"Moron" wasn't strong enough to describe the Snail Traveler.

Empty joy or not, the snail was still the same snail. Shen Cong composed himself quickly and stayed on the Snail Traveler's trail, still teasing and baiting the great snail from time to time — though the great snail's attitude had cooled somewhat, its replies growing fewer.

Without quite noticing—

They'd already left the Yimeng Mountains and come to flatter country, somewhere between Laicheng District and Gangcheng District, at a spot marked on the map as Lixin Town.

They hadn't gone far when something happened that startled Shen Cong. He and the Snail Traveler, advancing west-northwest along a corroded stretch of railway track, actually caught up — at four in the afternoon — to that steadily walking dragon-claw pagoda tree.

The pagoda tree really was too slow.

A whole day of its walking didn't beat an hour of anyone else's.

"The pagoda tree and the Snail Traveler have met. No telling what might happen — will the Snail Traveler treat the pagoda tree as food?" Shen Cong observed with curiosity.

These two colossal creatures might just strike sparks without end.

The moment Shen Cong spotted the pagoda tree, the Snail Traveler spotted it too, and he could feel it at once — radiating fragmentary Activity waves of tasty, so big, moving tree, and the like.

The pagoda tree, meanwhile, radiated only the two waves found it and advance, and either hadn't noticed the Snail Traveler or didn't care in the slightest.

The Snail Traveler picked up speed and crawled toward the pagoda tree, catching up two minutes later.

At that point, sensing the Snail Traveler's terrifying pressure aura, the pagoda tree finally woke from its own private world. Its taproot, dragging along the ground, wriggled snake-like, then stabbed abruptly downward, driving fast and deep into the earth to anchor itself.

Its countless branching roots planted themselves in the ground in turn, lifting high the branches that had served as walking supports — and in an instant it seemed to become a towering, sky-piercing tree once more.

Countless thread-roots grew out into…