I, Stone Golem, only want to forge.

Chapter 126 Blood and Flesh Dam

However, one can only say that the tree's name truly reflects its purpose.

Murphy stood in front of the glass observation window, his gaze fixed firmly on what was below.

As the giant serpent slowly approached the thick fungal carpet on the ground, the roots of the strange serpent bloodwood tree, which had been quietly coiled on the ground, suddenly sprang up from under the fungal carpet and stabbed into the pustules on the giant serpent's body.

The tip of the root pierced the surface of the abscess the instant it touched it, and then the entire root began to expand and contract violently.

The filth and impurities accumulated in the abscess surged upwards along the channels inside the tree roots, causing the bark on the trunk to bulge continuously.

Those protrusions start from the roots, climb up the trunk, pass through the thick side branches, and finally surge into the dense branches and leaves in the canopy.

The flowers were strikingly white, standing out starkly against the blood-red landscape, like snowflakes fallen into a pool of blood.

The petals unfold layer upon layer, with a faint fluorescent glow emanating from the stamen.

But this purity was fleeting.

Immediately afterwards, one after another blood-red fruit grew from the very center of the flower, rapidly swelling to the size of a fist, while the snow-white flowers withered swiftly the moment the fruit took shape.

They fell off the branches one by one and drifted into the wriggling fungal carpet below.

"What's going on? Has this giant snake been preyed upon?"

The relics merchant had somehow managed to suppress his earlier urge to escape.

Although he still naturally shielded Murphy in front of him, he leaned forward slightly, peeked out and looked at the eerie scene at the bottom of the window, and whispered his guesses.

Murphy shook his head.

In its spiritually insightful vision, however, a completely different picture emerges—a curse.

The giant serpent carries an extremely stubborn curse.

This curse takes a form similar to what Murphy previously observed in the ice elemental crystals, but it is far more persistent.

The curse on the ice crystals was like a layer of frost on the surface, which could be scraped off.

The curse on the giant serpent in front of them was like a root growing into its flesh and blood, one layer after another sprouting up, endlessly.

The giant serpent forcibly pushed the curse from its internal organs and bones to the surface of its body, where it mixed with the blood and was pushed under the skin.

They accumulate in the gaps between the scales, forming pustules.

Then, the roots of those strange serpent bloodwood would burrow in and suck away the cursed pus and blood.

The curse was carried to the tree crown along with the blood, eventually blossoming into those blood-red fruits.

Even though the curses in the pustules are absorbed by the Bloodwood of the Strange Serpents over time, new curses will soon emerge from the depths of the giant serpent's body.

Murphy shifted his gaze from the giant snake to the blood-red fruit.

After watching for a while, some strange thoughts suddenly popped into my head.

A curse, at the very least, should have some concrete effect, right?

Like a curse on an ice crystal, its effect is to make the cursed thing cold.

So what exactly is the effect of the curse on this giant snake?

Murphy already had a vague guess in his mind.

If this giant snake really is the one it saw before, then many things will make sense.

There was also a forest of strange snake blood trees near the cave where it used to live.

The giant serpent must have once roamed that area. If the serpent was already burdened with a curse at that time, then there is a high probability that this strange serpent bloodwood forest once absorbed the curse from the serpent.

Murphy recalled the state of those goblins after they ate the Bloodwood fruit of the Strange Serpent.

Their temperament has indeed undergone a visible change, becoming more ferocious and belligerent than ordinary goblins, and they may even lose their minds when faced with a crisis.

At the time, Murphy thought it was just some kind of stimulant effect from the fruit itself, but looking back now, it probably wasn't a stimulant at all.

Rather, it is a side effect of the curse being redistributed within the host's body.

Of course, this may only be a superficial phenomenon.

In conclusion, based on the clues currently available, it can be preliminarily inferred that the curse on this giant snake is very likely what caused it to lose its mind.

However, Murphy was more curious about something else than the giant snake and the curse on it.

Why does this strange snake-blood tree grow here?

These strange bloodwood trees were clearly not part of the original underground facility.

When the heritage dealers came a year or two ago, this place was completely empty.

In other words, these trees only grew in the last year or two, and they have grown so huge that it seems as if they have been rooted here for decades.

What kind of growth rate allows a tree to grow to more than 20 meters tall in just one or two years?

It would be impossible to obtain them with ordinary nutrients and water alone. The only explanation is that these trees absorbed a large amount of curse, or even more than just the curse of this snake.

But even so, how did the original seed get here?

How did the giant snake find this underground facility?

Does this place possess some special attribute that attracted both the giant serpent and the strange bloodwood serpent to be here at the same time?

"Are there any other places we can go?"

Murphy glanced again at the giant snake below, which was still being sucked dry by the Bloodwood Serpent. It seemed that there wouldn't be any new developments for the time being.

So he turned around and asked the relics merchant standing behind him.

It didn't come here to see snakes.

While the relationship between this giant snake and the Bloodwood Serpent was indeed a surprising and thought-provoking discovery, it was ultimately not the main objective of this trip.

Murphy is looking for tentacles!

But from the edge of the pit all the way down to this deep underground place, it hasn't even seen a single tentacle.

