20: Chapter 20 Shennong Mountain Range

From his home to the core area of the Shennong Mountain Range, the straight-line distance on the map was no more than fifty kilometers.

However, a map is just a map, and a mountain is a mountain.

In a primeval forest, straight-line distances are deceptive; you have to climb over ridges, cross valleys, and detour around cliffs and impenetrable thickets.

By the time you actually walk it, it's at least seventy kilometers.

Seventy kilometers of mountain trails would take an ordinary person two or three days to hike, even traveling light.

If carrying a load, the time would double.

But Chen Mo was not in that category.

He shouldered his forty-kilogram hiking pack, locked the door of the old house, and headed north along the ridge line of the back mountain.

Under his feet was the mountain trail he had traversed countless times over the past half-month; the footprints in the soil were layered one upon another, having almost worn a small path.

After walking out of the back mountain's range, the path began to change.

First, the cement road receded into a gravel road, the gravel road turned into a dirt path swallowed by weeds, and in the end, the dirt path disappeared entirely.

All that remained were old stone steps occasionally visible amidst the dense forest and long-rotted wooden stakes.

These were remnants left by logging teams from years ago. Later, when the protected area was established and the logging teams withdrew, the mountain trails were slowly reclaimed by the vegetation.

The speed at which nature swallows human traces is always faster than humans imagine.

Half an hour later, Chen Mo had reached the outer area of the Shennong Mountain Range.

As soon as he entered the outer area, the changes before him caused him to involuntarily slow his pace.

The density of the vegetation here was on an entirely different level compared to the back mountain near his home.

The forest behind his home was considered dense, but there were at least some gaps between the trees, and one could discern the spacing of the shrubs on the ground.

Here, however, the trees looked as if they had been planted side-by-side with a shovel, with trunks squeezed together so tightly that not even air could pass through.

The canopy overhead was layered in three tiers: ancient trees at the highest point, shorter broad-leaved trees in the middle, and patches of shrubs and vines at the very bottom.

By the time the sunlight filtered through these three layers and reached the ground, only dim, greenish spots of light remained.

He looked up at the canopies.

Several fir trees had astonishingly thick trunks; the thickest one would likely require three or four adults to encircle.

The bark was covered in moss and vines, with vines hanging from the trunks all the way to the ground, as thick as a human wrist.

The layer of fallen leaves underfoot was thick enough to submerge his ankles, and every step produced the delicate, crisp sound of rotting leaves being crushed, like stepping on dry sponge.

The air was permeated with a rich, humus-like scent—the smell of rotting leaves, damp wood, fungal spores, and a certain indescribable, aged atmosphere unique to primeval forests.

This scent was not unpleasant.

Chen Mo took a deep breath, letting the cool air fill his lungs.

He continued forward, and faded warning signs for the protected area began to appear along the roadside. Some signs leaned crookedly in the grass, their iron supports rusted down to mere stumps, with the words "Strictly Prohibited to Enter the Primeval Forest Area Without Authorization" written on them.

A few hundred meters further on, there appeared a section of barbed wire fence with a large opening; the wire itself had long since rusted and snapped, the gap wide enough for a car to drive through.

Beside it, a larger warning sign displayed three lines of text: "Strictly Prohibited to Enter the Primeval Forest Area Without Authorization," "Hunting Prohibited," and "Entering the Core Area Prohibited."

The writing on the sign had faded to the point of near-illegibility, but Chen Mo could still make it out.

He did not stop and stepped through the opening.

Past this barbed wire, the old mountain trail ceased completely.

The path ahead consisted entirely of desolate slopes, thickets, and dense, tangled woods, with no traces of human activity whatsoever.

On the ground, there were only game trails beaten out by wild beasts—narrow dirt furrows that could barely accommodate a person passing through sideways.

Both sides were packed with dense thorns and ferns, their leaves still hanging with morning dew.

The mist in the forest was even thicker than in the outer area.

Morning mist rose in the valleys, flowing slowly through the trees like a silent, white river.

Visibility plummeted to within a few dozen meters, and the shadows of trees in the distance were reduced to vague outlines in the thick fog, looking less like trees and more like something standing there.

Chen Mo did not slow down.

His vision was sharp enough to discern the wood grain of tree bark under moonlight; this bit of morning mist could not hinder him at all.

To him, the mist simply made the air a bit more humid.

He walked for another twenty minutes or so, and the game trail beneath his feet began to show some new traces.

There were deep, wide furrows in the soil that had been rooted up, the dirt on both sides churned into a mess—the marks of a wild boar.

Nearby were several clear hoof prints, each the size of an adult's fist.

Walking a few steps further, he saw a row of deep claw marks on the trunk of an old pine tree, slashed from top to bottom, nearly half a meter long.

The width and depth of those claw marks could not have been left by a feline.

It was a bear.

Chen Mo crouched down and measured his finger against the claw marks; they were roughly three times thicker than his fingers.

The bear that left these marks would conservatively weigh over one hundred fifty kilograms.

He looked at the ground again; the bear's footprints were very fresh, their edges not yet dried by the wind, likely left just last night.

He stood up and continued walking forward.

