After Yu Yicheng advanced to level five in the healing class, he eagerly rushed over to heal Qi Jin and Ning Wanli. The two recovered their strength, weighed the heavy crystal cores in their pockets, and felt their motivation to fight the aberrants surge dramatically.
Just as they were gearing up for a big battle, a strange roar that shook the heavens suddenly echoed from the distance, startling countless birds into flight from the forest. The aberrants surrounding them scattered in an instant, turning and racing toward the source of the roar.
In the blink of an eye, all that remained before them was an empty stretch of ground, leaving everyone present dumbfounded.
“Why are they all leaving? Don’t go!” Yu Yicheng stepped forward, trying to call the departing aberrants back, but he didn’t dare step outside the protective barrier, so he could only shout anxiously on the spot.
He had just reached level five and was eager to show off his abilities, if the aberrants all left, how was he supposed to demonstrate anything?
Cheng Yuchuan was also puzzled, but soon he began to sense something wrong. The ground rumbled and trembled as if they were standing in the middle of an aberrant tide, yet within visible range, no aberrant tide was approaching.
With such a massive commotion, this had to be an unprecedented, colossal aberrant tide. And being this close to the Aberrant Sanctum, there was only one possibility for something capable of summoning so many aberrants to move at once.
The Aberrant King was coming!
“Stop shouting! Get in the car now, there’s a powerful presence heading our way. Get in and go this instant!”
Hearing this, everyone scrambled into the RV. Cheng Yuchuan didn’t dare waste a single moment, speeding away from the Aberrant King’s territory.
It wasn’t until the RV ran out of fuel and was forced to stop that they finally caught their breath, surrounded by desolate silence with not a single aberrant in sight.
As luck would have it, there was an abandoned tunnel not far ahead. Seeing that the sun was about to set in the evening, and not wanting to risk traveling at night when aberrants were most active, the five unanimously decided to stop, hide, and rest rather than continue on.
Cheng Yuchuan filled the RV with fuel, patched up the rear that had been blasted with several large holes by the aberrants, and when he came back out, steaming hot dishes were already neatly laid out on the table.
“Come eat!” Lu Xihe called out to him from where he sat on a tree branch holding his meal, patting the spot beside him when he saw Cheng Yuchuan look over.
Cheng Yuchuan picked up his portion of food and headed toward Lu Xihe. He’d been on high alert for aberrant ambushes the whole way here, and with the late autumn chill, everyone was bundled up. Lu Xihe had also put on a hat, so he hadn’t noticed at first, but now that he was closer, he saw that Lu Xihe’s neck was reddened in patches.
“Did you get sunburned again?” Cheng Yuchuan frowned.
“Really? The sun these days… it’s probably from the wind when I was on the second floor watching the aberrants. Autumn up north is way colder than where we’re from, the wind howls.” Lu Xihe touched his neck, sounding uncertain.
“I’ll go get Yicheng.” With that, Cheng Yuchuan turned to leave.
“What do you need me for?” Yu Yicheng popped his head out from behind.
He’d just been over there getting force-fed a mouthful of couple’s dog food by Qi Jin and Ning Wanli, each taking turns feeding the other. Sour-faced, he’d picked up his bowl and headed toward Lu Xihe, but hadn’t taken more than a few steps when he heard Cheng Yuchuan calling for him.
“His neck looks sunburned again.” Cheng Yuchuan pointed at Lu Xihe’s neck.
“Let me take a look.” Yu Yicheng handed his meal to Cheng Yuchuan to hold, propped himself up on the tree branch, and sat down with a thump, leaning over to examine Lu Xihe’s neck.
{Sigh…}
The moment Yu Yicheng sat down, Lu Xihe heard a sigh, close but not too close, as if someone were speaking right by his ear. Yet Yu Yicheng’s mouth clearly hadn’t moved.
“Who sighed?” Lu Xihe asked, puzzled.
“I didn’t sigh.” Yu Yicheng denied it, and Cheng Yuchuan below also shook his head.
“Then I must have misheard. Go on.” Lu Xihe rubbed his ear, chalking it up to a mistake.
