Developing Superpowers in Another World

Chapter 341 – Total Annihilation

 

“I’ll go down with you,” Xi Chunzhi said, extinguishing the sparks in her hand. She looked at Huo and said, “Nutrients underground are limited. Their growth will be restricted. As long as those above sever the vines quickly enough, they won’t have the strength to deal with anything underground.”

Tu Ran tossed the laser gun to Xi Chunzhi. “You stay up here. I’ll go down with Huo.”

The underground space was narrow, and it was the lair of these vines. There were too many uncertainties and significant dangers. Her abilities were stronger than Xi Chunzhi’s, giving her a higher probability of returning safely.

Xi Chunzhi wanted to say more, but Tu Ran had already pulled out the remaining laser guns from her space and placed them in Xi Chunzhi’s hands. There were four laser guns in total, all fully charged, which would last for a while.

Huo watched in amazement as Tu Ran seemingly conjured laser guns out of nowhere, her curious gaze scanning her surroundings.

“The surface is in your hands,” Tu Ran said as she patted Xi Chunzhi’s shoulder with a serious expression. “Our lives depend on you now.”

Xi Chunzhi didn’t argue further. She lowered her head and began adjusting the laser gun. “This is my first time using a laser gun. Little vines, let’s see how my marksmanship holds up.”

Even though it was her first time using one, her movements were impressively skilled. A beam of laser shot out from the barrel, severing a large cluster of vines.

Tu Ran, who had intended to teach her: …Well, as expected of a sharpshooter.

She retracted her gaze and gripped Huo’s hand. “Let’s go.”

Huo nodded, concentrating energy in her feet.

The ground beneath Tu Ran’s feet gave way, and she and Huo vanished from the surface.

Xi Chunzhi stayed behind at their departure point, holding a laser gun and sweeping it in a spinning arc. She indiscriminately attacked everything on the ground, including the Xie family’s bodyguards, who had been drawn over by the commotion.

They were all sliced cleanly in half.

A death zone formed around Xi Chunzhi, with bright red blood mixing with the green sap of the vines. Human corpses and the smooth bodies of the vines lay together on the ground. They hadn’t adapted to the sudden death; even though they had fallen, they still twitched.

The entire ground looked as though it was covered by a layer of writhing maggots. Xi Chunzhi suppressed her nausea and continued firing.

Underground, Tu Ran and Huo moved quickly toward the roots. At first, they were not attacked, but as they got closer to the root junction, the vines detected their presence and began launching violent attacks against them.

A vine emerged from the soil, nearly as thick as an adult’s waist. Its tip was covered in a layer of fuzz that looked soft at first glance. However, as soon as Tu Ran wrapped her arms around it, both of her hands were instantly hit with a sharp, numbing pain.

Each hair on the vine was as sharp as a steel needle.

Tu Ran gritted her teeth and held the vine’s head in place to prevent it from advancing further, her palms pressed tightly against its surface.

“Mountain collapse, earth crack!”

A crack the width of her little finger rapidly spread. The exposed tip of the vine was disintegrated, and the part still embedded in the soil quickly split apart. The crack spread all the way to the root junction, destroying the entire root that the vine was connected to.

A single root could sprout many vines. When the root died, the vines above would lose their supply of nutrients and die immediately.

On the surface, Xi Chunzhi quickly noticed that some of the vines, after being severed by the laser beams, no longer grew. The remaining ones gradually turned from vibrant green to dark green, then yellow, and finally blackened and withered.

Xi Chunzhi had a rough idea that Tu Ran and Huo had encountered the vines underground, so she focused even more on eliminating the remaining vines on the surface.

Underground, after eliminating one vine, Huo quickly led Tu Ran away. They advanced a little further, only to encounter a second vine.

The vine attacked from the side, emerging from the ground and immediately curling toward Huo, as if it knew that Huo was the most dangerous factor.

Indeed, if Huo were killed, no matter how powerful Tu Ran was, she would be unable to progress forward.

“You’re quite clever,” Tu Ran sneered coldly, grabbing the vine with one hand. She didn’t pay any mind to the pain in her palm from the thorns.

The vine’s attempt to strike at Huo was forcefully halted.

It thrashed violently, trying to break free from Tu Ran’s grip, continuously deforming its tip, attempting to get closer to Huo.

As long as the sharp point of the vine pierced a human body, the person would experience temporary paralysis in their nervous system—at best, their movements would slow down and their reactions would be delayed; at worst, they would fall unconscious.

Huo took a step back, distancing herself from the twisted green creature in front of her.

The vine pursued, but was quickly pulled back by Tu Ran, who was gripping its neck.

