Qin Siyang no longer spared any energy for thinking. He threw himself fully into the attack, determined to complete the hunting route his brain had already laid out as fast as possible.
"President Qin, I'm begging you, this is enough already. Research doesn't need this many bodies. Let's go, hurry up!"
After Hu Chan begged and pleaded like he was calling on ancestors, Qin Siyang still knocked down every last multi-headed weasel.
At this point, the life signs of the multi-headed weasels he had knocked down earlier had completely vanished.
Qin Siyang immediately turned back and began rapidly collecting the corpses, starting with the first multi-headed weasel he had killed.
Seeing that his words were completely useless, Hu Chan had already given up struggling, staring at Qin Siyang as if he had lost both parents.
However, just as Qin Siyang was about to finish collecting the bodies, he suddenly felt a faint tremor coming from the ground beneath his feet.
Even though the hunt was over, Qin Siyang still hadn't relaxed. He kept constant watch over his surroundings.
The subtle movement in the ground instantly sent his already taut nerves into high alert.
He turned his head again, and in that split second, Qin Siyang felt the blood in his entire body freeze.
In the darkness in the distance, a gigantic tree was slowly emerging.
The trunk was thick and twisted, stacking upward layer by layer, its surface covered with crisscrossing scars.
The trunk coiled upward, splitting into countless slender branches. These branches stretched into midair, swaying independently without any pattern, as if they possessed lives of their own.
The enormous canopy formed by the densely packed branches blocked out half the starlight in the sky.
Hanging from these branches were "fruits." From afar, those fruits dangled like lanterns, emitting a dim, dark-gold glow. The light flickered uncertainly, bright and dim like a drifting fog.
There seemed to be other colors within these fruits, but from such a distance, Qin Siyang couldn't make them out clearly.
It was the Nightmare Lantern Tree.
Qin Siyang immediately realized something was wrong. With almost no hesitation, he abandoned several multi-headed weasel corpses that were a bit farther away and sprinted toward the drill cockpit at full speed.
But at this moment, his [Banquet Domain] was still on cooldown, and he couldn't use his fastest teleportation.
He could only rely on the [Violence] skill and, through [God Mimicry], activate the Flash Wolf's high-speed sprinting ability and charge forward.
The howling wind in his ears and the distortion at the edges of his vision all signaled that his running speed was pushing past its limits.
Yet, in a casual glance back, he was shocked to see the Nightmare Lantern Tree closing in on him at an eerie speed, its branches extending silently.
At the same time, a thin mist rapidly spread through the surrounding air, covering Qin Siyang's field of vision.
His heart sank as he cursed inwardly, focused only on getting back into the drill cockpit and escaping as fast as possible.
But he could feel the chill behind him growing stronger and stronger.
By the time he was almost at the drill cockpit, he could already see clearly through the thin fog the Nightmare Lantern Tree's branches etched with twisted wood grain, leaves like withered hands, and the fruits hanging from the tree.
Just a single glance was enough to see the appearance of the fruits, and Qin Siyang's entire body froze for a moment.
Just like its name, the Nightmare Lantern Tree was covered in lantern-shaped fruits hanging from its branches.
These lantern fruits were dark gold in color. Each one was wrapped in a semi-transparent membrane, inside which hazy images drifted.
They were distorted human faces, expressions twisted in pain, as if trapped inside some invisible prison.
These lantern fruits emitted a faint, eerie glow that flickered unstably, sometimes bright, sometimes dim, illuminating the thin fog around the branches and making the entire tree look even more bizarre in the darkness.
At last, he reached the drill cockpit. Hu Chan had already opened the hatch for him.
Qin Siyang leapt into the passenger seat, about to urge Hu Chan to flee for their lives.
Before he could say a word, a powerful force slammed him back into the seat.
Hu Chan, who had been terrified out of his wits after seeing the Nightmare Lantern Tree, floored the accelerator the instant he saw Qin Siyang return.
The drill cockpit roared and surged forward at full power.
The engine thundered like lightning, and the drill cockpit carved a brutal sprinting trail across the ground.
Qin Siyang let out a breath and looked at Hu Chan in the driver's seat, baring his teeth, his whole body tense.
Hu Chan hadn't abandoned him and fled alone in the drill cockpit. That warmed Qin Siyang's heart, dispersing some of the chill brought by the Nightmare Lantern Tree.
"Thanks, Holy Son."
Hu Chan didn't hear Qin Siyang at all. His face was pale, cold sweat streaming down his forehead.
While driving the drill cockpit, he muttered under his breath, "Heaven bless us, heaven bless us…"
Seeing this, Qin Siyang also anxiously looked back, wanting to confirm whether the Nightmare Lantern Tree was still chasing them.
For some reason, the Nightmare Lantern Tree had stopped pursuing them and was growing farther and farther away.
Qin Siyang collapsed back into his seat, "Phew! Looks like we shook it off."
Hu Chan, drenched in sweat, turned his head to look back. Seeing that the Nightmare Lantern Tree hadn't followed, he wiped his sweat and cursed loudly, "Qin Siyang! You bastard! I told you to hurry, hurry! And you just wouldn't listen!"
"I didn't hear you shouting either!"
"You…"
However, just as they drove a few hundred meters across the plain, the drill cockpit's speed suddenly dropped sharply, until it came to a complete stop underground.
"What's going on?", Hu Chan panicked, sweat pouring down as he stomped on the accelerator again and again, but the drill cockpit didn't budge at all.
He shouted in terror, "Why won't the drill cockpit move? Did the Nightmare Lantern Tree take control of it? Can the Nightmare Lantern Tree even control god-hunting equipment?"
Qin Siyang looked at the indicator lights lighting up on the console, his lips trembling, "It looks like… it looks like the accelerator is broken."
"What? Last time the brakes broke, this time the accelerator broke?"
Qin Siyang couldn't help feeling puzzled. Last time, when Lu Daoxing repaired the brakes, he clearly said he'd replaced them with a sturdy and reliable accelerator-and-brake system. How could it break again after only two uses?
He lowered his head and glanced at Hu Chan's foot, his gaze drawn to the metal plate under Hu Chan's foot that had been completely crushed and deformed, barely recognizable as an accelerator.
"Why are you stepping on the accelerator that hard!"
"You never told me I couldn't step on it hard! When you're running for your life, who has time to worry about that! Besides, isn't this a fourth-tier artifact? How could I break it just by stepping on it a couple of times?"
"The fourth-tier artifact is the drill cockpit! Not the accelerator! Who the hell would make the accelerator fourth-tier? With your sequence level five strength, one full stomp, what accelerator could survive that?"
"Then what do we do now!"
"How would I know what to do!"
"What about the Nightmare Lantern Tree?"
"It's still watching the two of us from not far away!"
"I…"
What Hu Chan said next, Qin Siyang couldn't hear at all anymore.
Judging by his mouth shape, it looked like he was saying, "I've got an 8 a.m. class."
Qin Siyang felt a trace of surprise, not understanding why Hu Chan had suddenly become so passionate about studying and work.
But he didn't have time to think about it anymore.
Because at that moment, a dark-gold lantern fruit suddenly appeared inside the drill cockpit, blocking Qin Siyang's view.
Qin Siyang stared at the dark-gold lantern fruit.
And at the all-too-familiar distorted face inside the lantern fruit.
"The one inside the lantern is… me?"
[T/N: Absolute Cinema ✋😬🤚]
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