger corpse on the left, and two turned around to hack at the decayed deer remains on the right.

The line of sight between the middle section and the rear rank was briefly blocked by these two moving remains.

The pressure of the Tree Domain intensified simultaneously with the obstruction of vision.

The adaptive mechanism shifted from the vanguard to the rear section, pulling down the mental defense lines of the Fire-Oil Handlers and crossbowmen.

The crossbowman at the very edge of the rear rank began to look back frequently.

The crossbow bolt in his hand was still aimed ahead.

But his face had already turned back toward the rear three times; on the third turn, his footing was unsteady, and the edge of his shield struck the copper canister of the adjacent Fire-Oil Handler.

The copper canister sloshed, and the Fire-Oil Handler cursed.

Shen Kui's danger intuition exploded at this very instant.

Without any hesitation, he grabbed the strap of his second-in-command's backpack and pulled him back, while shouting to the whole team, "Retreat."

But the strangulation line had already been set up the moment he stepped in.

The old wooden stake root system at Anchor Point No. 2, the lateral root network at the turning slope of the cart ruts, and the pre-embedded thick roots on the flanks of Tree Nest No. 1 all erupted simultaneously.

The Tree Realm was not completely enclosed.

It was precision cutting — — it only enclosed Shen Kui, the second-in-command, and two personal guards from the middle section, cutting them off entirely from the front and rear ranks!

The root-net wall flipped up from beneath the mud, a zhang high, so dense that the firelight on the opposite side could not be seen.

The rear Fire-Oil Handlers were isolated outside the wall.

Their barrel nozzles were aimed at the edge of the strangulation line, but they dared not spray because Shen Kui was inside.

Jiang Ming used entangling roots to overturn the nozzle of the Fire-Oil Handler's copper canister from the lower side, deflecting the stream of oil so that it poured all over the legs and shield faces of the rear rank.

The fire-oil splashed onto their trouser legs and boots.

The rear crossbowmen panicked and retreated, fearing that the corners of their clothes would catch sparks from a teammate's torch.

Shen Kui was effectively abandoned tactically in the center of the kill zone by his own rear rank.

The personal guards cut off inside the Tree Realm did not collapse.

These two were indeed veterans; the moment the root net closed, they automatically backed against each other, holding their short spears diagonally across the edges of their shields.

One protected the second-in-command, while the other pressed against Shen Kui's side to block the front.

The second-in-command's channel stone had already begun to glow.

He was frantically tapping the communication key, wanting to send out the message, "Multi-node living forest, monsters set up layered traps."

Shen Kui did not wait to die.

He stood in place and turned half a circle, his eyes looking not at the thick roots entangling him, but at the density changes of the interwoven root net on the walls of the Tree Realm.

His danger perception told him which side had the least sense of oppression.

He chose the southern corner, where the root net failed to seal completely due to an underground buried stone, leaving a gap half an arm wide.

He slipped in sideways, using his shoulder blade to push aside the loose roots, squeezing most of his body through.

He was only a kick away from rushing out of the strangulation line.

His eyes were filled with hope!

What Jiang Ming was waiting for was precisely this step of his charge.

The buried stone at the southern corner was real!

The gap was real, but the pre-embedded landing spot outside the wall was even more real.

The beating of the secondary tree core surged abruptly, and Tree Nest No. 1 bore the high-pressure burst as three main roots simultaneously turned up from beneath the mud at Shen Kui's anticipated landing spot.

"Ah!!!!"

The first root shattered his knee, sweeping away his right leg's support from the side!

"Ah! Ah-ah!!"

The second root wrapped around his waist, violently dragging him from mid-air to the ground!

"Ahhh!"

The third root pierced obliquely into his right ribs, puncturing his diaphragm.

"Pffrt!!"

It was very effortless, feeling like stabbing into cotton, finally piercing through his lung lobes and out from his back.

Shen Kui was pinned down just half a step away from the gate of life, the hope in his eyes vanishing.

He died with his eyes wide open in grievance, his mouth twitching slightly as if wanting to say something.

It wasn't fear, but verification — — before dying, he finally saw clearly what that thing was which his intuition had been warning him about all along.

The second-in-command's fingers were still on the channel stone.

"Pfft!!"

Jiang Ming used a branch to shatter the bone whistle, driving a main root into the second-in-command's chest cavity as a follow-up strike.

Fresh blood overflowed into the soil.

The second-in-command was strangled, and the channel stone was rolled into the root chamber by the roots.

"Pfft pfft!"

The personal guards' shields were crushed by the Tree Realm, and poisoned stingers followed up from beneath their feet.

Jiang Ming could not bear to witness the sufferings of the mortal world!

The moment the Fire-Oil Handler wanted to ignite himself, the root net wrapped around his arms from behind, successfully stopping him from playing with fire and burning himself.

In gratitude, he offered up his life...

The crossbowman's bolts shot into the walls of the Tree Realm without causing any damage.

Under the multiple pressures of the Tree Domain's high pressure, the splashing of fire-oil, and their retreat routes being sealed off by the Tree Realm, the few people in the rear rank collapsed one after another.

Harvested one by one.

When devouring Shen Kui, what surged in was an entire torrent of information.

Outer defense maps, risk ratings for various routes, construction progress of Outpost No. 2, and grain reserves at the northern storage point.

The complete dialogue of Lao Dong from the Camp Administration Room being scolded back to his face by Shen Kui for embezzling purified water.

The lowered discussions of the people nearby when Tiesi lifted the heavy cleaving blade with one hand in the training ground, the issuance process of rotation wooden tokens, the evaluation of field personnel, and the topics of the next meeting in the Council Shed.

As well as a string of channel codenames and corresponding dispatch passwords.

The entire nervous system operating outside the Settlement was all within this person's memory.

[Killed Tier-1 Danger Perception Awakened Shen Kui, Evolution Points +680. Killed 12 outer-line elites, Evolution Points +1260. Absorbed trait: Danger Intuition Fragment — — Predictive mental detection range expanded to 200 meters, accuracy upgraded to discern threat levels.]

[Awakening energy residue: Mentality permanently +45, Tree Domain's adaptive suppression accuracy against human Awakened slightly enhanced. Ledger-type information fragments automatically integrated: Acquired complete Settlement peripheral operation map.]

The walls of the Tree Realm loosened after the devouring ended, and the root network retracted beneath the damp soil zone.

All the remains were dragged deep into the root chamber of Tree Nest No. 1.

The ground in the Outer Ring only left scattered torches, a few shield fragments, and two overturned copper canisters.

Shen Kui's short blade was individually rolled by the roots into the storage cavity of the root chamber, with his surname engraved on the blade!

This blade could be used to create the next misunderstanding...