“Holy cow, what on earth is this thing?”
Yinxing woke up early in the morning and was preparing to fetch water to wash her face, only to be stunned by the sight in the courtyard the moment she stepped out of the door, her pretty eyes wide and round.
The corner of the wall where she had planted the sweet potato yesterday was now replaced by a giant ball of green leaves.
Each leaf was bigger than her head, crowding tightly together to completely obscure the remaining half-wall. The lush foliage stretched forward, almost blanketing the entire small courtyard.
She felt as if she had accidentally strayed into some kind of green ocean.
“This isn’t right—didn’t I just plant a sweet potato yesterday? What in the world is this?”
At this moment, all she could think about was her sweet potato. She only had that one sweet potato, and she was still waiting to eat it. How had such a monster emerged?
No, that wasn’t right—she had clearly purified it when she planted it yesterday! How could it still have mutated?
The more she thought about it, the less she understood. Setting down her basin, she plunged into the dense thicket of green leaves, spending quite a bit of effort to push aside those heavy leaves before finally seeing what was inside.
And the result made her even more dumbfounded.
“Th-Th-This is the sweet potato planted last night?”
This wasn’t a sweet potato; this was practically the ancestor of all sweet potatoes! What should have been buried deep underground was now nearly half above ground, and its size had undergone a massive transformation. The current sweet potato was almost half the size of a table, its skin a deep, rich purple-red that looked immensely substantial.
Looking at it, Yinxing’s mouth almost watered.
“The sweet potato is so big, one pot can’t hold it all~”
Upon hearing her say this, the poor little… huge sweet potato shivered through every single one of its leaves. Though it couldn’t speak, one could still feel its profound terror.
The next second, a thick vine abruptly shot out in front of Yinxing and plunged directly into the ground. With a fierce scoop, it yanked out a large root of sweet potato still clad in fresh soil.
Although it wasn’t as colossal as the sweet potato ancestor, it was still as long as her forearm.
“Wow, is this for me?” Without waiting for its answer, Yinxing had already self-consciously taken the sweet potato over, her joy plain for all to see.
“In other words, you can grow sweet potatoes on your own, right? Does that mean I’ll have sweet potatoes to eat every day from now on?”
In response, the sweet potato ancestor extended two more vines. With two swift swish-swish sounds, it plucked two more long sweet potatoes from underground and presented them before her. Its leaves still couldn’t stop shivering twice…
Sweet Potato: Eat them and you can’t eat me, okay? (submitting, submitting) QAQ
Yinxing was thrilled. She hadn’t expected a sweet potato planted on a whim to yield such a massive harvest—she had practically stumbled upon a treasure~
Tenderly stroking the big leaves of the giant sweet potato, she couldn’t help but praise, “Big Sweet Potato, you’re amazing! I need a capable sweet potato like you here. Keep up the good work! Whether I can eat plenty of sweet potatoes in the future all depends on you. From now on, the sweet potatoes in this plot of land are under your charge! However, I must emphasize one point: pull back your leaves. Look at how they’ve spread everywhere—I don’t even have a place to step! You can only stay in this specific area. As for the extra parts, see if you want to clean them up yourself, or if you’d like me to help you trim them?”
The old sweet potato shuddered once more.
Blah blah… Be useful, or if there are no sweet potatoes, I’ll eat you… Blah blah… Cross the boundary and I’ll chop you…
Old Sweet Potato: Humans are terrifying! QAQ
With a quick swoosh, those extra leaves were retracted. The thick vines shrunk back into the ground before the naked eye, and the courtyard became clean once again, as though nothing had ever happened.
Yinxing was extremely satisfied with this super-large sweet potato. Touching its leaves, she said, “This is much better. Don’t let your leaves grow too tall either—if other people spot you, they’ll probably come to dispose of you.”
After another bout of trembling, more than half of its leaves shed, and the entire giant sweet potato buried itself a bit deeper into the dirt.
Yinxing: How can there be such an obedient plant~
Sweet Potato: How can there be such a terrifying human!
“Then this area will be under your charge from now on. Later on, I’ll put up a fence around here. I’ll water you a bit first, hold on.”
Picking up the washbasin that had been dropped earlier, and keeping in mind the size of that old sweet potato, she filled a large basin with water, purified it, and poured it into the soil. While the old sweet potato didn’t show much above ground, its underground roots stretched out so comfortably that they seemed ready to perform a dance.
“Alright, I’ll go start a fire. This morning, I’ll steam a sweet potato, and roast another one~”
Off she went blissfully to enjoy her sweet potatoes, completely unaware that at the monitoring station in the city center, a group of people hadn’t been able to rest the entire night. Having finally waited until dawn when the energy seemed to stabilize, just as they were preparing to let a batch of people go back to rest, the energy alarm blared again.
“Everyone snap to attention! Plant energy is fluctuating again—get a lock on the coordinates!”
“Reporting, Commander! We’re monitoring not just plant energy fluctuations outside our safe zone; the plant energy inside the safe zone is also showing signs of instability.”
“Have you gotten any leads from investigating the contamination source? Are the previous energy fluctuation and this one part of the same event?”
The leading officer’s questioning left the monitoring personnel underneath him momentarily at a loss for how to answer.
“Commander, as for the team we dispatched last time, none of them have returned so far. Although the life monitors show that several team members still have life signs, they are gradually growing faint. It is very likely that they are trapped deep in danger.”
These words made the commander’s expression darken significantly as he demanded sternly, “Wasn’t a single word sent back?”
“Unable to establish contact; the signal seems to be deliberately jammed.”
“Then keep sending people to reinforce them!”
“Among the team members we dispatched, there were two A-rank sequence users and three B-rank sequence users.”
Once these words were spoken, the commander collapsed powerlessly back into his chair, his face no longer merely looking bad, but pale as a sheet.
A squad like that could already be considered top-tier combat power. If even a squad like that couldn’t return smoothly, what kind of team could they possibly find to send as reinforcement?
That would probably require the Commander-in-Chief himself…
Could it be that humanity truly has no way out left?
“Commander! Commander! They’re back! The Snow Leopard Squad dispatched on the mission last time is back!”
“What! They’re back? Quick, quick, quick—I want to see them!”
When the members of the Snow Leopard Squad returned, every single one of them was weak to the extreme, their bodies covered in injuries big and small. Fortunately, though, everyone was still alive, even if their breathing was faint.
“What on earth happened? What did you encounter? Did you find out what the contamination source is?”
The only one in the Snow Leopard Squad able to answer was one of the A-rank sequence users, whose sequence ability was healing.
“Reporting, Commander… It’s—it’s that chestnut tree in the C-Zone forest. It… it evolved. We failed to detect it and got trapped as soon as we entered its territory. Its… its attacks were far too ferocious, and we… we were no match for it… cough.”
A mouthful of fresh blood welled up and was spewed out, terrifying the people nearby. Yet even more terrifying were her words.
“Has it become an S-rank mutated plant? Then our safe zone… can it really not be saved?”
“No.” Wiping the fresh blood from the corner of her mouth, the Snow Leopard Squad member held on with her last breath to speak. “It spared us… It was more like… it was playing with us…”