Garden of Eden || Apocalypse Paradise #2 [Complete]

162: The Great White Radish Harvest

"Is this a wreckage from a motor vehicle? It shouldn't be that long... so I should be able to pull it out, right?"

Doubting herself slightly, Lin Sanjiu held the board's edges and began attempting to pull it out. The thick layer of dust and soil piled on its surface fell in clusters, forming a small spatter of grey rain, getting her face caked with dust and dirt. However, the board didn't move an inch.

Lin Sanjiu stopped; she gave it some thought before activating her [Mosaic Censorship].

The explosive force of her ability blasted the ground open. Rubble and soil sprayed in all directions, blinding her for a second. After a few violent coughs, Lin Sanjiu dusted the dirt off her face and lowered her head to examine the board sticking out of the ground.

The metal board was a sliding door. She dug along the sliding door and discovered that it was attached to the body of an armored fighting vehicle (AFV).

She had never seen a vehicle like it in her former world. It was only a two-seater, but its terrorizing exterior design and the densely packed firearm muzzles under the driver's cabin were more than proof that it was a military vehicle.

Even so, her kick should have made it budge, right?

Since Lin Sanjiu had no other ideas on what to do, she dug deeper into the soil with her bare hands. She finally saw the interior of the driver's cabin and a human-shaped figure around ten meters deep inside the earth. She could even make out the safety helmet on the figure's head. Past the figure, a small portion of the vehicle was still buried.

"Oh, it's a dead body."

Despite her experience, Lin Sanjiu still disliked seeing dead bodies. She glanced at it and lost interest. As she was about to leave, she paused and immediately turned her head. She hastily swept the soil off the driver's cabin and stuck her head in to have a closer look— she wanted to have a clearer view of the dead person's face.

'Would a normal corpse buried in the soil decades ago be this fresh?'

Although soil covered the person's face, Lin Sanjiu could still vaguely see a whitish surface under that helmet. To be honest, that couldn't possibly be human skin. That white surface seemed more like a... white radish.

However, the existence of a large, helmet-wearing white radish exceeded Lin Sanjiu's imagination.

No matter what that was, it would be clear once she opened the cabin. Lin Sanjiu placed one of her hands on the driver's cabin and the other at the point where the AFV was still stuck in the soil, activating her ability. It created an explosion of dirt, stirring up a small sandstorm sprinkled with vehicle fragments.

After waiting for the dust to settle, Lin Sanjiu vigorously spat out the few mouthfuls of soil. She squinted and looked in the direction of the white radish.

Even after looking at the white radish for a few seconds, she wasn't sure what she was looking at.

"What... is this?"

She thought she had seen much of the world, but no matter how she looked, the thing in front of her appeared incomprehensible. She walked a few steps toward it and reached for the helmet with two cautious fingers, taking it off.

Her hand trembled as soon as her eyes fell upon the item. The helmet fell with a clang, hitting the vehicle's body and rolling off into the distance.

It turned out that the white radish wasn't entirely white. At least, there was still a nest of black hair where its 'head' was supposed to be. Lin Sanjiu endured the churning feeling in her stomach and, upon closer look, realized what it was.

It was a human.

He was probably a driver who died in the vehicle during the war. The years of changing topography buried the vehicle, but at some point in time, his corpse had been encased in this hard layer of white skin.

Under his hair, through the semi-translucent skin, Lin Sanjiu could still somehow make out the prominent facial features of the corpse and two hollow black eye sockets. When looking down, his neck, torso, and limbs were wrapped tightly by the layer of white skin.

Lin Sanjiu endured discomfort as her eyes followed the white skin, and that was when she was genuinely startled.

The white skin continued extending from the foot of the desiccated corpse, forming a thick, rhizome-like object, which looked quite similar to a white radish. The other half of the vehicle was on top of another massive white radish. The gigantic white radish was as wide as a street that could hold at least a row of ten people. Ten people were walking side by side on it. The white radish that enveloped the corpse looked like a small tassel hanging from the larger radish.

After decades, the enormous white radish had already grown around the AFV. When Lin Sanjiu blasted open the ground, it only revealed a section of the large radish. Lin Sanjiu did not know how far the white radish extended beyond the hole she created.

Lin Sanjiu stared blankly for a while. Without warning, she suddenly started digging madly.

Her movements were quick. Using another board from the vehicle as a digging tool, she dug a long trench following the body of the white radish, exposing it to the sun. But she didn't stop. It was as if this was all she wanted to do. She dug for about four hours before she threw down the board. Her face was pale as she quickly sprinted in the opposite direction.

The ridges behind her were much taller than the others. Lin Sanjiu didn't even dare to steal a breath as she climbed to higher ground and looked down from above.

She had already dug open a large land surface in those four hours. She revealed a network of dense, intricately connected gigantic white rhizomes, which formed a larger rhizome. She couldn't even tell where the larger rhizome started or ended. The shallowest part of the rhizome network was a mere knuckle depth from the surface.

The gigantic white rhizomes were covered with numerous smaller roots. Some were as long as a human's full body length, while others were only about an arm's length. A few desiccated corpses were encased in some of them, while others encased some other unknown creatures.

The roots were alive, vibrating when Lin Sanjiu accidentally touched them, but that was all.

"Damn it! This isn't a pocket dimension!" Lin Sanjiu felt goosebumps erupt all over her body. She turned and ran, rushing toward where Snow and the others disappeared.

She knew then—every missing person was still in the same spot.