Chapter 67: Lips and nips are cold!
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
The kicked away Heinrich immediately reacted, rolled twice on the ground and immediately pulled out the light gun he carried and fired at the vine. The light bullets from the middle of the vine directly broke it, a section of the vine twitched a few times, spread rigidly on the ground incapacitated. But the other one seemed to be enraged as if it rose up in the air and lunged straight at Heinrich. More brown-green vines emerged from the weeds and moss and darted towards the two humans in the forest.
Lin Xu tightened his grip on the cosmic alloy dagger, and turned sideways and backwards sensitively to avoid the vines’ attack, and raised his hand to stab the vine. But the special alloy dagger only left a shallow mark on the surface of the plant.
Lin Xu had to get close to the vine but his dagger attack was an ineffective blow, so he grabbed the advantage to distance himself from the vine. In the next moment, Lin Xu’s fingertips stabbed out sharp long nails, a flash of silver light, cut off the vine that had reached his nose.
“Use the light energy sword! Activate protection mode!” In the midst of the chaos, Lin Xu shouted at Heinrich.
The power exoskeleton in its normal state was a set of hollow braces that supported human movement. When the protection mode was turned on, the electromagnetic barrier between the braces wrapped around the body and could resist external attacks to a certain extent.
The vines were electrified by the electromagnetic barrier on Heinrich’s exoskeleton, and Heinrich took advantage of this breathlessness to draw his light-energy sword and cut through the dry, yellowing vine branches in front of him.
“I’ll go find the source.”
Heinrich looked up. He saw that Lin Xu was running deeper into the forest with his light energy sword in one hand and his claws shredding the vines in the other.
Lin Xu discarded the dead vines without hesitation and ran along the branches, while Heinrich used his light gun to point blankly clear the small vines that inadvertently approached Lin Xu and cautiously approached Lin Xu’s direction.
The vines seemed to have senses and pain, and after several branches were cut off by Lin Xu, the remaining branches dripped foul-smelling poisonous juice from their incisions. Suddenly, the number of vines tripled at once, dancing furiously from head to toe around Lin Xu like a tightening birdcage.
Lin Xu gritted his teeth and used his brute force to break the light energy sword power supply, a burst of very strong bright light flashed and then the flames rose into the air, engulfing Lin Xu and the vines like a tidal wave.
“Lin Xu!” Heinrich’s heart tightened and he instantly rushed forward, but before he could run to the edge of the flames, a black shadow swooped out of the flames, straight over Heinrich and rolled twice on the ground.
The burned exoskeleton stuck to the electromagnetic barrier, and the current lost its stability, constantly emitting a stabbing and penetrating burst.
“Lin Xu!” Heinrich ignored the heat and hugged the figure that darted out of the flames.
“Quickly… Let go.” Lin Xu said with difficulty, “The heat…”
He rolled out of Heinrich’s arms and the first thing he did was to remove the red-hot power exoskeleton from his body. The heat made the metal material brittle and soft, and Lin Xu’s brute force pulled the exoskeleton straight out of shape, and Heinrich immediately went up and removed the exoskeleton in the normal order of donning and doffing.
Lin Xu held on to the trunk of the tree, gasping for breath, but the heat in his hands directly baked the bark and turned up, he could only resentfully withdraw his hand.
The mutant vine was still burning, its body was two meters wide, and the root system was immeasurably deep. Lin Xu secretly used his psychic powers to control the range of the flames to avoid spreading to innocent plants.
Heinrich handed Lin Xu a jug of water and looked him up and down to make sure Lin Xu was not hurt after walking through the flames. The temperature control system of the isolation suit could not stop the heat of the explosion of the light energy material, but even Lin Xu’s exposed facial skin showed no signs of burns.
Heinrich was a little puzzled, but also kind of put his mind down, as if he could calmly accept everything that appeared on Lin Xu.
“I asked Arnold to bring fire-fighting equipment to handle the follow-up.” Heinrich said.
If the fire was allowed to spread, this pristine forest might have to suffer on the first day humans set foot on Earth’s home again.
