Chapter 525: Chapter 520: Days Gone By (Part 4)
This is very different from the botany lessons taught by the old professor.
Ji Ning thought of the old professor, and her mood sank a bit further.
The days of waiting for death were long, but these plants seemed to have forgotten her as their food.
No matter how she shouted, these plant spirits acted like they didn’t hear her. Occasionally, they would open a small opening above the green cocoon and drop a wild fruit into her mouth to stop her from speaking.
Ji Ning went from facing death positively to a state of bored surrender.
With her seemingly malfunctioning brain, she continued to sense the outside world.
She saw endless mountain forests catching fire under the bombardment of artillery.
She saw countless creatures desperately trying to survive, running towards where she was.
She saw the plant spirits swaying happily, scattering their seeds and pollen into the air.
She also saw the animals covered in pollen suddenly dying, then standing up again as if revived, slowly walking towards the territory of the tree spirit.
Then they were shared and eaten by the tree spirit and its plant spirit minions.
She noticed that each time the tree spirit finished eating, the plant liquid in the green cocoon would become more viscous, and the strange energy within her body would grow more violent, hurting to the point that she wished for immediate death.
When she awoke again, the range of her brain’s perception would expand further.
It was as if these plant spirits were transforming her body, turning her into a new plant spirit.
This realization terrified Ji Ning, who was just over seven years old.
She attempted to save herself...
She diligently probed the outside world for a way to save herself.
When her perception finally exceeded the area reached by the roots of the tree spirit, she saw humans.
She saw the superpower users, whom the old professor admired, waging battle.
She saw a certain energy gathering around them, and as it accumulated, it started to influence the stable energy nearby, slowly turning it into water cannons, fireballs, earth walls, and moving plant spirits...
Could they really control the plants?
Then could she also control these plant spirits to let her go?
Ji Ning tried to control the minions of the tree spirit like the superpower users did with plants outside.
As soon as she started, a sharp pain stabbed through her brain, as if she had been discovered and warned by the tree spirit.
Ji Ning got a bit angry, pursing her lips to try again, but the tree spirit’s warnings got increasingly severe.
Even the white light from her earring emerged to stop the tree spirit’s assault.
It was also the first time Ji Ning discovered that these plant spirits feared the white light emitted from her earring.
She attempted to sense the energy emanating from the earring, which felt gentle and pure, like the warmth of a mother’s embrace.
She then tried to find the pattern in the movement of this energy, hoping to control it to emerge from the earring and use it.
But the white light flickered, refusing to comply, instead absorbing a significant amount of white light into the earring from her body.
After realizing its intention, Ji Ning asked in surprise, "Do you also need energy?"
The white light flickered again.
"Can’t you absorb the tree spirit’s energy?"
The white light flickered again, leaving Ji Ning unsure whether it was a yes or no.
But being a person with a spirit of exploration, she stopped trying to control the plants and focused on feeling the energy radiating from the plant spirits around her.
Feeling the movement pattern of these energies, she attempted to integrate herself into them, then guide the energies back into her own body.
These energies inherently carried a rampant attribute, entering her body with greater destructiveness than the energy emitted by the plant liquid.
She felt her meridians and blood vessels nearly ripped apart by these energies, the pain causing her to sweat profusely, forcing her to seek guidance from the earring again: "Do you absorb this energy?"
The earring emitted white light again, penetrating her body, slowly repairing it, like a teacher instructing her on how to use her internal energy to tame and transform the violent energies into her own, bit by bit being absorbed by it.
Ji Ning observed the white light’s operation, striving to memorize its procedures.
She tried again to draw energy from outside into her body, then transform it into her own energy to be absorbed by the earring.
Through this day-by-day training, she finally discovered the method to control these plant spirits.
By taking away the energy around them, they would gradually wither and lose vitality.
So she began to seize the energy surrounding the tree spirit, watching its vines turn from green to yellow, no longer delivering new plant liquid to her.
Even the plant liquid covering her body started to turn into a muddy sludge, slowly falling away from her body.
Her arms were finally free to move.
She eagerly clawed at the jelly-like sludge on her body, vigorously pounding on the green cocoon.
The green cocoon was woven from countless thin plant fibers, possessing great resilience, making them difficult to tear apart.
She exerted a tremendous amount of effort, yet could not tear them apart, and her dagger, which she had on her, was nowhere to be found.
Perhaps she could find it?
Ji Ning closed her eyes, once again sensing the outside world, looking towards the place where the old professor died.
She had been afraid to look there before, fearing that she would see the old professor’s tragically dead body, while she was trapped here, unable to give him a proper burial.
Now, she finally had the chance to escape, so she would use the old professor’s weapon to break out of this last cage.
She stifled her tears, using her energy to slowly lift the dagger towards the tree spirit.
Perhaps sensing her determination to leave, the tree spirit frantically obstructed her, its thick branches swaying in the air, rocking the green cocoon back and forth, forcing her to swallow a few mouthfuls of plant sludge.
It also attacked her external energy, but thanks to her recent energy seizing, these attacks were weaker.
Ji Ning stubbornly endured the energy attacks from the tree spirit, gripping the dagger tightly, and fiercely stabbed it into the green cocoon.
When the outside light appeared, the tree spirit’s attacks vanished instantly.
The rampant energy around also disappeared in a flash, as if everything had just been a dream.
And she awoke from that dream, returning everything fantastical to reality.
She picked up the fallen dagger, tore open the green cocoon forcefully, and stepped out, only to miss a foothold and fall from the top of the tree.
In her memory, the tree spirit was always lush and verdant.
But now it seemed like a withered old man, its foliage yellowed, dried, and fallen abundantly.
The plant spirits surrounding it were all withered and listless.
It was as if someone had drained all their life force.
Suddenly—
The relatively clear sky outside was overtaken by a fierce wind.
A black cloud drifted in from somewhere, gradually gathering as if a black sandstorm was approaching, ready to swallow the mountain forest.
Ji Ning felt the heat coming from her earring, as if reminding her to flee quickly.
She dared not delay, scrambling up from the ground and sprinting out.
The mountain paths that once seemed long now felt like they had an accelerator attached, and in the blink of an eye, she had run out of the tree spirit’s territory.
Slightly panting, she looked back, seeing the dense forest completely shrouded in darkness, the path she took slowly disappearing before her eyes.
She felt like she had just escaped from an imminent closed space and returned to reality.
The outside sky was also shrouded in a gray haze, the air thick with the unpleasant smell of gunpowder and uncomfortable energies.
Overcoming her nausea, she walked towards where the old professor had perished.
The forest was teeming with insects and ants, but the old professor habitually carried insect-repelling herbs, so his body was not decomposing as fast as others.
Ji Ning knelt heavily beside the old professor, bowed deeply three times, then rose to wash the mud from the old professor’s face with the moisture in the air.
During her endless learning and training within the green cocoon, she learned how to control different energies, which the old professor referred to as superpowers.
She had finally awakened superpowers as he had hoped.
Even many types of superpowers.
But the old professor would never see them...
