Chapter 523 - Surprise Attack in the Cemetery (1/2)

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

What’s the natural cemetery? Many denizens of Earth may not know, but the denizens of Saturn had no choice in knowing.

It was a very large mystical forest. Only God knew whether the land there was particularly nutritious or had something particular in the soil, but a young sapling that had just broken the ground would grow into an over five-meter tall towering tree overnight. The trees that had been growing there for a few years had already grown into giant trees with heights of ten meters, fifteen meters, or even twenty meters.

But it didn’t mean that the timber quality of these fast-growing trees decreased because of their short period of growth. On the contrary, the timber quality of these big trees was even better than sapwood. People could not help but marvel at the mysticalness of Saturn.

But instead of marveling at the mystical trees on Saturn like ordinary people, the scientists of various planets instead were actively analyzing, exploring, and speculating.

Science had always been a field full of debates, discussions, and numerous contradictions. However, in regards to the rapid growth of trees on Saturn and Jupiter, nearly every scientist agreed on the current point of view, something they rarely did in the past. They stood on the same line and expressed almost the same view.

“The sudden transformation of these two gas planets into solid planets must be related to epoch-making new energy! This new energy can even stimulate rapid growth in trees!”

With scientists from all over the world throwing in the same opinion, more and more mercenary exploration teams began to gather on Saturn and Jupiter. What would finding new energy entail? As long as one didn’t have an IQ below seventy, he or she was aware of the significant changes obtaining the new energy would bring to their future.

Is there really a new type of energy on these two planets? Already hundreds of thousands of mercenaries were exploring these two planets but no one had found any new energy whatsoever. Most of the time, everyone caught some strange creatures or things that had never been seen before. They brought them back and sold them before replenishing themselves again, like the American gold rush back then. They entered the natural cemetery that gave everyone the jitters at first glance.

The thick foliage was blocking almost all the sunlight. The ground of the forest was extremely wet. The fallen leaves didn’t dry up immediately. Owing to the wet ground, they began to rot bit by bit, forming a thick layer of rotten leaves. When one stepped on them one could often hear squishy noises.

A Jungle Ranger dedicated to jungle operations traversed through the forest at an extremely fast pace like a wild cat that had lived in the forest for many years. Occasionally, it would slash suddenly with the electromagnetic knife in its hand, cutting the hidden mutant creatures that jumped out from God knows where into two, electrocuting them into coke. They gave them no chance to pose any threat.

“Qin Fen is really fast.” Caesar, piloting the Jungle Ranger that had most of its electronic system malfunctioning, complained from time to time. This ghastly place was more troublesome than the intel he had read. Not only did electronic positioning device malfunction here, even the life detector was malfunctioning as well, making it impossible to scan for biological signs in the radius of a hundred meters.

What Caesar found hardest to bear was that the tracking and exploration electronic system was completely useless in this natural cemetery. Had it not for Du Peng, who wasn’t skilled enough to cover his traces, and the two people who attacked quickly, Caesar suspected that he might have already fallen behind.

With various electronic systems malfunctioning, Caesar simply gave up on the Jungle Ranger’s auto-pilot system and piloted the mobile armor manually.

Another Acid Spitting Snake! Caesar raised his hand and fired an electric arc, turning the mutant creature that could spit strong acid into a jet-black dead snake.

Caesar didn’t even bother to take a glance at this little thing near his feet afterward. But when this little thing was first discovered, God knows how many powerful martial artists it had killed.

“Signs of fighting!?”

After having tracked Qin Fen and Du Peng for ten or so kilometers, Caesar found messy traces of fighting around the ground, along with mottled bloodstains that had not been covered by the leaves completely. But there were no signs of any human in the vicinity.

The entire area was cluttered with signs of fighting. Traces of cuts and stabs from sword-like weapons could be found everywhere along with the marks of shooting at a close range. Judging by the marks, a frigid battle had taken place but he couldn’t find any sign of anyone at all! It could only mean that the corpses may have been dragged by the mutant creatures that had been here not too long ago.

“Attacked by beasts or…?” Caesar remembered a saying from the introduction of the natural cemetery that was left by a mercenary who had entered the natural cemetery many times:

“The most dangerous enemies in the natural cemetery are never those brutal mutant creatures with strange abilities. Humans, who also entered the natural cemetery with the dreams of getting rich, are the most dangerous!”

Caesar looked about and found no signs of mobile armor battles. Thereby, he concluded that the battle that took place here recently was not fought by Qin Fen and Du Peng but by another team.

“The same direction?” Caesar could not help but look around again. He discovered that the trail was following Qin Fen and Du Peng.

The area of the natural cemetery was several times larger than the Amazon Forest, the largest forest on Earth. Even if a large number of mercenaries entered this forest, it would be very hard to bump into each other.

Caesar didn’t believe that fate in life would really be like that in a novel, that a few explorers just happened to bump into each other in this huge forest.

“Sometimes, many seemingly coincidental things actually have certain and perhaps secret relationships.” Caesar raised his head. “Since the direction is the same in such a large forest, they don’t happen to have the same goal, do they? How is Qin Fen doing now?”

…

“It’s another trap!” Qin Fen, piloting the Jungle Ranger, dismantled two Type 72 metal-shell anti-tank mines once again. This weird thing had a diameter of 279mm, a height of 93 mm, and a total weight of eight kilograms. It contained three kilograms of TNT and three kilograms of RDX. It had considerable explosive power. After all, it used to the most powerful mine once.

During the travel of a hundred kilometer, Qin Fen had dismantled five high-explosive mines of different types but with great power.

Before coming here, Qin Fen had also read the information about this place. He knew that there may be traps installed by the previous mercenaries anywhere in the natural cemetery but he hadn’t expected them to be this much.

“All of these were installed today.” Qin Fen, dismantling the detonating fuse of the mine, carefully observed the surroundings. The installation level of these mines was very high. Just from one glance, it was quite evident that the installers of these mines were experts in jungle operations. As such, a precautionary and careful observation was necessary to see whether there were any machinations installed in the surroundings.

The sound of an explosion would be very sensational and could travel to very far distances. Qin Fen didn’t want to attract more explorers because of mine explosions.

In the natural cemetery, a loud explosion could usually draw other mercenaries quite easily.