"Keep digging."
Li Xu commanded.
The men moved forward again and dug deeper.
After repeating this process several times, they worked until noon.
"We've hit something! We've found something!" a villager suddenly cried out in alarm.
Beneath the shovel, a section of something deathly pale was revealed, covered in fibrous roots like a human hand.
Terrified, everyone retreated once more.
Li Xu walked forward and gestured for them not to panic.
The poisonous gas had already dissipated.
It was safe now.
He picked up a shovel, first draining the surrounding water to one side, then had the others build a mud barrier to hold back the river.
Then, he cleared the soil around the object, bit by bit.
Finally, the legendary, eerie marvel—the Yabulu—revealed its complete form to everyone present.
It was an enormous plant root, over a meter tall, shaped uncannily like a curled-up infant.
Its "body" was grayish-white, its surface a tangled web of roots resembling blood vessels.
