Chapter 387: The Underground World
Chapter 387: The Underground World
An Ran turns around and looks at Zhao Ru again.
Zhao Ru lies on the bed, alone. Her brows are tightly furrowed, teeth clenched, forehead drenched in sweat, and her face extremely pale. She seems deeply uncomfortable, suffering from the limits of her overdrafted supernatural power.
An Ran enters the room, places Doll on the sofa, surrounds him with cushions, and sits beside Zhao Ru. Seeing her discomfort, An Ran places a few crystal cores into Zhao Ru’s hand.
As soon as the crystal cores touch Zhao Ru’s palm, they’re like drops of water soaking into dry earth—instantly absorbed into a pile of white powder.
An Ran places another handful into Zhao Ru’s palm.
Gradually, Zhao Ru’s brows relax, and her eyes open.
She sees An Ran sitting before her and suddenly sits up, gripping An Ran’s shoulders with both hands. “An Ran, where is my aunt? How is she?”
“She’s next door,” An Ran replies.
Before An Ran finishes, Zhao Ru jumps out of bed and runs barefoot to the next room.
An Ran doesn’t follow but sits on the bed’s edge, listening to the noises from next door. After a while, Zhao Ru’s piercing cry echoes through the room.
“Alas.” An Ran sighs deeply, lowering her head and resting her elbows on her knees. In a world like this, the death of the only family member is indeed a cruel blow.
Zhao Ru’s sobbing continues. Liang Ziyu tries to soothe her, but soon the sound of a heavy door slamming comes from outside.
Zhan Lian, Luo Feifan, and Zhang Boxun return after finishing their task. Of course, Luo Feifan has Tang Siluo with him.
Though there are few pursuers, if left unchecked, they’ll likely summon hordes of zombies again—and possibly evolve into even more terrifying monsters right there.
An Ran can’t handle these awakened copper-skinned sensory zombies, but she can still help block the rats underground.
So An Ran moves Doll onto the bed, lines the area with cushions, and lets Doll play alone. She goes out, plants the cactus that Yun Tao placed on the windowsill into the soil, and begins to emit her abilities, radiating into the nearby underground plant root system.
If it weren’t for this radiation, An Ran would be shocked at how rich the underground world is.
Though the surface appears calm, beneath the ground, creatures fight in endless cycles. Rats eat ants, ants devour tree roots—and even rat cubs. Besides rats and ants, there are snakes and various insects, all preying on each other.
They share one key trait: rapid reproduction. When any species grows too numerous, they emerge from the ground, searching for food—humans, zombies.
The reason An Ran and the others are still safe is that no underground creature holds a clear advantage. They’re like rival princes battling for control, constantly consuming each other.
An Ran closes her eyes, sensing the information fed to her through the plant roots. In her mind, she paints a grand scene of these “princes” fighting for hegemony underground.
In the vegetable garden outside the gate, there’s an ant nest with a large batch of newly hatched eggs.
An Ran directs the nearby plant roots to silently crawl over and “consume” the entire clutch of eggs.
The remaining ants have grown quite large, with tough black shells that the plant roots find hard to eat. So An Ran assigns the nearby snake group to fight those ants, simply watching from the sidelines like a spectator.