Both of them started their journey in the wee hours of the morning and it was already dusk.
Mushi County was about 700 kilometers away from the reconstruction area. If Luo Yuan had been alone, he would have been able to make it back and forth within a day. However, he had brought Wang Shishi along, and his telekinesis could not last long, so his speed had been greatly reduced.
Fortunately, they were less than 100 kilometers away from Mushi County. They could reach their destination in less than an hour. However, Luo Yuan stopped when he saw how tired Wang Shishi was. He blamed himself for being too impatient. If the Wisdom Tree was really there, it would not have disappeared after a day. He said, "It's getting dark. Let's call it a day. You stay on guard while I look for a place to stay nearby."
They were in a mountainous area with undulating hills. Luo Yuan found a cave near the cliff. The cave was covered by dense vines. If Luo Yuan did not notice the traces of dead leaves nearby, he would not have noticed it at all.
He forcefully pulled the vines away and gently covered his nose. There was a strong stench coming from inside. He had only taken a few steps when a creature that looked like a giant bear rushed towards him. It came and went quickly. Luo Yuan punched it in the head, and the sound of bones breaking was heard. The giant bear was thrown a few meters away and fell to the ground.
In order to avoid unnecessary trouble with the smell of blood, Luo Yuan was much more civilized this time. He was not as bloody as before.
Now, he even had dinner for the night.
"Pfft!"
Suddenly, Luo Yuan frowned and stomped hard on the ground. A beetle that was trying to crawl under his feet was smashed into pieces. Looking at this cave where insects and mutated beasts coexisted in harmony, he suddenly released his aura, causing the air to tremble. Countless insects didn't even have the chance to escape before they all stiffened and died.
After a while, Wang Shishi also came in. She did not care about the dirty cave and sat on the rock. She looked tired and did not want to move.
"Do you regret coming out?" Luo Yuan laughed.
"I'm just not used to it yet. I'll get used to it after some rest." Wang Shishi pouted and said stubbornly.
Luo Yuan smiled and did not continue to provoke her. "Be careful. I'm going to look for something delicious."
"Come back soon!"
After Luo Yuan left, he covered the entrance of the cave with the vines again and began to search in the forest. For a jungle expert who had the Identification Technique, as long as he looked carefully, there would be food everywhere. Whether it was starchy tubers or succulent fungi, they could be found everywhere. When it came to the abundance of food, the Reconstruction Area was no match for it.
Luo Yuan sniffed the air and walked a few steps to confirm the location. He pushed away the dead leaves and soon found a pile of snow-white eggs. Each of them was the size of a goose egg and was round like a ball. There were hundreds of them piled up into a small hill.
It was obvious that this was definitely not a bird's egg, but an insect's egg. However, it was still edible, and it tasted softer and tastier than a bird's egg.
Luo Yuan picked five and left. As for the rest of the eggs, he broke them all. It was a habit that he had developed in the Reconstruction Area. As long as there was a mutated creature in sight, he would destroy it immediately to prevent it from becoming a threat.
Luo Yuan was lucky enough to find a wild fruit on his way back. It looked like a hawthorn, but it was a few hundred times bigger. Each of them was the size of a soccer ball. The outer shell was very hard and full of barbed thorns.
However, when the hard shell was broken, there was a fragrant pulp inside. Luo Yuan ate one. It did not have the characteristic sour taste of a hawthorn. Instead, it had a milky aroma with a hint of alcohol. It was soft and had a very unique flavor.
The tree was tens of meters tall, but there were only eight fruits on it. Luo Yuan picked all the fruits and wrapped them in a large leaf that was a few meters wide. Even if he could not finish them, he could bring them back for Huang Jiahui and Zhao Yali to try.
… …
The embers of the campfire gradually extinguished, leaving only a faint red light in the dark.
Luo Yuan and Wang Shishi slept in each other's arms, quietly listening to the cries of the mutated beasts outside. They were used to the peaceful life in the Reconstruction Area, so they could not adapt to being back in the wild. Any slight movement would wake them up.
