Chapter 621: You’re Hungry
Zhan Lian spun around and leapt onto one of the tentacles. The slick, red tendrils grew rapidly beneath his feet, coiling and stretching upward like living steel. In just a few seconds, he was several meters above the ground, running across them as they lifted him higher into the air.
He raised his hand and unfurled a large metal plate, angling it toward the sunlight. The sky was clear that day, the sun bright and sharp. The polished metal caught the light and sent it flashing directly at the bomber circling overhead.
The pilot squinted instinctively. For a brief instant, his view blurred white. Before he could regain sight of the ground, before he could even react—
A rocket streaked upward.
Blinded by the glare, the pilot didn’t see it coming. The missile struck the plane’s underbelly, igniting the munitions inside. The aircraft exploded midair in a deafening roar, scattering shards of metal across the icy sky.
The other bombers immediately broke formation, veering off to escape the blast radius. Alarms blared in their cockpits. One after another, they pulled up and away, suspending the lock-on bombardment.
Zhan Lian, standing on the writhing tentacles, watched the burning wreckage fall and exhaled sharply.
For now, the skies were his.
Underground, the flesh flower’s crystal core—once planted in a tall clay pot—had burst through its container. The pot shattered under its weight. Mud and vines spilled out, tentacles twisting and coiling beneath An Ran’s feet like living octopus arms.
An Ran crouched down. Her hand, pale against the dark red flesh, gently brushed one of the slick, pulsing stems. “Are you hungry?” she asked softly.
A low whistling sound rippled through the air, echoing faintly in response.
An Ran nodded. No one else could understand what the creature was saying, but she could. Its hunger was unmistakable—sharp, insistent, alive.
“Start with the snow wolves,” she said. “There are plenty of them down here.”
As soon as her words fell, one slippery tendril slithered off the balcony. People below screamed and scattered as the tendril snaked past them, gliding like a living serpent into one of the icy tunnels.
In the pulsing mass of roots, the faint green glow of the crystal core could still be seen at the center. But no one dared go near it now—the thing was crawling with moving rootlets.
Thick or thin, they spread in every direction. With each new meal, they multiplied faster—longer, denser, hungrier.
Something like fleshy leaves began to form—plump, raw, glistening red as fresh meat. They pulsed with An Ran’s rage, her grief, her fury. Within minutes, they had climbed past her head.
Gradually, a layer of skin-like flesh grew around the outer edge of the core, wrapping it up completely, transforming before everyone’s eyes.
From the blood-red main stems, new sprouts emerged—white and slick like strips of raw fat, writhing with power. Each tendril rooted itself into the frozen ground, burrowing deep into every tunnel, spreading in all directions, hunting the snow wolves to feed its growth.
It grew fast—faster than the thistle vine ever had. The flesh-flower was a superior mutant species; once fed, it expanded at a monstrous pace.
And it devoured just as fiercely.
In no time, every snow wolf in the tunnels was consumed—stripped clean to the bone.
Above, the bombers continued to circle, but the airspace had become chaos.
Below, the flesh flower pressed forward through the ice, its roots crawling northwest, seeking the lair of the mutant snow wolves—
—seeking more food.