bookpub Chapter 107 Tree Snake
Chapter 107 Tree Snake
Silence reigned all around.
There was no wind, and no sound.
The chill of autumn seeps in through the gaps in the fabric, clinging to the skin without diminishing in the slightest.
Chris deliberately walked lightly, his boots avoiding the dry fallen leaves on the ground, leaving only a faint rustling sound that almost blended into the silence, as he slowly walked through the maze-like corridor surrounded by tree walls.
Having come this far, he had no other choice but to venture deeper into the maze.
Turn the corner.
Chris stopped in his tracks.
With a slight thought, a faint, almost invisible ripple appeared on his fingertips, and a wisp of air suddenly rose in the quiet corridor.
The air currents stirred the stagnant air around him, brushing against the rough tree bark, and darted quickly between the two forks in the road in front of him and to his right.
He was using this method to determine the route.
The faint vibrations from the airflow hitting the enclosed tree wall would be precisely transmitted back to his senses, and the direction of the obstruction would most likely be a dead end, which could be directly eliminated.
A moment later.
The breeze around Chris receded completely, returning to silence.
He took a step and walked straight towards the corridor directly in front of him.
The sunlight overhead filtered through the gaps in the leaves, still dazzling.
Chris suddenly had an idea and took out a brass pocket watch from his inside pocket.
The watch case was polished to a shine from years of handling and still carried the warmth of his body. He opened the watch cover and glanced down at it.
His gaze darkened slightly, and his fingertips paused lightly on the smooth watch case.
As I turned the spring knob with my fingertip, I could clearly feel the subtle resistance of the gears turning. Even after the spring was fully wound, the two steel pointers remained completely still.
Chris closed the watch case and carefully put the pocket watch back into his pocket.
Time stopped.
More accurately, the hands of the pocket watch stopped moving.
But for Chris at this moment, this wasn't bad news.
He was already trapped in this bizarre maze of ever-growing tree walls, so it wasn't unacceptable for him to encounter other anomalies.
Having experienced several lucid dreams, a stopped pocket watch was hardly something to panic about. His mindset had long since been tempered enough by these bizarre and unpredictable circumstances.
Chris maintained a steady pace forward, and every so often, he would urge the airflow across the forks in the road ahead, filtering out what he considered the correct direction.
Suddenly, a pleasant, crisp sound pierced through the thick tree wall and came from behind the wall beside him.
Chris stopped abruptly, his muscles tensed instantly, and his breathing slowed down.
He immediately turned his head and looked at the tree wall beside him.
What came into view was a thick, impenetrable wall of trees, only about two people high, and black, viscous substances slowly wriggling between the tree crevices.
Chris took a half-step forward, getting a little closer.
A faint smell of decay mixed with a hint of leaves instantly filled my nostrils.
Ding-ling.
The pleasant, crisp sound rang out again.
This time, Chris heard it perfectly.
The source of the sound was just across the wall.
He activated his spiritual vision, his pupils contracted slightly, and a very faint blue spiritual light appeared in his eyes.
The world in my field of vision has lost its surface light and shadow, but the tree wall is still that airtight tree wall, and the black substance in the cracks of the tree is still a stagnant mass of black. It is no different to see with the naked eye and with spiritual vision.
He detected no signs of life, nor did he see any unusual energy fluctuations.
Chris turned off his spiritual vision and stood there, a thoughtful look flashing in his eyes.
A gentle breeze appeared beside him again. This time, the airflow was broken into dozens of extremely fine threads, moving at a speed several times faster than when he was exploring the path before, swiftly traversing every fork in the maze.
A faint rustling of wind echoed in the empty corridor.
Chris had been walking through the maze for quite some time.
The roads here are winding and twisting, with similar corners and similar tree walls, and you can't see the end of them.
Even if the sound was just a wall away, he couldn't get over this hard, ever-growing tree wall.
We can only rely on the scattered air currents to find a way to get around to the next one.
A moment later.
The sounds of wind in the maze dissipated, and the scattered air currents slowly gathered back to his side, returning to calm.
Chris looked up abruptly, a glint of light flashing in his eyes, his fingertips involuntarily curling slightly.
He found it.
We found a way to get around to the next corridor.
The route is a bit roundabout, requiring three turns, but it's still within an acceptable range.
He needs to walk back a bit first.
Although he didn't know what was making the noise or what was hidden on the other side, Chris, trapped here, had no better choice.
Instead of aimlessly spinning in a closed loop and heading in what you think is the right direction, it's better to follow this one variable and look at the source of the sound.
A few more moments passed.
Chris followed the path indicated by the airflow, turned three corners, and finally stepped into a right-angled corridor.
A wall of trees, somewhat different from the surroundings, appeared before him.
There is a dead end ahead.
His previous airflow probing precisely avoided this area, which also confirmed the reliability of this method.
But who could have imagined that something different was hidden at the end of this dead-end road that he had deemed useless?
At the end of the road, a small circular open space is enclosed by a wall of trees.