In the past, seeing these signs would have made him turn back.

For a normal person walking in a primeval forest, to discover fresh bear footprints and claw marks and still continue forward would be no different from seeking death.

But now, he merely took an extra look, noted the bear's approximate size and direction of movement, and then continued north along his own route.

An hour later, he crossed a cold, damp ridge.

The scene on this side of the ridge was completely different from the southern slope.

The southern slope had ample sunlight, and while the vegetation was dense, it was still somewhat sparse.

The northern slope was in the shade with short daylight hours, and the entire forest was shrouded in a gloomy dampness.

Moss and lichens covered every exposed rock, and there were more fungi on the tree trunks than bark.

The moisture in the air was so saturated it felt like it could be wrung out, and the temperature of the air he inhaled was at least three or four degrees lower than on the southern slope.

Walking down the northern slope for about fifteen minutes, the terrain gradually leveled out.

The forest ahead suddenly became tall and ancient; the size of the trees was not the same as in the outer area.

Here, the trees generally required two or three people to encircle them, and the tallest fir trees were visually estimated to be over thirty meters, their trunks thrusting straight toward the sky, leaving almost no gaps between the canopies, blocking out the entire sky.

This was the core area of the Shennong Mountain Range.

It was the only well-preserved mid-latitude primeval forest in the world, with a vegetation coverage rate exceeding ninety-six percent, a core area spanning over three hundred square kilometers, and containing over three hundred streams.

In other regions of the Northern Hemisphere at the same latitude, primeval forests had been cut down a hundred years ago; this place was the last isolated island.

It preserved a large number of living fossil plants left over from the Ice Age, serving as a living gene bank of ancient flora.

But as Chen Mo stood here now, what he felt was not scientific value.

It was an ancient and primal power.

The air here was still.

There was no wind, no birdsong, and no insect chirping.

There was only an extremely low-pitched hum, as if the entire forest were breathing.

Light leaked down through the gaps in the layered canopy overhead, scattered by the mist into beams of grayish-white light that slanted down to the ground.

Within the light beams, countless tiny spores could be seen floating slowly, like microorganisms drifting in water.

Vines like twisted pythons coiled around the trunks, as thick as a human arm.

The layer of fallen leaves on the ground was thick enough to submerge his calves when stepped upon; the leaves at the very bottom had rotted into black humus, emitting a warm, fermented scent.

Occasionally, he could see fallen logs—great trees that had fallen god-knows-how-many years ago, lying horizontally on the ground, their bodies covered in moss, being slowly digested back into the soil by the forest.

There were no more passersby here, no more mountain trails.

It was truly isolated from the world.

Chen Mo stood in place and slowly turned around, taking in the three-hundred-sixty-degree view of his surroundings.

Then, he walked to the nearest fir tree, grasped the trunk with both hands, kicked off with his feet, and climbed up, his body pressed against the trunk.

His fingers could easily wedge into the crevices of the rough bark, and the friction under his feet was so great that he could steady his body even without stepping on branches.

In less than ten seconds, he had reached the top of the tree.

Standing on the branches at the treetop, his field of vision suddenly opened up.

Beneath his feet were layers upon layers of canopies, a dark green ocean extending to the horizon.

In the distance, several mountain peaks emerged from the sea of canopies, the mountainsides covered in similarly dense primeval forest.

Looking further into the distance, the skyline and the mountain range merged into one, with grayish-blue ridges layered one after another; the furthest layer was indistinguishable as either mountain or cloud.

Just as he was preparing to climb down from the tree, a low, deep beast roar echoed from the forest in the distance.

The sound was extremely muffled and distant, as if it had come from inside the mountain itself, the lingering echoes reverberating in the forest for several seconds before dissipating.

He looked in the direction the sound had come from, but could see nothing—only layered canopies and mist.

However, he was certain that the thing which had made that sound was not small.

Chen Mo jumped directly down from the tree, his feet hitting the fallen leaves with a dull thud.

A height of twenty-some meters made no difference to him compared to jumping off a single step.

The concentration of Spiritual Qi in the air was as he had expected, consistent with the concentration in the outside world, and the particle distribution was also uniform.

He sensed the reactions of three spirit energy particles within a range of a few hundred meters, with a density at the same level as the back mountain near his home.

Sure enough, it was completely consistent with the judgment he had previously written in his notebook.

Before entering the mountain, he had made a hypothesis: the concentration of Spiritual Qi is uniform on a macroscopic scale, unaffected by terrain, vegetation, altitude, or human activity.

Now, this hypothesis had been preliminarily verified in the primeval forest; although the vegetation coverage here exceeded ninety-six percent and the density of flora and fauna was several times that of the back mountain, the concentration of Spiritual Qi had not increased in the slightest.

This also meant that his plan to accelerate his growth by searching for some "Spiritual Qi-rich" treasure land was invalid.

There was no such thing as a blessed land filled with abundant Spiritual Qi, at least not for now.

Spiritual Qi was fair; it was evenly sprinkled upon every inch of the Earth's surface.

It would not give you any more just because you were in a primeval forest, nor would it give you any less just because you were in a city.

He continued to walk forward.