After traveling some distance, the group successfully found a clearing. The location was quite good, and since it was getting late, they began setting up their tents to prepare for sleep.
As was her routine, Lu Shiyu was writing in her diary that night. Yan Hong was the one on watch duty. Keeping watch was both vital and incredibly boring; without it, a single moment of danger could lead to the total annihilation of the team, but if no danger or accidents occurred, it was essentially just staying awake with nothing to do.
Yan Hong yawned and shifted her gaze toward the surrounding darkness. If one stared at the campfire for too long before looking into the dark, they wouldn’t be able to see anything and wouldn’t be able to guard against threats in time.
The campfire crackled, and Lu Shiyu wrote the final period in her diary.
“Lu Shiyu, what do you write about every night?” Yan Hong asked, resting her chin in her hand as she looked over. “Every day we’re either on the road or about to be on the road. What is there worth recording?”
“There’s plenty,” Lu Shiyu said, flipping through her diary and listing the various events, large and small, that had occurred over the past few days. Some of the incidents Yan Hong had already forgotten or hadn’t noticed at all, but Lu Shiyu had recorded them in meticulous detail.
“You actually wrote about those things too.”
“I wanted to record my experience of going out for the first time.”
“It must be nice to have that sense of novelty. I’ve gone out so much I’ve grown numb to it. Every time I see those mutated creatures, I just get annoyed. The base is much more comfortable.”
Yan Hong stretched, stood up to survey the surroundings, and then sat back down.
“The base is stable, but staying there too long makes everything feel a bit stagnant.”
“If I could, I’d rather hunker down in the base dorms every day.”
Lu Shiyu intended to put her diary back in her bag and go to sleep, but then she noticed many dotted lines of ants crawling in one direction. Yan Hong noticed the anomaly at the same time. The two followed the line of ants and discovered their destination was Shao Xingyang’s sleeping bag.
“Where did all these ants come from?” Yan Hong stood up and walked toward Shao Xingyang’s sleeping bag. Lu Shiyu quickly packed away her diary and followed to investigate.
“Shao Xingyang? Shao Xingyang?”
Yan Hong poked Shao Xingyang’s sleeping bag with her scabbard. The area around his bag was crowded with dense clusters of ants, and countless others were crawling all over the bag itself.
Hearing Yan Hong’s call, Shao Xingyang turned over groggily.
“Hmm? Is it time for the shift change?”
Shao Xingyang sat up with a dazed expression. The moment the two women saw his face, their expressions turned pale instantly.
“Your… your face…” Lu Shiyu pointed at his face with a trembling finger.
“Captain! Chen Yunliang! Captain! Stop sleeping and get up, quick!” Yan Hong hurriedly turned to wake the other two.
“Face?” Shao Xingyang’s consciousness hadn’t fully awakened, and his tone was still sluggish. “I know I’m handsome, but there’s no need to be so surprised. Ugh… why does it feel a bit itchy?”
Shao Xingyang scratched his face and, feeling something there, swiped his hand across it. He looked down to see a handful of ants scurrying frantically in his palm. His brain stalled on the spot, seemingly unable to process what he was seeing.
“What happened?”
Tang Zeyu and Chen Yunliang rose quickly and gripped their weapons, ready to deal with any mutated creatures that might be ambushing them. But looking around, where were the attackers?
Since there was no ambush, it had to be something else. The two lowered their weapons and asked Yan Hong what was wrong.
Yan Hong’s expression was complicated and hard to describe. She could only point toward Shao Xingyang and let them see for themselves.
By now, Shao Xingyang still hadn’t figured out why there were ants on his face, but he saw Tang Zeyu and Chen Yunliang looking at him with subtle expressions.
“What? Why are you all looking at me like that?”
Shao Xingyang looked down at himself. “It’s not like I’m not wearing clothes… AHHHH!”
A piercing scream shattered the silence of the night, startling several birds resting in the trees into flight.
“Calm down first, don’t move.” Tang Zeyu told Shao Xingyang not to get agitated, hoping to prevent the ants crawling on him from becoming provoked and biting his skin. But Shao Xingyang was far beyond being calmed by a simple command. He felt ants crawling all over his body, and goosebumps broke out everywhere.
“Help! What are these things!”
Shao Xingyang looked as if his very soul were screaming. Tang Zeyu pulled Chen Yunliang aside to ask if there was a solution.
“Vinegar and smoke can be used to drive ants away, but I’m not sure if these methods still work on them after they’ve mutated.”
“Well, let’s try anything we can.”
Tang Zeyu told Shao Xingyang to sit still and not move. He instructed Yan Hong and Chen Yunliang to find some dry grass and went to ask Lu Shiyu for some vinegar.
“Vinegar? I have some, but wait a second.”
Lu Shiyu ran behind some bushes with her backpack, looking as though she were rummaging for the vinegar. Tang Zeyu had a significant height advantage and sharp eyes; from his position, he could see that while Lu Shiyu appeared to be taking vinegar out of her bag, her hand hadn’t actually reached inside. Instead, she was fiddling with something in a blind spot. A moment later, she emerged with a bottle of vinegar.
“Here.”
Tang Zeyu didn’t ask questions. He took the vinegar and pulled out a small bottle of disinfectant alcohol, temporarily pouring the alcohol into another small container. He mixed the vinegar and water in a 1:1 ratio and put the mixture into the small spray bottle. By then, Yan Hong and Chen Yunliang had both returned with armfuls of dry grass.
