Chapter Eighty-Nine: Endless Growth

“I’ll go in and have a look,” Lin Dong said.

“Oh, all right....”

Tank nodded dumbly, still wanting to show some concern and remind their boss to be careful.

But when he turned his head, he realized Lin Dong’s figure had already vanished....

He had activated his concealment ability and was moving step by step into the mountains.

Soundless, like a ghost.

The forest was dark and damp, silent except for the occasional rustle of leaves and the strange cries of unseen birds.

Lin Dong did not touch the ivy. Instead, he followed the traces of its growth deeper inside, moving straight along its trail, to put it plainly, tracking it by its own rope.

He was also curious. At the deepest point of all this ivy, what exactly was there?

The journey went smoothly.

Along the way, he saw many corpses—small animals, humans, even zombies. The bodies gave off a foul stench, each at a different stage of decay.

Some were already overrun with maggots, while thumb-sized flies circled overhead.

As he went farther on, the ivy grew denser and denser. It was clear that this mountain forest had been completely occupied and had become its territory.

About ten minutes later, Lin Dong emerged from the woods and reached a forest road.

This road led up to the mountaintop, where the wealthy residential district was located, with many villas perched among the peaks.

Now the road had been utterly abandoned and taken over by vegetation.

Along the roadside, he could still see some overturned wrecked vehicles, left behind by the humans who had fled into the mountains when the apocalypse first broke out.

Lin Dong stepped forward and found a corpse inside a rusted car, decayed down to bone. A few spiders had spun many webs across the skeleton, crawling back and forth over it.

The car’s glove compartment, trunk, and even fuel tank had been pried open; it was obvious someone had already stripped it clean.

“There are humans in the mountains.”

When the apocalypse erupted, people in the cities fled into the hills to escape the zombies and began fighting to survive in the wild.

Though the depths of the forest were fraught with danger—mutant beasts, mutated plants—human awakeners still had a chance to survive.

Lin Dong turned and looked again, discovering that the ivy vines were spreading along the road, extending ever onward.

He continued following them.

And it became obvious that the corpses were growing more and more numerous. They had been wrapped up, drained dry, and turned into mummified husks.

After walking a little farther, a villa appeared ahead.

What had once been a luxurious building was now in ruins. The fence in the yard and the villa walls were all covered in ivy.

The leaves were broad, fanlike, and a dark purple-black, while the stems had grown especially thick, with streams of filthy blood flowing through them.

“Here?”

Lin Dong had already detected a strange aura hidden inside the villa.

He glanced over.

The scene in the courtyard was also strangely magnificent.

Bodies had been buried in the soil with only their heads exposed, while the roots of the ivy grew out from their skulls.

Some of the heads had already rotted into skeletons, but others were still “fresh,” people who had died not long ago—human victims snatched from who knew where by the ivy.

“The landscaping here is rather distinctive...”

Lin Dong muttered to himself, finding that the ivy had a rather artistic flair.

He stepped into the courtyard.

With corpses everywhere around him, the yard was thick with the scent of death—cold, oppressive, and filled with a sharp, nauseating stench of rot.

Anyone arriving here would instantly know it was an ominous place.

They would likely avoid it as fast as they could.

No one would dare come near.

Only Lin Dong walked in alone. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the luxurious villa had long since shattered.

Looking inside, he saw something even more horrifying.

Many corpses were hanging from the ceiling beams inside, packed tightly together like sausages strung up to dry. There were humans among them, and animals too. As the cold wind swept through, some of them swayed faintly.

“What is this, a corpse exhibition?”

Lin Dong complained silently to himself.

Just as he was about to continue forward, the grass and leaves nearby suddenly began to rustle, like a rattlesnake, carrying a sense of sinister malice.

The ivy vines on the ground writhed, rising like serpents. Behind Lin Dong, they reared up, ready to strike.

“I’ve been discovered...”

With a thought, Lin Dong unleashed his Corpse Domain. The vines preparing to attack from behind burst apart one after another with a series of sharp cracks.

As the domain spread outward, pressure rolled in all directions.

Every vine nearby, like loaches dropped into boiling oil, shot upright and began twisting violently.

Then, one after another, they exploded.

What Lin Dong saw before him was a scene of writhing vines and flying filthy blood.

The courtyard, dead and silent only moments ago, instantly descended into chaos.

“Aaah—”

A piercing scream rang out from within the villa, like a witch’s howl, shrill and frenzied.

The cry lasted a full three seconds, echoing through the dense mountain valley and startling flocks of birds far away into flight.

“So it’s coming out?”

With a wave of his hand, Lin Dong conjured a long blade out of thin air. Energy surged through it, and fierce flames erupted, covering the entire blade.

Fire was the bane of plants.

Lin Dong swung forward, turning countless vines to ash, while the rest began to retreat in panic.

With the plants out of the way, Lin Dong’s vision cleared. In the direction of the villa, the thick leaves on the wall bulged into a human shape, which slowly stepped out from within.

“You should not have come here.”

The grass figure spoke in a voice neither male nor female.

Lin Dong stared at it. The person before him was completely wrapped in green, as if woven entirely from leaves. It was impossible to tell whether it was more plant than animal.

But one thing was certain: this was the mastermind controlling the ivy.

“You’re allowed to run wild in my territory, but I’m not allowed to come looking for you?”

“If you want to die... I’ll grant your wish!”

A pale green light radiated from the grass figure and surged wildly outward. At the same time, the ivy across the entire area began to grow at a frenzy, countless vines charging in like a tidal wave.

Lin Dong’s vision was once again swallowed by vegetation.

It felt as though he had fallen into a world made entirely of plants.

A red glow flashed in his eyes, and the King of Corpses Domain expanded to its fullest.

That overwhelming pressure surged once more, roaring forward like a boundless sea of blood.

Boom!

With a thunderous blast, everything around them exploded to pieces, including the dense mass of vines, as though it had been swept up by a storm.

Countless leaves flew through the air, then were crushed into powder under the immense pressure.

The grass figure trembled, as if struck by a shockwave, clearly never expecting the other side’s domain to be so formidable.

Yet he forced himself to steady and continued channeling his power.

“Endless growth!”

With a soft cry, the already shattered vines actually sprouted new shoots, which in an instant became thick and strong again.

The sky-full vegetation once more engulfed Lin Dong.

“Hm?”

Lin Dong raised an eyebrow, discovering that this grass figure’s ability was indeed bizarre. With its strength, it was absolutely no weaker than any corpse king outside.

And this method of attack carried a faint sense of domain formation as well.

...