Chapter 245 — So Many Gluttons
The couple leaned over the windowsill to watch the mutated plants wildly lashing their tentacle-like branches. After watching for a short while, Luo Xun quickly nudged Yan Fei beside him, asking him to use his superpower to test exactly how high up the roof the mutated plants could reach.
Yan Fei first used the metal sheets stored on the roof to seal off the top sections of glass closest to the edge, preventing the frenzied mutated plants from whipping them to splinters. Only then did he use metal to tease the branches, testing their current destructive power and reach.
When constructing the greenhouse, Luo Xun and the team had intentionally built the structure slightly taller than the surrounding mutated plants. But now, the plants closest to the exterior walls had already grown taller than the greenhouse itself. Fortunately, although they had outgrown the building, they could only reach a short distance inward, and their destructive power wasn’t enough to compromise the metal Yan Fei had reinforced.
“We can ignore them for now. As long as we don’t make too much noise, they won’t actively attack our base.” The walls of the base were entirely made of metal—cold, lifeless, and dead. Furthermore, the metal Yan Fei fabricated was incredibly thick and delivered excellent sound insulation. As long as these plants couldn’t sense anything inside, they wouldn’t attack these familiar, dead objects.
Luo Xun kept his binoculars raised to monitor the results of Yan Fei’s experiment. Hearing this, he nodded, letting out half a sigh of relief. “I’ll let the others know. We’ll finalize the subterranean floor for the rabbits first, and once we gather more metal, we’ll raise the height of our greenhouse…” Speaking up to this point, Luo Xun frowned. “If they just keep growing, growing, and growing… what then?”
If those mutated plants kept growing endlessly, would their family have to keep raising, raising, and raising the height of the base? How long would they have to keep that up?
“Don’t worry, they are plants after all. There’s bound to be a growth ceiling; it’s not like they can grow all the way to heaven.” Yan Fei offered a helpless word of comfort, before recalling an alternative matter to remind him. “But we’ll have to be cautious when we venture out in the future. We need to stay even further away when passing those mutated plants outside, lest we get pulled in if we aren’t paying attention.”
“Right. The next time we head out and pass those fields, we’ll measure exactly how far they can extend their reach.” Luo Xun nodded, turning around to inform the others.
After all, they occasionally had to step out onto the roof to sun-dry supplies or clear debris. If someone unluckily suffered a sudden attack from a mutated plant due to a split second of carelessness, they probably wouldn’t even be able to unearth their bones down the line.
Setting the secondary growth of the mutated plants aside for the moment, Luo Xun and the team rested for the night. Rolling out of bed the next morning, they first tended to all the crops before preparing to begin the excavation.
However, before they could even step into the basement, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed across the sky outside. A violent gale whipped the surrounding mutated fields, trees, and homesteads to a chaotic tilt, and a torrential downpour lashed down immediately after.
“Heavens, it really is raining, and it’s coming down so hard.”
For safety reasons, Yan Fei had already completely sealed the roof during the morning while Luo Xun and the team were handling the crops, preventing the violent storm from shattering the glass panels.
Right as they were speaking, a sharp pitter-patter, clatter-clank resonated from the exterior. While the group was caught off guard, the noise grew significantly louder and more rapid.
“…Hail?!” Everyone was instantly stupefied, crowding by the windows to peer outside. Fortunately, the iron scaffolding on their windows extended outward a fair distance, topped with metal louvers for protection, ensuring the hail wouldn’t smash directly into the glass panes.
“Whimper, whimper.” Suddenly, the puppy clamped his jaws around Luo Xun’s trouser cuff, pulling at him relentlessly.
Luo Xun was wearing a pair of knee-length shorts, and the puppy’s sudden tug almost pulled his shorts clean off, forcing him to grab the waistband in a hurry.
“What’s wrong?” Luo Xun held his shorts with one hand while stroking the puppy’s head to comfort him. Yet the puppy continued to whimper anxiously, pacing in a tight circle on the floorboards while intermittently nudging Luo Xun’s leg with his head.
