Chapter 1638 - Abnormal Tree Rings (2/2)

“That’s a f*cking great idea, why didn’t we think of this earlier?” Li Du could not help but swear.

Brother Wolf sighed. “Because our heads were in a mess. The folds on the rocks have a hypnotizing effect and we’ve been looking at too many for too long so our brains aren’t working as they should.”

Li Du and the rest of them first confirmed their position before finding their target destination. Then, he pointed to the destination and Ah Fei flew into the air. It led the entourage from above and so they started moving.

Despite this, the mountains, valleys, numerous rocks, and lush vegetation made it easy for them to lose their way. Sometimes they would loop around a valley for a while only to discover they had gone one big round before finally returning to the right path!

Moving on foot through the mountains was just too slow. Another day passed like this and they were barely any closer to where they were headed.

At night, the bunch of them found a leeward hillside to set up camp.

According to their expedition of the past two days and the information provided by Elson, there were not many large predators so camping at night was not very dangerous. They would be fine as long as they avoided the tiny, venomous bugs.

Big Markelov got some men around the camping ground to spray insect repellent. Li Du made himself comfortable as he lay down. Just like yesterday, he was hit with a dizzy spell the moment he closed his eyes for some rest.

They learned their lesson yesterday and gathered a sufficient amount of wood. Madman saw a few large, withered trees along the road, which he chopped and dragged along the journey. The wood could be put to good use now.

One tree was as thick as the calf of a grown adult and could burn for some time.

Big Quinn went to grab a few pieces of the wood and said, “Let me see if I can make charcoal out of this. If I can, we can roast some— hey, that’s odd!”

“What’s wrong?”

Big Quinn stared at the wood in confusion and said, “Boss, there are no tree rings on this one?”

Li Du scoffed. That was impossible; every tree had tree rings. Tree rings were a result of cells and ducts changing from large to small, the material changing from loose to dense. As long as the tree had been growing for some time, it would definitely have tree rings.

However, tree rings were circular patterns of a different color, luster, and texture. Some were obvious and others less so.

The tree that Madman had lugged back was a pine, the most common type of tree in cold regions. Pine trees had tree rings that were clear and not difficult to find.

Big Quinn waved his hand as he spoke, “Come take a look at this, boss, come see for yourself if you don’t believe me. There really aren’t any tree rings on this one.”

Li Du moved over to take a look and was stunned. Tree rings were usually of varying width and easy to spot, but he could not find any in this piece of wood.

This bit of the trunk had rings on it too, but they were not as wide as regular tree rings were. It was basically made of many rings and the whole trunk looked like it was made by gluing layers of wood on top of one another.

These were not tree rings. Li Du was also puzzled and asked, “What’s the matter with this? Why doesn’t this tree have tree rings?”

The others inspected the section of the trunk and arrived at the same conclusion.

Big Markelov turned this over in his head for a while, then reached for an axe to cut another tree. He then took a flashlight and directed its beam on the cross-section of the tree before shaking his head at the result. “Same. The trees here are really weird.”

Everyone was staring in wonder. Someone mentioned off-handedly, “These may be tree rings, just that they’re narrower than usual because of the environmental impact that sped up the tree’s growth.”

“That’s some other kind of rubbish, how can something like that happen?” Young Markelov bit back sarcastically. “This has nothing to do with how quickly it’s growing. Time is the only reason for this. Unless time passes extremely quickly here, how else can such tree rings appear?”

They were only discussing this casually so no one paid much attention to what he had said, but Li Du was momentarily stunned by his words. He had a conjecture that Markelov might be right!