Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Moon Plant

The convoy settled where it stood.

More than ten armored vehicles formed a ring, with the largest one at the center. Cultivators and staff rested in the space between, weapons close at hand.

Night fell.

Back in the old world, night meant sleep. In the apocalypse, night felt like everything else was waking up.

Mutant plants emerged in greater numbers after dark.

Hui Zhua wandered over with a grin. “Guess what I found?”

He jerked his chin toward the largest armored vehicle. At some point, metal window panels on both sides had slid open. White curtains hung within. Several silhouettes moved behind them.

Wang Jie looked away. “Go to sleep.”

Hui Zhua sounded bitterly impressed. “That vehicle’s built different. Doesn’t even shake no matter how much it rocks.”

With that, he sauntered back to his own spot.

No one else reacted. Most of them were used to it.

Wang Jie laid stones down as a base, stacked wooden boards over them, and pitched a small tent.

Watchers rotated around the perimeter. Drones still skimmed low overhead. Distant beast roars echoed through the dark, but for now, this place felt untouched.

Moonlight slipped through seams in the canopy and fell across Wang Jie’s face. He pulled open the tent flap and looked up.

Clouds drifted over the moon, swallowing the light.

Wang Jie moved instantly.

He slid out and vanished into shadow without alarming anyone, his body gliding away as if it had melted into the night.

There was an expert here—probably sixth seal. Wang Jie could feel it. But “sixth seal” only described raw combat power. Everyone had strengths and blind spots.

No one was perfect.

Except Wang Jie.

His speed came from a combat technique he’d seen in the sky projection. Once he used it, very few people could even perceive him, let alone follow.

And no one was watching him.

He sprinted up the mountain road toward the resort.

Mutant plants struck from the roadside. Their senses were sharper than a human’s, but they couldn’t keep up with his pace. Their branches whipped at empty air as he flashed past.

He reached the destination quickly.

Bodies lay piled in the ruin ahead, chewed into something barely recognizable. Several were only half intact—spat out after the creature couldn’t digest them. Stomach acid pooled in the dirt, stinking so badly it burned the nose.

Wang Jie found Liu Ying’s brother among them, took photos, then turned to leave.

A thick branch swept in without warning.

Wang Jie twisted and barely avoided it.

Behind him, a house snapped in half with a deafening crack.

Plants rose all around, swaying in the darkness—too many, too fast. Branch after branch lashed down, sealing off every direction.

Wang Jie’s eyes narrowed.

A huge mutant plant.

He stepped his left foot onto his right and launched upward. From that height he finally saw it—the main body crouched behind the house like a lurking beast.

More branches burst up from underground.

Wang Jie raised a hand and pointed.

A shadow of a finger flashed out. The air twisted into a spiraling thrust that shredded the incoming branches and pierced the mutant plant’s main body from a distance.

A shrill wail ripped through the night.

Wang Jie’s gaze swept the perimeter. One. Two. Three…

Eight.

He drew a single breath, then struck with eight fingers in rapid succession. Each strike landed precisely, shattering the eight mutant plants that had surfaced around him.

He landed hard, clenched his fist, and drove it into the ground.

Force surged through the earth. With a booming blast, the ground within ten meters collapsed, swallowing the nearby house with it.

Silence returned.

Wang Jie let out a slow breath and scanned the wreckage. His eyes caught on something vivid green—half a meter of branch, pulsing faintly.

A disaster material.

He grabbed it and raced back down the mountain road.

Halfway down, he saw flames spearing into the sky in the distance.

The camp.

Something was wrong.

He surged forward.

A massive cry erupted, turning into a sound wave that nearly flipped the armored vehicles. Drones wobbled and crashed against the cliffside.

A giant peacock stood in the firelight, nearly five meters tall. Its narrow eyes were cruel and bloodthirsty.

It kept screeching, blasting sound waves with each cry.

Behind the armored vehicles, cultivators hurled weapons—arrows, darts, stones. More than ten cultivators used the same combat technique at once, their attacks merging into a single force.

Wang Jie stared at the peacock, unease crawling into his gut. It was one of the strongest mutant beasts near Jin Ling Base, a sixth-seal creature that usually stayed deep in the mountains.

Why was it here?

And it was bigger than before.

He remembered the massive mutant plant he’d just fought.

That one had grown bigger too.

Plants and beasts were changing.

The battle was fierce, but Wang Jie didn’t join. He hadn’t been here when it started, and now he needed to stay out of sight even more—so no one would ask where he’d been.

Hui Zhua was hiding farther back than anyone.

The door of the largest armored vehicle opened. Wang Jie glanced over.

The Zhao family’s Eldest Young Master stepped out.

Handsome. Young. Calm.

He watched the fight without fear, like it was a joke unfolding in front of him.

The peacock screamed again. Feathers rose behind it and began to spin, building momentum for something no one could measure.

No one knew how deadly the next attack would be.

A figure suddenly ran across the tops of the armored vehicles and charged straight at the peacock.

A middle-aged man.

He raised his arm. Knuckle-dusters flashed on his fist, glowing red as if about to melt, and he punched.

The peacock locked onto him and fired more than ten feathers at once.

Bang, bang, bang—

The man’s fists blurred at an insane speed, snapping each feather midair. A drone drifted too close to his face. He stepped on it and used it as a foothold, launching himself through the air with a light, agile movement technique.

