CHapter 252

  Darkness (III)

  Our picturesque journey didn't last for particularly long--this tiny forest was truly just a tiny buffer between the civilization and just... darkness.

  No, seriously.

  It was night in here. We've barely walked into the jungle-like behemoth, perhaps sixty feet or so, yet we had to use Qi to empower our eyes to be able to see anything.

  Except that didn't help.

  Next on the list was trying a globe of light, which Lao Shun did, and it lasted for the perfectly long four seconds before being snuffed out.

  Qi here was... unordinary. Not in the way Light's or Wan Lan's was, but more so that it seemed to swirl in a very predictable pattern, and trying to go against it was impossible.

  I dipped into my spatial rings and soon found an oil lamp in one of them--there was a lot of random crap that I kept just in case, and it turned out to be a rather genius thing on my part, as the light it gave persisted.

  It was weak, barely lighting up about ten feet around us, but compared to nothing, it was golden.

  The trees here were... old. Weathered bark rounded thick trunks, with roots jutting out practically everywhere like spider legs. Navigating this, I knew, would be a nightmare, but hey, kids needed to be challenged and all.

  We decided not to go deeper in, however, and just stick to the relative edge for the time being. I wasn't expecting to find anything worthy of note, of course, as these edges have been explored by probably thousands of people in the past. In fact, within just an hour of wandering about in silence, we came across two signs that people had been there before--remnants of a campfire and an iron pan and an iron bowl.

  There were layers of dirt over them, so it's likely been a while, but we probably won't find anything worth even a single copper coin around the edges, as, if there ever was anything, it was taken a long time ago.

  The more we walked, the more I realized just how easy it'll be to get lost in this place. It's all the same. I mean, forests even on Earth were broadly similar, which is why a lot of the 'lost while hiking mysteries' weren't really mysteries at all--it's enough to lose your sense of direction for literally 30 seconds in the forest, and if you have no frame of reference, you're just... lost.

  I kept reminding myself which direction 'out' was, but, honestly, gun to my head... I probably couldn't claim I remember it well enough with absolute certainty. We didn't just walk straight, after all; some trees bled into one another, shaping into a malformed amalgamation.

  Sometimes the roots were so numerous, so thick, and so tall that we had to go around them, often by dozens of feet or so.

  Altogether, I'm beginning to regret this little expedition of ours, to be honest.

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  Doubly so when the first horror appeared--we'd just started relaxing a bit, with the kids even turning to chat, when I came to a halt as I'd been at the front of the group--I didn't see it, per se, but I felt it somewhere from the front. I wasn't alone, far from it, as all the relaxed posturing disappeared in a flash and everyone (no, really, everyone, even Rayce) broke rank to come in front of me.

  ... haah.

  Maybe I should just be flattered? Yeah. Preserve what little's left of my pride.

  Everything turned still--or, at least, the aggressive darkness made it seem so, the exception being the flickering shadows cast by the oil lamp illuminating the few feet of space around us.

  A growl was a bit late, as I saw a flashing figure dart forward, only for another flash to intercept it; blood sprayed out as I watched something be cleaved in half while Xi Zhao withdrew his sword and put it away.

  Holy shit.

  I had to consciously stop my jaw from slacking, as I literally could not follow that strike. In fact, if he attacked me with it... wouldn't I just straight up die?!

  "What was that?" Dai Xiu asked as the kids curiously drew forward, with me right behind them.

  As it was cleanly cut in half, it was actually morbidly easy to 'reassemble', though even with that... it wasn't, really, anything specific. It was a canine-like... I think... as it seemed to have a jutting snout and four legs and a tail. Though everything else was just a mass of growths and rotting flesh, so who was to say what it actually was?

  The first thing, beyond how depressing it looked, I noticed was the lack of stench--despite the fact that it looked like it should stink of rotten fish and eggs, it really just didn't. At all.

  "A mutant of some sort," Rayce said. "Maybe a wolf, originally?"

  "What made it look this way?" Dai Xiu asked with a faint frown.

  "Qi here, potentially," Lao Shun said.

  Was it Qi? I don't really know. Its body seems to be covered by tumors, but tumors aren't necessarily a mutation.

  Regardless, we set it aside and moved on; despite its appearance, it was really only in the middle stages of Qi Condensation or so, so hardly a threat.

  For the next three hours we tried looking for a place to pitch the tent and rest for a while, only to come to a rather horrifying realization that there are no clearings here. No, seriously, not even a few feet of them, let alone one large enough for a tent.

  By now, there were quite a few tears and nicks on our robes as we struggled with loose branches and such, and no matter how far we went, it never improved. We thus had a choice to make: leave the forest and camp outside, or... persist.

  "We won't always be able to leave it," Lao Shun said. "Maybe we should get used to it?"

  "We can take turns standing guard," Rayce said. "I've also drawn a few Forewarning Words that we can burn."

  "What are--"

  "AUUUGGGGWWWW!!" I tensed while everyone else jumped to form a circle around me... but nothing manifested.

  It was... a growl? A howl? A whimper? Honestly, I don't know. It wasn't like anything I've ever heard before. Distorted, unwound, and cracking at strange intervals, it lasted for only a few seconds before the silence returned.

  Right.

  We probably shouldn't have come to this house of horrors here, but hey, adventure and all.

  "We can rest here." Long Tao pointed to a nearby set of trees that provided a bit of a clearing (like a foot, in total) while also concaving as though offering to cradle weary travelers.

  Hmm.

  "What's a Forewarning Word, Junior Brother?" Dai Xiu asked curiously as everyone tried to settle down in the most comfortable position we could.

  "It's a Word that alerts us of hostile intent," he said.

  "Isn't that amazing?! Doesn't that mean if you have it, you can never be assassinated?!"

  "Ha ha, no," he said with a laugh, strangely enough. "Of course not. It's nowhere near that powerful. It really only works on things driven by instinct rather than intellect. Even so, some preying beasts are so clever that they can avoid it, too. It's not something to rely on and more so a secondary measure just in case."

  "Aah, amazing! What are Words, Junior Brother?" Dai Xiu's curiosity drove the conversation as my ears perked up to listen in.

  Maybe it's high time I learned some basics of Shamanism, if I am to have a Disciple of it?