NOVEL WEB Chapter 17
Chapter 17: Hanging Spine Man-eating Tree
Tsk, this is too horrifying. Luo Chong quickly forbade everyone from eating this kind of tree root and also stopped the elder from continuing to hit her.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Even stealing honey comes with the risk of being stung to death by poisonous bees. Moreover, with such sweet tree roots, Luo Chong didn’t think it would be easy to harvest them, so he decided to check it out personally tomorrow.
Luo Chong didn’t believe in man-eating tree spirits. Since he had arrived in this strange world, he hadn’t encountered anything that he couldn’t explain scientifically.
The reason he prohibited its consumption was actually because he was worried about potential toxins or hallucinogenic or addictive substances.
Nature is full of wonders. Things like opium or hallucinogenic mushrooms are not uncommon. After all, this isn’t a mythological story, nor does it involve the great experience of tasting hundreds of herbs like Shen Nong. In this harsh reality, humanity pays a bloody price for every edible species obtained from nature.
Putting these thoughts aside for now, Luo Chong asked the clan members who had worked hard all day to start preparing dinner. The dinner was abundant, featuring phoenix dragon soup (wild chicken stewed with snake), roasted groundhogs, wild boar meat, and dried fish—all stored provisions.
Storing food works like this: only when the day’s harvest exceeds consumption will the surplus be kept in storage.
At night, Luo Chong remained awake and extremely alert. He sat cross-legged beside the hearth, adding firewood while carefully sensing any changes in his body.
Unfortunately, during the evening, he had indulged and eaten the sweet tree root along with everyone else. While the clan members slept soundly, Luo Chong waited anxiously for fate’s verdict—whether he would “die from poisoning” or have “nothing happen.” These were things beyond his control.
Sitting there until the middle of the night when the moon was high, Luo Chong found himself not only unharmed but also increasingly energetic. With nothing else to do, he quietly exited the cave, picked up a wooden stick, and began practicing a set of emergency baton techniques he had learned in the military.
This emergency baton technique originated from a variant of Shaolin baton techniques, with power comparable to its original version, the “Shaolin Little Night Demon Baton Technique.” However, the moves were simplified, making it easier to learn and more efficient, emphasizing effectiveness over compassion. Of course, this was a necessity for the army.
The Shaolin baton technique is considered the ancestor of all baton techniques, and its various small baton techniques are quite famous, especially the Little Night Demon baton. Although it is classified as a baton technique, it primarily embodies the spirit of spear techniques. Three parts baton, seven parts spear, without a spearhead, yet incorporating thrusting, stabbing, poking, deflecting, and other spear techniques imbued with a fierce killing intent.
Therefore, the evolved police emergency baton amplifies this brutal style even further, characterized by expansive and powerful movements.
Now, Luo Chong had no choice but to relearn these cold weapon techniques from his previous life. This place lacked the modern firearms he was familiar with, forcing him to rely on semi-ancient cold weapons to defend himself.
As dawn broke and Luo Chong was practicing with vigorous energy, a pair of big, shiny black eyes reflected light through a crack at the cave entrance, like two ink-black pearls. Luo Chong leaped high into the air and delivered a downward diagonal stab, embedding the spear-less wooden stick more than a foot into the ground, firmly fixing it there.
“Qu Bing? Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Luo Chong walked to the crack at the cave entrance and lifted the little Qu Bing who was peeking from the ground. The child had been frightened by Luo Chong killing a pig yesterday and was now silent, burying his cool little face in Luo Chong’s neck and blowing bubbles.
Only when the sun fully rose and the clanspeople came out did the child start fussing to play.
Today’s work arrangements were the same as yesterday, with the only difference being that Qu Bing and his mother went to the fishing team, while Luo Chong led four younger members to the foraging team. He wanted to see what the demon tree mentioned by the elder looked like and how it ate people.
Qu Bing’s aunt cried all night yesterday, feeling wronged upon arriving at the new tribe. Fortunately, the chief saved her; otherwise, she would have suffered a terrible fate.
