War Truck in the Apocalypse

Chapter 29: Mutated Man-eating Peach

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation

Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The greatest impression the post-apocalyptic world left on Shen Cong was that the sky was very blue, the earth was grayish-yellow, and the monsters’ blood was bright red. 

Practically nothing green had appeared before. 

But at that moment, Shen Cong saw a flash of emerald green. 

‘What is that?’

Shen Cong brought out his binoculars and looked in the direction of the green color. 

It was a tree, and its branches were filled with lush green leaves. There were also bright red fruits, which revealed that it was a peach tree. It grew on the slope of a hill, and it was alone, which was a little miserable. 

‘A peach tree? Wait, a tree? There’s actually a tree in the area?’

Shen Cong came up with three questions in succession, which showed just how shocked he was by the sight. 

It was too incomprehensible that the apocalyptic storm had not destroyed all the plants on the surface of the earth. 

Shen Cong put down his binoculars and did not say anything. He just drove Titan to the hill. Ten minutes later, he parked the truck at the foot of the slope. 

Titan was now less than 100 m away from the peach tree, but Shen Cong was not in a hurry to leave the truck. There was definitely something wrong about the situation, considering the fact that a lone peach tree grew in this place. 

Shen Cong used his binoculars to observe the situation carefully, and he could not help but frown. 

There were not many fruits on the peach tree. It only had around twenty-thirty fruits, but they were all red. All of them were larger than normal canistels too. They were about the size of a baby’s head. 

What made Shen Cong frown was that there were a few animal carcasses sprawled around the empty spot at the bottom of the peach tree. They were already decaying, and the bones on their chests and abdomens were exposed to the world. 

Judging by their shapes, they were monkeys, boars, and snakes. It made the situation a little bizarre. 

Shen Cong continued observing the area with his binoculars, and at the same time, he started making guesses as to why animal carcasses would appear at the foot of the peach tree, along with the reason behind why the peach tree was able to survive. 

It was rather difficult for him to guess how the peach tree managed to survive. 

Perhaps the animals were lured over by the peach tree, and they died while fighting against each other. The peach tree could be the killer too. Shen Cong would never even bother thinking about the possibility of a tree killing a group of animals before the apocalypse, but in the post-apocalyptic world, Activity brought about too many abnormalities, so there was nothing impossible. 

Shen Cong waited for ten minutes. 

Nothing happened. The leaves from the peach tree continued swaying gently in the breeze. 

Shen Cong felt that he could attempt getting close to the peach tree and observe it from a closer distance. He first picked up his slingshot and shot the animal carcasses as well as the branches from the peach tree to test their reaction. 

Nothing happened. 

Hence, he put on Sky Lifting Pillar 1.0, collected his weapons, and jumped off Titan. 

But he was not in a hurry to get closer. Instead, he intended to circumnavigate the slope and reach the hilltop first. He believed that he would be able to see further into the distance if he stood at a high spot, and it would allow him to observe his surroundings in detail. 

He reached the top of the hill five minutes later. 

He was able to see everything straight away. There were barren rocks all around him. Rocky hills rose and fell in the distance. It seemed like the peach tree was the only thing that was filled with life force in this area. 

There was no movement on the ground. The surface of the earth in the area was covered in sturdy rock. The level of danger was reduced because of it. 

With puzzlement and caution, Shen Cong carefully approached the peach tree. When he was still far away, the foul stench from the animal carcasses wafted into his nose. Shen Cong scowled, but he was not bothered by it. He slowly walked until he was under the peach tree. He was afraid that it was a “man-eating tree” that knew how to move, which was why he decided to use a fang javelin to prod the trunk. 

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound was very strange. It sounded as stones had just rammed into each other, but at the same time, it also sounded like metal clashing. 

When Shen Cong saw that the peach tree showed no signs of going berserk, which was the typical sign of a “man-eating tree”, he avoided the animal carcasses and touched the trunk. It was cold to the skin and released waves of Activity radiation. 

The tree had mutated, but it was not strange. If it did not mutate, it would not have had a chance to survive. 

‘The tree bark is very sturdy. When I touch it, I feel as if I’m touching metal. It seems like the tree bark is slowly changing to metal. Is it just like an Activity core within an animal?’