Shao Xingyang was still trying carefully to keep the ants from crawling into his nostrils and ears when he suddenly felt a chill and shuddered. Three dark shadows loomed over him. Shao Xingyang looked up and asked with a source of unknown fear:
“What are you guys trying to do?”
Lu Shiyu sat a short distance away, watching the three take turns driving the ants away from Shao Xingyang. Tang Zeyu sprayed the vinegar water over him relentlessly, as if it cost nothing.
“What is this! It’s so sour! Ptooey, ptooey!”
Next came Yan Hong and Chen Yunliang. Tang Zeyu lit a portion of the dry grass they held. Thick smoke billowed out, and the two circled Shao Xingyang, letting the smoke envelop him to drive away the ants.
“Cough, cough, cough! Are you trying to smoke me to death too! Cough, cough!”
It was no use for Shao Xingyang to try and flee; fearing he would move too much, the three had tied him up with rope beforehand. Now, his only means of struggle was to squirm.
At this point, Tang Zeyu finished another bottle of vinegar water and continued spraying it on him.
“Again?!”
After the two methods were applied in turns, the ants finally realized it was too much and retreated, fleeing far away from Shao Xingyang.
“It worked. The ants are gone.”
Shao Xingyang lay on the ground, having lost all will to live. “Yeah, and I’m about to go too.”
Yan Hong kicked Shao Xingyang as he lay there and said, “Do you know what you look like right now?”
“What?”
“Sweet and sour smoked fish.”
Shao Xingyang began making unintelligible groans of despair on the ground.
Sitting nearby, Lu Shiyu watched the retreating ants scurrying off in another direction. Out of curiosity, she reached out and picked one up to examine it.
Although these ants didn’t look much different from regular ants after mutating, they were several times larger. One ant was about the size of a soybean. With their increased size, the details were much clearer—such as legs that looked like a cockroach’s and a mouth like a pair of pliers. Although normal ants looked like this too, most people never looked closely enough to notice; it was only natural to find them terrifying once seen clearly.
No wonder Shao Xingyang had screamed loudly enough to hit a high E6 note.
Lu Shiyu watched the ant crawl across her hand, switching hands to keep it moving. Suddenly, she felt the ant looked somewhat familiar. She hurried to pull the “Handwritten Manual of Mutated Creatures” from her bag to compare.
Found it!
Lu Shiyu put the ant back on the ground and jogged over to Tang Zeyu, asking him for a favor.
“A favor? What do you want to do?”
The other three also became curious, leaning in to hear what Lu Shiyu wanted.
Lu Shiyu gave a mysterious smile and said, “I want you to help me dig up a treasure.”
“Treasure?” Shao Xingyang stopped moaning and scrambled up from the ground, leaning on Chen Yunliang and Yan Hong. “What treasure?”
“You’ll know once we dig it out.” Lu Shiyu showed no intention of giving away the answer early. The mystery piqued everyone’s curiosity.
“Then I’m coming too!”
“Let go of me first, you smell like a sour mess,” Yan Hong said, pinching her nose in disgust. “I won’t go. We can’t leave the camp empty. Since it’s my watch tonight, I’ll stay here and guard the place.”
Lu Shiyu led the three men forward, her eyes fixed on the ground the entire time. Finally, she stopped in front of a certain mound.
“We’re here. It should be right here.”
“Where? I don’t see anything.” Shao Xingyang rushed forward and looked all around, but there was nothing.
“It’s right under here.” Lu Shiyu pointed downward.
The group looked down and found a raised mound of earth. There was a small hole in the mound, about the size of a finger poke, with ants lining up to enter and exit.
“An ant nest?” Chen Yunliang pushed up his glasses. “Those ants must have come from here earlier.”
Seeing ants again, Shao Xingyang was in a state of tearless grief.
“Why ants again! Ants aren’t treasure. I got excited for nothing.”
“Who said the treasure was the ants?” Lu Shiyu shook her head with a look of mystery. “The treasure needs to be excavated. Grab your shovels and start digging!”
Tang Zeyu handed out an entrenching tool to everyone. The four of them worked together, huffing and puffing as they dug into the ground at the ant nest.
With someone attempting to destroy their home, the ants naturally wouldn’t sit idly by. Countless black ants surged out from the nest. Having just experienced being covered in them, Shao Xingyang was instantly terrified.
“How are we supposed to dig? We’ll be covered in ants before we’re even half-finished.”
Without a word, Tang Zeyu threw a fireball. The cluster of ants it hit was instantly turned to ash. He threw several more in succession, and soon the ants on the surface were mostly cleared away. The group continued digging, but more ants surged out after a moment. Tang Zeyu threw more fireballs, and again they were wiped out. After several repetitions, the number of ants crawling out of the nest visibly decreased.
These ants had to be cleared out all at once, or they might crawl onto Shao Xingyang again. It was too late to change campsites now, so the only way to spend the night in peace was to eliminate these ants.
Lu Shiyu wiped away sweat and glanced at Tang Zeyu as he threw fireballs, remarking, “A fire-type ability is really convenient.”
Hearing this, Shao Xingyang almost choked on his own spit. He had thought that Tang Zeyu’s ability being used as a stove fire these past few days was pathetic enough, but now he was using it to burn ants, only to be called “convenient.” Is that how an ability is supposed to be used?
Thanks to their collective efforts, they dug a pit nearly a meter deep. Several tunnels were collapsed during the process, but all were dealt with by fireballs. Finally, they found the “treasure” Lu Shiyu had mentioned.
Lu Shiyu called for them to stop, then knelt down and began digging with her bare hands. She pulled a somewhat irregular round ball completely out of the soil.
“Found it! This is it.”