“Yeah.” Lin Xu nodded and took a sip of water.
Arnold, who had received the message, dutifully and willingly returned to the lander to pick up the special firefighting equipment and head back into the forest.
Heinrich squatted down, picked up a severed vine corpse and examined it, “Do all plants on ancient Earth possess autonomous attack characteristics?”
“No, this is a mutant species.”
If all the plants had attack characteristics, the planet would not be a warm home planet, but a purgatory for the weak and the strong.
“The vast majority of plants are normal and cannot move on their own.” Lin Xu said, seeing Heinrich rummage through his backpack and pull out an empty test tube to collect the vines. But the infected, radiation-mutated plants in the apocalypse could.
After Lin Xu confirmed that the body of the mutated vine was completely burned away by the high temperature, Arnold turned on the intelligent program of the fire extinguishing robot to carry out the extinguishing work. Instead of staying where they were, the three of them returned to the halfway point of the mountain where the lander was located and re-sent an unmanned probe to open an all-round search of the nearby mountains to find out whether there were still hidden problems of mutated plants and animals present.
Heinrich sent a message to Zhou Pingbo, who was back in the mission organization, asking him to keep an eye out for possible mutant plants and animals, and sent him two test tubes as samples.
Time passed quickly, the sun was setting, the western sky was painted a rose color, and the east was a magnificent blue.
Morning and evening shadows under the sky seemed to turn deep blue, Ryan and Cassandra received the news and rushed back. Ryan also carried a pile of fruits of plants in his arms, letting go of the pile in the middle of the dining table.
Cassandra was upset and Arnold spat, “If I hadn’t stopped him from thinking about eating wild animals on an unexplored planet, he would have been ready to shoot a rabbit.”
At this very moment, Ryan nibbled on the nutrient solution and artificial solid food with an innocent expression, asking Lin Xu which of these fruits he could eat.
Lin Xu pressed his temples, looked at Ryan, and then looked at the fruits piled up on the table. He used a Geiger counter to get close enough to confirm that the fruits bred from the highly radioactive soil could be ingested by interstellar humans before casually fingering a moment of lime green fruit to Ryan.
Ryan asked, “Do I need to peel it?”
“You can.”
Ryan leapt to clean the fruit, without removing the outer skin, and bit into it.
“Help… Help…” It only took one bite for the fruit to cause Ryan to pick at the table and shake his entire body. The lime green plums made his whole face wrinkle with sourness, his eyelids trembled and he couldn’t break free. It was so painful, Ryan still managed to swallow the flesh.
Cassandra glanced sideways, “Is it that sour?”
“Mm-hmm.” Ryan nodded frantically, his eyes wrapped in tears from the acid, and looked over at Lin Xu, and Heinrich looked at him like this and pressed his lips together.
Lin Xu said, “… It’s only March, the plums are not ripe, and they are indeed sour.”
Heinrich gave him an unexpected look, he didn’t expect Lin Xu to be teasing the big-hearted Ryan, but he still looked as calm as usual.
After the couple settled their dinner with artificial fast food, the returned unmanned probe showed no other unusual plants and animals in the area, and the intelligent fire-fighting robot returned automatically, reporting that all the fire spots had been cleared.
Lin Xu asked Heinrich if he wanted to go for a walk.
“Right now?”
“Yeah, I’d like to go back to the lake.”
Heinrich had to lead Lin Xu to change into a new isolation suit and power exoskeleton, checking by the way to make sure Lin Xu was not burned by the hot flames.
A dark blue sky was falling, but it was not too late. The missing moon was hanging in the east, and the moonstone ring, which was dull and inconspicuous in the universe, was surrounding Earth like a million pearls and gems, reflecting a soft brightness.
Lin Xu told Heinrich not to fly the craft, and he followed the footprints left by Ryan and Cassandra in the mountain path to find the woods where Ryan picked the fruit.
In his memory, the hill outside the base was a commercial orchard before the pattern came, but then it was all deserted, and the fruit trees that had survived until now were of unknown wild varieties for many generations.
