To be fair, these noises were not very obvious, but to Rozim's sharp hearing, the movements of these unknown targets looked like careless marches.
In order to prevent alerting more possible enemies, Rozim gave up the gun and took out his knife - it was a boning knife. The long and sharp blade was deliberately covered with dust to avoid reflection.
He leaned against a thorny stalk, his body anchored in the twisted plant.
But when he looked carefully, he found that it was not an enemy, but some native animals on the planet walking among the ferns.
They looked like some kind of herbivorous ungulates. Based on their size, Rozim judged that they were not a threat, so he put away his knife and moved forward.
He encountered nothing special for the next two hours.
He walked all the way through the valley bottom to the shadow side, where ferns stood endlessly like black fans.
Every dozen steps, Rozim's feet would crack a thorn or a seed shell, or kick up a pebble - no matter how carefully he moved forward.
He cursed every time he made a sound.
The bracken suddenly hissed in the wind.
Rozim paused to check his little compass, his eyes flickering between the sun and the hands.
Half an hour ago his route should have taken him to the outskirts of Ledi.
But now he still hasn't seen any traces of human activity, which is a bit abnormal.
The wary Rozim lowered his body close to a thick fern stem, knelt down on one knee, and raised his gun.
There was some dust on the muzzle of the gun, which he wiped off.
Dust also got into his eyes. He wiped them and aimed to the left and right as he advanced.
After advancing a few meters, he discovered another twisted mark in the fern bushes, as wide as three people shoulder to shoulder. The fern bushes had been uprooted or broken and trampled.
Rozim carefully touched a broken stem that was dripping with sap.
It was as thick as my own thigh, and the bark was as hard as steel. Even with a logging ax, I couldn't cut it open so neatly.
Then he checked the ground.
The trampling marks were deep and wide, just like the footprints left by giants. The traces snaked forward and back to the limit of his sight, uneven and twisted.
Something huge is moving here.
Suddenly, Rozim's fingers touched something buried in the gray soil and pulled it out.
It was a piece of charred bone, the size of a clenched fist. After his identification, it should be the skull of an adult.
Knowing that there may be greater dangers here, Rozim did not intend to give up, but continued to move, following the line of the trace, following the direction given by the compound leaves that were pressed forward.
Sixty meters later, the trail suddenly turned uphill, and he stopped and wiped his weapon again.
At this time, a scream cut through the air, as bright and sharp as a sharp blade.
Rozim stopped immediately, and the scream also stopped suddenly. He thought for a while, and there was no doubt that it was caused by humans.
The owner of the restaurant immediately moved according to the direction of the sound.
He strayed off the trail and reentered the trees.
Ahead, the plant species changed, and beneath the top of the hillside he saw a clump of strange, multi-petaled purple flowers.
Rozim's eyes immediately lit up. This was the target he was looking for, Spinach!
The average height of Spiny Orchid is about three meters. Its fibrous gourd-shaped stems have many hairs on the surface, and the open flower bones are like a big mouth. The diameter is generally more than half a meter, and there are six bladders inside. Rows of long needles line the gaps between the bladders and sway gently in the wind.
There are hundreds of such plants, a forest of needle-studded bulbs.
About five hundred meters away from the Spinach Bush, he also saw the outline of a town.
Just as he was excited about finding his target, a fainter scream came, like the sound of someone waking up from a nightmare but quickly realizing it was just a dream.
Then another sound followed the scream.
It was a hollow, explosive sputtering sound, like the sound of someone vomiting a fruit core from their mouth.
Rozim lay on the ground and slowly moved towards the direction of the sound.
Soon, he saw a wrinkled human being among the gourd-shaped bulbs.
A bright stain of blood splashed on the gray ground showed how the man crawled over. There were more than a dozen thorns, some of which were a meter long, and they directly pierced the man.
The deadliest one went straight through the eye and into the brain.
Rozim was horrified. He saw that this man was wearing an Astra Militarum uniform, with grenades and laser rifles scattered around him.
"Why did the Astra Militarum die here?"
He was wondering, then he noticed that the blood on the ground was clumping and quickly turning yellow, and the body was also dissolving rapidly.
Soon, only scattered equipment and clothes were left on the ground.
Apparently the thorns of this plant are highly poisonous, and the way they eat their prey is to dissolve the prey and then absorb it.
Rozim had no intention of falling victim to such stupidity.
He looked around for a while and found that a ring of needles on the nearest spinach orchid had disappeared, leaving only a row of orifices that oozed juice.
After thinking for a moment, Rozim decided to do an experiment.
He took out a stone from the side, pointed it at the helmet left by the unlucky guy, and then threw it lightly.
With a thud, the stone hit the helmet accurately.
In an instant, the three spiny orchids closest to the helmet vibrated, and the needles in their corollas spurted out.
A hollow blasting sound sounded again, and the needle pierced the helmet like a swift arrow, or was bounced off and fell to the ground.
"I see."
Rozim suddenly realized that these plants attacked based on sound, so this would be much easier to handle.
He just needs to make enough noise to trick the thorns out of the spinach orchid, and then he can harvest the plants like wheat.
To make noise, he needed some tools, so he planned to take a trip to Lai Di Town to see if he could find what he needed.
Thinking of these things, as soon as he turned around, a dead wood was crushed under his feet.
"Oops-"
A spinach orchid vibrated with the sound of breaking and shot out a thorn leaf.
Rozim suppressed his screams and quickly dodged.
But he still didn't dodge, and the needle hit him directly.
Thankfully, his melta gun came to his rescue in this situation, as the butt of the gun eventually jammed the needle - it missed by just an inch from reaching Rozim's abdomen.
Only then did Rozim exhale, pull out the needles, and then slowly withdraw from the attack range of the Spiny Orchid.