“Uncle, does he want to bring those two big doggies inside?” Little Xinran crouched beside the puppy to help soothe him, suddenly raising her head to ask Luo Xun.
“Big doggies?” Luo Xun froze for a split second, before a wave of realization struck him—”Those two wolves?!”
Although the secret subterranean tunnel had been expanded multiple times and was significantly more spacious now, could it truly accommodate those two towering wolves? Crucially, although they had cooperatively hunted alongside the pair on numerous occasions, those encounters were always structured around assisting one another from an objective distance. Did they truly want to drag those two massive creatures inside?
Yet the puppy was putting on such an anxious display of fawning and pleading for rescue that not a single member across the entire Otaku Team could find it in their hearts to utter the words “no entry for those two wolves”—even Zhang Su, who normalized throwing cold water on ideas, kept his mouth tightly shut.
Coupled with little Xinran’s presence… this psychological lethality was visibly skyrocketing along a geometric progression.
Under these dynamics, Luo Xun and the team unexpectedly ran down to the tunnel entrance in a massive, rapid column, and then…
Exchanging a few glances with one another, Yan Fei raised his hand to throw open the main iron gate, while Song Lingling stepped up to manage the siphoning of the rainwater.
The hail rattled violently against the asphalt outside, leaving the group feeling somewhat tense inside their chests. Although those two wolves appeared remarkably thick-skinned, could they truly tolerate being pelted by such a heavy torrent of hail?
“Bark, bark!” The absolute moment the secret entrance barrier swung open, the puppy began barking furiously toward the wild outside. He was remarkably clever; although he was vocalizing toward the exterior, he harbored absolutely zero intent to step past the threshold to get battered by the hail. Right while Luo Xun and the team were wondering whether the wolves could even catch those loose barks under this storm, an earth-shaking vibration rippled through the air. Immediately after, the silhouettes of two thoroughly drenched wolves, their heads covered in visible lumps from the hail, materialized straight within the group’s visual field.
“Quick! Clear the lane!” Heavens, if the group absorbed a sudden impact from their bulk, every single member would transform into a literal meat pancake!
Although the physical bulk of the two wolves was immense, they weren’t actually as… toweringly robust as they usually appeared on a regular day.
Or rather, the height of these two wolves hovered around two to three meters, and that “majestic, towering” aura they usually radiated was entirely a structural illusion delivered by their thick, soft plumage to the public! Yes, a pure illusion!
Currently, now that the two wolves had slunk inside the subterranean tunnel, they didn’t even require bending their limbs to navigate; they merely needed to lower their heads slightly to prevent striking the ceiling. Crucially, because the fur lining their bodies was completely waterlogged by the storm, their coats had collapsed flat against their skin… the moment that long, fine, fluffy fur flattened, their majestic past image instantaneously collapsed past redemption.
They transformed seamlessly from a pair of towering, sleek, handsome wolves into a couple of pathetically miserable, drenched mutts.
The two wolves discovered that the tunnel actually delivered enough clearance for them to forcefully shake their coats!!
Fortunately, Song Lingling’s elemental reaction was incredibly instantaneous, and she rapidly deployed her ability to siphon the moisture from their coats while simultaneously “shoving” the runoff they had dragged inside straight back out the tunnel entrance, preventing the entire crew from absorbing a secondary shower along the way.
Yan Fei raised his hand to seal the secret entryway once more, blocking the rainwater from leaking inward.
