Chapter 162: The Great White Radish Harvest
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
The eastern skies gradually turned white as Lin Sanjiu sat cross-legged on the ground, gazing straight into the distance.
She was still sitting by last night’s bonfire, though there was now a haphazard pile of rucksacks beside her. She had finished searching through those rucksacks, belonging to Green Melon and the others, and discovered that the items distributed to them the night before were still safely stored in the bags.
Apparently, they were unknowingly captured when they were fast asleep.
Though she knew the dangers of sitting there, Lin Sanjiu didn’t want to move at all.
Instead, no matter who or what captured B.Rabbit and the others, she couldn’t wait for it to quickly get its hands on her—just so she could know where B.Rabbit and the others went to, and what exactly happened.
Disappointingly, even after Lin Sanjiu waited till the skies became brightly lit, with the sun slowly crawling above her head, she didn’t observe even a single sign of abnormality. Sunlight pierced through the clouds, pouring down upon the ground, adding a bit of warmth to the slightly chilly weather. Lin Sanjiu could only hear the rustling of leaves, pindrop silence enveloped the world around her.
After waiting impatiently for a few more minutes, Lin Sanjiu finally jumped up, unable to tolerate waiting any longer. She packed her things and headed onward, deciding to seek out for her enemy actively.
[It might not be looking for me, but there’s nothing stopping me from seeking it out, right?] Lin Sanjiu cursed angrily as she leaped down the slope of the first ridge—it was the same place where Snow disappeared. Then, she headed for the next ridge.
There seemed to be no boundary to the unique landform as it stretched for miles. There was nothing exceptional about it, aside from the inconvenience it brought to travelers. After climbing up and down the numerous rows of ridges, Lin Sanjiu finally felt a bit tired. She heaved a sigh and sat down dejectedly.
"Everyone had been captured, so why not me? B*stard!" She took out a bottle of water and guzzled down gulps of water. Having nowhere to vent the many stifling emotions in her heart, she suddenly kicked a piece of wreckage on the ground.
It appeared to be just a metal board, but when Lin Sanjiu kicked it, it did not budge at all.
"I don’t believe this. I can’t even do this right!"
In an inexplicable fit of anger, Lin Sanjiu stood up, determined to pit herself against the board. She gathered all her strength and delivered a second violent kick.
This wasn’t because she was hot-tempered. Ever since she arrived in the Garden of Eden, she had gone through too much. She had witnessed the display of nightmarish brutality and cruelty from the residents of the Garden of Eden and discovered Nüwa’s insane determination of exterminating humans and executing her grand plan of populating the world with her new creations. But even if she set these aside, the days she spent traveling and roaming the outside world with her companions, carrying the burden of her companions’ fate, worrying if they could survive for another day, was stressful enough to make a person crumble.
This was made worse when she found herself suddenly all alone again, without the support of any friends. The emotions she had forcefully repressed all this time, mixed with her uncertainty and worries, erupted all at once. After all, regardless of everything, she was just like an ordinary person.
Though her emotions were understandably normal, she had extraordinary strength. That kick of her could have overturned a heavy-duty truck. Strangely, the board-like object only wobbled a little. It was as though it had simply grown out from the ground.
"Eh?"
Facing this situation, Lin Sanjiu felt her churning sea of tumultuous emotions finally abating. She was only left with a sense of curiosity.
"What’s this?" Lin Sanjiu knew her strength very well. The object in front of her was no longer than a meter and no thicker than a fingerbreadth, so there was absolutely no reason why her kick couldn’t make that thin-flimsy looking thing budge.
"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 edges of the board and began her attempts 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 and activated her [Mosaic Censorship].
The explosive force of her ability blasted open the ground. Rubble and soil sprayed in all directions and she was blinded 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 from the ground.
She realized that the metal board was actually 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 that 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 was more than proof that it was a military vehicle.
Even so, her kick should make it budge, right?
Even if she wasn't digging this wreckage here, Lin Sanjiu did not know what else she should be doing so she casually dug a bit deeper into the soil with her hands. She finally saw the interior of the driver's cabin. She spotted a human-shaped figure about around ten meters deep into 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 person."
Even after going through so much, Lin Sanjiu still disliked seeing dead bodies. She glanced at it and instantly lost interest. But just as she was about to leave, she suddenly 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 man's face.
[Will a typical corpse buried in the soil decades ago be that... 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 and activated her ability. It created an explosion of dirt, stirring up a small sandstorm, sprinkled with fragments of the vehicle.
After waiting for the dust to settle, Lin Sanjiu spat out the few mouthfuls of soil vigorously. She squinted and looked toward 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 that she had seen much of the world, but no matter how she looked, the thing in front of her appeared to be incomprehensible.
Lin Sanjiu walked a few steps toward it and reached for the helmet cautiously with two fingers. She carefully took off its helmet.
Her hand trembled as soon as her eyes fell upon the item. The helmet fell with a clank as it hit the body of the vehicle and rolled 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 finally understood what it was when she took a closer look.
It was definitely a human.
He was probably a driver and 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 black hollow eye sockets. Looking down, his neck, torso and limbs were also wrapped tightly by the layer of white skin.
Lin Sanjiu endured the feeling of discomfort, as her eyes followed the white skin, and that was when she genuinely startled.
The white skin continued extending from the foot of the desiccated corpse; forming a thick, rhizome-like object, which certainly 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 which could hold at least a row of ten people. Ten people walking side by side on it. The 'white radish' which enveloped the corpse looked just 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.
In those four hours, she had already dug open a large surface of the land. She revealed a network of dense, intricately connected gigantic white rhizomes, which came together to form 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 of them were as long as a human's full body length, while others were only about an arm's length. There were a few desiccated corpses encased in some of them, while others encased some other unknown creatures.
The roots were definitely alive as they vibrated a bit when Lin Sanjiu accidentally touched them. But, that was the only reaction they displayed.
"Damn it! This isn't a Pocket Dimension!" Lin Sanjiu felt an eruption of goosebumps 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.