Chapter 201 Twisted Woodland

Twisted Woodland, a place with a strange atmosphere.

There is an ecological environment that is completely different from the outside world. Stepping into it will even give people the illusion of accidentally falling into an alien forest. There are no green leafy plants in the forest, and the leaves of all flowers, plants, and trees are glowing with a purple-red color with a slight metallic luster. It looks charming at first, but after a long time, it will make people feel extremely strange. Most of the forest plants grow tall and twisted, and there is a bush as tall as a person that even grows like a spiral of flames. Under shrubs and in places with thick humus soil, you can see strange fungi growing along the terrain. They look a bit like a combination of mushrooms and moss: large lavender fungi cover the surface of rocks or other plants, and An umbrella-like structure suddenly grew on this layer of fungi. These fungi grow vigorously in dark corners with bright shapes, but I don’t know if this world also follows the rule of “the more beautiful the fungi are, the more toxic they are.” The forest floor is covered with thick leaves and other plant debris everywhere. All plants grow freely according to the most natural laws, showing a primitive style that is rarely disturbed by people.

In addition to the short plants associated with the forest, there is only one kind of tree in the entire twisted woodland: a tall and twisted broad-leaved tree with iron-gray bark, no branches in the lower part, and a trunk along a It grows into the sky in a slight spiral arc, and then suddenly and explosively grows large branches at a very high position. The crown of the tree is covered with purple-red oval broad leaves. This kind of broad-leaved tree is found throughout the forest, and its appearance is almost the same. Apart from the size difference, they are almost copied and pasted in terms of the distortion of the trunk, the shape of the branches, and even the distribution of each branch. Hao Ren immediately discovered Noting the anomalies in these trees, he carefully observed the crowns of two strange trees far apart, and finally confirmed that their branches were 100% identical.

Now a group of people are walking on the "official road" in the twisted forest. This road was opened up by the church hundreds of years ago with a lot of manpower and material resources. Many generations have sacrificed to maintain this not very wide forest road. A lifetime of energy. Now hundreds of years have passed, and the ferocious monsters in the Twisted Woodland have gradually become accustomed to the existence of this road, and actively stay away from the outposts near the road: this road has become part of the woodland ecosystem, and the forest has given way to the man-made road. .

This allows travelers traveling through the woodland to have a basic level of safety, as long as they don't stray too far from the boundaries drawn with magic lights on both sides of the road.

"These trees have no scientific name because they are just a part of the huge creature called 'Twisted Woodland', just like the hair on a beast, but mercenaries and adventurers gave them a common name of 'spiral trees', which is quite vivid," Betsy noticed that Hao Ren's eyes were always on those strange trees, and took the initiative to introduce them, "All trees are one. They grow together in an intertwined way underground, and the surface part is only used to receive sunlight. Back then, there was a group of elf scholars. It took a long time of investigation in the Twisted Wood to determine this fact. It is said that the Twisted Wood was the goddess's back garden before the world was destroyed, and the elven magic emperor Lorissa stole the life factor of this woodland and used it to use the Twisted Wood. The roots of the tree have copied the Tree of Life. However, the Tree of Life has been burned into a large piece of charcoal in the flames of destruction, and I don’t know how similar they can be.”

"Well, you said before that this entire forest is just one plant," Nangong Wuyue said with a sniffle. The woodland was filled with water vapor, which made the siren girl feel a lot more comfortable. "But such a large forest …How big does it have to be underground?”

"I don't know. It is said that the roots of the Twisted Woodland spread westward to the center of Beinz Blood Lake and east to the foot of the Dragon's Back Mountains. This entire land is supported by the roots of the Twisted Woodland. Also Legend has it that more than a hundred years ago, a group of dwarf miners wanted to mine the pyroxene in the Dragon's Back Mountains. They dug the mine tunnel too deep, and as a result, they dug out a huge black root in the mine tunnel on the side facing the Blood Lake. All the miners went half crazy on the spot - later the church explained that the anger of the goddess when she destroyed the world was still stored under this forest, and it would take thousands of years to be digested by the roots of the forest, so it banned anyone from mining west of the mountains. If there is a hole, even building a well requires church approval.”

