475: Chapter 471 strips you of all your rights and places you under arrest and imprisonment.

Lu Jianchuan and Shen Mingyuan walked deeper in the direction of that heat source.

The vines underfoot grew denser, feeling soft as if stepping on a thick sponge. The leaves overhead hung down, brushing against their helmets, while ears of wheat swayed beside their faces, heavy and looking as if they might burst at any moment.

Shen Mingyuan suddenly stopped. "This is the place."

Lu Jianchuan stood beside him, looking at the mass in front of them—vines converged from all directions, twisting into a large ball in the center of the room, its surface covered in dense leaves and roots, wrapped tightly.

That faint heat source was deep inside this mass. Lu Jianchuan turned to look at Shen Mingyuan.

"You do it."

Shen Mingyuan was stunned for a moment. "Me?"

"Switch to your second form. Use your blades to cut. My flames might roast him to death." Shen Mingyuan nodded, pressed his hands together, and completed the switch to Falcon Dive Form. Wings folded behind his back, and two Arm Blades slid out from the outer sides of his arms.

He approached the mass of vines, the Arm Blades slicing slowly against the surface.

Where the blades passed, layers of leaves and roots were peeled away, transparent sap oozing from the cuts and sparkling under the light. He cut very slowly and carefully, each stroke precisely avoiding the tiny roots that had pierced into the human body.

Lu Jianchuan stood behind him, grabbing a freshly cut vine and breathing fire from his palm, turning the still-writhing branch into charcoal.

"If you can't grow, just find something new." He grabbed another one, burned it through, and tossed it aside. The two of them cooperated like this, one cutting and the other burning.

Shen Mingyuan's Arm Blade sliced through the last layer of leaves. A person was curled up inside, eyes closed, face as white as paper.

Tiny roots branched out from the vines, piercing into his arms, his chest, and his neck, like countless small tubes pulsing slightly beneath his skin.

Shen Mingyuan crouched down, switching from Arm Blades to his hands, pulling the roots out of him one by one. Some weren't deep and came off with a gentle tug.

Others were buried in the flesh, requiring him to pinch the ends of the roots and pull them out slowly, bit by bit. Su Muchen's body twitched slightly in his coma, but he did not wake.

When the last root was pulled out, the vines wrapping around him loosened simultaneously, like a hand opening its fingers.

Shen Mingyuan lifted him out of the vine's indentation. Su Muchen was very light, not at all the weight of an adult man.

The entire building suddenly jolted. It wasn't the dull thud from deep within the structure like before; it was all the vines, all the leaves, all the wheat ears, and peas moving at once.

As if sensing something, they surged toward Shen Mingyuan and Lu Jianchuan.

Lu Jianchuan took Su Muchen from Shen Mingyuan's arms and threw him onto his own back. "Go!"

Shen Mingyuan turned, his Arm Blades carving an arc in front of him, severing several lunging vines.

Lu Jianchuan charged out with the man on his back, flames erupting from his palms to burn a path ahead. When a vine lashed out from the left, he raised his left hand and burned it through.

When peas were shot from the right, he didn't even turn his head, just waved his right hand, turning those beans into charcoal mid-air. Shen Mingyuan followed behind him, his Arm Blades swinging incessantly, cutting the pursuing branches into pieces.

They rushed down the stairs, through the corridor, and kicked open the door that had already been burned once. The sunlight outside was so bright it was blinding.

The person in Shen Mingyuan's arms suddenly moved. Su Muchen's eyes opened a crack, his pupils dilated as if he had just surfaced from deep water. He looked at Shen Mingyuan's black visor, then at the silver-white figure beside him, his lips moving.

"Who are you..."

"Hello." Shen Mingyuan's voice came from behind the visor, as casual as greeting a neighbor.

Su Muchen was stunned for a moment, then also nodded. "Hello, hello. I..."

"What exactly happened?" Shen Mingyuan asked without stopping his pace. "What on earth did you do in this building?"

Su Muchen opened his mouth but didn't answer. His gaze drifted over Shen Mingyuan's shoulder, falling on the building that had been swallowed by green,

falling on the vines that were still growing outward, on the golden wheat ears and the bulging pea pods.

His lips moved, his voice very soft, as if speaking to himself.

"What about my experiment..."

Shen Mingyuan rushed downstairs holding Su Muchen, his twin guns now held in one hand while the other supported the man. He dodged a vine lashing from the side and raised his hand to fire, snapping another branch that had just sprouted.

"What time is it, and you're still worried about your experiment?" He switched back to his basic form, twirled the twin guns in his hands, and fired one-handed with perfect accuracy.

Tucked under his arm, Su Muchen's body swayed with the running, his eyes half-open and half-closed as his voice squeezed out of his throat in fits and starts: "I... I seem to have failed again..."

Shen Mingyuan shot through the wheat ears blocking the way, fragments exploding around them as golden grains scattered across the floor.

"Failure is normal." His voice came from behind the visor, slightly breathless but steady in tone. "Everyone fails. No one has never failed."

Su Muchen fell silent for a moment.

"It has intelligence."

Shen Mingyuan's footsteps faltered for a second before he continued running.

"What did you say?"

"After I rushed in... I injected the Secondary Reagent." Su Muchen's voice was very soft, like he was recounting something he wasn't even sure of himself. "It became different after that. I could feel it. It was reading my memories, learning things from me."

"You're joking, right?" Shen Mingyuan looked down at him.

Lu Jianchuan cleared the way ahead without looking back, his voice coming muffled from behind his visor: "Plants don't have brains; how could it gain intelligence?"

Su Muchen fell silent for a moment.

"Computers," he said. "It's the computers in this building. When the vines crawled over the computers... they mimicked the circuits inside. It turned part of itself into something like a biological computer. From then on, it gained a slight capacity for thought."

He took a breath.

"Those peas later were snacks my colleagues ate in the lab. It absorbed the DNA blueprints of those seeds to grow peas. And then... when it entangled me, those tiny tentacles connected with my nerves. It read many things from me."

He paused, his voice sounding a bit weak.

"By the way... when you were pulling those roots out of me just now, it really hurt."

Shen Mingyuan was stunned.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I was conscious then." Su Muchen's voice held a hint of grievance. "I could feel it; it was very painful. I'll need treatment when we get back. I feel like I might not be able to handle delicate things anymore."

"It's fine." Shen Mingyuan shot through a pea pod flying in from the side. "You'll be able to handle them later. This stuff can heal you."

He paused.

"So it has intelligence now?"

"You could say that." Su Muchen's voice grew fainter. "Like a biological computer... using biomass instead of circuits to simulate calculations."

"So even as a plant, it possesses a slight capacity for thought. It learned many things from me and should have established its own... Sense of Autonomy."

More plants surged from both sides of the corridor. Lu Jianchuan finally blasted through a wall ahead, revealing the greyish light of the sky outside. He turned back and shouted at Shen Mingyuan, "Jump!"

Shen Mingyuan jumped out of the hole holding Su Muchen, his knees bending upon landing as he shielded the man in his arms.

He looked back to see Lu Jianchuan standing at the edge of the hole, all the vents on his body opening as flames exploded from him.

Fire poured out of every gap in the armor simultaneously, swallowing the pursuing vines, wheat, and peas, along with the entire floor, in flames.