"Sleep, I'm here!" Luo Yuan said.
Wang Shishi nodded obediently and felt relieved. The tiredness of the day had finally overcome the worries of the night. Her eyelids were getting heavier and she soon fell asleep. After some time, Luo Yuan gently pushed Wang Shishi away and looked at the time. It was already one o 'clock in the morning. Feeling the slight chill in the forest, he got up and prepared to light the campfire again.
Suddenly, a faint blue light swept past the entrance of the cave and disappeared in a blink of an eye. He walked out of the cave out of curiosity and found that the blue light came from three to four kilometers away. It was still shaking. Luo Yuan hesitated for a moment and decided to go and have a look out of curiosity. He looked around and found a pile of giant rocks.
Then, he pushed the giant rocks to block the entrance of the cave. Wang Shishi, who had been running around the whole day, was sleeping soundly. He did not wake her up at all.
… …..
In the middle of the night, the mountain forest was already covered in fog, as if countless evil spirits were clinging to the ground, baring their fangs and brandishing their claws, giving people a kind of gloomy and terrifying feeling. All kinds of animal cries rose and fell like steam whistles, making people feel as if they had arrived in the prehistoric times.
The next moment, a shadow quietly passed through the forest, and the fog was instantly torn apart by him.
Not long after, Luo Yuan began to slow down. His footsteps became light and silent. He arched his body and completely submerged his body in the mist. Then, he stopped and quietly lay on a hillside. He was motionless and his face was solemn.
He found that the thing that was glowing was not a mutated beast, but a recognizable technological item.
It was a round ball with a diameter of about half a meter. It was milky white, and its surface looked very smooth. There was a small concave arc at the head, and a crystal the size of a fist was floating above the concave arc without any support. The blue light was coming from the crystal.
There seemed to be words and icons on its smooth surface, but other than the geometric icons, Luo Yuan could not recognize any words. It was more like some kind of twisted wave than words.
The orb floated in the middle of the forest. The blue light was constantly scanning its surroundings. Plants, animals, even small insects were not spared. This blue light was obviously not lethal. As the blue light swept across, these mutant creatures continued to do what they were supposed to do.
The round ball was moving erratically, and its speed was very fast. When it turned, it was like moving clouds and flowing water. It flew up and down from time to time, and it was obvious that it was very busy. However, even the dense branches in the forest were like a fish swimming in water, and there was no obstacle at all.
Luo Yuan looked serious. After the apocalypse, under the pressure of life and death, human technology had advanced by leaps and bounds. In just a short span of two to three years, technology had advanced by leaps and bounds. Although there was no improvement in the civilian field, there was a huge change in the military field.
The new high explosives, the upcoming application of exoskeleton armor, the nuclear electromagnetic gun, and even the recent breakthrough in nuclear fusion power generation. Of course, Luo Yuan did not know that he had contributed to all of this. The appearance of superconducting materials at room temperature had led to many key breakthroughs in many fields.
However, no matter how many breakthroughs there were in technology, there were always traces to follow, and it could not be achieved overnight.
The technological content of this small round ball, even when it was flying, was already shocking to Luo Yuan.
Anti-gravity, advanced intelligence, and all these were just what he could see. As for the blue light, he had no idea what it was used for. The smooth and sci-fi appearance was obviously not the rough style of the apocalypse that pursued maximum production.
His heart sank. Nowadays, humans did not have the leisure and interest to craft things. Even if they could make such an item, in order to reduce the process and increase the efficiency, the surface would definitely be mottled, with the edge of a machine, and even some metal burrs. It would be like a defective product, and there would never be such an exquisite piece of art.
...
At this moment, the round ball seemed to have discovered something. Suddenly, it flashed and turned into a shadow, disappearing in front of him.
Luo Yuan's heart skipped a beat, and he quickly got up to catch up. After running for about 10 minutes, Luo Yuan hid again.
