Global Evolution

“I am sorry for your loss,” Chang said. Then, he glanced at the direction where Qing Shui and Jing had gone.

......

Qing Shui and Jing were aiming for the general hospital, which was the nearest hospital in this area. If they could find the solution anywhere, it would be there.

Carrying Jing on the back, Qing Shui and Jing didn’t talk to each other on the way to the hospital; in almost half an hour, they finally arrived at their destination. It had a huge plaque on the gate of the courtyard, and if they went close enough, they would clear see a few characters in the neon light box “Kaifeng General Hospital”.

“Here we are.” Qing Shui put down Jing, then glimpsed at the extinguished neon light box, and took a quick look over the abandoned hospital. He asked Jing in confusion, “Can you detect any dangerous organisms?”

“Not at all,” Jing shook her head.

“That’s strange...” Qing Shui rubbed on his chin and asked again “Are there any humans?”

“There aren’t any either,” Jing shook her head again.

“There must be something wrong.” Qing Shui looked around the courtyard and said, “There should be groups of people residing in the hospital, given the fact that there is a large inventory of medication. Even if the “Deadly Evolution” reduced the population significantly, it still shouldn’t be as lifeless as it is now. And there aren’t any traces of mutated organisms... isn’t it weird to you?”

“I have no idea; we just need to be extra careful.” Jing closed her eyes to sense the surroundings again, she took a deep breath and confirmed, “There is nothing here.”

“Okay, you’ve never made any mistakes in detection before. Let’s be more cautious and go slower. If anything shows up, we’ll turn back immediately.”

“Okay.”

They walked into the courtyard cautiously as they made up their mind. Every two steps, Jing would scout around – but still nothing was found.

As Qing Shui’s vision was not different from a normal person, he could only see within 3 meters. In his world, the surroundings were bloody red, and except for where he was standing, he was almost completely blind to this world.

Although the fog was a great barrier, walking along on the traces of the gravel pavement had helped them orient themselves. It was hard for them to miss the direction even though their vision was bad. Therefore, when walking on the “nature-made pavement”, it was relatively unimpeded, uncannily quiet and unexpectedly safe. They arrived at the center of the courtyard – it was strangely smooth.

“Hold on.” Qing Shui stopped after they got to the center, “There must be something unusual happening here, I am extremely uncomfortable with this freaking silence. We should go back.”

“We can.” Jing didn’t dispute with him, “But what about the formalin?”

“We can go to other hospitals instead of this one; there are quite a few smaller ones nearby.” As Qing Shui said so, he patted on Jing’s head to beckon her to return.

At the same moment that his left foot left the ground, he realized his feet were nailed to the ground; he immediately looked down under panic and found numerous root-like vines sneakily and vigorously wrapping around his ankles, and the fact that they kept twining up to his legs had almost made Qing Shui scream.

Without a second thought, Qing Shui pulled out the knife that he always carried and began to cut the vines. But not even his best attempt seemed effective – those pliable and soft looking vines were tough as steel.

In three or four seconds, the crazy vines had wrapped Qing Shui up to his waist and stopped growing. Jing was not exempt from this sneaky attack either.

“What’s wrong?’ Qing Shui was obviously flustered and panicked.

“I don’t know; I didn’t detect anything at all.” Jing was even more terrified, and the ineffectiveness of her ability on this plant made her feel frightened.

The strange atmosphere sublimated completely until a voice spoke in the air.

“Hello, human.”

A normal sentence that was usually used by aliens invading Earth, the voice was old as if it was an echo in a tree hole. The language it used was Mandarin, thus the two understood what it was saying.

“Who are you?” Qing Shui looked around nervously, and saw a giant hazy shadow.

The shadow was towering, and Qing Shui couldn’t even estimate how tall and wide it was, he couldn’t even know what it looked like. The reason why he saw the shadow was because it blocked the sunshine on the top of his head, otherwise he wouldn’t know something had approached him.

“Hello human, I am a tree.” The shadow moved like a ghost without any sound. When it stood close enough to Qing Shui and Jing, it completely blocked the light. It spoke again, “If I have to explain in the human language, I am a willow tree, a mutated one.”

“Willow tree?” Qing Shui suddenly thought of those thick and stout roots he had seen a week ago in the sewer; those roots covered the whole underground world and he even thought that was a “World Tree”. This made him even more curious and skeptical about this world. He still remembered he brought a souvenir – a small section of a thin root, it was in his pocket now.

“Yes, I am a willow.” The gigantic shadow spoke again. “You have met me before. You still have part of my roots, don’t you?”

The hollow sound continued to echo around Qing Shui and Jing, and then Qing Shui saw a twig extend over in the air in a slow pace. The twig kept reaching until it slid into his pocket, then it rolled out that piece of parched root.

“It used to belong to me.” As the shadow spoke, the twig rolled up tightly and that piece of root was crushed “But I don’t need it anymore.”

“Are you really a tree?” Seeing that twig was as flexible as a human finger and hearing the human-like voice, even though Qing Shui was knowledgeable in biology and got used to seeing all sorts of strange plants and animals, he still could not believe these were facts.

“Yes, I am a willow tree and it is not beneficial for me to lie to you.” The voice in the air sounded patient.

“Then how do you know the human language?” Qing Shui yelled, as if using this hysterical voice could cover this crazy fact. “Even though some organisms gained intelligence through evolution, it is still impossible to learn the human language in such a short period of time! Alright! Let’s just assume you have learned it; it is too hard for me to believe you understand every single word profoundly... The way you speak and your tone is nothing like a beginner!”

“You are like...You are like a living human!”

“That is because essentially, my wisdom is that of a human’s; and naturally, the language I speak is the human language.” While the hazy shadow was explaining, a twig dropped from above, but it was dozens of times thicker than the last one and looked extremely complex – it was like a precision instrument consisting of a twig combined with numerous thin branches.

In this twig combination, some branches were as thick as an index finger and the thinnest ones were finer than human hair. All of them wrapped around a football size of ellipsoid covered with a thin transparent resin film; within the ellipsoid, there was a human brain.

It was a fresh human brain. The blood vessels seemed to be delivering blood to parts of the brain as if they were functioning perfectly, and they were also fused with those hair-like red willow branches, which were constantly transporting blood and minerals to the brain.