Then, Shen Cong noticed that the leaves were also showing slight signs of changing to metal. He shook a tree branch, and a large number of the tree leaves instantly started making clear, rattling sounds. 

‘A mutated peach tree… Could it grow into a metal peach tree?’ Shen Cong wondered. Activity and metal shared a deep connection with each other, which was why his first reaction was to form this sort of connection.

The tree trunk and tree leaves were showing signs of gradually turning into metal, but Shen Cong did not notice any gradual change from the mutated peaches, which were the size of a baby’s head. They only released a thick wave of Activity radiation, and their magnetic field was far stronger than what Shen Cong was ever able to perceive from the mutated monsters’ Activity cores. 

This was good stuff. All objects filled with Activity were good stuff, but Shen Cong did not know whether he could eat them or if they were poisonous.

He looked at the mutated peach in his hand, then at the decaying carcasses on the ground. Shen Cong felt that the peach would definitely not allow itself to be eaten like a proper fruit. There was a high chance that the animals were poisoned to death after they ate the peaches. 

Shen Cong bent down in front of a monkey’s carcass despite the stench and casually fiddled with it using his fang dagger. 

It appeared to be a mutated monkey, because its size had already changed. Four of its canines were huge, and they seemed to be its Activity core. But Shen Cong could not detect a single hint of Activity from the carcass. It might be because it had died for a long time, but Shen Cong used the dagger to make the monkey carcass turn over. 

He instantly noticed something that made his skin crawl. 

There were a lot of white threads at the spot where the monkey carcass previously lay, and all of them had risen up into the monkey’s rotting pelt. 

They were a type of plant root. 

Shen Cong cast his eyes on the mutated peach tree. This was the only plant in the area. He used an entrenching tool to scoop away the earth that was now like the powdered form of stones, and just as he expected, he saw that the thread-like white roots went through a superficial layer of the earth crust, circumnavigated the cracks of the rocks, and went straight back to the roots of the peach tree. 

The mutated peach tree used this kind of method to absorb Activity from animals!

‘Peach tree, animals, roots, peaches.’

Shen Cong’s imagination instantly came up with a possible reason for this situation. The peach tree used its peaches, which were full of Activity, to lure mutated animals over. Once eaten, they poisoned the mutated animals, and the creatures turned into fertilizer for the peach tree. 

Shen Cong flipped over the other mutated animals’ carcasses, and he found the thread-like white tree roots coming from the peach tree under all of the carcasses. 

‘If that’s the case, I can’t eat these peaches. All the mutated animals died within three meters of the peach tree. It’s clear that they’re very poisonous.”

Shen Cong looked at the large red peach in his hand with a slightly regrettable expression. The extremely thick wave of Activity radiation was incredibly alluring. 

He lacked Activity right now, since Titan’s Activity had been reduced a few times, and he was never able to make it rise again. This also meant that Titan could not give him a lot of Activity to strengthen his body, so his physical constitution remained at the strength of two bulls. He could not improve at a swift rate. 

‘If I can keep it for a long period of time and use it as poison that takes the disguise of a harmless fruit…’ Shen Cong was a rather nimble thinker. He quickly remembered the prehistoric crocodile-like creature that once bullied him. 

If he ran into it again, he could just throw a few poisoned peaches at it, and all he would need to do after was to collect the carcass. 

Shen Cong might find it regrettable that he could not eat the poisoned peaches, but he still decided to pick all of them up, though he only ASSUMED that they were poisonous. Before he investigated them and became certain of it, he could not be sure that they were poisonous. Even if he managed to determine that they were such, he could still use them for something, so they were good stuff. 

But Shen Cong did not immediately pick the peaches. He intended to research the mutated peach tree for a time being, because he had finally run into a plant that managed to survive through the apocalypse. This was a chance for him to gain more knowledge regarding Activity. 

Crack.

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Shen Cong used his fang dagger to cut off one of the twigs from the mutated peach tree. Then, he used his entrenching tool to dig out a section of the thread-like tree roots before he returned to Titan’s truck compartment with the poisonous peach, twig, and roots. 

His research began. 

He first cut off a small piece of the peach and put it in a glass bottle. He then lured out a green-headed fly from the mesh food cover and put it in the glass bottle. 

He waited for the green-headed fly to eat the fruit so that he could see whether it would die. 

The first test to check whether the peach was poisonous began.