“Beast—die!”

He clasped his hands and lifted them high. Six streams of gray air boiled from his body and, in a blink, turned red like a cape, making him look overwhelmingly domineering.

He brought his fists down.

The blow sent the mutant peacock flying. Its huge body crashed into the shattered highway and carved a pit several meters deep.

Wang Jie’s expression tightened.

As expected—a sixth-seal expert.

If the Zhao family’s Eldest Young Master traveled in person, there was no way he’d come without a protector like this.

“Good.” The Eldest Young Master clapped, pleased.

Around him, cultivators stared at the middle-aged man with a mix of awe and relief. Without him, the peacock might’ve killed them all.

Six streams. Sixth seal.

The middle-aged man walked toward the pit step by step.

The peacock lay there, its bulk impossible to hide even in the crater’s depth. It stared without blinking, not moving at all.

The man approached carefully. Mutant beasts grew smarter as they cultivated—too smart to underestimate.

“Uncle Ling,” the Eldest Young Master called, “can you capture it? If we use it instead of Xueju, that might work too.”

Uncle Ling frowned. “No. Xueju is canine—before mutation, it was a pet. Beat it into submission and it can be tamed. But this peacock is too wild, and it’s sixth seal. One mistake and it’ll go wrong.”

The Eldest Young Master sighed. “Fine. Kill it, then. See if we can get disaster materials.”

Materials from a sixth-seal creature were valuable even to the Zhao clan.

Wang Jie didn’t watch the peacock’s eyes.

He watched its claws.

They were dug deep into the ground.

His face changed.

Wang Jie shouted, “Run! It’s drawing in disaster!”

People turned toward him, baffled.

Then the mutant peacock suddenly took off, flying toward the mountain by the resort.

Uncle Ling tensed, about to move.

The ground shuddered.

Armored vehicles rocked violently. Cracks spidered across the earth, as if something beneath was pushing upward.

Wang Jie’s voice cut through the chaos. “Moon plant! Run!”

Terror hit like a physical blow.

Uncle Ling grabbed the Eldest Young Master and sprinted. Inside the central vehicle, a few women screamed and cried, pounding on the doors as they were left behind. No one even looked back.

Wang Jie ran too.

The moon plant was the largest plant under moonlight.

It appeared randomly in the wild, with no pattern anyone could understand.

Humans couldn’t predict it—but mutant beasts might.

Especially tonight.

The moon was bright. The moon plant hadn’t appeared yet. The peacock’s claws had been dug into the ground, releasing something from below.

It had been luring the moon plant here.

These beasts were far too intelligent now.

The moon plant was enormous—over a hundred meters tall. It could swallow birds and beasts whole. Even Jin Ling Base, with Hong Jian among the Five Poles, couldn’t deal with it. They’d tried to surround and kill it once and failed, suffering heavy losses.

The earth began to sink as everyone ran.

But the ground dropped over a radius of a thousand meters in an instant.

Many cultivators didn’t make it out. They fell, scrambling in panic. Heat surged up from below. White vapor rose—and people melted where they stood, dying without even a scream.

Wang Jie looked back.

The armored vehicles warped and melted as if made of wax. The ground twisted, and a green leaf edged with dark-red stripes pushed up. Heat flipped into a terrifying suction that yanked at everything, trying to drag them back.

It was like a giant mouth had opened in the earth, hungry.

Wang Jie couldn’t save anyone.

The moon plant sat at the peak of apocalypse combat power. Even the Three Gods and Five Poles couldn’t handle it. Humanity had no way to fight it right now.

Uncle Ling was fast—faster than Wang Jie expected.

Wang Jie deliberately veered off in another direction, ready to use his movement technique to escape.

But Uncle Ling locked onto him and chased.

Wang Jie had been the first to notice what the peacock was doing. Uncle Ling instinctively believed that following him meant survival.

Now Wang Jie couldn’t use his technique openly without exposing it.

Leaf after leaf burst from the ground, each green blade threaded with dark red like blood vessels. Razor teeth lined their edges. They snapped upward toward the moonlight, as if they wanted to bite the moon itself.

Shadows crashed down over everyone.

People fled in all directions. Wang Jie and Uncle Ling ended up in a zone where the moon plant blocked the moonlight completely. Everything went pitch-black.

A heartbeat later, green leaves scattered outward, swallowing people one after another.

Screams tore through the sky.

Cultivators who could crush ordinary men were as helpless as children before the moon plant.

One leaf lunged toward Wang Jie and Uncle Ling.

It wasn’t sparing anyone.

Uncle Ling’s eyes flashed. He lunged at Wang Jie. One arm clamped onto the trembling, despairing Eldest Young Master; the other reached for Wang Jie.

Wang Jie met his eyes.

This bastard wanted to use him as bait.

Wang Jie twisted—and grabbed Uncle Ling at the same time.

Uncle Ling’s voice went ice-cold. “Hold on to me. I’ll take you out.”

Wang Jie held on.

Uncle Ling tried to fling him backward—

But he couldn’t.

Worse, he realized he was being pulled off-balance instead.

What?

This kid was strong enough to move him?

Uncle Ling’s fingers snapped tight around Wang Jie’s wrist, digging five bloody holes. Blood ran down his fingertips.

“Little kid,” Uncle Ling hissed, “do you want to lose your arm?”