Ghosts sneak and hunt with light and shadow, and the murmuring of the stream lingers with dark fragrance.

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Even though the first showers had long since dissipated, the winds that had been going on for a long time had finally begun to subside, and they no longer frantically passed through the forest, but the rustle of the leaves did not subside, but continued to be heard from every direction, up and down, left and right.

At nightfall, only a silvery white frost could be seen slowly rising in the sky, but as the night wore on, a lilac shadow began to appear on the horizon: it was the Thunder Moon that was covered in Raft's electric cloud gas, and even with the naked eye, one could see the occasional large lightning bolt in its atmosphere. At the same time, ordinary optical sensors and other remote sensing equipment cannot penetrate this layer of electric clouds, and even the starships used by Xinglan for space exploration cannot forcibly penetrate the obstacles of the electric clouds without the inflators below actively opening the weak spots.

However, even if there was another moon in the sky, it did not ease the darkness of this land in the slightest, and the forests of the entire Nanyuan Continent were still shrouded in the world of night...... Walking on the soft ground covered with dead branches, the dense canopy above the head directly blocked most of the brilliance of the stars and moon.

Xinglan didn't turn on the infrared view for the time being, but used an enhanced version of the starlight camera, which is similar to the vision of the Moon Prayer Man to observe the forest in the middle of the night, she believes that this is the only way to understand the perspective of ordinary creatures in the deepest way, and of course, it will also make the exploration process itself more interesting.

Even though I've been through so many things, let's not forget what Xinglan wanted to create a living planet in the first place...... It's not about developing technology through bionics, it's not about cultivating a powerful race to dominate the universe, it's not even about defending your own territory, it's just about making your boring life interesting.

From this point of view alone, she has achieved it perfectly.

For most diurnal animals, traveling overnight in the forest can be called taboo. Xinglan turned on the sensitivity of the hearing sensor device directly to the maximum, constantly capturing the sound in the forest, and then separating different sound waves for analysis to determine the location of the sound source, which is very important without using signal sensors to scan the environment.

The faint sound of water came faintly from not far away. For Xinglan, there is never such a thing as "seems to be" and "seems to be" in perception and memory, so once she senses the location of the sound of water, she can use the Doppler effect to lock in that direction with absolute accuracy and keep moving forward until she finds the source of the sound.

The faint sound of water came from the direction that was completely different from the direction to the location of Kong Luo, and it was not the direction of returning to the settlement as Yun Mo said, but another completely unfamiliar direction.

"The forest at night is still a little cold...... "Gently stepping on the ground covered with dead branches, Xinglan walked towards the place where the sound of water came from, and estimated the temperature of the outside world by the way, "Although it is said to be a forest located in the Nanyuan Continent, it is still near the northernmost coastline after all." ”

However, after walking this way, Xinglan suddenly stopped, and looked at a very ordinary tree in front of her with some surprise, and there seemed to be something strange on the trunk of the tree completely hidden in the darkness.

After a slight hesitation in place, Xinglan bent down and began to cautiously approach the tree, even landing on it to see the distribution of those messy branches and leaves before slowly stepping on it, reducing the sound she made as much as possible, not even making the sound of breathing.

Soon, she crept to a distance of only about two meters from the trunk of the tree, and without alarming the animal attached to the trunk, the signal quickly played the role of auxiliary light collection, presenting the image in front of her as if it were daytime.

Even with daytime vision, it was not easy to distinguish the dark gray color of the animal from the background of the tree trunk. Its limbs stretched out like a frog, and at the end of each limb were four small claws with hooks, which firmly clasped the surface of the trunk to hold itself in place.

Its body heaved slightly, and its tiny eyes did not open, but closed tightly, as if it was resting. Of course, this does not mean that this little guy has completely relaxed its vigilance, looking at its big ears that are erected, Xinglan has every reason to believe that once the movement is a little louder as soon as it gets closer, it will not hesitate to flee from here immediately.

If you ignore the elongated limbs that spread out at great angles and the dense folds underneath the limbs, the overall silhouette of the creature actually looks more like ...... Mouse.

Yes, the creature looked a lot like a mouse, and its familiar colors and shapes reminded Xinglan of something she had seen before, she narrowed her eyes slightly, slowly picked up a broken stone from the ground, aimed at the animal on the trunk at close range, and then threw it with all her might!

Bang!

The sound of the stone colliding with the trunk of the tree resounded abruptly in the forest, and the gravel lost its strength and fell back to the ground without leaving any marks on the trunk, and it did not hit its intended target.

