In the apocalypse, I hoarded goods and handed over my storage space to the government.

Conference room of the temporary command post at the Bashu base.

The group filed in.

"The initial exploration is over. Let's all share our first impressions."

Su Ran sat in the main seat and spoke frankly.

"That's strange."

Ye Xiao drew the Tang sword from his back, grabbed a few tissues, and vigorously wiped the dark red sticky substance off the blade.

"Brother Su, this thing looks like tree bark, but when I cut into it, the feel was completely wrong."

The blade encountered immense resistance when cutting; there was none of the crispness of breaking wood fibers. Instead, it felt like striking a whole piece of compressed old pigskin.

Su Ran nodded, his deep gaze shifting to the girl beside him. "Bai Lu, how do you feel?"

Bai Lu pulled out a chair, sat down, took a sip of warm water, and spoke in a cool voice.

"The swarm is large in number, but each individual possesses extremely low mental strength, almost zero. However..."

She paused, a hint of doubt flashing in her eyes.

"Before they died, I could sense an extremely subtle mental fluctuation. It was like a marionette having its strings cut."

"A marionette?"

Su Ran pondered these four words, then shifted her gaze to Mo Yun.

"My feeling is that those plants are aware of danger."

Mo Yun pushed up his glasses and spoke directly.

"When my poisonous mist comes into contact with the vines, they react accordingly, directly and actively breaking off the corroded parts."

I've encountered mutated plants before, but I've never seen any with this kind of strategic abandonment instinct.

"Brother Su, I don't feel much."

Zhu Jingye spoke up, "However, after listening to what Brother Mo just said, I did notice something strange."

When I focus my fire on the main vine, other vines will cross in front of it to protect it and help it dodge bullets.

Four people, four perspectives, pieced together a chilling outline.

"Danger rating." Su Ran looked at Mo Yun.

"Let's say the individual is second-order."

Mo Yun provided a detailed explanation.

"But if we take into account its scale, regeneration capabilities, and unified scheduling characteristics, its overall threat level is half a step into the third tier."

This is much more difficult to deal with than the second-tier mutants we've encountered before.

Su Ran nodded.

This is basically consistent with his judgment.

"But every living thing has weaknesses, and the mutated infected are no exception."

Su Ran's gaze swept over the crowd.

"When Ye Xiao cut it, it bled. When Mo Yun poisoned it, it cut off its tail to survive. This shows that it feels pain and can be injured."

He stood up and walked to the electronic sand table.

"Now, let's see what kind of information the Academy of Sciences can squeeze out of that piece of 'meat'."

……

at the same time.

The biological laboratory is located on the second basement floor of the Bashu base.

On the sterile workbench, the purple "bark" that Ye Xiao had cut off had been sliced ​​into dozens of thin pieces.

In a nearby container, several dead black beetles were being dissolved by strong acid to extract tissue fluid.

Zhou Jian was wearing a full hazmat suit, his eyes almost pressed against the eyepiece of the high-powered microscope.

"This is unbelievable, it can't be true."

He muttered to himself, his fingers frantically typing on the keyboard, bringing up one set of comparative data after another.

"Team leader!"

Assistant Li Tianyuan rushed over, holding a newly printed urgent report.

"Preliminary results from gene sequencing are in! DNA helix structure alignment is complete!"

Zhou Jian snatched the report and quickly scanned the dense data.

The more he looked, the more his pupils contracted.

"There's no cell wall."

Zhou Jian suddenly raised his head.

"The piece of 'bark' that Commissioner Ye Xiao cut off wasn't plant cell at all! It was highly fibrotic smooth muscle tissue!"

That red liquid isn't tree sap; it's mutated blood rich in high-energy particles!

Upon hearing this, several senior researchers in the lab gathered around.

"Team leader, that's not all."

A researcher with gray hair pointed to another screen, "Look at its genetic map."

We extracted the vine's epidermis and internal tissues, as well as the body fluids from the remains of the mutated beetles, for comparison.

"Compatibility: 99.9%"

Dead silence.

What this means was clear to every biologist present.

"A forest stretching for tens of kilometers, thousands upon thousands of trees, and swarms of mutated insects covering the mountains and plains..."

Old Li Tianyuan swallowed hard, feeling a chill run down his spine.

"Their DNA is all the same sequence? They...are the same organism?"

"There's only one explanation!"

Instead of fear, Zhou Jianmeng's eyes blazed with an extreme fervor that revealed his profound understanding of the truth!

"But how is that even possible? How will the nutrition be provided?"

Zhou Jian muttered to himself like a madman, and suddenly, he turned around and lunged at another dissection table.

The corpse of a corpse beetle that Ye Xiao brought back was fixed on top, its chest already wide open.

"No digestive system."

Zhou Jian used tweezers to turn the beetle's internal organs inside out.

