Chapter 218

Chapter 218: Eaten!

‘Pa!’, a shockwave exploded as Bai Yi and Sarelli clashed with each other in mid-air. Bai Yi pushed with the Tai Ji Fist, and Sarelli instantly felt a gigantic force on his body making him fly backward. The group of people then split into two sides, with Bai Yi and Sarelli landing in the center.

“Bai Yi, what are you doing?”

“I should be the one asking what you are doing,” Bai Yi said with a calm expression.

“I’m trying to harvest this fruit, of course. This kind of fruit with unknown effects must definitely be handed over to the higher-ups,” Sarelli said as if it was a given.

At this time, Mavis finally noticed that the more than ten people here didn’t belong to a single team. She had still thought that Bai Yi had found new teammates over this period of time. Also, ’handed over to the higher-ups’? It couldn’t be that Bai Yi had joined a powerful faction? No, that wasn’t right; Bai Yi didn’t seem like that kind of person?

Bai Yi glanced at the fruit inside the crack; it looked just like a heart, with seven withered vines stretching out from it to other parts of the tree. Bai Yi pondered if he should create animosity with the United Nations over this thing, but suddenly, Momo started to slowly walk over to the fruit. How should one describe this? If other people instinctively felt that this strange fruit was very precious, then to Momo, this fruit would be completely indispensable to herself.

Momo lightly jumped over, reaching toward the crack for the fruit.

Momo’s actions alarmed everybody and all of them instantly tensed, but this time nobody tried to stop each other. In the eyes of Sarelli’s team, Bai Yi would definitely hand this fruit over to them to take away.

Momo gently grabbed one side of the crack with her left hand, while stretching her right hand toward the fruit. The moment Momo’s hand grabbed hold of the fruit, it automatically detached itself from the seven vines connected to it. No wonder Mavis told them to harvest this fruit first—it was obviously completely ripe. If some more time had passed, it would have probably fallen to the ground by itself.

“Give us this fruit, and also this Soul Release Tree; even though it has withered, we will still take it away,” Sarelli said.

However, exceeding everyone’s expectations, Momo held this fruit, which looked just like a heart, and took a big bite out of it. Black smoke instantly emitted from the spot where Momo bit into this heart-like fruit. However, even though it looked like smoke, it didn’t dissipate in the air and remained, surrounding the fruit like dense smoke. Even more so, the place where the fruit flesh should have been just seemed like a gloomy, dark void, almost as if it was going to suck all the light inside of it.

Everyone looked at Momo in shock; don’t say that she knew what kind of fruit this was? Impossible! Bai Yi knew that they had never seen such a fruit before! However, Sarelli and the few others thought that Bai Yi knew what this thing was and that he had let Momo eat it because he knew that it was extremely precious.

“What are you doing!?” Sarelli immediately pounced at Momo.

This time not only Sarelli acted, but the rest of his team acted as well. However, unfortunately for them, the few of them were repelled instantaneously in a brief clash. Bai Yi, Sharpei, Pupu, Nancy, and Ulisses immediately stopped Sarelli’s people.

Momo still continued to eat the fruit at a moderate pace, one bite at a time.

“Bai Yi!” Sarelli roared in anger.

However, Bai Yi completely ignored him and only quietly observed Momo. Indeed, most of the plants and animals in the Devil Isles now were completely unknown to them. However, they had gained a mysterious sense after entering LV2. For example, the fruit that Woolf had found previously, or the Great Stink Bomb Fruit that Pupu had found; when the body intensely desired a thing, there would naturally be a feeling toward such a kind of thing.

Momo’s energy inclination was toward the soul, and this fruit grew on the Soul Release Tree; Bai Yi wouldn’t believe it if somebody said that there was no connection.

However, he really didn’t imagine that Momo would directly eat this strange food now. That only reinforced Bai Yi’s belief that this fruit was extremely important to Momo.

Sarelli and his team were very strong; after all, they had to bring the Soul Release Wood back—this was their most important mission, and also their only mission. However, facing off against Bai Yi’s team, Sarelli suddenly felt that they didn’t have the slightest chance of winning. Even more so, he felt that they couldn’t win even with just Bai Yi himself here. In the recent battle between the evolved humans and experimental subjects, Bai Yi’s combat power had given many people an immense sense of pressure.

“Bai Yi, think clearly about what you are doing right now,” Sarelli said.

“Of course I know what I’m doing. The United Nations wants the Soul Release Wood, and the condition I agreed to was to help you guys acquire the Soul Release Wood; other things weren’t included in the agreement.” Bai Yi bore a gentle smile on his face, seemingly not minding Sarelli’s threat at all.

“You…!”

