134: vegetative state

"Why does that Jiang Ren's state look a bit off?" Su Ze muttered to himself as he watched the battle not far away.

The strength of the two was not much different, but their current environment was very favorable for Jiang Ren's plant-type demon beasts.

Plus, Qi Lin had used all his methods during his clash with Kuang Yi, which Jiang Ren, who had finished his battle early, saw clearly.

So in Su Ze's view, this match should have been very intense and deadlocked, but in the end, Jiang Ren would still win.

But now the situation on the field was exactly the opposite!

The time went back to when Xue Yuhe's demon beast self-detonated.

The standoff between Qi Lin and Jiang Ren also ended at that moment, and then the battle began with the sound of the explosion as a signal.

At the very beginning, everything was roughly as Su Ze had predicted.

The clash between the two seemed like a back-and-forth, but in reality, Jiang Ren had already faintly suppressed Qi Lin; winning was only a matter of time.

However, from some unknown moment, the situation suddenly reversed.

For some reason, Jiang Ren's movements would occasionally become stiff and sluggish; the lack of control over his body made even him feel very surprised.

"What's... going on? My body... what's happening to it?" He suddenly exerted force to push Qi Lin away, then began to carefully check his body.

"Could I be poisoned? From food or a wound?"

But all the food he ate today was personally prepared by himself this morning to prepare for the Beast Taming Grand Competition; there shouldn't be any problems.

As for wounds, from the beginning of the competition until now, his luck had been quite good, and the battles he experienced were very easy, so he hadn't suffered a single injury.

"Speaking of which, the only recent wound on my body is..."

Jiang Ren seemed to remember something. He deactivated the beast taming armor on his hand, where there was a wound that had been accidentally scratched by tree bark in the Ancestor's garden not long ago.

But because the wound wasn't large and healed quickly, he had soon forgotten about it.

Moreover, that large tree in the family garden was said to be the Ancestor's own beast.

Why would the Ancestor harm him?

Jiang Ren held such thoughts in his heart, but the moment he saw his palm, he was so horrified that he was speechless.

After a moment of daze, he stammered and roared, "What... what the hell are these things?!"

He saw that at the seemingly inconspicuous tiny wound on his hand, a small emerald-green sprout had poked out from the gap in his flesh.

At first, he thought he had seen it wrong, but after blinking, not only did the sprout not disappear, he also saw more details clearly.

Looking down through the gap between the green sprout and the wound, it seemed that this sprout was just a small tip of the iceberg, with roots of unknown length deeply rooted in his arm and blood vessels!

And judging from the dark marks on his arm, they were still extending upwards, wanting to spread across his entire body!

In terror, Jiang Ren raised his weapon—a longsword composed of his beast's tree branches and leaves—wanting to cut off his own arm to stop them from continuing upwards.

But the moment he raised it, he discovered that his beast taming armor had also started to be covered with some twisted and strange patterns at some point. These patterns turned into thick vines the moment he raised his hand, entangling the sword in his hand and preventing him from cutting down.

Subsequently, Jiang Ren felt a sharp pain in his head, and then his expression gradually became dazed, and the fear in his heart just now vanished along with it.

Looking down at his arm that was not covered by the beast taming armor, in his eyes now, it was clean and showed no abnormalities.

He even forgot why he had chosen to deactivate part of his beast taming armor during such an intense battle.

"How strange... why did I do that? I can't remember... forget it. Qi Lin, what are you standing there for? Let's keep fighting!" He shook his head and said to the bewildered Qi Lin not far away.

Qi Lin had just been completely confused by Jiang Ren. These things actually happened very quickly; the pushed-back Qi Lin only saw Jiang Ren suddenly raise his sword to cut his own arm.

Then he suddenly lowered it again, and in the blink of an eye, he wanted to fight as if nothing had happened.

"Simply inexplicable..."

But at this time, Jiang Ren had already rushed over quickly. Qi Lin had no choice but to respond, and the two clashed again.

While on the arm that looked perfectly normal in Jiang Ren's eyes, some vines grew out. These vines helped him grip the sword in his hand tighter, making it even harder to break free from control.

This time, Jiang Ren gave Qi Lin no more chances, maintaining a total suppression of Qi Lin throughout the battle.

Furthermore, his strength seemed to grow stronger and stronger during the battle, and correspondingly, the patterns on the beast taming armor became more and more dense.

Finally, after suffering a heavy blow, Qi Lin was forced to deactivate his beast taming armor and was subsequently knocked down.

Although the process had its twists and turns, Jiang Ren was the one who won in the end, entering the finals along with Su Ze.

On another branch not far away, Su Ze's eyes had become slender and powerful, clear and bright, with a divine aura, and they flickered with a faint golden luster as he watched everything ahead.

In order to observe the moves of both sides, he had activated the Phoenix Eye ability of the Golden Feather Phoenix Bird.

Originally, he just wanted to understand his next opponent, but he didn't expect to see everything that happened through the Phoenix Bird's vision, including the mutation on Jiang Ren's hand.

He didn't know what those things were, only that his current state seemed very wrong.

"Is this... the legendary 'Vegetative Man'?" Su Ze thought back to the scene he had just seen where vines grew from the hand and couldn't help but quip.

Su Ze was also considering whether he should inform others about this, but that state didn't seem to improve Jiang Ren's strength.

Even from the fact that Qi Lin once held the advantage, it seemed to interfere with him, which was beneficial to Su Ze.

And if saying it out loud really revealed some problem that caused this Grand Competition to be canceled... Su Ze looked up at the wutong fruit, which was already very close. This was very important to him, so Su Ze didn't want to cause any unnecessary trouble.

After a short rest, the two began to climb upwards slowly, heading towards the final battlefield.

That was the last branch located at the very top. It was no longer as huge as the other branches, being just about as thick as an ordinary arena.

And hanging above was the final prize, a massive fruit dozens of meters in size.