Faint golden electric arcs shot out of Meng Chao's fingertips.
A few harvesting blades danced around the electric cables and scraped off some samples of the mulch.
He placed the samples of the mulch, the faint green liquid he extracted from the deformed monsters, and the strange green lichen under a crystal microscope to study them.
Just as he expected, he discovered something that was between animal cells, plant cells, and fungal cells. It was incredibly active.
Meng Chao had Long Feijun and the others come over to observe it.
Then, he fell into deep thought.
"I have a thought, or rather, a question."
Once everyone saw it, Meng Chao said, "Have you ever thought about how monsters came to be? What I'm saying is that monsters like the Seven-star Wolf Spider, which can fuse the characteristics of arthropods and mammals together, or the griffin, which can fuse a liger-type monster and a falcon-type monster together, definitely didn't evolve naturally. There has to be … a modifier, right?"
Long Feijun and the exploration team members looked at each other and nodded at the same time. "That's right."
"And this sort of modification that fuses the most brutal characteristics of various animals together in an attempt to create the strongest carbon-based biological weapon has a high failure rate, because most of the organs and motor functions of animals are not compatible with each other. If they're the slightest bit careless, they'll end up like this small saber-toothed tiger with wings on its ribs. The different organs will conflict with each other, and forget about fighting, even survival will become incredibly difficult," Meng Chao continued.
"So, the modifier has to carry out a lot of experiments and fuse the organs of countless monsters together. No, we can't talk about fusing them yet. We should say that they're 'stitching' them together and filter out the ones with higher fighting strength and a longer lifespan. They'll then get rid of the failed products that are mixed together.
"This process is similar to how we humans optimize and filter out the seeds in our gene farms. Once we filter out the seeds, we'll naturally get the crops we need the most.
"Hidden Fog is the monster civilization's gene farm. No, more accurately speaking, it's a lab.
"The monster civilization's mastermind sutures a large number of deformed and ugly monsters in the depths of Hidden Fog. Then, it releases them and observes their characteristics, fighting strength, and survival time to analyze whether there's a possibility of further modification.
"If their fighting strength and survival time are relatively good, they can modify them further or replicate them in large batches to turn them into the monster horde we see."
The group thought about it based on Meng Chao's train of thought, and all of them looked enlightened.
"How do you explain the incredibly active cells hidden in the moss, lichens, and deformed monsters?" Long Feijun asked.
"I think this is some kind of … 'biological glue'."
"Monsters are made by stitching together the organs, characteristics, and traits of different animals and plants. It will definitely lead to great rejection. Two or even three sets of completely different organs can't coexist. At that time, we have to use biological glue to glue them together.
"A monster that was forcefully pieced together with organs can't live for more than five hours.
"After being bonded with 'biological glue,' it might be able to survive for three to five days or even longer.
"We originally thought that monsters were products of natural evolution and overestimated their lifespan. Three to five days is naturally not enough.
"But if some of the monsters are artificially created and their goal is to attack Dragon City, as long as they can survive for three to five days, it'll be enough."
Long Feijun nodded repeatedly. He thought about it and asked, "Then, why didn't we find this mysterious biological glue in the monsters Dragon City captured in the past?"
"There are two possibilities."
Meng Chao extended two fingers. "Either the monsters are mass-produced products that have been successfully experimented on, and their organs are already perfectly compatible with each other, so there's no need for us to use biological glue to glue them together.
"Or, the strange cells have already fused with the monsters through an even more mature and secretive method, and with our current biochemical technology, we can't detect them.
"Wait, if that's the case …"
Meng Chao suddenly stopped talking.
He stared at the green lichens in the distance, which were so thick that they did not seem real, and started thinking about it again.
Suddenly, he threw the small Saber-toothed Tiger with wings at the lichens.
The monster carcass was cut into pieces and covered in blood. When it landed on the green lichens, it instantly stirred up a green wave.
Countless lichens seemed to have been stimulated. Fine green threads shot out from the depths of the fungal carpet and wrapped around the monster carcass.
In the beginning, the monster carcass was like a small hill that rose high into the air.
Very soon, it lowered and shrank amidst a series of 'slurp, slurp, slurp' sounds.
Around a minute later, the lichens returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.
Only one corpse was missing.
Meng Chao gestured at Long Feijun to have the explorers burn the lichen.
Two members of the exploration team stepped forward again and raised their flamethrowers.
The lichen turned to ash, revealing the fine bones underneath.
This winged saber-toothed tiger was only the size of a lynx.
