Chapter 261 – Alien Nest
After swimming for more than an hour, Tu Ran saw a white line in the distance, stretching across the entire horizon and forming a sharp contrast with the dark sea.
It was the coast.
Finally, she was about to reach land! Tu Ran couldn’t contain her joy.
The land looked close, but it actually took nearly another hour before Tu Ran truly reached the shore.
Looking at the scene before her, Tu Ran realized why she could still see the coastline from an hour away.
The beach here was made up of white, smooth stones, varying in size. Each stone emitted a cold white glow of different intensities, illuminating the entire beach as if it were daylight.
The white beach formed the starkest contrast with the black sea.
Tu Ran jumped off the alien creature and waded through the remaining shallow water.
The creature stayed in place, its silver tail fin waving up and down, seeming to take pride in its accomplishment.
Tu Ran paused for a moment; instead of leaving immediately, she took an apple out of her space.
She had prepared this for herself, having stocked a whole box of them. There was no oxygen in the space, so the fruit could be stored for a long time.
“Here you go,” Tu Ran said as she tossed the apple to the creature.
The creature immediately opened its mouth wide and caught the apple with precision. After chewing a few times, it swallowed it.
It licked its lips and gazed longingly at Tu Ran, its ears perked up in excitement. Its tail fin wagged joyfully, and several tentacles at the end of its tail reached out of the water like a peacock spreading its feathers.
“This is the last one,” Tu Ran tossed another apple to it. “Finish it up and go.”
The creature happily swallowed the second apple and joyfully circled in place.
Tu Ran no longer paid attention to the creature and walked toward the interior of the land.
Inside the silvery-white beach was a dense forest, predominantly filled with plants resembling spruce trees.
By this time, it had already turned dark, making it difficult to travel. Tu Ran quickly searched for a suitable large tree.
The temperature in this area was relatively low, and the cold wind roamed freely among the trees. Her thin clothing offered no warmth at all. She took out a set of pre-prepared pioneer combat gear from her space and quickly changed into it. The cold wind was immediately blocked outside, and wearing the fully enclosed combat helmet eased the stiffness in her features.
Climbing swiftly up the tree, Tu Ran sat on a branch, pulled a leaf over her body, and forced herself to fall asleep quickly to restore her strength.
The night forest was very quiet, with only the sound of the wind rustling the leaves.
When dawn began to break, Tu Ran woke up. Glancing at the time, she realized she had only slept for four hours; according to the Federation’s time, it was only ten o’clock in the evening.
Her strength had fully recovered. Tu Ran climbed down from the tree and headed deeper into the forest.
The wind in the woods was weaving through the trees, covering the trunks with a layer of white frost.
As Tu Ran moved through the forest, she paid attention to the surrounding sounds, her goal being to find alien creatures.
Unfortunately, from dawn until dusk, she did not see any trace of alien creatures.
And it had only been six hours from dawn to dusk.
Tu Ran climbed back up a tree again to wait for the night to pass.
She wasn’t tired. After napping for five hours, dawn broke, and Tu Ran seized the time to continue her journey.
Now, without Pangpang to guide her, Tu Ran could only blindly choose a path and walk into the dark.
After having gained nothing yesterday, she observed more carefully today, not wanting to miss any unusual details. Even if the frost on the trees formed different patterns, she would go over to take a closer look.
Unfortunately, she still found nothing.
It seemed that this dense forest had never welcomed any living beings, and she was the first creature to step into this place.
As night fell, Tu Ran climbed up a tree.
Taking out a bottle of nutrient solution from her space, she sipped it slowly while glancing at the time on her communicator. The daylight had lasted only five hours today.
She had been here for two days, and each day the daylight grew shorter, while the nights grew longer, severely affecting her travel speed.
If there came a day when daylight would not appear, she would have to travel at night.
What worried her the most was why she had not encountered a single alien so far. It shouldn’t be this way. According to the survivors’ reports, there were many aliens in the island area, and they came in various types.
There was no way she could have spent two days without encountering even one alien, let alone finding any traces of their existence.
It didn’t make sense.
It felt like the calm before a storm, making it hard for Tu Ran to fall asleep.
On the third day and the fourth day, she still did not encounter any alien.
The location she was in still looked exactly like the dense forest she had seen on the first day, with oversized spruces and pines arranged in a seemingly organized manner, giving her the illusion that she had been stuck in the same place for days.
Indeed, the daylight shrank by an hour each day, while the length of the nights increased. By the fourth day, the sun would only rise for three hours, followed by eight hours of darkness.
After thinking it over, Tu Ran decided to travel at night.
Fully equipped, she focused and maintained a high level of alertness as she began her first nighttime expedition within the Threshold.
She had night vision goggles, which allowed her to clearly observe her surroundings in the dark.
At first, it was very quiet, just like during the day.
That was until an eerie chant floated into Tu Ran’s ears with the cold wind. The ground began to tremble, and the trees shook violently as massive claws wrapped around the trunks, revealing huge heads peering out from behind the trees.
Bears? Lions? Porcupines? And a bunch of nameless beasts.
This group of alien creatures had not mutated much; aside from being able to walk upright, they looked no different from normal species.
They emerged from behind the tree trunks, staring at Tu Ran with glowing green eyes, baring their sharp fangs and claws.
Tu Ran gazed at the countless aliens before her, and more continued to emerge from behind the trunks. She instinctively swallowed hard and took a step back.
There was no need for this.
What she wanted to find was a solitary alien, not a whole nest of them finding her.
Moreover, among the densely packed creatures in front of her, there was only one with an inner core.
[Sense of Direction]
[Description: The owner possesses an absolute sense of direction to the destination they intend to reach, allowing them to arrive at any place they think of without the need for a map.
Level: Primary
Note: All things are nothingness, and feelings are even more so. Please carefully discern between truth and falsehood.
Repeat: please carefully discern between truth and falsehood.]
Tu Ran took a last glance at the final sentence; this was the first time the [Ability Identification] had droned on and repeated itself.
She didn’t think too much about it; she urgently needed this ability. Fixing her gaze on the brown bear that was the owner of the ability, Tu Ran took out a laser gun from her space.
At the moment she retrieved her weapon, the aliens also began their battle for food.
Countless aliens surrounded Tu Ran from all directions, roaring as they lunged toward her.
Tu Ran stood her ground without dodging. She raised her laser gun, pressed the trigger, and a beam of blue light shot forth like a blade of light, sweeping across the oncoming waves of creatures.
The bodies of the aliens were severed at the waist, with their lower halves continuing to run forward for a few steps while their upper halves came to a halt in place, misaligned. Soon, both halves fell to the ground.
