Chapter 614 - 612: Found

’Washing Marrow!’

’No wonder my superpower didn’t seem to change much. Could it be that the Seventh rank Wood Element Ability is just some physical changes?’

’Oh, right. I can also sense the emotions of plants.’

However, the plants didn’t seem to be able to communicate with her. Su Qing frowned slightly. ’This new development seems a bit useless. What’s the point of just sensing plant emotions? It’s not like I’m a farmer. At most, I could sense when my grandma’s flowers are thirsty and give them some water...’

As this thought crossed her mind, Su Qing paused. Her Domain had a limited range, and her time-reversal ability also had a limited range. ’So, what’s the range for sensing plant emotions?’

With this in mind, Su Qing casually placed her hand on a large tree beside her and closed her eyes.

Her perception began to expand.

Slowly, as the range of her perception grew, the emotions of all kinds of plants gently brushed against it.

The joy of having just drunk its fill of water, the pain of being trampled by an animal’s hooves, the lethargy from lack of sunlight, the comfort of being caressed by the wind...

Wherever Su Qing’s perception reached, she sensed the emotions of every plant. To her utter delight, the range was surprisingly vast, covering the entire mountainside.

She could keenly perceive all the various emotions of the plants, even the minuscule pain of a tree’s roots being gnawed on by insects.

Su Qing opened her eyes and looked at the great mountains before her. The Qinling range stretched for hundreds of miles. This peak was just one of many in Qinling, and while not large compared to the entire range, it was more than enough for Su Qing.

Su Qing’s heart pounded with excitement. ’If I can even sense the minuscule pain of insects chewing on roots, then finding those Japanese should be much easier.’

Back on Putai Mountain, when she was collecting the Stone Pillars, Su Qing had learned that burying them required digging enormous pits. This would inevitably sever the root systems of the mountain’s trees. The trees in Qinling were much older than those on Putai Mountain; after all, few people ever set foot this deep in the range, and some of the trees here were thousands of years old.

Naturally, the root systems of these ancient trees were incredibly developed, a sprawling and tangled network that spread out over an unknown distance.

’If I can find a place where the vegetation has been heavily trampled, and where the roots of nearby trees have been severed, there’s a high probability that humans are active there. And right now, the only people who would be sneaking around Qinling doing this kind of work are most likely those Japanese.’

’Whether my theory is right or wrong, there’s only one way to find out.’

Having already searched this mountainside, Su Qing immediately set off for the next one. She was stronger now, moving through the forest with greater ease and agility. In just two or three hours, she reached the next peak.

Su Qing continued her search, moving from one mountain to the next. Finally, on the fifth day, deep within a certain ridge in Qinling, she found some clues.

Following the trail, Su Qing approached stealthily. Her previous encounter with Ye Yue Taidou made her wary of getting too close and being discovered. This time, instead of rushing in, she found a large tree nearby and climbed to a branch at the very top. The view from up here was wide and open, making it an excellent spot for covert observation.

A few vines slowly extended through the grass, stopping beside a large tree before creeping up its trunk.

Below was a flat clearing in the mountains, situated next to a pond. Numerous tents were pitched on the flat ground. A man sat on a rock next to one of the tents, writing something in a notebook resting on it. Not far away, several men were working together to dig a pit. They heaved a severed tree root out of the hole and tossed it onto an empty patch of ground nearby.

"Damn it, this root is thick as hell! Took so much effort just to break it," one of them cursed. He was speaking the language of Hua Country, but it was clearly stiff and clumsy, tinged with a foreign accent.

"What can you do? We just have to dig," said another man next to him. "Grand Elder Ye Yue gave us this location. It’s not like we can change it."

"Sigh, that’s true." A third man wiped the sweat from his brow and took a deep breath before speaking. "But with just a handful of us, how long is this going to take? I counted the Stone Pillars yesterday. Holy cow, you guys want to guess how many there are?"

"How many?"

"Eighty-one of them!" the sweaty man exclaimed with an exaggerated expression. "That means the dozen or so of us have to dig eighty-one pits, and each one has to be at least six or seven meters deep! You tell me, how long is that gonna take? We’re not going to be stuck in these mountains for the next few years, are we?"

The man couldn’t help but shudder at the thought. These mountains were desolate. Including the few people from the Ye Yue Family and Shengchuan Family, there were only about twenty-some people in total. Their group of a dozen or so were the manual laborers. If he had to stay in the mountains for several years, he thought he’d probably go insane.

Their group of a dozen or so men were not members of the Ye Yue or Shengchuan families but had been hired for a high price. To be honest, while they didn’t fully understand the situation, they had a vague sense that the people from the Ye Yue and Shengchuan families hadn’t brought them secretly into Hua Country’s Qinling to do anything good.

But what did that have to do with them? As long as they received their generous pay and could go back to live comfortable lives, that was all that mattered. As for the rest, they couldn’t care less.

Still, the thought of being stuck in these mountains for a long time was enough to make them feel like they were breaking down.

What these dozen or so men didn’t know, however, was that the Ye Yue and Shengchuan families had no intention of ever letting their high-priced hires have the chance to return home...

"Eighty-one? That many?!" Another man’s not-so-large eyes widened in surprise. He glanced at the blisters forming on his palms and winced. "Sigh, this really ain’t an easy job."

"Tch, would an easy job pay this well?" One man, however, saw things clearly. "We’re already here, so we might as well just get on with it. The sooner we finish, the sooner we go home. Nothing’s more important than that."

"True."

The men chatted as they grunted and groaned, digging the pit. Fortunately, while the work wasn’t easy, their tools were at least decent.

Perched on the tree branch, Su Qing listened to the men’s conversation and breathed a sigh of relief. ’I’ve finally found these Japanese. It looks like this group prepared eighty-one Stone Pillars as well.’

Looking at the eighty-one Stone Pillars in her storage space, Su Qing sneered. ’So they’re meant to correspond with each other.’

’But let’s see... there are over twenty Japanese who entered Qinling in total. I’ll have to think carefully about how to take care of them all without a sound.’