Chapter 529: Chapter 528: Once in a Thousand Years

The Vajra Parrot Beastman pursed his lips. "Well, that’s because something happened in our city—something that hasn’t been seen in a thousand years, and it has to do with you guys!"

Si Shuo and her group, who were pretending to rest and drink water nearby, felt even more flustered. They had a vague premonition that this was likely the same matter Lady Mu Qiong and Wuzhou High Priest had spoken of.

’But what kind of event happens only once in a thousand years?’

Xiao Cheng offered a wry smile. "Brother, please don’t keep us in suspense. Just tell us, won’t you?" He handed over another small Beast Skin Bag of dried fruit. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The Vajra Parrot Beastman nodded happily, carefully tucking the Beast Skin Bag away before continuing to crack melon seeds. "Doesn’t the Iron-eating Beast Clan have that vast Bamboo Forest Mountain?

That’s the place the Iron-eating Beast Clan specifically chose when the city was first built. Everyone knows the Iron-eating Beast Clan has formidable Combat Power, but they’re also dirt poor. And they’re poor precisely because they pour all their Crystal Stones into maintaining Bamboo Forest Mountain.

Bamboo Forest Mountain has been around for over a thousand years, but a few days ago, all the bamboo started to flower!"

Si Shuo and her group were stunned, their minds still trying to process the news. As they did, the surrounding Beastmen gathered around and began to chatter:

"How can bamboo even flower? Once it flowers, it dies. Who knows how long it will take for a forest of that size to grow back..."

"The members of the Iron-eating Beast Clan eat a ton. They spend half their day just chewing on bamboo. Without the forest, they probably won’t be able to get enough to eat..."

"If you ask me, it’s a warning from the Beast God. The Iron-eating Beast Clan has been hoarding that huge Bamboo Forest Mountain all to themselves. Now that the bamboo is dead, isn’t it the perfect chance to divide the land among everyone?

Now the Iron-eating Beast Clan can’t make any more excuses to monopolize it..."

"Think about it, the rainy season is almost here. Without bamboo, will the Iron-eating Beast Clan be able to survive the rainy season and the coldest season?"

"It’ll be hard. They used to go out every few days, even when it was raining or snowing, just to haul back bamboo to eat... Sigh, it’s like the heavens want the Iron-eating Beast Clan to be wiped out..."

Wei Ce’s expression changed drastically. He said in a low voice, "Shuo, I’m heading back to the clan to see what’s going on!"

Si Shuo nodded. "We’re right behind you."

Not daring to delay, the group transformed back into their Beast Forms and rushed toward the Iron-eating Beast Clan Land, carrying Si Shuo and the cubs.

But the closer they got to their land, the more Beastmen they saw, and the clamor of their voices could be heard from far away. "The Iron-eating Beast Clan must have offended the Beast God to deserve this divine punishment! We have to drive them out!"

"They’ve always been tyrants. Even the Beast God couldn’t stand it anymore. They had this coming..."

"I bet they brought a curse into their clan, someone who brought disaster upon them all..."

Wei Ce stomped his foot on the ground. Everyone felt the world shake, and an oppressive aura, like a hurricane, blasted a path through the dense crowd.

He ran to Wei Jin, shifted into his human form, and asked with a grim expression, "Father, have the bamboo really flowered?"

Wei Jin nodded, his shoulders slumped in defeat. "Yes. Overnight, every single stalk of bamboo on Bamboo Forest Mountain bloomed. Our ancestors planted them, and we’ve cared for them meticulously for so many years. How could they flower on our watch?"

’How were the more than four hundred members of their clan supposed to survive?’

"What in the world happened, Father? Have you investigated it thoroughly?"

"We did. Everything was normal, and then, all of a sudden, the bamboo just flowered," Wei Jin said, equally baffled.

"Let’s go up the mountain and check the situation again," Zhi Le said, stepping forward. His voice was grave. "This is too strange!"

"We’ll go too," Xu Chi, Gong You, and the others agreed with a nod. "If the bamboo really just reached the end of their natural lifespan and flowered, then there’s nothing to be done. But if some Evil Beast is behind this, we can’t just accept this loss lying down."

The eyes of several elders were red with self-reproach, convinced they must have failed to care for the bamboo forest properly.

The younger generation, however, agreed with Gong You. "That’s right, someone must be sabotaging us! Otherwise, how could such a vast expanse of bamboo on Bamboo Forest Mountain all flower at the exact same time?"

"Exactly. We each manage a section of the mountain, and we always eat the older stalks first, so we finish them off long before they’d have a chance to flower. It’s impossible for them to bloom just from old age. Plus, we take excellent care of the forest—nutrients, water, and Crystal Stones are always more than sufficient..."

"There were no conditions that would make the bamboo flower. It shouldn’t have happened..."

Before she lost contact with her system, Si Shuo had redeemed points for a number of books, including one on the cultivation and management of bamboo.

Pretending to fish it out of her Beast Skin Bag, she took out the book and began to flip through it. "It says here why bamboo flowers!"

Sure enough, Si Shuo found the title in the table of contents. She quickly flipped to the page and read that experts attributed bamboo flowering to two main causes: the "cyclical theory" and the "nutritional theory." This was more or less what one of the young Beastmen had just said.

Their meticulous care of Bamboo Forest Mountain ruled out those possibilities.

"But there’s more," she continued. "’Because bamboo reproduce asexually through their underground rhizomes, they typically only flower when facing extreme stress like drought or insect infestations. This is why people associate it with lean years, disasters, and starvation. The ancients often saw it as an omen of turbulent times, a sign to flee... It’s said that bamboo can sense certain mutations in the soil... a last-ditch effort to survive a hostile environment...’"

"Insect infestation?" Ji Liang’s eyes narrowed. "Maybe we should dig up a stalk and see what’s going on."

They soon reached Bamboo Forest Mountain. From a distance, they could see clusters of small, yellowish-green flowers hanging from the bamboo stalks, covering the entire mountainside. While strikingly beautiful, like a delicate veil draped over the mountain, the sight filled them with despair.

The flowering process consumed too many nutrients from the bamboo’s roots, stems, and leaves, preventing further growth and causing them to slowly wither and die.

Wei Ce ran up the mountain, grabbed a flowering bamboo stalk, and ripped it out of the ground, roots and all. To his shock, the roots were crawling with mole crickets!

The mole crickets, barely two centimeters long, instinctively scattered in every direction to escape the light. On the rhizome of a single stalk, there were dozens of them.

The male Iron-eating Beasts who had come with them stared, wide-eyed in disbelief. They each tore a stalk from the ground, and every single one had a scalp-crawling number of mole crickets on its roots.

"What is going on? There are always some mole crickets in the forest, that’s true, but are you telling me our thousand-year-old Bamboo Forest Mountain was forced to flower by these little bugs? We never had a problem before, and now we’re even raising chickens to eat them. How can there be so many?"

None of them could believe this was the cause. Yet, the number of mole crickets was astounding, and they were specifically devouring the rhizomes.

"Something’s not right. The scent on this rhizome is too strong," Zhi Le said, frowning as he bent down to sniff it. "It’s almost as if it was marked, guiding the mole crickets to attack it."

Si Shuo looked down into the hole left by the uprooted bamboo. "If the rhizomes were really marked, does that mean there’s something unusual to be found underground?"

Wei Ce clenched his fists, a terrible suspicion forming in his mind. ’The only Beastmen who can travel underground... The most suspicious are the Mouse Clan...’

Xue Zhu raised her hand. "Father, Mother, I can ask the little field mice to go in and find out what’s happening!"