Murphy couldn't help but feel uneasy.

Surely those tentacles haven't already been absorbed by the Bloodwood of the Strange Serpent as nutrients?

"I can't pry up the rest—"

When the heritage merchant heard Murphy's question, he instinctively wanted to shake his head in denial, but he suddenly stopped talking.

He then remembered Murphy's access to any access control system without needing to swipe a card.

In that case, why not just take Murphy and try to pry open those doors that he can't pry open himself?

He changed his tune, his tone shifting from denial to a cautious expectation: "Maybe it's possible. It wasn't supposed to be, but maybe you can. I've looked into the area a bit. On this floor alone, there are several laboratories, an archive, and a control room. Shall I show you around?"

After they got off the elevator, the heritage businessman never mentioned the issue of fees for the guided tour again.

He's a shrewd man, quick-witted.

Murphy is now asking him to lead the way, which is, frankly speaking, a way of giving him face.

With Murphy's access level, which allows him to open any door he sees, even if I don't lead the way, he can still explore most of this underground facility by wandering around aimlessly; it's just a waste of time.

On the contrary, he himself would be happy if he could go with Murphy into those rooms that he had been unable to open.

Even if there's nothing of value to be gained inside, the intelligence gathered is enough to warrant at least a basic intelligence fee.

No matter how you calculate it, it's a sure thing to make a profit.

Murphy nodded and did not refuse.

Having someone familiar with the terrain with you is always more efficient than wandering around aimlessly alone.

So the relic merchant took the lead again, leading Murphy around the corridors on this floor.

After exiting the elevator, there is a main corridor with several metal doors of different sizes on both sides.

Just as the Relic Merchant had predicted, Murphy's access level remained unimpeded at this level.

Regardless of the original lock level on the door, Murphy only needs to take one step forward.

The scanning device on the door will automatically light up with a pale blue light.

Then, with a ding-dong sound, it opened.

However, the situation in the first laboratory was somewhat disappointing for the relics merchant.

The rooms had been almost completely emptied, not even a scrap of paper remained.

All the equipment, materials, documents, and samples were neatly moved away.

All that remained were an empty metal countertop and an empty shelf fixed to the wall.

According to the heritage dealers, the central control room on this floor is directly opposite the one-way glass observation room where they were standing.

If they start now from the observation room and walk counter-clockwise along the main corridor...

It will pass through four laboratories in total.

However, as the two moved forward, they discovered that the closer they got to the central control room, the more chaotic the laboratory became.

The first room was clean and tidy.

But some small, half-disassembled machines began to appear on the table in the second laboratory.

The door frame of the third laboratory had obvious impact marks, several metal cabinets inside had been knocked over, and several yellowed documents were scattered on the floor, the text on the papers faded to the point of being almost illegible.

And when he followed the relics merchant to the door of the fourth laboratory...

The heritage merchant and Murphy both stopped in their tracks.

What appeared before them was not any experimental equipment, nor could it even be described as machinery.

Instead, it is a huge river model.

It is embedded in the floor in the very center of the room, occupying several square meters of the entire room's area.

The model is extremely detailed, with the undulating terrain, the location of the river, and the miniature hills and plains on both sides all carefully sculpted.

However, the water in this model river didn't look like normal water at all; it was dark red and thick, like blood that had been left out for a long time.

The blood flowed slowly in the model river.

The surface is covered with a layer of oily sheen, and occasionally one or two tiny bubbles will emerge from the bottom of the river and burst on the surface.

In the middle of this river of blood, a dam stands across the waterway.

But when the relics merchant saw what this thing really was, he couldn't help but gasp.

That dam.

It was made up of countless corpses whose faces were obscured.

The torsos served as the foundation, one after another, densely packed together to form a broad base.

Above the torso, the limbs are separated from the body and stacked on top of each other, with the legs and arms interlocking.

At the very top of the dam are rows and rows of heads.

The faces of those heads were blurry and indistinct, making it impossible to discern their appearance before birth. Only the positions of the eye sockets and mouths could be barely identified, suggesting they were facing downstream.

The empty eye sockets stared at the blood-red river, as if silently watching something about to happen.

The corpses all appeared somewhat rotten, yet inexplicably—alive?

The skin had long since rotted into a soft, pus-like state, hanging loosely over the muscles. In some places, the skin had completely peeled off, revealing the dark red muscle texture underneath.

However, the flesh itself remained bright red, as if it had just been cut from a living body, making it difficult to tell whether these corpses had been dead for a long time or had just died.

Between the flesh and blood that were in contact, the muscle fibers seemed to retain some kind of activity, tightly attached together, and you could even see some tiny granulation tissue growing out of the muscles of one corpse and burrowing into the adjacent corpse.

"Well----"

Although the ruins merchant was well-traveled and had seen many strange and terrifying things while wandering through ruins, seeing this ghostly scene was still a shock.

Jing couldn't help but feel a surge of emotion in her throat.

He instinctively took a step back, his shoulder bumping against the door frame.

Murphy took two steps forward, his gaze sweeping over the structure of the dam several times, and sighed silently in his heart.

The structure of this dam is somewhat dilapidated.