"The intestines have degenerated, and the stomach has atrophied. Only extremely well-developed mouthparts and a huge energy storage sac remain."

"The energy gained from digestion is directly stored?" The accompanying elderly scientist's eyes widened.

"That's right. The flesh and blood it eats are not for its own survival at all!"

It stores this high-purity energy in its sac, carries it back, and feeds it back to the mother plant through its root system!

Zhou Jian's eyes were sharp as he pointed at the insects on the dissection table.

"This insect isn't a byproduct at all; it's a worker ant from that forest, or rather, a stomach with legs!"

The entire audience gasped.

A stomach with legs!

What a terrifying and distorted evolutionary path this must be!

Zhou Jian ignored everyone's shock.

He rushed back to the control panel, retrieved the cell slice images from the microscope, and projected them directly onto a large screen that occupied half of the wall.

"Look carefully."

Zhou Jian pointed to the tightly packed strip-like structures on the screen, "Can you see the cell walls?"

"No, absolutely not..."

Old Li stared wide-eyed, carefully examining the structure. "The cell wall structure unique to plant cells has completely disappeared."

"Not only do they lack cell walls, but look at how these tissues are arranged."

Zhou Jian's finger swiped rapidly across the screen.

"This is a typical striated muscle fiber structure! This isn't tree bark at all, it's muscle!"

That outer purple, hard shell is the keratinized stratum corneum!

The laboratory was deathly silent for a few seconds.

"Team leader, you mean...?"

Old Li's voice was hoarse, "That forest stretching for over ten kilometers outside is an animal disguised as a plant!"

"If it's a single organism, then everything makes sense! All anomalies have a perfect explanation!"

Zhou Jian slammed his fist on the control panel. "But I need other evidence to corroborate this!"

He looked at the electron microscope control panel beside him and yelled at the operator.

"Retrieve the neuronal conduction test results for sample number three! Quickly!"

Ten minutes later, another report was released.

Zhou Jian's breathing became rapid as he looked at the data flashing on the screen.

"Found it. The red liquid it oozes contains a high concentration of neurotransmitters."

He stared intently at the screen. "This explains why such a massive device can respond instantly."

He quickly connected these clues in his mind.

Highly consistent DNA, animal muscle tissue, neurotransmitter transmission.

Zhou Jian strode to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and frantically drew structural diagrams.

"The mutant fungal mats we studied at the Kunlun base before were typical anucleate symbionts."

Zhou Jian explained at a rapid pace as he drew.

"You cut it up, and each piece can survive independently, each piece can become a new core."

He drew a messy jumble of dots on the left side of the whiteboard.

Next, he drew a huge tree outline on the right, with a dot prominently placed in the center.

"But this thing is different. It has a central nervous system!"

Zhou Jian's pen tip poked at that dot.

"It has a direction for nerve conduction! It has an absolute hierarchical control structure!"

Every vine and every insect is an extension of its tentacles.

All the signals collected must converge at a single point!

"It has a clear core!"

Old Li, listening from the side, felt a chill run down his spine.

"Team leader, does this mean that this monster is actually just one?"

"That's right! That forest isn't made up of countless trees; it's just one tree!"

Or rather, it's a single, colossal beast disguised as a forest!

Zhou Jian threw away the marker, ripped off the protective mask on his head, and his eyes shone with an alarming intensity.

"Since it is a single organism, what does its terrifying size of more than ten kilometers matter?"

"If we find its brain and destroy it, its body, which spans over ten kilometers, will be instantly paralyzed!"

That's the charm of biology.

What appears to be an invincible monster to ordinary people is stripped bare under a microscope.

"Team leader, is there a way to pinpoint the core location?" Old Li pressed.

"Yes. We can locate it by tracking the directionality of these neural pathways."

Zhou Jian pointed to the neural synapses under the microscope,

"By collecting samples from several points outside the defense line and measuring the direction of the micro-waves indicating neurotransmitter flow, we can calculate the precise coordinates of its core using triangulation!"

"Old Li, Zhan Yu, Brother Long, the three of you, prepare the relevant signal measurement equipment immediately!"

He ripped off his heavy hazmat suit, tossed it aside, grabbed the preliminary analysis report, and rushed out.

"I'm going to see Advisor Su and inform the Awakened team to collect samples!"

"yes!"

The entire laboratory instantly erupted in excitement, with all the researchers rushing to their respective posts as if they had been injected with adrenaline.

Zhou Jian strode through the corridor and headed straight for the combat command area.

"Bang!"

The door to the operations room was pushed open.

Zhou Jian stood at the door, panting heavily, meeting the surprised gazes of the crowd, and looked directly at Su Ran, who was in the main seat.

"Advisor Su!"

Zhou Jian's voice boomed, brimming with barely concealed excitement, "We've found out everything about that thing!"