From Apocalypse Boss to Farmer: My Vegetables Make Me Stronger!-Chapter 213 - 204: Things Are a Bit Complicated

Apparently, the hatch of Unknown No. 1 had been opened, but it was completely empty inside.

And the members of the base’s Guard Team who were originally in charge of guarding the scene had all met with accidents... Each of the factions involved in the matter assumed the others were responsible for the foul play.

Speculation, probing, suspicion, political maneuvering... Once a certain balance was broken, incidents like this would likely only become more and more frequent.

And Gu Xi wasn’t exactly a patient person.

Li Ming was faintly worried.

Ye Junhan listened in silence, occasionally gazing into the distance.

Meanwhile, He Yue and Xu Hai exchanged a look.

Neither of them was a fool. Aside from preventing their departure, the green wall encircling the camp showed no signs of wanting to attack them.

The thing outside the wall, however, was another story.

Clearly, both men had received news from their superiors—that thing was out of control!

With the situation unclear, the higher-ups wanted them to cease their infighting and quickly find the reason it had lost control.

...

Gu Xi returned to the camp in the dead of night.

By then, the entire camp was silent. The green wall that had previously encircled it had long since vanished, and the superpower users it had trapped had been released. Now, they were all lying in rows in the medical area.

Ye Nan and Tuan Fugui had examined them and found nothing physically wrong. The reason they remained unconscious was that their superpowers had been completely drained...

This made He Yue and Xu Hai’s hearts pound with increasing fear.

It could use a Devouring Superpower and control plants... This immediately made them think of a certain terrifying entity.

But if the wall was also its handiwork... that meant this was about more than just a simple loss of control.

Xu Hai even suspected the creature had evolved a certain level of intelligence, which was why it had deliberately used plants to trap them.

This was clearly far more terrifying than it just being out of control.

After this realization, neither man had any appetite for scheming against the other. They each gathered their confidants and huddled off to the side to confer.

As a result, when Gu Xi returned, the entire camp was silent, the atmosphere inexplicably cold and tense.

Gu Xi arched an eyebrow slightly, looking at Qi Xiang, who was sitting by the fire. "What’s wrong?"

"Gu Xi, you’re back." Qi Xiang turned to look at her and lowered her voice. "I think I discovered one of Shen Yue’s secrets..."

But the situation was a little complicated, and since you and Wei Heng weren’t around, I didn’t dare make a peep. I could only hide off to one side.

"What secret?" Gu Xi sat down beside her, tilted her head, and asked calmly.

Qi Xiang leaned in closer. "Earlier, I noticed something was off with Xu Hai and He Yue’s people, so I went to find Shen Yue... but I ended up seeing him and Ye Nan slip into the woods together... very secretively..."

Gu Xi was speechless. ’What kind of secret is that? It just sounds like a piece of juicy gossip.’

Qi Xiang glanced left and right, then lowered her voice again. "I saw her give that box to Shen Yue. You know, *that* box... the one for ’planting seedlings’."

’Ye Nan gave it to Shen Yue?’

’A very wise move.’

Gu Xi gave a calm nod.

Qi Xiang paused, taken aback. ’Why doesn’t Gu Xi seem surprised at all?’

After a moment’s thought, she decided to set the matter aside for now and asked instead, "Gu Xi, you were just...?"

"I went to confirm a few things." Gu Xi looked up into the distance. The sky was just beginning to lighten before dawn, and from afar, the mountains seemed to be wreathed in mist.

The messages the little thief had sent her were rapid and vague. It took her a long time to understand what it was trying to express—that once, long ago, it had seen her from a distance.

To be precise, it had sensed her presence.

But then one day, she suddenly vanished.

And it, due to a lack of energy, had fallen into a deep slumber.

It wasn’t until this time, when it sensed her presence again, that it awakened...

Gu Xi felt things were a little complicated.

The unknown creature in the deep pit, the captive mutants, and the hybridized plants and animals...

During the thirty years she had been asleep, far too many things had happened without her knowledge.

So clearly, even if humanity had now solved the food crisis, that hadn’t made the world a better place.

’What a pain.’

Gu Xi lowered her gaze, tossing the dead branch in her hand into the fire.

Fortunately, it seemed that ordinary people were unaware of these things. In other words, these problems were still confined to a very small number of people and hadn’t spread. As long as the source could be found, the problems weren’t impossible to handle.

Gu Xi considered her options. As things stood, the easiest problem to solve was actually the most recent one: the Hybrid Monsters.

After all, a technology like plant and animal gene fusion had to be quite advanced, and it was likely only in the hands of a few people. If she could find them and destroy the original research data, the matter would be more or less resolved. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

As for the Hybrid Monsters that had already been produced... judging by the military’s response, they were already prepared. Those special Superpower Bullets were the best proof of that.

Moreover, the fact that the research institute’s people took the tail back to "plant a seedling" also indirectly confirmed that there weren’t many finished specimens of this creature.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have cared so much about a single piece of a tail.

The number of finished products was small, and the military was prepared. So, the most important thing now was to find the source—the people who had mastered the technology and the original research data.

Gu Xi turned her head to look at Qi Xiang. A man like Dr. Qi would never let secrets slip casually. But a few years ago, he had inadvertently told Qi Xiang about this...

And a few years ago... was precisely when Qi Xiang had been openly pursuing Ye Junhan.

’Qi Xiang—Ye Junhan—the military. Perfect. The pieces connect.’

In other words, Dr. Qi, the key to this breakthrough, had probably been under the military’s covert surveillance for a long time.

Following that lead, with the military’s capabilities, it shouldn’t be difficult to find the people who had mastered the gene-fusion technology.

Gu Xi guessed that the military hadn’t made a move because their targets were in a special location and protected by powerful experts. The military didn’t want to alert them, and that’s why it had been delayed until now.

Fortunately, killing was one skill she had never allowed to get rusty.

Gu Xi breathed a sigh of relief and reached out to poke Sprout.

She could probably resolve this matter after she had a chat with Shen Yue—it was impossible that he didn’t know something, otherwise Ye Nan wouldn’t have given him the "seedling" box.

Compared to the Hybrid Monsters, however, the matter of the mutants was a bit more troublesome.

After all, keeping mutants captive wasn’t exactly a high-tech endeavor... Gu Xi wasn’t sure how many factions were actually involved.

The only saving grace was that the population census had been handled well in recent years. Wei Heng had once said that every person showing signs of mutation was officially on record.

No matter how powerful or deceptive some factions were, able to hide their actions from the world, Unit 176 was still an official organization. As long as they investigated seriously, they were bound to find some clues.

Besides, mutants weren’t that easy to control. The slightest carelessness could result in a backlash.

This matter had to be dealt with at the source.

But as Gu Xi thought it over, she realized she couldn’t be of much help in this matter. At most... she could help kill a few people and provide some deterrence through force.

Fortunately, Li Ming was already prepared on his end.

Thinking of Li Ming, who hadn’t been replying to her messages promptly for the past few days, Gu Xi sighed with a complicated expression. She opened her personal terminal again and sent him a message.