But the next second, he heard another sigh, this time very clearly, coming from right beside him.
{Sigh…}
“Who’s there?” Lu Xihe’s spine snapped straight, and he whipped his head around warily. “Someone really spoke, I heard it.”
Seeing that his expression didn’t seem feigned, Cheng Yuchuan tensed up as well, scanning their surroundings on high alert. But there was no one in sight, not even a shadow of an aberrant.
“What’s wrong with you?” Yu Yicheng looked at him with concern, his face full of confusion. “There’s no sound.”
“I really heard it, two sighs, very clear.” Lu Xihe’s pupils suddenly dilated, and he spoke with a serious, furrowed brow.
Yu Yicheng stared at him blankly, not knowing what to say. It was just the few of them here, who else could there be?
Seeing that neither Yu Yicheng nor Cheng Yuchuan had heard anything, Lu Xihe began to doubt himself again. Maybe he was hallucinating from lack of rest?
{Stop looking. I’m not human. Sigh… even if I tell you, you can’t hear me. My branches are about to be broken by you two sitting on me. I mean, really, one of you sitting is bad enough, but then another one comes along? Are you trying to take my old life?}
The voice sounded again, this time not an ambiguous sigh, but a clear, coherent string of words. What was even more horrifying was that from this speech, Lu Xihe realized the speaker was the very tree he was sitting on.
Startled, Lu Xihe lost his balance, his feet kicking up as he toppled straight backward.
Yu Yicheng sat close beside him, and when Lu Xihe fell, the sudden shift threw him off balance too, sending him tumbling off the tree right after Lu Xihe.
Seeing this, Cheng Yuchuan hurried forward to catch them. Lu Xihe landed steadily in his arms, while the vine that reached out to Yu Yicheng also caught him successfully, though Yu Yicheng didn’t land directly on the woven vine net, as a layer of soft beast fur was padded beneath him.
The false alarm helped calm Lu Xihe’s nerves somewhat. After all, he was someone who had seen the world. Now that he’d figured out where the voice was coming from, and with Cheng Yuchuan guarding him nearby, Lu Xihe felt a bit bolder.
He reached out and poked the tree trunk, asking cautiously, “Was it you who was talking just now?”
“You…” Yu Yicheng was baffled by his bizarre move of talking to a tree and was about to ask what he was doing when Cheng Yuchuan silenced him with a gesture.
{Who else would it be? What, you humans get to talk but we trees don’t? Wait, no, are you talking to me?!}
{No, no, no, wait… you can hear me?!}
The unfamiliar voice suddenly shouted with intense excitement, its volume so loud that Lu Xihe had to raise his hands and cover his ears tightly.
“Stop shouting, I can hear you.” Also, how could a tree yell that loudly? His eardrums were about to burst.
{Oh my god! oh my god! oh my god, a human’s become a spirit, a human’s become a spirit oh my god, it’s scaring the tree to death, go away go away, I can’t move so you need to stay far away from me ahhh the tree is so scared ahhhhh!!!}
The white elm tree screamed and trembled, its yellowish-brown leaves rustling down to cover the ground. Its already bare branches now had only a few leaves left.
Lu Xihe’s ears ached from its high-pitched shrieking, so he quickly told Cheng Yuchuan to carry him farther away. Only after retreating more than ten meters did his ears feel better.
{Why isn’t the other one leaving? You rude humans, go away, hurry up and go, go, go, go, go, go, go…}
Yu Yicheng couldn’t hear the white elm tree at all. When Cheng Yuchuan carried Lu Xihe away, he had no idea what was going on and naturally stayed where he was. The white elm tree then started chanting ‘go, go, go’ nonstop until Lu Xihe called Yu Yicheng over to stand more than ten meters away, and only then did it quiet down.
“You can hear it talking?” Cheng Yuchuan asked.
“Seems like it.” Lu Xihe still hadn’t figured out what was happening, and the white elm tree had been wailing for ages without directly answering his question. “Put me down first.”
The moment Lu Xihe’s feet touched the ground, more youthful voices rose up from beneath his feet.
