"So, this really is the Garden of Eden!" Lin Sanjiu uttered as every inch of her body trembled while she looked at her surroundings.
Due to the overwhelming shock, she looked around with a lifeless glaze in her eyes. She was in a daze. Unknowingly, a gigantic object approached her from behind, casting an enormous shadow over her. Sensing the peculiar presence, she turned behind and couldn't help but curse softly.
"What the hell?"
Just half an hour ago, Lin Sanjiu was still sitting in the capsule, helplessly drifting along. She was right about the tree roots converging. As the flow speed of the fluid within the roots sped up, the currents within the roots grew stronger. She saw batch after batch of black figures being transported to the 'river' she was in. Not long after, her capsule was surrounded by a variety of corpses. Waves after waves of fluid, carrying various dead corpses, hit her capsule, causing it to spin uncontrollably. For a moment, Lin Sanjiu felt dizzy. She couldn't see anything clearly. She could only feel the flow of the fluid accelerating downward.
As objects rammed violently against her capsule due to the strong waves, some components in her capsules were loosened. As the capsule spun and whirled 360 degrees, the components fell off and were tossed within the capsule, hitting the walls noisily and almost disfiguring Lin Sanjiu a couple of times.
Considering the hectic situation, Lin Sanjiu didn't have time to protect herself. She only realized that her capsule was under attack after a minute had passed. As the capsule was designed to imprison female posthumans, it was impossible to open the capsule from the inside. On the other hand, damaging it from the outside wasn't that difficult. When the alarm bells head started ringing in her head, an indistinct silhouette of a man broke through the fluid and slammed the door of the capsule violently again. The hinge of the door started vibrating.
Shocked, Lin Sanjiu attempted to pull the door back, but there was nothing in the capsule to provide support. Just as she spat out a stream of expletives, she saw the black figure dashing toward her again. This time, he managed to grab the door handle and started shaking the door vigorously.
This time, she managed to get a better view. The person outside was a well-built man, and his clothes were in tatters. There were wounds all over his pale skin. Only the mask on his face was undamaged. A pair of long, thin eyes stared at Lin Sanjiu through the mask.
'This person wants to come in!'
Lin Sanjiu finally understood. Anything caught by these strange tree roots could only survive using their physical advantages, their abilities, or their special items. Nonetheless, no matter what methods they used, they were still tortured badly by the corrosive slime and the thin roots. Most of the people were simply unable to survive this and had long become the many wreaked corpses around her.
Under such circumstances, anyone would covet a small boat-like capsule that could fully protect its passenger. The man outside must have reached his limits. He could see that there was no way Lin Sanjiu could hold back the door. Thus, he kicked and trampled the door with all his might as if he had decided to take her down with him if he couldn't get in.
After several attacks, the capsule vibrated so violently that Lin Sanjiu felt that her capsule would fall apart at any moment. Her anger flared, and she quickly drew her saber, planning to stab the man once the door opened. When the man suddenly noticed the saber pointing toward the door, he stopped. He looked at the saber and then at the door.
"You bastard! If you enter, I'm going to thrust this saber into your body!" Even though she knew that the man couldn't hear her from outside, Lin Sanjiu yelled out. "Know your place and scram!"
At that moment, the fluid within the roots grew more turbulent. Even though he was holding on to the door handle, the man was staggering from blows from the objects that hit him. It was nearly impossible for him to dodge her saber, considering that he couldn't even steady himself.
In the end, the man gave up after staring at Lin Sanjiu with his long bloodshot eyes for a while. He released his hands from the handle and swam away with difficulty. Lin Sanjiu gripped her saber tightly. She didn't dare to let her guard down. She let out a sigh of relief only after he vanished from her line of sight.
Before she could catch her breath, a heavy force suddenly struck the back of her capsule. She stumbled forward along with the capsule. Unprepared, her head struck the wall of the capsule. If she hadn't converted her saber back into a card in time, she would have been stabbed.
Before she could stabilize herself, someone kicked her capsule forcefully from behind once more. The pair of long, narrow eyes, which had somehow gotten behind Lin Sanjiu's capsule, revealed the man's astonishment to find that Lin Sanjiu was still alive. He pulled back his leg and swam toward the capsule again.
Without even waiting for her body to stabilize, a forceful kick came again from the same direction—the pair of long, thin eyes, which moved to the back unknowingly, seemed to be flabbergasted as to why Lin Sanjiu hadn't died yet. As soon as his legs withheld back their strength, he began to dig and swim towards the capsule.
"If you really want to die, I'll grant it!"
Lin Sanjiu felt a surge of murderous intent. Within a single thought, she stored her capsule, exposing her body to the slime outside. She felt waves of stinging pain from her skin. But before she could get her saber out, she saw the man swimming upward desperately. Lin Sanjiu was stunned. Suddenly, a tsunami-like wave washed over everything.
For a second, she lost all her five senses. She felt immense pressure and only saw darkness. Pain coursed through her body, and she felt surges of acid in her nostrils. Through her fragmented sensations, she felt the strong currents pushing her body for a long distance before she finally hit a solid surface.
'Is this some creature's corpse?'
Once that thought struggled out from Lin Sanjiu's cluttered mind, she suddenly felt an emptiness behind her. The solid wall-like surface disappeared, and a length of thing root pushed her waist. She felt herself being pushed out. The rhizome's epidermis opened.
