Chapter 242 - 233: A Bit Miserable
Ye Junhan leaned against the front of the car and glanced at the time.
3:45 AM. Two hours until dawn.
"Don’t overthink it." He turned sideways to look at Gu Xi inside the car. "Wait till dawn, then we’ll go down together?"
Gu Xi looked up. "Okay."
Neither of them spoke again. They both closed their eyes to rest, waiting for dawn to investigate what lay below the cliff.
At 4:25 AM, Gu Xi’s eyes snapped open. An SUV was slowly driving up the mountain toward them.
「Fifteen minutes later.」
After Qi Xiang got out of the car with the Qin Family sisters, she instinctively wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed the goosebumps on her arms.
"Why do I get the feeling this place is a little spooky?" she said, nudging Wei Heng beside her.
Wei Heng frowned slightly but said nothing.
Meanwhile, Shen Yue opened the driver’s side door and walked over to Ye Junhan.
"What are you guys doing here?" Ye Junhan looked up at him.
Shen Yue leaned against a large boulder opposite them, exchanged a look with Gu Xi who was still in the car, then turned back and shrugged. "Qi Xiang was worried, so we came to check things out."
He looked up toward the edge of the cliff. "What’s the situation?"
Ye Junhan slowly shook his head. "It’s hard to say."
Just then, Gu Xi also got out of the car and walked over with Qi Xiang and the others.
The group walked to the edge of the cliff. Qi Xiang craned her neck to look down, then let out a sound of surprise. "Huh? Does this height seem a little off?"
The vertical distance from their camp at the foot of the mountain to the summit was probably only a few hundred meters, but the abyss below felt like it was over a thousand meters deep.
The Qin Family sisters noticed this too. Wei Heng stared at the abyss at his feet and frowned. "It might be a giant sinkhole."
What he didn’t say was that when his Earth Ability had seeped down along the cliff face just moments before, he had felt a faint sense of obstruction. Yet, when he tried to perceive it more carefully, it seemed like nothing was wrong.
’It’s just... a little strange.’
Ye Junhan opened his personal terminal and pulled up the surveillance footage from the abyss. On the screen, you could faintly see a few drones controlled by Yang Liu still weaving back and forth amidst the massive treetop.
Other than that, the scene remained eerily still.
Qi Xiang tilted her head to look over, brushing back a strand of long hair that the mountain wind had tousled. "There’s still half an hour until dawn. Why don’t we get ready and go down now?"
’Just sitting here in the wind is pretty cold. We might as well go down and take a look.’
That could work. The group exchanged glances and began to plan their descent.
Ten minutes later, according to the plan, Gu Xi, Shen Yue, and Ye Junhan would go down in the first group. Wei Heng would follow close behind with Qi Xiang, while the Qin Family sisters would remain on the cliff to stand guard.
Shen Yue, a Wind Skill user, was the first to leap into the abyss. He stopped in mid-air, about a dozen meters from the crooked tree’s canopy, and suddenly activated his skill.
Even under the hurricane-force winds, the tall, crooked tree remained completely motionless.
The scene was indescribably bizarre.
Gu Xi stood on a mutant pine tree jutting out from the middle of the cliff, not far behind him. She stared down with a slight frown. ’That thing just sent out another feeling. It seems... very displeased with Shen Yue’s actions?’
’And it’s issuing a warning?’
Just then, Ye Junhan, who was free-climbing down the middle of the cliff, planted a foot on a protruding boulder. In the instant he turned, he whipped out the Superpower Gun from his waist.
With a "BANG," he only managed to hit a small, nameless mutant sapling next to the crooked tree.
The small sapling withered rapidly. And in Gu Xi’s perception, the thing was already baring its teeth in rage.
’So, it was hiding in that little sapling just now.’
’But how did Ye Junhan find it?’
Gu Xi looked up at Ye Junhan.
Ye Junhan pushed off with his feet and, with a few leaps, landed beside Gu Xi. He stared at the withered sapling below and frowned slightly. "It didn’t fight back."
’Something’s wrong.’