In the distance, there was a behemoth that was four or five stories tall. At this moment, it lowered its head and let out a muffled warning sound. Obviously, it was quite irritable. Any mutated beast would be infuriated if a strange ball of unknown origin boldly moved up and down beside it while emitting blue light on its body when it was eating. Moreover, it was the top predator in this area, and its temper was as explosive as fire.
Finally, the giant beast's intense anger turned into reality. It stopped eating, and its whole body was burning. A layer of light blue flame, like a glamorous light, danced violently on its body.
Luo Yuan noticed that the terrifying temperature had caused the air nearby to distort violently, and his vision was blurred. The trees not far away could not withstand the high temperature, and in the blink of an eye, they turned yellow and started to burn.
In the blink of an eye, the dark night sky was lit up with a red light. In the midst of the flame, the round ball did not seem to be affected at all. It was still faithfully carrying out its inexplicable mission. Occasionally, it even flew close to the blue flame on the giant beast's body. The terrifying temperature did not seem to exist in front of the round ball, and its surface color did not even change a bit.
After a few seconds, the round ball finished scanning and began to fly away. The crystal in its head was still scanning its surroundings, completely ignoring the giant beast's anger.
The round ball had only flown a few meters away when the beast suddenly moved. It did not even need to move its huge body to cover such a short distance. It opened its mouth and swallowed the round ball. The whole process took less than 0.01 seconds, and even Luo Yuan could barely see it clearly.
Luo Yuan looked serious, still lying on the ground, not moving an inch. He was looking forward to it, as he did not believe that such a sci-fi object would be destroyed so easily.
Perhaps this level seven giant beast could bite it into pieces with its terrifying bite force. However, this ignorant mutated beast thought that it was a living thing, and thought that it could digest it with its gastric juices. This was undoubtedly a fantasy.
Luo Yuan did not have to wait for long. It was only a second.
A white beam of light instantly broke through the beast's thick armor. Soon, more and more beams of light appeared. One of the beams of light hit a nearby mountain rock. Without a sound, the mountain rock turned into magma and flowed down. Vaguely, Luo Yuan could feel a stronger force erupting from it.
Luo Yuan's expression changed, and he quickly retreated. After a few meters, he heard a loud bang, and a wave of heat rolled over, causing Luo Yuan's hair to flutter. Luo Yuan looked up and was shocked to find that the powerful mutated beast had been torn into pieces. It looked extremely miserable, and even its bright red flesh had become charred black. It could not have been more dead.
Among the green smoke, a round ball slowly floated up. The transparent crystal on its head was still faintly emitting a red light.
It circled around on the spot before flying off in another direction.
He was 100% sure that it was definitely a product of extraterrestrial civilization. If humans had such technology, they would not have been forced to such a state.
Based on the battle between the round ball and the mutated beast, and the fact that the round ball was only defending itself, Luo Yuan was confident that he could cut it into half before it attacked. However, he did not have any intention to attack.
He couldn't guarantee that there was only one such AI robot, and he couldn't guarantee the terrible consequences of killing this AI robot. After all, even Earth's technology could reach the stage of real-time recording. Perhaps the moment he killed it, the next moment, an attack from space would come, or it would self-destruct.
Whether the alien was trying to hide itself or just retaliating, he could not afford to take the risk. He knew nothing about extraterrestrial civilization, but thinking about how earth could destroy an area with a radius of more than 10 kilometers, let alone an extraterrestrial civilization that came from thousands of miles away.
His own strength seemed so insignificant in the face of such a destructive attack.
Luo Yuan continued to follow it from afar, carefully. Fortunately, the round ball's activity area was not big, and it was basically circling around. When it was almost four in the morning, it suddenly stopped its mission. As the concave arc cracked like a chrysanthemum pattern, the floating crystal quickly shrunk back into the ball and closed up.
An invisible force was emitted, and the surrounding bushes suddenly bent down. The next moment, it flew up like a shadow, and instantly broke through the dense forest, crushing the surrounding branches, forming a hole with a radius of three to four meters, and disappeared. Luo Yuan quickly flew out of the forest, and looked up at the sky. The round ball had become so small that it could not be seen, and soon, it completely disappeared.
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