By chance, this unnutritional creature had been pushed close to its epidermis. The rhizome seemed more than happy to squeeze her out of its network of roots. The man caught in the middle of the chaotic flow was stupefied by the scene in front of him. Following this, he struggled crazily, using all his limbs to swim forward, but he couldn't even get close to the epidermis before it closed.
Only layers of soil, a few thousand meters under the ground level, awaited her outside.
"I'm really going to die this time..."
The rhizomes continued heading downward. They probably already reached the planetary core. Lin Sanjiu closed her eyes, waiting for the layers of rock and soil to crush her to death. Suddenly, her body became light, and a sense of weightlessness embraced her.
With the sound of whooshing air by her ears, her heart nearly shot out from her chest when she opened her eyes. She was falling rapidly. Tears spilled from her eyes as the wind whipped her body painfully. But at that point, nothing could compare to her immense fear that she would fall to her death. She drew out her saber in a panic and stabbed it into the thing beside her. It might be the wall of a precipice for all she knew, but surprisingly, she managed to stab her saber into it, slowing her fall. Though she was still falling rapidly, judging from her current speed, at least she wouldn't die from the fall. Lin Sanjiu clutched the hilt of her saber firmly with both hands. Sparks flew as she slid down the wall. The blade of her saber quickly became blunt as the black ground below her grew closer and closer. She steeled her heart and let go of her saber before landing.
Lin Sanjiu landed heavily. She felt a sweetness in her throat and rolled hastily to dispel the impact of the fall. Fortunately, she fell on soft, slightly pliable ground. She checked herself and found that she only had some abrasions and bruises. She didn't even fracture a single bone.
Escaping a narrow death, Lin Sanjiu took a few deep breaths before she calmed down.
"What's this? What's going on?" Her mind was an utter mess. "Weren't the roots heading for the planetary core? How could I have fallen from a high place?"
Without the sparks from the saber, she found herself in pitch-black darkness. She couldn't see a thing. Lin Sanjiu had been to many dark places, but never was there a place darker than her current location. Most people should have such experiences—no matter how dark a place is, there will always be a ray of light; no matter how dim it is, after one's eyes adapted to the darkness, one should be able to see silhouettes at least. Posthumans could see even better.
Yet, she found herself in pure darkness. There wasn't even a single beam of light. If it weren't for the sparks from her saber, Lin Sanjiu would even believe that she had gone blind suddenly. It was as if someone had used bricks and cement to build a room without any windows or doors.
'Huh?'
Lin Sanjiu felt a little startled by her thoughts. She felt a drop of cold sweat sliding down her forehead. She had put together the fragmented clues subconsciously. The tree roots were on the shallow layers of the soil. The deeper the roots go, the thicker they get. After a few thousand meters deep, everything within the roots converged...
She should be at the core of the planet, yet she fell from a height. This place without any light was like a fortified room...
Compared to Nüwa, admittedly, Lin Sanjiu's intelligence was lacking. But when things were so clearly spelled out for her, she couldn't help shuddering as she had finally solved the mystery regarding the tree roots.
Lin Sanjiu quivered as she took out her [Ability Polishing Agent]. The silver light lit up the space around her immediately. However, the light seemed to waver in the darkness due to her trembling hand. Before she had the time to survey her surroundings, she hastily raised her [Ability Polishing Agent] and looked upward.
There was nothing except a darkness that seemed capable of swallowing everything.
"Cling!" Her [Ability Polishing Agent] fell and rolled on the ground, illuminating a small area.
"This is the planetary core," Lin Sanjiu murmured, her words sounding illogical even to herself, "but the center of this planet is hollow."
This planet was like a sphere without a center core. When she reached the center of the planet, it was just empty space. She naturally fell after being pushed out by the plant's fluids.
So, that was why the roots were on the shallow layers of soil. This tree grew upside down. The tree roots stayed on the topmost layer, absorbing nutrients from whatever creature it could capture. Burrowing through the planet's crust, it delivered the nutrients to the tree crown, which grew in the hollow core of the planet.
She concluded that she must have fallen out from that unspeakable tree. But when Lin Sanjiu looked around, she didn't see a single tree. There were certainly many tall plants around her, but they seemed to be some large species of herbaceous plants. She landed on top of these large plants just now. She picked up her [Ability Polishing Agent] and squinted. At the edge of the illuminated area, she could make out the vague outlines of a few round shadows. From this distance, they were probably about the size of a truck.
"What the hell is that?"
Even after looking at it for some time, the object did not move. "It probably isn't some sort of creature, so it shouldn't be that dangerous..." she muttered to herself before she approached the shadow carefully. As she got closer, the light from her [Ability Polishing Agent] also illuminated the object.
It was an apple that was one and a half times her height.
The unique outline of an apple was drawn by the reflection of the light on its surface. Still, she couldn't really tell its color, couldn't see its entire appearance clearly, and its size was twice that of a truck.
Lin Sanjiu stared at it with her mouth wide open. For a second, she couldn't believe her eyes. After some time, she finally uttered, "So, this is really the Garden of Eden."
While she was still in shock, a dark figure, even larger than the apple, sneaked toward her and into the silver light coming from her [Ability Polishing Agent].