Chapter 19: Brain Vine

As they headed into the forest, there were many strange sights that had appeared.

There were all kinds of strange looking plants that filled the forest, but they weren't useful elixirs that were filled with natural energy, rather they seemed to be aggressive plants that were filled with killing intent.

After driving for a bit, they arrived at a lake that was several kilometers away from the portal.

Once they came to the side of the lake and seeing that it was clear, Boss Gao made the decision to take a break and scout their surroundings.

Hou Zi was the one who was normally in charge of scouting for their team since he moved as fast as a monkey.

Hou Zi called out his Zephyr Hawk to help him scout out the area and when he came back, he reported, "There are human tracks that are leading to the east."

Lin Fan immediately asked, "Are you sure it was the east?"

Hou Zi was confused by this question, but he still answered, "Yep, the tracks were heading east."

"And they were fresh tracks?" Lin Fan added.

"Yes." Hou Zi replied before hesitantly saying, "Didn't you know this already, isn't that why you had us come this way?"

It was only then that Lin Fan had remembered that he was the one that led them this way.

To be honest, he was only following the map that the system had provided, he had no idea what he was doing.

But of course he wouldn't tell everyone else that since that would be embarrassing.

"Of course, I know where we're going based on the animal tracks, but our job is to find the survivors as well." Lin Fan said it was the most natural thing.

He was so confident that Hou Zi didn't have anything to refute it with, he just responded with an "oh".

Boss Gao in the end made the decision to fill up on water by the lake first just in case before heading out, so everyone went over to fill up their bottles.

When they reached the edge of the lake and they let their guard down to get some water, there was a sudden splash as the surface of the water broke.

As soon as they looked up, there was a giant alligator mouth that popped out of the water and two large pairs of teeth snapping at Mei Rou.

Watching the large pairs of teeth approaching, Mei Rou tried to move out of the way, but she tripped on a rock in her rush.

Seeing that Mei Rou was about to be eaten, Boss Gao erupted with all his life energy and charged in front of her, using all that life energy to form a barrier that shattered the teeth of the alligator that was falling on her.

Unbeknownst to him, Mei Rou's face had a faint blush on it as she stared at Boss Gao's back in front of her.

Erupting with all his life energy had exhausted Boss Gao, but the other members of the team had all quickly reacted to get in front of them to protect the two.

In truth, the alligator was only in the beginning Silver Realm, so it was no threat to them unless it caught them off guard like it had just done.

When Yang Xin was about to charge in to cut down this alligator, Lin Fan shouted, "Wait, don't rush in."

Lin Fan's soul had been nourished by the sun in his dantian, so his spiritual senses were much stronger than what would be normal at his recorded level.

Lin Fan's spiritual senses had completely wrapped around the alligator and he found that there was actually a vine that was piercing into the back of the alligator's head. He continued stretching his senses along this vine, but once he reached a certain point, there was another spiritual sense that clashed against his, blocking him from spreading any further.

Once he knew that there was something controlling it, Lin Fan immediately said, "Circle up! There's something controlling the alligator and it might be controlling other beasts as well!"

When he said this, there was a roar that came from the forest around them, as several other beasts also jumped out to attack their group.

Hou Zi and Zhuang Da were the ones to react the fastest, jumping into the cars and driving them in between the beasts and them to create a barrier, trying to slow their approach.

While the beasts were weak, they were outnumbered four to one, so it would definitely be a hard battle if they had to fight and Boss Gao was already weakened.

While they were feeling despair, Lin Fan was actually quite calm.

He had assumed that the soldiers sent would be much stronger, that was why he was being cautious, but seeing that the strongest one was only at the Silver 4 Level, it meant that this was the highest level beast that the mastermind could control.

Lin Fan had already found its general location through sending his spiritual senses along the vine, so the mastermind had to know that it was in trouble, making it send its army at Lin Fan's group while it escaped.

But what it never expected was that Lin Fan was much stronger than it had expected.

As the beasts were about to slam into their vehicles, Lin Fan suddenly sent out a punch that created a giant gust of wind and life energy, slamming into the beasts and stopping them in their tracks.

During this, Hou Zi and Zhuang Da were bracing for impact, but they found that impact never came in the end.

When they opened their eyes, they saw that all the beasts were lying on the ground unconscious just a few feet away from them.

They were both completely confused by what had just happened, but turning back to the others, they saw that everyone else had a shocked look on their faces while staring at Lin Fan who was holding an arm up in a punching posture.

The God Tier Cultivation Technique was clearly more special than other normal cultivation techniques, it allowed Lin Fan to freely control his aura and life energy at a level that normal people at his level couldn't do.

It was actually something that only a Legendary Expert would learn after stabilizing in their realm!

Lin Fan knew that it wasn't over, so ignoring everyone else who was just standing there looking stunned, Lin Fan quickly ran off to chase after the mastermind.

But the mastermind was already prepared for Lin Fan when he came.

Lin Fan carefully approached the hollowed out tree that the mastermind had been hiding in, but all that he found was an explosive seed that blew up right in his face.

All the explosion could do was blow back his hair and turn his skin a bit dark, but other than that, Lin Fan was completely fine.

When the explosion was over and Lin Fan could hear again, he heard something that seemed like snickering that came from above him.

When Lin Fan went to look up, all he saw were a few more seeds dropping down on him that came from a snake that seemed to be made of vines.

He only caught a short glimpse of that snake before the seeds exploded, obscuring his vision and his hearing.

By the time the smoke cleared, the snake was already gone and all that was left were a few feathers.

Picking up the feathers, Lin Fan knew that the vine snake had escaped through putting a parasite into a Gale Oriole, which was one of the fastest beasts in the Silver Realm, meaning that Lin Fan had no chance of catching it.

Based on the appearance of the vine snake, Lin Fan was sure that what attacked him was a Brain Vine, but the actions from earlier confused him.

While Brain Vines was a beast that possessed high intelligence, it wasn't at the level of being equal to humans yet and that Brain Vine was clearly only in the low Silver Realm since that was the highest level it could control.

There was only one explanation for this, the Brain Vine that he had encountered was definitely one that had mutated and gained increased intelligence!

When he thought of this, Lin Fan really wanted to catch this Brain Vine since mutated monsters were leagues above normal beasts. However, the Brain Vine had already escaped, so he had no choice but to head back to Boss Gao's group.

Once he came back, it seemed like Boss Gao wanted to ask something, but he didn't say a single thing about this in the end since he knew that everyone had their secrets.

Once they had rested for a bit, they set off again, heading in the direction of the human tracks.