Following that, the group began staring at one another in utter silence… they were thoroughly squeezed against the concrete wall by the massive bulk of the two wolves, and if they intended to head back upstairs, they had no alternative but to navigate right past their flank. However, having just caught the pathetically drenched display of the two wolves, not a single member harbored dread toward these two predators anymore. The core dilemma currently pressing upon them was—
“Does this mean as long as it continues to rain cats and dogs outside, our household has to feed and maintain them?” Wang Duo raised his hand to point toward a specific upper diagonal angle—it mapped onto a highly plump wolf rear, and a massive, furry tail whipped right past his face while he was speaking…
“…Let’s just maintain them for the time being.” Luo Xun merely felt a wave of physical exhaustion resonate through his frame. Setting aside the spatial dilemma triggered by these two massive creatures occupying the tunnel tracks, analyzing purely their dietary requirements, the volume was bound to be outrageously immense! Strictly speaking, should they be profoundly grateful that their household quails had multiplied to a point of surplus yield, allowing them to temporarily sustain these appetites? Wait, hold on, the above-ground greenhouse still housed two eaglets waiting to consume dinner as well! Every single one of these creatures was a literal bottomless pit!
Confronted with this sudden emergency development, Luo Xun couldn’t help but suddenly wonder whether their family should evaluate shifting the quails out of the second-floor classrooms to an alternative sector as well?
But if they executed a relocation… heavens, did that imply they would have to excavate an additional two subterranean levels down the line?
Furthermore—gazing at those two wolves currently lying obediently flat on the concrete floor, their behavioral models and physical gestures appearing increasingly Close to a standard dog the more one analyzed them… wolves. Did their household have to evaluate dedicating a separate excavated tier explicitly to house these two specimens?
Well, in truth, that parameter wasn’t entirely an impossibility either. Granted, the absolute prerequisite was that these two creatures—be they wolves or dogs—had to truly prove capable of being fully domesticated… Right while he was mulling over the thought, the wolf resting before Luo Xun’s frame slid semi-flat onto its side, lifting its four limbs into the air. As little Xinran let out a succession of giggles while reaching out to stroke its chin, the predator remarkably exposed its soft underbelly to her palm.
These two frauds are absolutely dogs! Dogs!
Outside the base perimeter, the hail hammered down with earth-shattering fury, beating against the base’s protective metal plating with a relentless clatter-shatter-clang, causing the surrounding mutated plants to thrash their “arms” without a single moment of pause, looking exactly like a swarm of demons dancing wildly in the storm.
Luo Xun and the team evaluated the layout for a good while. Verifying that their base framework was sufficiently sturdy to weather the onslaught, they finally retreated back to the basement to kick off the excavation labor—although the downpour outside was monumental, that runoff couldn’t possibly leak into their deep subterranean soil layers anytime soon.
Although Luo Xun and the team intended to completely excavate and integrate the third subterranean floor to cultivate the rabbit warren, a meticulous evaluation revealed a core parameter—how many rabbits did they currently house? And how many quails did their complex possess? If the absolute spatial footprint of the third subterranean tier mirrored the dimensions of the upper floors, it would deliver an operational clearance of at least five-plus acres for them to exploit! Cultivating the two animal types together or partitioning the floor into separate sectors to manage them independently was well within their capabilities. Heaven only knew how long it would take for them to multiply the livestock enough to fully pack the entire basement floor.
As for those two wolves… they would simply hold off on a definitive arrangement for now. At the very least, once this hail and rainstorm concluded, they would still release these two creatures back into the wild first. If the pair truly ended up completely anchoring themselves to their household down the line, they could always carve out an extra room horizontally across the second subterranean floor, which would be perfectly sufficient to accommodate the pair during their evening rests and throughout the heavy winter snowstorms.
After all, these two frauds were mutated predators; if they truly kept them cooped up inside the house permanently, they would be completely ruined down the line. The same logic applied to the twin eaglets; once the feathers lining their wings hardened, Luo Xun would similarly brainstorm a strategy to ensure they understood the absolute hazard posed by mutated plants before releasing them back into the skies outside.
Gazing down at the puppy from his own household, did Luo Xun and the team even dare to let him roam free outside currently? It was profoundly fortunate that his physical bulk remained relatively compact, meaning keeping him inside the complex delivered more than enough space for him to frolic unrestrictedly. They absolutely didn’t dare allow these four alternative creatures to be completely ruined by a pampered lifestyle!
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