At the moment when the stone struck, the sound of breaking the air alarmed the creature that had been resting on the trunk of the tree, and it jumped up from the trunk with extraordinary reaction speed in a short period of time, dodging the stone coming from behind it, and then the folds under the limbs suddenly unfolded, forming a structure like four membrane wings......

"That's right, that's it." Xinglan looked up at the creature shaking its limbs in the air, made a beautiful roll, and then slashed across the dark sky like a ghost, "It's definitely the same species as the figure that passed in front of it before, it's called ...... Ghost rats. ”

The wings of the ghost rat are not a structure capable of flying...... Xinglan saw this very clearly, it was just gliding through the forest in a posture, but this made it move more silently, and in this thick dark night, it could really haunt like a ghost, and it deserved the name.

Looking at the shadow of the ghost mouse in the distance, Xinglan smiled and shook her head, the other party was just an ordinary creature, she had no intention of continuing to entangle this species, but just when she was about to continue to move towards the water, something happened suddenly.

An extremely sharp hiss resounded through the forest, and it was the sound of the departing ghost rat, a small creature that was usually silent and could let out such a terrible scream when it really screamed with all its might...... That's right, it's the screams of despair before death.

With a scream of violent air currents, a black and white shadow rushed out of the canopy next to it like a whirlwind, intercepting it in mid-air with a speed far exceeding that of the ghost mouse, but quickly grabbed the ghost mouse and rushed towards the dark sky at high speed, disappearing into the thick night in just a few seconds.

"That's ...... The creatures of light and darkness that Yun Mo said? Xinglan was stunned for a moment, and then looked at the sky interestingly, "The color of the body is black and white, but it is about the same color as a panda, it looks like a creature that is very good at flying, but that screaming sound ......"

Thinking of the sound just now, Xinglan's expression became a little serious, and she began to move towards the water source again, thinking that it was definitely not the sound that ordinary birds could produce by flapping their wings, but the sound that could only be produced by jet propulsion by burning biogas like a white puffin...... But if the white puffin is in such a place, it is certainly impossible to do a similar way of flying.

The white puffin's jets are too fast to be used in such a dense forest, and if they dared to do so, they would definitely crash headlong into a tree branch and kill themselves. Moreover, it is impossible for the white puffins to change direction so flexibly during flight, let alone make a tumbling act, such a huge change in power will tear their own muscles to pieces, and the difference in level is not a little bit.

Obviously, from the Dragon Soul Period to the present, the way animals on the planet fly has once again changed dramatically, and many weaknesses are being overcome in the process of evolution...... This should be good news for Xinglan, this is what she wants, if there are very ordinary creatures everywhere, just a contest of claws and muscle power, wouldn't this planet be too boring?

Xinglan casually scattered a large group of annoying insects that surrounded them, these annoying little things have infrared vision like mosquitoes, and the dark night has no effect on them, and Xinglan will inevitably emit a higher temperature than the environment even if she uses a mechanical body, which makes this group of small things always try to gather in this direction. While it's impossible for them to bite through the robot's skin, the cacophony that lingers in their ears is really annoying.

"I'll have to go back after a few more hours at most......" Xinglan looked up at the Ice Moon Frost Lin that was sinking to the west, and subconsciously accelerated her pace of progress, and the sound of the water gradually became clear, "You have to go over as soon as possible, if you can, walk down the stream for a while to see if there is a big river." ”

Soon, there was a scene in front of Xinglan that should be considered a relatively rare scene in this forest, it was a huge ancient tree...... The diameter may be about two meters, and the overall length is an astonishing more than 100 meters. This huge ancient tree, which I don't know how many years it had lived, broke off and fell directly into this forest, and along the way, you could even clearly see that six or seven smaller trees were also directly smashed and crushed underneath by this fallen big tree.

Of course, what Xinglan cared about the most was not only the huge size of the fallen tree, but the fact that she felt a very familiar aura in the air here, this kind of faint fragrance lingered in the air, making the group of curved tube worms that couldn't be driven away just now as if they had encountered a natural enemy.

"Things are really getting interesting...... Xinglan saw the destination of her trip, the stream that ran through the forest was also crushed by the huge fallen trees, and the sound of gurgling water echoed happily in the forest, "This special fragrance...... There is no mistake about it, but the smell emitted by the leaves that were used to neutralize attractants by cloud foam and rain foam is so strong in this environment. ”