It was still spring, but after Earth’s overall temperature had risen, the flowering period of most fruit trees had ended, and the scattered old trees were each hanging fruit on their branches, without fertilizers and chemicals and artificial selection, the fruits were not large, and there were many notches pecked by birds and animals.
The night breeze was soft, Lin Xu bypassed the plum and peach trees whose fruit was still green, stopped at the cherry tree, broke the fruit down with the branches, and returned to Heinrich, who had already washed the cherries with his water control powers secretly, in a blind corner of his vision.
“These are cherries, ripening much earlier.” Lin Xu handed out the branch, and the cherry on it swayed like a bell.
The small pinkish-orange cherries with soft, easily broken skin were crushed in Heinrich’s isolated gloved fingers, giving off a ripe, sweet and sour smell.
Heinrich threw down the accidentally broken cherry and lowered his eyes to pick another one, but Lin Xu suddenly withdrew the cherry branch without letting Heinrich touch it. Heinrich looked over. The next moment, a cool breath suddenly covered the corner of his lips.
Lin Xu plucked a cherry with his teeth and brought it to Heinrich’s lips, the facial membrane of the isolation suit was able to melt into each other when they touched, allowing both sides to touch each other’s lips and skin.
Lin Xu leaned over Heinrich’s shoulder and pushed the red cherry through, his tongue and teeth splitting the flesh in half, the pit and stalk being deftly rolled back by him.
Lips and cherry flesh were cold. The fruity acidity gave Heinrich’s mind a jolt. Lin Xu’s lips had a sweetness to them, but the cherry was solidly tart.
The green plums that Ryan had been tricked into eating by Lin Xu didn’t look too good, but now the cherries in front of him were all red and confusing. Who would have thought it would be so sour?
Heinrich opened his eyes and saw that Lin Xu had indeed retreated to a normal distance, surrounded by the moonlight, his expression was light, and when he met Heinrich’s eyes, he said, smilingly, “You’ve tasted the cherries too, let’s go?”
Heinrich has always had an inexplicable animosity towards alpha people close to Lin Xu, sometimes Heinrich didn’t even notice it himself, but Lin Xu’s eyes always fell on Heinrich, it was hard not to notice this. This was an alpha’s physiological instinct that was hard to change.
Heinrich paused, suddenly wrinkled his eyebrows and eyelids, and then stiffly wrinkled his nose, his handsome features distorted by this hard-squeezed expression, “Sour…”
Lin Xu froze for a moment, then raised his hand to flatten the folds on Heinrich’s face, “Don’t be like that silly child.” Unripe plums were sour, bitter and astringent, but ripe cherries were deliciously sour. After breaking the expression on Heinrich’s face, Lin Xu grabbed Heinrich and continued on his way.
“Where do you want to go?” Heinrich realized Lin Xu hadn’t just brought him out to taste the sour fruit.
“To find that mutant vine.”
The serious thing he came out to do was to get the crystal nucleus of the A-Class mutant plant back, and by the way, to see if there were more crystal nuclei in stock in the giant vine’s house.
Lin Xu could already confirm that this was the same Earth he had lived on. In the afternoon in the forest, the crystal nucleus crushed by Heinrich’s foot had awakened the A-Class mutant vine, which seemed to be sleeping until then. In the range explored by the unmanned probe so far, only this one sleeping mutant plant was encountered.
Lin Xu had to recall a hypothesis from the apocalypse. The mutated plants and animals, zombies, in addition to having the living as a target, also hunted for the same kind to obtain evolutionary upgrades. Back then, it was just to isolate the contact between humans and mutants, waiting for the mutants internal self-killing to be exhausted, so that humans could sit back and enjoy a peaceful and safe world again.
In the current situation, even if the mutants killed each other, the last remaining advanced mutants could not die completely, their tenacious life force and long life span was sufficient to support it for thousands of years. But humans, who were completely cut off from contact with the outside world, could not wait for thousands of years.
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