The Gnarled Grove, a place with a strange atmosphere.
The ecological environment here was completely different from the outside world. Stepping into the Gnarled Grove would give people the illusion that they had accidentally fallen into a forest on another planet. There were no green plants in the Gnarled Grove. The leaves of all the flowers and trees glowed with a metallic luster of purplish red. At first glance, it looked glamorous, but after a while, it would give people a very strange feeling. Most of the plants in the Gnarled Grove were tall and twisted. There was a shrub as tall as a man that grew spirally like a flame. Under the shrubs and in the thick humus, there were strange fungi growing along the terrain. They looked a bit like a combination of mushrooms and moss. Large patches of purple fungi covered the surface of rocks and other plants, and on this layer of fungi grew abruptly like umbrellas. These fungi thrived in the dark corners and looked very colorful. But no one knew if this world also followed the rule of "the more beautiful the fungus, the more poisonous it is". The Gnarled Grove was covered with a thick layer of fallen leaves and other plant debris. All the plants were growing in the most natural way, showing a primitive style that was rarely disturbed.
Apart from the short and small plants that grew with the forest, there was only one type of tree in the Gnarled Grove: a tall, crooked broad-leaved tree with iron-grey bark and no branches on its lower half. The trunk grew in a slight spiral arc high into the sky, and then suddenly grew a large number of branches at a very high position. The crown of the tree was covered with purplish red oval leaves. This kind of broad-leaved tree could be found all over the forest, and its appearance was almost identical. Apart from the difference in size, the distortion of the trunk, the shape of the branches, and even the distribution of each branch were almost identical. Hao Ren immediately noticed the abnormality of these trees. He carefully observed the crown of two strange trees that were far away from each other, and finally confirmed that their branches were 100% identical.
Now, they were walking on the "official road" in the Gnarled Grove. This road was opened up by the church hundreds of years ago with a lot of manpower and resources. Many generations of people had spent their entire lives to maintain this narrow road in the forest. Now that hundreds of years had passed, the ferocious beasts in the Gnarled Grove had gradually gotten used to the existence of the road and actively stayed away from the outposts near the road. The road had become a part of the forest ecosystem and the forest gave way to the man-made road.
This provided the most basic security for travelers in the forest, as long as they did not stray too far from the boundary line marked by magic lights on both sides of the road.
"These trees don't have scientific names because they're just a part of the Gnarled Grove, just like the fur on a beast. However, the mercenaries and adventurers gave them the common name of 'Spiral Tree'. It's quite fitting, isn't it?" Becky noticed that Hao Ren's gaze was fixed on the strange trees, so she took the initiative to explain, "All the trees are one. They grow intertwined underground, and the part on the surface is only used to receive sunlight. A group of elven scholars studied the Gnarled Grove for a long time before confirming this fact. It is said that the Gnarled Grove was the back garden of the goddess before the end of the world. The elven mage-emperor, Lorrisa, stole the life force of the forest and used the roots of the Gnarled Grove to replicate the Tree of Life. But the Tree of Life had been burned into a large piece of charcoal in the flames of Armageddon. I don't know how similar they are. "
"Well, you've said before that the whole forest is a plant," Nangong Wuyue said, sniffling. The forest was full of water vapor, which made the siren feel a lot more comfortable. "But such a big forest... how big is its underground part?"
"I don't know. It is said that the roots of the Gnarled Grove extend westward to the center of the Beinz Blood Lake and eastward to the foot of Dragonspine Ridge. The whole land is supported by the roots of the Gnarled Grove. There is also a legend that more than a hundred years ago, a group of dwarven miners wanted to mine pyroxene in Dragonspine Ridge. They dug too deep into the mine and dug out a huge black root on the side of the Blood Lake. All the miners went crazy on the spot. Later, the church explained that the anger of the goddess during the end of the world was still under the forest, and it would take thousands of years for the roots of the forest to digest it completely. So, no one was allowed to dig mines west of the mountain. Even digging a well requires the church's approval. "
Hao Ren looked at the towering trees in amazement. It was hard to imagine what kind of huge life was hibernating under the land, and how it could form such a vast forest with just a few breathing tentacles. But he knew that Becky was right because the trees were strikingly similar in appearance. It was not a natural phenomenon. It could only be attributed to the fact that they were organs of the same organism.