Sarelli wanted to say something but still pushed the matter aside in the end. The fruit was already eaten, they couldn’t win even if they fought, and just like Bai Yi said, their mission was just to bring the Soul Release Wood back and not anything else. “Fine then, let’s leave it at this. I will report this incident as it is to the higher-ups.”

Bai YI nodded plainly. “En.”

The state of mutual hostility between the two sides gradually calmed down. Mavis also generally knew what was going on from their conversation; so they were actually cooperating with the United Nations. After things cooled down, both sides looked at Momo, wondering what effects this mysterious fruit would have after being eaten.

Momo swallowed the last bit of the fruit and even licked her lips after that.

“How is it?”

“I don’t know; it feels very important, but I don’t feel anything now after eating it,” Momo answered.

This reply made everyone very surprised; there was actually no feeling at all? All of them still thought that… thought that what? That she would gain an elemental body, or become a rubber-man, or become a specter? Bai Yi couldn’t help but hold his head, and suddenly started laughing. Really, why did he think about the anime that he watched long ago? This wasn’t a devil fruit1 from anime!

“It’s fine, the effects probably won’t appear so quickly,” Bai Yi said and looked at Mavis after that.

Mavis saw Bai Yi turning to look at her and said, “Seems like you guys went through a lot of things.”

“En, we really did experience a lot of things.” Bai Yi nodded. “What happened here, how did it become like this?”

“Not long after you guys left, a battle happened on the outskirts of Wellington and destroyed a few of the buildings there. From then on, a hole seemed to have appeared in the city; the range of the Ghost City gradually shrank, and it returned to being a normal environment. We aren’t able to survive for long in a normal environment, and to prevent ourselves from dissipating, all the souls—including both normal ghosts and vengeful spirits—started to move toward the center,” Mavis started explaining when Bai Yi asked.

Everybody listened very seriously, even Sarelli’s team. This was a rare opportunity to understand something that they had never had a chance to interact with before.

“The closer we moved to the heart of the city, the closer we got the Soul Release Tree. You guys know as well that the Soul Release Tree has a very strong attractive pull on souls. Continuously, both the vengeful spirits and the normal ghosts were gradually sucked into the Soul Release Tree and disappeared completely. After consuming a large number of souls, the Soul Release Tree grew to become more and more lush; but in the end, there was a storm one day, and the tree was struck by a bolt of lightning, forming that huge crack.”

“Ever since then, the Soul Release Tree started to wilt, and we even thought that it was really dying from the lightning strike. However, after a period of time, we realized that a strange fruit had started to grow in the place where the lightning had struck. After that, the range of the Ghost City continued to slowly shrink, more and more souls were sucked into the Soul Release Tree, and the tree wilted more and more while the fruit became more and more ripe, all the way until Momo plucked the fruit from the crack.” Mavis objectively detailed the changes in Wellington, not adding in any of her own opinions so as to avoid bringing them down a wrong track of thought.

“A fruit that grew from absorbing souls?”

“Mutated after getting struck by lightning?”

Mavis smiled and said, “I don’t know.” Although it looked like that on the surface, they couldn’t confirm if it was really true.

Bai Yi nodded. “I see, so many things happened over here.”

“What are you guys doing here then?” Mavis asked.

“The United Nations want the branches of the Soul Release Tree. We discovered that if somebody has this kind of branch on them when they die, the soul will be sucked into the branch of the Soul Release Tree and not dissipate. It is hard to say if revival is possible, but on the small chance that it is, that bunch of people started to value this thing very greatly,” Bai Yi said.

“So it’s like that.”

“But this is a good time too; it’s lucky that we came back in time. From today onward, welcome back to the team Mavis,” Bai Yi said to her.

“En.”

“Then, how do you plan to handle this Soul Release Tree?” Bai Yi asked Sarelli.

“By chopping it down, of course.”

“Be more exact. This tree is more than three meters in diameter and 30 plus meters tall; how much of it can you take away?”

Everyone looked toward the Soul Release Tree. Previously, the United Nations had only wanted some of its branches; after all, the Soul Release Tree was precious beyond words. Even an idiot wouldn’t plan to chop the tree down once and for all. Now, however, the tree had already withered, so they didn’t need to be so apprehensive about that anymore. However, with such a big tree, they definitely couldn’t take everything away in one trip.

Sarelli hesitated for a moment and pointed to a forked tree branch. “Chop off that branch first then.” Although it had wilted, the Soul Release Tree was still very huge. They didn’t have the authority to decide how to handle this precious tree, so they decided to follow the United Nations’ instructions first and bring back just a section.

Bai Yi drew Red Kiss and swung it a few times, the air splitting apart before him. The branch that Sarelli had indicated immediately fell down in three sections, each roughly two meters in length and as thick as a wrist. Due to having wilted, the branch sections didn’t have many twigs left on them now, so they didn’t have to do any other processing on them.

***

Translator’s Notes: