Chapter 585: Deep In The Forest
The fourteenth day of the examination, which also put them almost at the halfway point of the examination, Xiao Lin finally made his decision to head deeper into the forest!
Not choosing to leave, to a certain degree it was because he was following Gu Xiaoyue’s wishes. That woman obviously did not want to leave. She had never been afraid of dying. To Gu Xiaoyue, who only had less than two years left in her life, what she needed to do was to do everything in her power to cure her sister.
The others did not have that many opinions. Half a semester worth of examinations was not enough for everyone’s life spans to drop to dangerous levels. Even if they died, they were not too worried, and comparatively, the rewards they could gain were even bigger.
…
What shocked Xiao Lin was the fact that Anna had chosen to follow them. Even though she complained a lot the entire time, the woman’s appet.i.te and ambition was huge. As someone who grew up among mercenaries, Anna had spent most of her time around various dangers, so she was not scared of risk, and was very calculative.
“If the calamity you spoke of really is coming, and you have some way of avoiding it, then this place will really be a paradise for us! Think about it, the whole body of an Epic-ranked monster is a treasure. With corpses littered all over for us to get, we’d earn enough for ten lifetimes!” Anna discussed it with Xiao Lin with a tone of admiration.
Fine, Xiao Lin had to admit that that was part of his thought process as well. He obviously could not deal with Epic rank monsters, but if they really could avoid it, picking up the bodies was natural. He could not hide that from the intelligent girl, but their next steps still needed Anna’s help, so they naturally would need to properly compensate her.
“Let’s think about how we’ll overcome this calamity first.” Xiao Lin changed the topic.
“Don’t you know astrology? Can’t you just predict it?” Anna did not seem to have any suspicions.
“Didn’t your astrologian fail to predict the earlier beast tide?” Xiao Lin asked in exasperation.
“That’s right. Do you know what’s in the deepest parts of the forest?” Anna suddenly asked with a mysterious expression.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t need you to guide me!” Xiao Lin said expressionlessly. He did not know if he had shown off his power too much, or if the others did not have fluent enough Normese, but Anna had stuck to his side to chat the entire time.
Of course, Gu Xiaoyue’s Normese was good as well, but she seemed to have a natural animosity toward Anna. The two women did not have any intention of talking to each other.
Xiao Lin did not add on to the conversation. Anna pouted and answered herself, “In truth, n.o.body knows what’s in the deepest part of the forest. There are only some records that say that there are very strong beasts within. On top of the beasts that appear during the beast tide, no one ever wants to venture inside.”
“Records? Where are these records from?” Xiao Lin asked, because no matter if it was their geography or history lessons, this forest had never been mentioned. When he was in Dawn City, he also knew that this forest did not exist. Of course, it was possible that the records were all within the library, and he definitely could not have read every book in the library.
“This forest appeared around a few hundred thousand years ago, or even possibly millions of years ago. Before this, the entire area was a desolate wasteland. Because back then, the air was very dry and there were no sources of water. Putting aside humans, even the beasts that are resilient to the heat would not come over. However, after that a mysterious explosion happened. After the explosion, there was torrential rain that fell and lasted a whole month which completely changed the weather around here. No, to be precise, the area turned incredibly strange. I’ve said before, this place is very rich in natural energy. Even if the forest was destroyed, it would quickly recover.”
“That’s right, you’ve said that before.” Xiao Lin was mildly curious, as he did not expect the forest to have a past like that. If it were just an explosion, he would have suspected it was some kind of meteor, but a collision would not cause a month long rain.
With the beast tide closing in, the deepest parts of the forest started to be more and more peaceful. At the start, they would occasionally see some strays, but now they would not even see a single beast for an entire day. They knew it was not a good thing. Everyone could not help but feel that it was merely the calm before the storm.
As they ventured deeper into the forest, they started to be exceptionally careful, worried that they would startle some amazing hibernating beast away.
However, they were quickly disappointed. The restricted area that Anna kept talking about, the legendary deepest area, did not have any suspicious places, nor did it carry any signs of beasts. Of course, the group of them did not have that high of a perception ability, but if there really were Epic-ranked beasts, even if they were asleep, there would still be traces of them around.
However, was the place right in front of them where these amazing beasts were living?
In front of them was a beautiful scene with clear waters and wondrous mountains. They had gone past a dense forest to arrive there, and felt like they had entered a completely different world. The air around that place was not too humid; it was not too hot or too cold. There was even a ma.s.sive lake not far away, the surface of the lake shimmered, and there were various colorful flowers next to the lake. They had seen some of them in their textbooks before, but some of them were foreign to them.
No matter what, the fact that the legendary deepest part of the forest was such a scene both shocked them and gave them a strange feeling. They would not be surprised if they were told that this was the site of a resort, but if this was the nest of some beasts, then those beasts really were living a life of luxury.
“You said before that no one has tried to enter the deepest parts of the forest,” Gu Xiaoyue coldly said to Anna.
“That’s right. Who would be so suicidal?”
“There definitely would have been some suicidal folks, right?” Xiao Lin said. It went without saying that he referred to their group as well. There were always some people who placed money over their lives.
“Yes, some people have entered before, but I’ve never heard of anyone coming out.” Anna’s expression turned heavy, but she was very brave. Even knowing so, she had dared to follow them in.
“Let’s look around first and see if there are any places that look like nests or caves, but make sure not to startle anything. Gather here after half an hour.” Since they were already there, Xiao Lin did not consider anything else as he issued his orders.