"Wait a minute, I have to go." Hao Ren suddenly remembered something. He grabbed his daughter's pot and ran to the side. Becky shouted from behind, "Where are you going? It's dangerous out there! "
Hao Ren waved his hand and shouted, "I'll be back soon. I won't go too far!"
Becky looked a little worried. Lily saw that and helped Hao Ren explain, "Mr. Landlord must have gone to the toilet. His kidneys are not good..."
Vivian was shocked. "How do you know his kidneys are not good?"
"Didn't he have a pee collapse in the mountain village a few days ago?"
Everyone was speechless.
Apparently, the girl's brain circuit was still stuck at that time. She had not figured it out yet!
By then, Hao Ren had run out of the official road and found a place where Becky could not see him. But he did not dare to go too far. There were magic lamps made of divine crystals by the church on both sides of the official road. The area outside the range of the magic lamps was still a world of monsters. He hid behind a bush and opened his daughter's pot. Lil Pea immediately poked her head out and happily patted the water as she greeted Hao Ren.
Hao Ren poked the little one's head as a sign of affection and then called the MDT. "Come out and scan it. High power one."
"You finally have a working attitude." The MDT hummed as it floated out of the pot and rose into the air under Lil Pea's curious gaze. Then, blue light burst out from its body.
The high-intensity radar signal began to penetrate deep into the ground, analyzing the underground structure of the forest.
"Found an unprecedentedly large plant root system. The little girl was right, the forest is a whole." The MDT released a holographic projection and showed the situation under the Gnarled Grove in a three-dimensional image. Hao Ren saw that the underground of the forest was indeed shocking: there were intertwined giant plant roots everywhere, radiating from the forest for many kilometers. They intertwined and grew into a whole. The shape looked like a flattened ellipsoid with gullies, a bit like a crooked walnut.
It was disgusting to look at.
The MDT commented, "If these roots disappear, the underground of the Gnarled Grove and a large area around it will form a large hole with a diameter of hundreds of kilometers, enough to let everything fall into the deep underground. You can imagine the scale of this thing. Also, what the little girl said was not very accurate: the forest roots extend westward beyond the center of the Blood Lake. They have already crossed the Blood Lake and are growing to the crystal plain on the other side of the lake and under the mountains further west. However, there may be something wrong with the soil of the crystal plain. A large part of the roots that extended over the crystal plain has died. They should not continue to grow. "
"I didn't expect the underground to be so much wider than the surface." Hao Ren was amazed. He was not amazed by the ancient "miracle", but by the amazing craftsmanship of nature — just like Raven 12345.
"In addition to the underground roots, I found one more thing, which should be of more research value," the MDT suddenly said. "This forest... well, it should be the ecosystem of the entire Beinz Blood Lake area is actually incompatible with the outside world."
For a moment, Hao Ren did not understand. "Incompatible?"
"This is the terrain of this area." The MDT switched to a high-altitude holographic image. "You can see that the entire Beinz Blood Lake area is actually a closed environment. Dragonspine Ridge to the east, the sacred mountain of the mountain people to the west, a large rift valley to the north, and the ocean to the south. The rift valley and the ocean can more or less play a role in separating the ecological areas. Surrounded by this series of terrain, the Beinz area forms a closed ecological circle. The plants that grow here — the ones I detected — are not adapted to the outside environment. They use nutrients in a very strange way. Only the Beinz Blood Lake can provide this environment for them. "
"Completely unable to adapt to the outside environment? Can't survive at all? "
The MDT said decisively, "Can't survive at all."
Hao Ren became more and more curious about the Beinz Blood Lake.
It was maintaining the ecological environment of the ancient times. What was in the lake?
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