Fu Xuan immediately followed the scream into the woods.
Pushing aside the bushes blocking her path, she found a clearing ahead.
The Cloud Knights soldier who had screamed was half-kneeling on the ground, countless dark green shoots visibly sprouting from the gaps in his armor.
Just looking at them, Fu Xuan’s mind involuntarily conjured the horrifying sound of those shoots tearing through flesh.
Two Cloud Knights soldiers beside him were protecting him as they retreated, hacking at a humanoid monster with dark green skin.
Yet it wasn’t alone.
More of the creatures kept emerging from the eerie woods around them.
Fu Xuan even spotted white skeletons wielding Longbows, green creatures that ran silently on all fours, and spiders half as tall as a person.
Not daring to delay, Fu Xuan immediately raised both arms and formed a hand seal.
A semicircular formation sprang up around her, enveloping both herself and the three Cloud Knights soldiers while keeping the monsters outside.
As for the monster that had already closed in, she could only leave it to the other two Cloud Knights soldiers.
To Fu Xuan’s surprise, their weapons failed to budge the monster in the slightest, not even leaving a single wound on its body.
But just as Fu Xuan prepared to help, the monster suddenly let out a roar and dissolved like a cloud of smoke.
The entire scene was utterly bizarre.
Seeing that the monster had been eliminated, the two Cloud Knights soldiers breathed sighs of relief and hurriedly supported their wounded companion as they approached Fu Xuan.
“Master Diviner.”
Fu Xuan nodded and looked at the soldier’s arm.
In just that brief span of time, dark green branches had already covered his right hand.
Apart from their color, they looked almost identical to what happened when a Xianzhou Native became Mara-Struck!
“What happened to him?
What did you just encounter?”
Fu Xuan sensed that something was terribly wrong and hurriedly questioned them.
The other two Cloud Knights soldiers didn’t dare delay and promptly answered.
“The three of us were surveying the area together when a monster suddenly leaped out of the bushes and injured his arm.
He reacted quickly and immediately put some distance between himself and the monster.
Since it moved slowly, he checked his injury.
His armor wasn’t damaged, so he thought he was fine.
But in less than half a minute, he suddenly became like this!”
The more Fu Xuan heard, the graver her expression became.
After grabbing the Cloud Knights soldier’s arm and examining it, her face turned even darker.
Noticing the change in Fu Xuan’s expression, the wounded Cloud Knights soldier’s voice began to tremble.
“M-Master Diviner, this isn’t Mara-Struck, is it?
I should just be poisoned, right?
Cough, cough…”
“Don’t speak for now.”
With a grim expression, Fu Xuan gave him a warning before immediately looking up at the other two Cloud Knights soldiers.
“Notify the others at once.
Call for reinforcements and have this Realm-Weaving sealed off.”
“Understood, Master Diviner.
We already warned our other colleagues earlier.
We’ll contact the outside immediately!”
While the two Cloud Knights soldiers took out their phones to contact the outside, the wounded soldier suddenly wrapped his arms around himself and looked up at Fu Xuan, trembling.
“Master Diviner…
Something doesn’t feel right…
I-I’ll be fine, won’t I?
I…
Roar—!”
The Cloud Knights soldier’s body suddenly stiffened.
The branches spread across him at incredible speed until they covered his entire body.
Aside from their color, he now looked exactly like the people Fu Xuan had seen become Mara-Struck!
A trace of sorrow appeared in Fu Xuan’s eyes, but her hands moved without hesitation.
She formed a hand seal and summoned a formation beneath the infected Cloud Knights soldier’s feet.
Countless threads emerged from it, binding him firmly in place.
Once that was done, Fu Xuan turned toward the monsters relentlessly pounding on the barrier.
At the same time, she urged the remaining two Cloud Knights soldiers to summon everyone else and regroup.
Two minutes later, the rest of the Cloud Knights arrived and entered the barrier to regroup with Fu Xuan and the others.
Fu Xuan watched the soldiers who had accompanied her return one by one, but Qingque was nowhere to be seen.
She immediately grew anxious.
“Have any of you seen Qingque?”
The newly arrived Cloud Knights soldiers exchanged glances before shaking their heads in unison.
“We haven’t seen Qingque.
She wasn’t traveling with us.”
Fu Xuan’s expression tightened upon hearing that.
“Stay here and wait for reinforcements.
I’ll find her.”
“Yes, Master Diviner.”
…
Meanwhile, not far from Fu Xuan’s group, Qingque had hurried back as soon as she received the order to regroup.
However, the dense woods obstructed her return, and in that brief span of time, a group of monsters blocked her path.
When Qingque saw a spider half as tall as a person charge out of the bushes with glowing red eyes, she jumped in fright.
Worse still, a humanoid green-skinned monster that barely reached her knees charged out after it.
“Waaah!”
Qingque instinctively stumbled back several steps and immediately pulled a Jade Tile from her pocket.
Pressing three overlapping fingers against it, she coated it in purple light before hurling it at the little zombie.
The Jade Tile struck it squarely in the head.
With a hissing roar, it turned into a wisp of smoke and vanished without a trace.
“That wasn’t so scary…”
Seeing that her attack worked, Qingque immediately grew bolder.
As more monsters gathered around her, she repeatedly pulled Jade Tiles from her pocket and threw them.
Every Jade Tile accurately took down a monster, but after throwing only three, her hand closed around empty air.
‘Oh no!
I’m out of tiles!’
Qingque’s face paled.
Only then did she remember that she hadn’t brought an entire set of tiles in her pocket.
More and more monsters emerged from the surrounding bushes, and before long, they closed in on her like a small wall.
“Um…
I’m out of tiles.
How about we reschedule this for another day?”
Seeing that the little zombie was about to catch up, Qingque didn’t dare throw another Jade Tile.
Afraid it would reach her during the brief moment she spent throwing it, she could only run for her life.
“Why does it run so fast when we both have such short legs?!”
Qingque let out a sheepish laugh before turning and fleeing.
But then she suddenly heard something break beneath her feet, followed by a sensation of weightlessness.
Looking down, she discovered that a perfectly square hole one square meter in size had appeared beneath her feet at some point, even though she hadn’t seen it while running.
Before she could think any further, gravity dragged Qingque straight down the hole.
She fell so quickly that she didn’t even have time to reach out and grab its edge.
“Aaaaaah—!”
Qingque’s scream hadn’t lasted long when she suddenly landed in someone’s arms.
With her eyes tightly shut, her lashes trembled as she cautiously opened them, only to find herself staring at a handsome man’s face.
Fu Mo held Qingque in both arms.
The warmth of her body and the young woman’s fragrance both told him that she was a real person.
He had only been testing the Vein Miner MOD he’d just purchased with Achievement Points, so how had a person fallen out of the sky?
Fu Mo and Qingque stared at each other and blinked.
Unable to help himself, Fu Mo looked up through the hole and muttered subconsciously.
“Did I just use Vein Miner and mine into a village?”
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T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me!
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Shilling time!