The group bypassed behind the cave and headed towards the jungle. It was then that Luo Chong realized the tree was located deep in the back mountain of the cave.
There weren’t many tall trees on this mountain, but the shrubs were very lush, and there were quite a few fruit trees. During their journey, Luo Chong discovered something he had been longing for—chili peppers.
Ha ha ha! Finding the chili peppers, Luo Chong couldn’t help but burst into laughter, looking up to the sky. There were plenty of half-dried, bright red chilies. He didn’t know the exact variety, but they were thin, about the length of a finger, forming a vibrant red patch hidden among the bushes.
However, the clanspeople never ate them, finding them unsatisfying and believing their stimulating taste indicated toxicity. It seemed he’d have to take care of this himself since good things could go unnoticed right under one’s nose. Following Luo Chong’s instructions, the four younger members spent the day picking chili peppers and doing nothing else.
Luo Chong continued forward with the foraging team, climbing over a ridge, and before them lay a basin. The land here was exceptionally fertile, nourished by countless animal skeletons scattered everywhere, appearing greenish.
Tsk, it was truly eerie, resembling a mass grave or a pit of ten thousand corpses.
In the center of the bone-laden basin stood a monstrous tree about 60 meters tall. From afar, it appeared quite beautiful, like a giant golden mushroom. Its massive canopy shaded an area of approximately 200 meters in diameter, with sweet floating roots sprawling across a 500-meter radius.
However, the closer to the edge, the fewer root nodules there were, while closer to the center, the more abundant they became. Those contained natural syrup, suggesting a pattern enticing animals toward the trunk. Could it be that the closer to the trunk, the quicker death came? Otherwise, why would it grow this way?
Luo Chong wanted to get closer for a better look but was held back by several women, warning him that getting closer would result in death.
Tsk, curiosity piqued, now that he wasn’t allowed to see it, his heart felt itchy, like being scratched by cats and dogs.
Despite the objections of the clanspeople, Luo Chong insisted on investigating, deciding to proceed cautiously if danger arose. Confident in his current skills, he believed he could escape safely.
Like a blind person, Luo Chong prodded the ground ahead with a spear at every step, ensuring safety. Each step was taken on tested ground, gradually moving closer to the center.
As Luo Chong approached the tree trunk, his spear touched the area covered by the tree canopy, and years of special forces training immediately alerted him to impending danger.
Without hesitation, he swiftly retreated, just as whistling sounds suddenly descended from above. More than a dozen spikes, nearly 1.2 meters long, plunged into the ground where his spear had touched moments ago.
Damn, this was ruthless. A wave of covering attacks came immediately. If he had walked straight past, he would likely have turned into a hedgehog.
These spikes were bizarre, each about one centimeter in diameter, with the shortest still over a meter long. They were light brown, smooth, and glossy, perfectly straight and round, as if machined by CNC.
At the end of each spike was a white flower the size of a bowl, each with four petals, stabilizing the trajectory as the spikes fell. These were naturally occurring arrows, with the petals functioning as fletching.
After careful observation and repeated dangerous experiments, Luo Chong finally provided a scientific explanation for this so-called demon tree.
Calling it a demon tree was exaggerated, so Luo Chong renamed it the Hanging Spine Man-eating Tree. Though named a man-eating tree, it consumed not only humans but also indiscriminately attacked any living beings that ventured under its canopy.
The spikes grew on the tree canopy, while the floating roots below acted like a spider web sprinkled with bait. Whenever prey touched the area covered by the canopy, the spikes would rain down indiscriminately.
Dead animals decomposed into fertilizer for the tree. If any survivors managed to crawl away, the spikes embedded in them would sprout elsewhere, growing into new man-eating trees. Evidence of this could be seen in the saplings growing from the skeletons scattered around.
Simply put, this tree lacked intelligence, acting much like sensitive plants or pitcher plants. Killing other creatures for parasitic purposes was merely a means of spreading seeds and reproducing, not something extraordinary.
What was impressive, though, was the speed of its reaction arc—from touching the roots to the spikes falling.