“Do I have such a low presence?” Tu Ran said coldly, though she knew the creature couldn’t understand her. “If you want to stretch your neck that badly, I’ll satisfy you.”

With that, she yanked hard, forcing the vine’s entire body to stretch forward.

Since vines grew rapidly and had elasticity, the small length Tu Ran had pulled out was quickly compensated for. The vine didn’t snap as Tu Ran had expected.

Tu Ran wasn’t discouraged. She freed one hand and grabbed Huo’s arm. “Let’s keep going.”

Huo glanced at the deformed vine clutched under Tu Ran’s arm and then looked up at her determined eyes. She understood what she meant.

For a moment, he felt a strange, unspoken sympathy for the vine in its contorted state.

But it was just a fleeting thought. Her body had already begun to move through the soil, following Tu Ran’s command.

No matter how elastic the vine’s body was, it couldn’t withstand such a rapid pull. It snapped with a sharp crack, like a helpless rubber band reaching the limit of its stretch.

The head that Tu Ran had gripped slumped limply, and the remaining body dragged along the ground, scraping against the dirt.

Huo, who was digging ahead, heard the sound of the body dragging along the ground and could already imagine the brutality of it. She didn’t dare to look back at Tu Ran.

She couldn’t help but recall the rumors she had heard about Tu Ran.

‘Her methods of killing are diverse, and she especially enjoys t*rturing her victims…’

“Why are your hands suddenly so cold?” Tu Ran’s voice echoed in the narrow space.

“Huh? It’s nothing, just a bit cold,” Huo quickly replied, shaking the thoughts from her mind and focusing entirely on leading Tu Ran forward.

With each step they took, a vine would appear to block their path, and Tu Ran swiftly dealt with it. The further they advanced, the harder it became, especially the last twenty meters before reaching the root junction of the vines.

The vines had clearly sensed the danger approaching. They surged toward the two, and the narrow space became filled with vine after vine.

They writhed and twisted, and dirt began to fall from above the tunnel. The passage had a faint tendency to collapse.

Tu Ran took out a curved knife from her space. With her left hand pulled forward by Huo, she wielded the knife in her right, swiftly cutting through the approaching vines.

The air in the cramped space was thick with the pungent smell of green sap oozing from the severed vines.

Huo gave up on the direct route to the root system, as that path was now blocked by the most vines. Instead, she started to weave through the vines, avoiding the densest parts, moving between the gaps of each vine.

With her ability to see through things, it was easy for her to anticipate where the vines were in the soil.

They moved nimbly through the soil, their distance from the root system fluctuating, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, but overall, they were getting closer.

The vines chasing after them had it much worse. In the intricate network of tunnels, sometimes vines from different root systems collided, refusing to give way. They tangled tightly, preventing any of them from moving forward.

If there had been someone above ground with the ability to see through the soil, they would have seen a dense, three-dimensional web formed by the intertwined vines.

And within this web, Tu Ran and Huo continued to weave their way through, making the net even more tightly bound.

“We’re here,” Huo said, staring at a wall in front of her. She could clearly see what lay beyond it.

The mass of root systems was tangled into a dense cluster.

The roots were rapidly growing, sliding against each other, tightening and sometimes loosening, expanding like a pulsating heart. But instead of flesh and blood, it was made up of countless green, worm-like strands, densely packed together.

Tu Ran pulled Huo behind her and faced the wall. She placed her hand against it.

“Get ready,” Tu Ran whispered.

The moment the words left her lips, the thin wall cracked open, and the scene inside was revealed to Tu Ran in its entirety.

Even though Tu Ran had been mentally prepared, the sight before her still sent a chill down her spine.

“Disgusting, soft-bodied creatures!” she exclaimed.

A vein throbbed in her temple, and her arms spread wide. She gathered her immense mental power into an invisible giant hand, enclosing the writhing mass of roots before her.

“Annihilate!”

The rapidly growing vines, in that moment, felt the immense pressure coming from all directions, threatening to tear them apart.

They were powerless to resist, allowing the force to separate every single cell in their bodies. In an instant, they went from being a unified whole to countless individual cells, like being crushed and dissolved by an invisible hand in the cramped space.

Huo witnessed the entire mass of roots disintegrating into dust in an instant, her eyes widening in disbelief.

Her gaze shifted to Tu Ran’s back, and she instinctively took a step back.

How… how is this possible?

This power was terrifying.

On the surface, Xi Chunzhi was about to initiate another wave of annihilation when she saw all the vines stop their attack, rapidly retracting and falling from the air.

They had succeeded!