{Ouch, ouch! you stepped on me.}
Startled by the sound, Lu Xihe quickly stepped back, only to have a different voice immediately shout ‘stepped on me, stepped on me.’ The ground was covered in grass, and no matter where he stood, voices cried out. Lu Xihe had nowhere to put his feet. After pacing around for a while, he gave up and climbed back onto Cheng Yuchuan.
He naively thought that as long as he didn’t touch them, he wouldn’t hear them, and that would be the end of it. But unexpectedly, a deeper, more muffled voice sounded from beneath Cheng Yuchuan’s feet.
{What’s all the shouting about? Now look, here I am, one blade of grass bearing the weight of two people.} The grass crushed under Cheng Yuchuan’s foot grumbled indignantly.
“…” Lu Xihe was at a loss.
{They were both standing on you together anyway, so why let one go and come step on me?} The first grass that had shouted ‘stepped on me’ protested, and the other blades Lu Xihe had stepped on chimed in agreement.
A dozen blades of grass bickered endlessly. Lu Xihe’s ears, which had just barely recovered from the white elm tree’s shrieking, were now overwhelmed by their back-and-forth squabbling.
Just as he was about to say something to mediate, another blade of grass near the RV spoke up: {It’s only two people, if they step, they step. I don’t see what there is to fight about. Being crushed under that car feels like death. If I could be stepped on by a human instead, I’d be thrilled.}
At those words, a bunch more grass voiced their agreement, all implying that the grass Lu Xihe had stepped on was being overly dramatic.
In no time, all the surrounding plants were cursing each other out, the chaotic racket even surpassing a market-on-market day, every word drilling straight into Lu Xihe’s ears.
The noise was about to make his head explode. He shouted ‘quiet’ several times, but no blade of grass paid him any mind, so he could only cover his ears in agony and try to block it out.
“Suppress the energy in your body, stop using that ability.” Cheng Yuchuan quickly reminded him.
Lu Xihe forced himself to push down that strange energy despite the discomfort, but somehow he triggered another one. The deafening noise vanished in an instant, yet the scene before him changed completely.
The familiar mountains and village, it was unmistakably Anshan Village before the bizarre apocalypse.
“I… where am I?” Lu Xihe picked himself up from the ground and looked around. Everyone was gone. It was as if he had been teleported back to Anshan Village before the apocalypse.
“Cheng Yuchuan?” Lu Xihe called out tentatively. No one answered, though the distant mountains echoed his voice back.
“Another ability?” Lu Xihe looked at his own hands in confusion. There was no one around to give him answers, so he could only explore on his own, calming his mind to carefully sense the flow of the different energies within his body.
There was indeed a relatively unfamiliar foreign energy at work. Previously, he couldn’t distinguish the differences between energies, but now as he carefully experienced and compared them point by point, he realized that every strand of energy had subtle variations.
The most obvious were the natural-type abilities. Fire-type carried an extra burning sensation compared to the others, while wind-type had an added coolness.
By the same logic, the ability currently in effect gave him a strange sense of confinement and limitation.
Although the Anshan Village before him, along with the surrounding mountains, spanned nearly a million square meters as far as the eye could see, Lu Xihe subconsciously knew with absolute clarity that he could only move within the village, reaching the foot of the mountain was his absolute limit.
And that was exactly the case. Lu Xihe walked straight through the village to the very edge at the mountain’s base. Clearly, there was a path ahead, yet an invisible barrier blocked his way.
The entire Anshan Village seemed to be covered by a transparent glass shell, and only the area within that shell was where he could move.
Lu Xihe returned to his own home, the furnishings were just as they’d always been. He went next door to Cheng Yuchuan’s house, and everything was identical to his memories. But when he visited homes he’d never been to before, the interiors became a complete void.
It was as if he had stepped into his own dream, only places he had seen could be recreated one-to-one, while those he hadn’t were blank.
Why did this situation feel oddly familiar? He’d never seen it, never heard of it, yet it struck a strange chord.
Suddenly, some distant memories surfaced from the jumble of his thoughts, and Lu Xihe slapped his forehead:
“Could this be the spatial ability that every protagonist in novels is bound to have?!”