Reincarnated as A Bamboo

The drizzle started out of nowhere.

On the bumpy mountain road were six dark green cars, slowly making their way towards Little Li Village.

After receiving the village's distress call, the fire department had quickly reported all the information to their superiors, who had been concerned about the abnormal changes in the Bamboo Sea Nature Reserve for a long time.

Professional firefighters and special forces familiar with the forest valley were immediately dispatched, to search for the missing villagers and recover the so-called travel buddies who had disappeared into the mountains.

The twisting mountain road had become extremely muddy after the recent rainfall.

About seven or eight miles from the village, the leading vehicle came to a creaking halt after struggling through the mud for what seemed like forever.

The door of the vehicle before it swung open, a middle-aged man wearing a camouflage uniform jumping out onto the mud-covered ground.

The driver of the leading vehicle got down as well, rushing over. "Captain Zheng! The road ahead is in terrible condition, our tires have gotten stuck in the mud and we won't be able to move for a while!"

Zheng Guodong nodded wordlessly and looked down at his feet. They had sunken deep into the mud.

Entering the mountains during the rainy season was gambling on God's mercy. Now that it was raining and their vehicles had stopped, their luck couldn't seem to get any worse.

[He] raised his head to look into the distance. The vast canyon between the mountains was now shrouded in a rainy mist and looked like a scene out of a fairytale.

Zheng Guodong looked behind [him] and realized that all his team members had stepped out of their cars and were waiting for his further orders. As for the city and county fire departments, their cars were far behind. It was even harder for them to drive in weather like this.

"Transcendent Squad! Walk with me to the Little Li Village, while the rest stand by on guard!" he announced.

There was not a particularly high risk of landslides here, so Zheng Guodong was not too worried. It also didn't seem like the rain would get any heavier than it was now.

Before their departure, Li Fei from the Little Li Village had called again to let them know there had been an earthquake on the mountain after midnight. The magnitude of the earthquake was large, and everyone in the village fearfully ran straight into their yards to take shelter.

Even though it was late into the night, various animal roars and countless bird cries were heard from the valley, as if all the creatures there had gone mad.

The quaking that came after was a little strange. The following rumbles seemed to have a certain rhythm and were much smaller than the first one that came.

This peculiar phenomenon did not end until dawn.

Zheng Guodong made an educated guess that the Bamboo Sea Nature Reserve may have experienced a spiritual aura explosion, which caused the disturbances with the animals, birds and insects of the mountain.

However, he had no clue about the reasons behind the earthquake.

If there had been an explosion, a spiritual aura vortex would appear in the 'spiritual realm', causing creatures to flock to it and cause chaos in the process.

He could order his team to wait for the rain to cease and for the firefighters, who were more familiar with the terrain, to catch up to them. However, he considered the critical state of the situation they were in. They could not afford to lose more time -- who knew when the rain would stop and the road would be usable again? Instead of sitting around, it would be faster to continue on foot. They could not risk the safety of the villagers.

Donning his raincoat, ZHeng Guodong dashed to the front of the group to take the lead, fifteen soldiers following him closely from behind.

However, there were quite a few in this group who did not look like soldiers and rather more like students or simply ordinary people. All of them followed their leader wordlessly, trudging through the slippery mud and heading into the mountains.

They were all carrying heavy backpacks, but seemed unbothered by the weight and kept up a blistering pace without even breaking a sweat.

Those left behind watched them leave enviously.

"Transcendent beings are on another level. They don't even need to straighten out logistics between themselves," a soldier muttered under his breath.

"Ha! They don't even need machines, let alone anything else. The magnetic field in these 'spiritual realms' are so strong that drones can't even fly through. If not for these beings, we ordinary people would never dare traverse the mountain." Another soldier shook his head helplessly as he watched the formation march forward.

After experiencing the Reawakening of the Spiritual Aura, the entire Tang Kingdom and other parts of the world saw the emergence of 'spiritual realms' with extremely dense spiritual aura.

These realms were mostly located deeply in mountains and forests, though some did appear near human settlements.

However, those areas would almost always have dense vegetation and an abundance of animals around.

What they all had in common were their extremely disordered magnetic fields. Technology would not function in the field, and electronic communication devices like cell phones could not detect any signals.

Even controlling drones and flying detector planes at low altitudes was impossible, as the strong magnetic field would render them into a mass of electronic and metal trash. Countless experiments had proven this point true without a shred of a doubt.

Despite all of that, people still managed to obtain some level of understanding about these secret realms. They saw that plants inside would grow very tall, while the sizes of animals would increase rapidly as well.

In a northeast woodland, someone had once witnessed a roe deer the size of an elephant. No bullet from an ordinary shotgun could wound it.

Meanwhile, in a mountain range in central Tang someone had discovered a gigantic insect almost one meter long in length. It could even spew out a green liquid that corroded bones and flesh.

The Reawakening of the Spiritual Aura had made normal animals turn into these beasts of nature. To expand their territory, they started to attack humans To obtain more territory for themselves, they began to attack nearby humans, leading to frequent reports of casualties in various places.

Very few mutated animals actually managed to reach invincibility levels where most weapons could not hurt them, most had simply increased in size.

However, it was still enough to injure or kill ordinary people. Only transcendents with special abilities could survive in these spiritual realms.

Transcendents were humans who developed superhuman abilities during the Reawakening, due to unusual mutations taking place in their own bodies and rousing their existing exceptional potential.

Initially, they were extremely rare but over the last six months, that has changed. For example, the Tang Kingdom now had almost ten thousand transcendents.

99.9% of transcendents in the world were of the same kind -- strength-type transcendents with great power.

Very few actually possessed special abilities.

However, it was difficult for normal people to identify them.

Were there any transcendents with special abilities in this 'Transcendent Squad'? The soldiers staying behind had no way to tell.