Hao Ren looked at the towering trees around him in amazement. From the appearance alone, it was hard for him to imagine what kind of huge life form was dormant under this land, and it only had some tentacles for breathing coming out of its body. Such a vast forest was formed, but he knew that Betsy was right, because the striking similarity in appearance of those trees was difficult to explain in other ways. This was not a naturally occurring phenomenon and could only be attributed to them. They are organs of the same organism.

"Wait a minute, I'll leave first." Hao Ren suddenly remembered something and ran to the side with his daughter's pot in hand. Betsy shouted from behind: "Where are you going?! It's dangerous outside!"

Hao Ren waved his hands and shouted: "Go and come back, you won't go too far!"

Betsy looked a little worried. Seeing this, Lily helped Hao Ren explain: "The landlord must have gone to the toilet. His kidneys are not good..."

Vivian was shocked: "How do you know his kidney is not good?!"

"Didn't you have diarrhea in the mountain village a few days ago?"

Everyone: "..."

I'm sorry this girl's thinking circuit has always stayed at that time and hasn't turned around yet!

However, Hao Ren said that at this time, Hao Ren had already run outside the official road and found a place where Betsy could not see him. However, he did not dare to run too far. On both sides of the official road, there were magic lamps made by the church using magical crystals. These magic lamps radiated radiation. The place outside the range is still dominated by monsters. He opened the girl's pot behind a bush, and Doudou immediately poked her head out of it and happily splashed the water to greet Hao Ren.

Hao Ren poked the little guy's head as a sign of intimacy, and then called to the data terminal: "Come out and scan, it's a high-power one."

"You have a working attitude." The data terminal floated out of the kettle with a groan, rising into the air under Doudou's curious eyes, and then the whole body glowed with blue light.

High-intensity radar signals began to penetrate deep into the ground, analyzing the underground structure of this forest.

"The discovery of an unprecedentedly large plant root system really convinced that little girl that the forest is one." The data terminal released a holographic projection, using a three-dimensional picture to show the underground situation of the twisted forest. Hao Ren saw the underground of the forest. The scene is really amazing: there are huge plant roots everywhere, and the root system can be seen radiating many kilometers from the forest. They are entangled underground and grow into a whole, and the shape is like a flattened tree full of ravines. The ellipsoid is a bit like a crooked walnut.

It looks pretty disgusting.

The data terminal commented next to him: "If these root systems disappear, a large hole with a diameter of hundreds of kilometers will be formed in the underground of the Twisted Woodland and the surrounding area, which is enough to cause everything here to fall deep into the ground. You can Imagine how big this thing is. In addition, the little girl said something that is not quite accurate: the forest roots extend westward beyond the center of the blood lake. They have already crossed the blood lake and are about to grow to the crystal on the other side of the lake. It’s under the plains and the mountains further to the west, but there may be something wrong with the soil in that crystalline plain, and a large part of the root system extending over it has died, and it shouldn’t continue to grow.”

"I didn't expect the underground part to be so much wider than the above ground part." Hao Ren was amazed. He was not amazed at the "miracles" of ancient times, but at the uncanny craftsmanship of nature - just like Raven 12345.

"In addition to the underground root system, this machine also discovered one thing, which should be of more research value," the data terminal suddenly said, "This forest...well, it should be the ecosystem of the entire Beinz Blood Lake area and the outside world." are incompatible."

Hao Ren didn't understand for a moment: "Incompatible?"

"This is the terrain of this area." The data terminal switched to a high-altitude holographic image. "You can see that the entire Beinz Blood Lake area is actually a closed environment. The Dragon's Back Mountains on the east side, and the mountain people on the west side. The Holy Mountain has a large rift valley on the north side and an ocean on the south side. The rift valley and ocean can more or less separate ecological zones. Surrounded by this series of terrains, the Beinz area formed In a closed ecosystem, the plants growing here—the ones detected by this machine—are not adapted to the external environment. They use nutrients in a very strange way. Only Beinz Blood Lake can provide them with this environment."

"Can't adapt to the outside environment at all? Can't survive at all?"

The data terminal said categorically: "I can't survive at all."

Hao Ren became more and more curious about the Beinz Blood Lake.

It is maintaining an ecological environment from ancient times. What is in the lake?