Chapter 12 The Forest of Leeches

The group continued forward in a rather oppressive atmosphere. Every so often, Honghu would take out the infrared light to check the surroundings and to see if any leeches had crawled onto their skin.

This "Leech Forest" covered a much larger area than they had imagined. After walking for a long time, they were still surrounded by invisible leeches. Because the leeches on their clothes were accumulating, they eventually had to stop, clean up a bit, and then walk a little further… stop again, and clean again.

Finally, about an hour after Feng Bujue's second wild pitch of *yakyuken* (a type of Japanese baseball-themed game), which was roughly the same time he accepted the quest, the five of them arrived at a stream. The infrared light showed that, with this stream as the dividing line, there were no leeches at all in the forest on the other side.

Upon seeing this, they each cleaned off the leeches on their bodies and jumped over the stream. Once on the other side, they carefully checked again to make sure they hadn't brought any over, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

"Ah…finally out of that disgusting place…" Young Master Atobe sighed, "It's like being reborn…"

Skypiercer added, "Yeah…a hero covered in wriggling, sucking creatures is just too uncouth."

Feng Bujue stroked his chin and said, "Not necessarily. I've seen some interesting hero animations, where…scantily clad female warriors are entangled by strange sucking creatures and lifted into the air…"

"Hey! Are you sure you're watching hero animations?" Atobe roared. "Isn't that the kind of movie with a title made up of letters and numbers?"

"Tch…uncultured," Feng Bujue snorted disdainfully. "The ones with titles made up of letters and numbers are live-action…"

"You two, enough!" Honghu shouted. "Why does the topic always drift to weird places so naturally? Focus on the script!"

"I say…" Uncle Worthless interrupted the three clowns, speaking in a more serious tone, "Did you guys notice…" He paused. "It feels like it's getting hotter."

"Eh? Now that you mention it…" Feng Bujue chimed in. "It really is."

"Yeah…the temperature seems to have suddenly risen from the twenties to over thirty-three degrees," Skypiercer agreed.

"Hmph, you're all too slow," Honghu adjusted his glasses,得意 *de yi* (proudly) saying, "I noticed it just now…" He pointed to the stream behind them. "The temperature is noticeably different on either side of this stream. You can jump back and try it; the other side is definitely still in the twenties."

"Oh, is that so…" Jue-ge rested his hands behind his head and said leisurely, "So it really is getting hotter around here."

"What did you think it was?" Atobe asked.

"I thought it was because we were talking about interesting topics, making my body restless," Feng Bujue said with a smile.

That was Jue-ge's sense of humor…He always made inexplicable jokes at the most inappropriate times, and the content of his words was unimaginable. It could be so high-end that it was incomprehensible, or so lewd that people didn't want to understand it…

"You're getting restless pretty quickly…" Honghu said sarcastically, narrowing his eyes. "You fantasize and imagine things yourself, and then get yourself all high, so your whole body heats up…The whole process takes less than ten seconds, right? Your imagination is about to break through the sky!"

"Of course, I'm an artist, after all," Feng Bujue replied shamelessly.

"Alright," Uncle Worthless shook his head, interrupting them again. "I was just reminding you that the temperature has changed; you three can really go off on tangents…" He looked at Honghu. "Honghu, you know Mad Bro's personality; don't let him lure you into arguing."

"Also, Mad Bro," Uncle Worthless turned to Feng Bujue again. "Although I also agree that…casual players should focus on having fun when playing games, don't be too casual…After all, most of us in this team are professional players, and we care about whether we clear the level."

"Alright, alright…I understand," Feng Bujue shrugged. "I'll say less rubbish, let's keep moving." Jue-ge nodded quickly, ending the conversation.

Feng Bujue was rather helpless when dealing with people like Uncle Worthless. He understood these types of people very well…They rarely spoke officially in a serious manner, but they were indeed very capable and had a clear understanding of things. If this kind of person adopted a serious attitude to remind or advise you, you'd better listen, because what they said made sense.

In real life, Jue-ge had several friends with this kind of personality, such as Bao Qing and Ouyang Jian. The words Feng Bujue left for them in his will (yes, he had written one, and was constantly adding and revising it) were: "You are all people I envy. You are successful in your careers and have happy families; your talents are enough to be the capital to despise others, and make those who are superficially impressive feel ashamed, but you maintain humility and uphold integrity. I originally didn't leave anything for you, because you already have so much that I don't. But after all…I'm more handsome than you, so I've left some of my personal selfies for you, to encourage you to scale new heights in your future lives."

…………

"Look! What's that?" After walking along the forest path for another twenty minutes or so, Skypiercer suddenly saw something. He immediately stopped and whispered.

Upon hearing this, the four people behind him all craned their necks to look…They saw that in the shadowy woods ahead, a tall, dark figure seemed to be approaching. The shadow was over two meters tall and wider than two people. Judging by the way it was moving, it seemed to be a bipedal creature.

"How about we hide?" Feng Bujue asked.

"What's there to be afraid of?" Skypiercer turned his head and said. "As heroes, how can we hide?"

"Yes, well said," Feng Bujue patted the other party on the shoulder, then turned to the other three and said, "How about the four of us hide first?"

"Okay!" The three of them responded in unison.

In the next second, except for Little Ma-ge, the other four all shot out like arrows, silently concealing themselves.

"Hey…these guys are going too far…" Skypiercer shouted in his heart.

*Chi*—*chi*—

As the dark figure approached, its footsteps became more and more obvious.

"As expected…when you're alone…" Skypiercer swallowed, nervously watching ahead, and muttered, "It's super scary!"

At this moment, the dark figure walked out of the forest and immediately saw Skypiercer standing in the middle of the path.

"Hmm? Human?"

Moonlight (although it was a blood moon, the moonlight was white and quite bright) shone down through the gaps in the canopy, illuminating the figure of the monster. It was a humanoid creature with a fleshy, baboon-like face. It was about 1.9 meters tall and had a very broad build, comparable to a sumo wrestler, but its physique wasn't "fat," but "strong."

This "person" was wearing a set of coarse dark-colored clothing and a pair of large scaly leather boots. The reason why the players had mistakenly thought it was over two meters tall was because it was carrying a large axe on its shoulder. The shadow of the axe overlapped with the shadow of the person, creating an illusion.

"What evil creature are you? Quickly state your name!" Little Ma-ge's expression sharpened, and he immediately shouted.

"I'll be…" Feng Bujue, hiding in the dark, was shocked, thinking, "This guy's ability to communicate with NPCs is practically negative…Speaking like that, even a friendly target might turn hostile directly."

"Hehe…hehe…ahaha…"

Unexpectedly, the "baboon face" actually laughed…It was a strange laugh, a crazy laugh, an inexplicable and chilling laugh.

"What?" Skypiercer asked. "What's so funny?"

"Hahahahahaha!" The other party laughed wildly. "After so many years…finally, there's a creature with normal thinking talking to me! Hahaha!" He gesticulated wildly, with an expression of joy. "Haha…Humans! Living humans!"

"Hey, hey…what kind of development is this?" Honghu, hiding in the tree, couldn't help muttering.

Unexpectedly…

"Oh? There are more?" The baboon face immediately looked up, accurately casting his gaze toward Honghu's location, staring straight at him and saying, "Great, there are two of them." After he said this to himself, he suddenly swung his axe and slashed down fiercely at Skypiercer.

In an instant, the baboon face put on an incomparably ferocious expression, grinning madly, "Then it doesn't matter if I kill one, right? Hahahahaha!"