In the middle of the open space, a small tree grows all alone.
It stood there quietly, out of place with the surrounding rough and tall tree walls.
The thickest part of the tree trunk is only as thick as a child's arm, and the tree is less than two meters tall.
The light brown bark has delicate patterns, the branches are sparse, and the few dark green leaves are oval-shaped, with nothing particularly special about them.
Chris stood at the edge of the open space, carefully examining the small tree not far away.
He saw a golden bell hanging on the thickest horizontal branch of the sapling.
The bell is small, only about the size of a thumb, and has a plain surface without any patterns.
At this moment, it is reflecting the sunlight filtering through the treetops, shimmering with golden glimmers.
Chris's gaze met the light reflected from the bell, and he squinted slightly, finding it somewhat dazzling.
In his perception, there was no airflow disturbance in this open space; even the wind had stopped at the edge of the open space.
A bell cannot ring out of thin air.
But Chris changed his mind.
Having arrived at a place where even time can stand still, it wouldn't be surprising to encounter a bell that can make its own sound.
However, from the moment he set off to find his way here, that pleasant, crisp sound never appeared again.
The bell must have stopped ringing around that time.
Why is this happening?
Did she sense his approach?
A hint of doubt flashed in Chris's eyes, but he remained standing at the edge of the open space, not moving any further.
He did not approach rashly.
He simply manipulated a wisp of extremely gentle airflow, following the trajectory of the wind, and gently touched the edge of the bell.
The bell swayed gently in the direction of the airflow, but made no sound.
Chris's gaze, which had been fixed on the bell, suddenly sharpened.
He noticed something else.
On another parallel branch next to the bell, a small creature the same color as the bark slowly raised its head and extended a black tongue with a forked tip.
It was only then that Chris noticed a small snake coiled up in the tree.
The snake's scales were etched with patterns identical to those on the tree branches, and the colors were exactly the same. Even the protrusions of the branches were imitated perfectly, blending seamlessly into the twigs.
If the little snake hadn't suddenly raised its head and flicked its tongue in Chris's direction, he would never have noticed this perfectly disguised creature.
The next moment, under Chris's slightly surprised gaze...
The little snake suddenly raised its sharp tail, the tip of which straightened, sweeping a pale golden afterimage through the air before striking precisely the center of the golden bell.
Ding-ling~
The familiar crisp sound rang out again, and the pleasant voice pierced the air, exactly the same as the one he had heard behind the wall before.
Chris instantly understood where the previous noise came from.
His attention was completely focused on the little snake.
He could see clearly that the last half inch of the slender snake's tail had a cold, hard metallic sheen.
There are also some faint patterns engraved on it, which are completely different from the bark patterns on the snake's body.
A sense of relief washed over Chris, and he instinctively took a half-step back to maintain a safer distance from the sapling.
Fortunately, he didn't rush forward.
Nobody knows if this snake is poisonous.
If you were bitten or whipped by that tail in this eerie maze where time seems to stand still, the consequences would be unimaginable.
The snake's head was only the size of Chris's little finger, smooth and oval-shaped, with two pure black eyes the size of mung beans, without any other color.
The snake simply lay quietly on the branch, watching him. It neither flicked its tongue nor adopted an aggressive posture, and seemed harmless, unlike a highly venomous snake.
This was the second moving thing Chris had seen after entering the maze, besides the black cat with violet eyes.
Chris also did not sense any disturbance in the airflow from the snake's breathing.
The other party was clearly not a normal being either.
He didn't believe it was any coincidence.
Was the little snake deliberately ringing the bell to lure him over, just like the black cat, perhaps for some other purpose?
What exactly is it trying to do by doing this?
What bothered Chris the most was why all these things hidden in the maze kept coming to him one after another.
Just as Chris was slightly tense, pondering what to do next.
The little snake suddenly moved.
It extended its metallic tail tip, precisely wrapped it around the cord holding the golden bell, and with a gentle twist and pull, removed the bell from the branch.
It held the bell tightly with the tip of its tail and climbed up the tree branch toward the right-hand wall at an astonishing speed.
In Chris's eyes, the slender snake body was just a faint golden afterimage, and he couldn't even hear the sound of scales rubbing against branches.
Its afterimage swept to the very top of the tree, its body suddenly straightened in mid-air, and it leaped up, disappearing directly into a crevice in the nearby tree wall.
The black, viscous substance that Chris dared not touch, carrying an eerie aura, seemed to have a mind of its own, parting to the sides to make way for the little snake.
Once the snake's body had completely slithered inside, it instantly closed up again, returning to its previous still and motionless state, as if nothing had happened.
In the blink of an eye, the little snake's figure completely disappeared into the tree wall.
next moment.
The familiar, melodious, crisp sound came again from the depths of the maze, unhurried and continuous, as if waiting for him ahead.
Chris stood there, listening to the fading sound of the bell, which completely confirmed his earlier guess.
The other party was guiding him deeper into the maze.