But with a pair of wide wings, no matter how one looked at it, it was at least a few hundred kilograms.
However, it was completely devoured by the lichen within a minute.
Even his bones had countless needle-like holes, as if he had been soaked in extremely corrosive acid for a long time.
From the looks of it, if they had waited any longer to burn the lichens, this saber-toothed tiger would not even be left with its bones.
Not far away from the Saber-toothed Tiger's carcass, they found traces of even more monster carcasses.
Since the lichens had devoured them for too long, the monster carcasses only had bits and pieces of bone left.
But there were quite a lot of them. Based on Meng Chao's identification, there were dozens of different monsters with the sturdiest claws, teeth, and horns.
"Now it makes sense. Since the Hidden Fog Desolate Domain is a natural, large laboratory, why haven't we seen many corpses of test subjects and failures here?"
Meng Chao said. "The strange cells in the green lichens aren't just amazing biological glue. The lichens themselves are natural scavengers. They can eat the losers of the experimentals who fought to the death and break down their carcasses into the most basic raw materials and energy. Perhaps they can use some unimaginable method to send them back to the monster civilization's ultimate nest so that the mastermind can modify them again.
"Now, there's only one problem left.
"The green lichens must have sniffed the blood on the monster carcasses, which is why they became much more active and devoured it.
"Will human blood cause them to react so strongly?"
As Meng Chao spoke, he spun the harvesting blade and cut a small wound on his fingertip. Then, he placed it on another lichen not far away.
A drop of blood seeped out of the wound. Before it fell on the ground, the lichen under his fingertip reacted.
A few of the lichens hissed and extended green threads to greedily demand his blood.
Meng Chao dripped his blood on the lichens.
It was like a drop of ice water falling into a pot of boiling oil. Piercing sizzling sounds rose up.
He squeezed another drop of blood to the edge of the lichens. It was about thirty centimeters away from the lichens on the charred ground.
Two lichens sniffed the scent of blood and squirmed over with all their might.
But one of the lichens that was further away only squirmed five centimeters before it shrank back.
The remaining lichens successfully licked the blood. As wisps of red spread through the green, they became even more dazzling and intense.
Meng Chao tossed another drop of blood one meter away.
This time, none of the lichens moved.
"They can't sense flesh and blood one meter away?" Long Feijun asked.
"No, it's just not worth it," Meng Chao said.
"If you activate your super vision, you'll notice that when I tossed my blood one meter away, a few green threads extended out of a few lichens, and they trembled a few times in the direction of the North Korean blood.
"They should have sensed it, but the energy needed to make the entire settlement squirm is not something that a drop of blood can make up for. That's why they can't be bothered to move.
"If it wasn't a drop of blood but a human covered in wounds and bleeding profusely, I believe that they would definitely do everything in their power to sweep over."
His words caused goosebumps to rise on everyone's skin.
"Looks like the most terrifying thing in Hidden Fog Desolate Region isn't the monsters but the strange lichens," Long Feijun mumbled.
Meng Chao agreed with his judgment.
For the time being, they named the dangerous lichens as the green tide.
After repeated tests, they discovered that the green tide had great mobility and regeneration. It could invade the bodies of animals and plants, devour their flesh and blood, seize their nutrients, and proliferate endlessly. It could even cover the entire forest.
The good news was that the spirit energy of superhumans could suppress the green tide.
Besides, they were afraid of fire, so flamethrowers and napalm bombs could temporarily get rid of them.
If they used heavy napalm bombs filled with fire-type crystals and fired by railway guns, they might even be able to completely get rid of them.
Of course, it would be best if there was no one standing beside them when they were "completely killed".
Otherwise, it would literally be "mutual destruction".
Aside from that, there was even more good news.
Once they finished inspecting the components of the portal, the technicians managed to piece together all the components needed for a portal.
Next, they just needed to spend some time assembling it.
And once the spirit energy tsunami stirred up by the carpet bombing calmed down, the communicators contacted the other nine exploration teams and the rear, and they connected the tactical data link.
Aside from Kun Peng, which was attacked by the UHV transmission tower and had to call for long-distance fire support, the other nine exploration teams managed to enter the forest safely.
Before the spirit energy magnetic field interference became stronger again, they successfully shared each other's locations and the newest topographical map. Their exploration rate of Hidden Fog Desolate Region increased to more than 60%.
"Since we're all here, we'll split up into ten groups and head to the pit according to our original plan!"
The strange green tide made Long Feijun's skin crawl.
In case anything unexpected happened, he made a prompt decision.
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