His gun was loaded with just a regular Superpower Bullet, but the mutant sapling had withered far too quickly.
’It’s as if... the time it took for the Superpower Bullet to take effect was compressed, accelerated to an extreme degree.’
"That’s not strange," Gu Xi said, staring down. "It likes to devour superpowers." A Superpower Bullet was just another form of a superpower.
Wei Heng landed next to them with Qi Xiang.
Hearing this, Qi Xiang’s eyes widened in surprise. "Doesn’t that mean we’re just feeding the beast?"
The others: "..."
They had to admit, the metaphor was surprisingly apt.
Gu Xi had been suppressing the creature, so it hadn’t dared to absorb any superpowers lately and had been starving for days. Now that Ye Junhan had delivered a superpower right to its mouth, how could it not devour it as fast as possible?
"But Shen Yue used his skill just now, too..." Wei Heng said with a frown.
Shen Yue floated back just then, landing on a branch next to them. He shrugged. "This place is a little messed up."
For a moment there, his skill had almost gone out of control. Luckily, Ye Junhan had fired a shot in time...
"Hey, look..." Qi Xiang suddenly pointed at the crooked tree below, her eyes wide. "I remember Qian Shan said he fired several shots at the trunk. But look at those bullet marks... don’t they seem off?"
Qian Shan’s sidearm was also loaded with Superpower Bullets. This type of bullet has a powerful destructive and suppressive effect on plants. Even the most resilient and vigorous plants would have a hard time recovering after being hit.
But the bullet marks Qi Xiang was pointing to looked strange.
On impulse, the group leaped down from the cliff. Getting closer for a better look, they saw that there were indeed no bullet marks on the trunk. What had looked like marks from a distance were just an illusion created by the light.
’This thing is pretty smart.’
"How can this be?" Qi Xiang even reached out and touched it. The spot that looked like a bullet crater was actually smooth and fine to the touch, cool like a piece of high-quality jade.
The others hadn’t expected Qi Xiang to be so reckless. It was too late to stop her. Gu Xi quickly grabbed her wrist and carefully checked her with her senses. Fortunately, she didn’t detect any problems for the time being.
Seeing Gu Xi’s slight frown, Qi Xiang felt a pang of fear herself. "Gu Xi, I just touched it for a second. It should be fine, right?" She wasn’t usually so impulsive. She didn’t know what came over her just now, but she had reached out as if possessed.
Gu Xi turned her head to look at Ye Junhan and said suddenly, "Let me borrow your saber."
Ye Junhan looked up to meet her gaze. After a moment, he said, "...Okay."
Beside them, Shen Yue and Wei Heng were both a little surprised to hear this, because they all knew that Ye Junhan never lent his blade to anyone.
Ye Junhan drew the scimitar from his waist with a reverse grip and handed it to Gu Xi.
The moment Gu Xi took the blade, she knew. Like the one she had before, Ye Junhan’s scimitar was forged from a special material that could maximize the power of a user’s superpower.
Holding the scimitar, Gu Xi stared intently at the crooked tree and suddenly asked, "What do you think of this blade?"
"!?" Qi Xiang looked astonished, suspecting she had misheard. ’Is Gu Xi asking the tree?’
Gu Xi looked down, casually toying with the scimitar in her hand. Her slender, pale fingers slowly traced the sharp edge of the blade, creating a scene that was both bizarre and harmonious.
She looked up and said slowly, "I think... you’ll like it."
Before anyone could react, Gu Xi flicked her wrist. A brilliant white light flashed, and the curved blade flew back into her hand.
And on the thick trunk of the crooked tree not far away, a deep gash had appeared.
Ye Junhan gave her a surprised look.
"You..." Ye Junhan was confused. With her level of strength, a single strike should have been far more powerful than that.
Gu Xi didn’t explain. She just nonchalantly swung the blade again.
Again and again...
Soon, the thick trunk was covered in a chaotic mesh of slashes.
Qi Xiang watched this, bewildered. Although she didn’t understand what Gu Xi was doing, she couldn’t help but feel... that this crooked tree was in a pretty miserable state.