# Chapter 207: Monster Paradise
Almost instinctively, Xu Huo turned and swung his sword, and before his shifting vision could fully capture everything behind him, he was sent flying by a powerful force, with a dark shadow hot on his heels!
Adjusting his posture mid-air, he kicked off the massive plant leaves beside him to face the shadow head-on. The Crimson Sword slashed out and quickly condensed into a thin, narrow sword energy cutting surface—the shadow was too fast; this strike only grazed its edge!
"Its energy value is more than ten times yours, you can't beat it!" Jiang Yihua shouted from not far away, using the sickle leg she had previously removed from a mantis to slash fiercely at the man-eating flower's branches!
"Crunch!" The branch hanging a human-shaped cocoon was severed in the middle. As the leaf fell to the ground, a rustling friction sound echoed through the glass greenhouse. The crown of the giant man-eating flower trembled, and then more than a dozen small man-eating flower heads sprayed out from the stamen area, shooting like cannonballs in all directions!
"Squeak!" The dark shadow blocking Xu Huo let out a thin cry and fled deeper into the flower thicket. But as the small man-eating flower heads fell, a giant mantis was suddenly bitten and lifted into the air, swallowed into the giant flower crown without any chance to struggle!
The sound of swallowing came from the flower crown. Xu Huo and the others only glanced at it before fleeing without looking back!
"Boom! Boom!" Small man-eating flower heads kept crashing nearby, but they weren't targeting them—instead, one after another, they grabbed animals from the dense thicket that they had completely failed to notice. One of them even had a human head in its mouth!
"This is a fucking monster paradise!" Zheng Liang couldn't help shouting, but before his voice faded, the middle-aged woman beside him was bitten and lifted by a man-eating flower. He instinctively reached out to grab her, only to be splashed with blood—the man-eating flower had directly bitten through her throat!
When the headless corpse fell, a mutant animal pounced from the thicket to catch it. But before it could start eating, another larger mutant mantis swung its sickle legs, cutting both of them in half at the waist!
"There's a small house up ahead!" Dai Wenqian suddenly pointed forward.
Sure enough, about ten meters away stood a small wooden cabin with a small lamp hanging in front and a sign next to it reading "Holiday Cabin."
"Boom!" Zheng Liang appeared in front of the cabin and kicked the door open. Xu Huo and Dai Wenqian entered one after another, with Jiang Yihua and Wei Bin slightly behind. But Dai Wenqian's companion at the rear was wrapped in a white silk thread that flew out from the thicket and dragged away. The rich little girl and her two companions, who were even slower, had long been swallowed by the jungle!
Ignoring the captured companion and the others who had fallen behind, Wei Bin locked the door and stepped back a few paces, looking out through the glass windows surrounding the cabin. "They're surrounding us!"
As they moved away from the giant man-eating flower, the number of mutant animals increased. These creatures had followed them almost step for step to the cabin, but stopped after they entered, as if afraid of something and unwilling to come in.
Xu Huo spotted a red button by the door with the words "High-Brightness Light" written next to it. He pressed it hard, and light shot down from the dome of the glass greenhouse, shining around the small cabin.
The mutant animals hiding in the darkness feared the light and fled from around the cabin one after another. Even the small man-eating flowers sprayed out by the giant one retracted under the intense illumination!
"Help..." A cry for help came from the dense thicket. It was the rich little girl, supporting an injured woman as she struggled toward the small cabin.
"Open the door?" Jiang Yihua turned back to ask Xu Huo. After he nodded, she pulled the door open and let the two in.
Both were injured, but not seriously.
After a quick check of their wounds, Jiang Yihua said, "They're fine."
Zheng Liang wasn't concerned about these two. Instead, he looked outside and asked, "How long can these lights last? Will those mutant animals come back?"
Dai Wenqian had already found a few pages of documents on the desk inside the cabin. "This glass greenhouse has its own power supply. With the main power cut off, the stored energy in the greenhouse can last twelve hours."
Hearing this, everyone present breathed a sigh of relief. Wei Bin couldn't help feeling sad. "Seventeen people came in, and now only seven are left."
Three players had also died.
"Dying in instance dungeons is too common," Dai Wenqian said, pointing at the small path outside the cabin that led to the elevator building. "That area isn't covered by the light. If we can't figure out a way to return to the building soon, we'll all die here."
The others followed his gaze. The distance from the cabin to the building wasn't far, but with so many mutant animals lurking around, even that short distance would be enough to kill them several times over.
"I thought we'd found a way out, but it turns out to be a dead end." Jiang Yihua's face was pale.
"Not necessarily." Xu Huo, standing by the window, turned around holding a small design drawing of the cabin. "There's Professor Hao's signature on this. This cabin should be where he observed mutant plants and animals. There must be a way to return to the building safely."
Otherwise, it wouldn't be called Holiday Cabin.
"Then let's search everywhere quickly," Wei Bin said.
The small cabin had a spacious workspace outside, a fully enclosed bedroom inside, and a dedicated bathroom. Daily necessities were complete, but most of the books and materials were gone, leaving only empty bookshelves.
Jiang Yihua found a photo in a cabinet. It showed a chubby middle-aged man posing with a half-human-tall man-eating flower. On the back of the photo was written "Photo with Little Flower Red Red" along with a date.
"This Professor Hao is colorblind, isn't he?" she couldn't help saying. "The man-eating flower is obviously nude-colored. Why name it Little Flower Red Red?"
Wei Bin and Zheng Liang both looked at her. The former said, "Compared to that, shouldn't we be more surprised by his attitude toward the man-eating flower?"
"It looks like Little Flower Red Red Building is named after this giant man-eating flower. Relying on this kind of man-eating thing to establish a research institute and having enough money to build such a large glass greenhouse—this professor isn't normal either."
"Isn't that something we already knew?" Jiang Yihua said. "Normal people don't install so many elevators in their workplace."
That made sense.
Wei Bin fell silent.
"Knock, knock." Xu Huo tapped on the side of the cabinet. The side connected to the wall seemed to have a hollow space. He used his blade to pry open the side panel and found a red button inside, with a note stuck next to it.
"Don't press, there's danger..." Zheng Liang leaned in and read the note aloud, then looked at the others with confusion. "Hiding a button and telling people not to press it—isn't this a trap?"
Xu Huo suddenly reached out and pressed the button.