Dark Blood Path

Surprisingly, the good ‘sister’ she was talking about was actually Yunyun. However, it was highly likely the latter deliberately and purposefully approached the innocent Jiang Xiaowen so as to use her to get closer to Xiao Yu.

What a little crafty woman.

It was originally Xiao Yu’s wish for YunYun to join the combat team anyway, and since she took the initiative on her own, it saved him the effort.

The other friend she brought along had short hair, a quiet look, exquisite facial features, and delicate eyebrows. She could also be regarded as a beautiful woman.

“This is Xu Jing.” Jiang Xiaowen took the short-haired girl’s hand, introducing her, “This is my best friend; she was the only one living with me in the dormitory back then.”

Xu Jing nodded slightly and smiled shyly, “I heard that you need some people. Li Dapeng and I want to join in together. Is that okay?”

Jiang Xiaowen added, “Li Dapeng is her boyfriend. Both of them are very brave, and they want to go together. He and Xu Jing are very good; we shouldn’t leave them behind!”

Xiao Yu nodded, “No problem, but think about it some more; this is not an adventure game. This operation is very long and way more dangerous. I can’t guarantee you coming back alive.”

Xu Jing’s eyes were extremely bright and firm despite her calm demeanor. “Senior Du Tao’s words have convinced me. I have also discussed this with Dapeng; instead of hiding in the dark underground cave, it is better that we fight. We……We have both made up our minds! Even if we are to die, we will die together!”

It seems that Du Tao has not been idle these last few days; his psychological work on the group is very successful.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Xiao Yu didn’t have any abnormal expressions and nodded slightly, allowing her to join, but there was still a lack of people. Finally, under the introduction of Wang Chao, Jin Shi, and Han Kexin, more than a dozen joined one after another. Du Tao also recommended a few, who he found more than capable after sizing them up.

Just like that, a team of thirty people was formed, Xiao Yu finally met Xu Jing’s boyfriend, and this guy named Li Dapeng also satisfied him.

There are already too many people; it’s not that I don’t want to bring more, it’s just that the more people there are, the easier it is to encounter trouble.

He thought as he found the thirty people to be really a lot, not to mention the lack of adequate weapons for everyone. Under Du Tao’s arrangement, the rest of the group continued their daily tasks by making tools, gathering fruits, and setting up traps in the surroundings.

After that brief period of embarrassment she showed at the beginning, YunYun immediately recovered, as if she had completely forgotten what happened yesterday. She was walking with Jiang Xiaowen and followed the team leaving the cave, Shuttling through the forest without stopping, nervous, and looking around vigorously.

“Pa!”

They had just taken a few steps outside the cave’s entrance when something dropped from the sky on a person’s head, and the person who was hit cried immediately.

Everyone looked up and saw a few gray monkeys on top of a tree, sitting leisurely on branches, nibbling the wild fruits in their hands. When they saw the gaze of everyone looking toward them, they were immediately alarmed as they backed away. Their gray fur stood up, showing their teeth and hissing in intimidation.

“Ignore them; not every creature in the forest is aggressive, and these monkeys are not a threat to us.” Xiao Yu said to the others while walking: “Actually, animals around can show you signs, often conveying some very useful information. The monkeys are lazily eating wild fruits, and there is chirping in the treetops. All of this may indicate that there is no immediate threat nearby; nevertheless, everyone needs to remain cautious.”

At his words, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Xiao Yu moved in front of the team, brandishing the withered bone blade and clearing a path.

They frequently saw exotic animals and weird vegetation along the way. Every time Xiao Yu comes across some familiar poisonous insects, he catches them one after the other, introduces their habits, explains their venom’s characteristics, and how to capture them, all based on his previous life experience. He simply taught everyone some survival skills in the forest, as well as some poisonous herbs and the identification method of edible wild fruits.

Everyone moved on at a slower pace for about an hour, cutting and chopping thorny shrubs all the way.

Xiao Yu came to a halt, took out a sharp fruit knife, and stabbed it into the large tree beside him. A fingernail-sized bug was on the tip of his knife as he drew it out. Even with close observation, it was almost hard to discern, “This particular kind of forest bloodworm has a steel needle-like head that unknowingly enters blood vessels to suck its victim’s blood, which may equal to five times its body weight! At that time, it will exert a strong anesthesia Toxin, making the victim insensitive to pain so they can’t detect it. When they become full, they will lay eggs inside the human body; the eggs hatch in the body and the larvae newborns also grow up by sucking blood, and then they lay eggs as well, as the cycle repeats itself until the body dries up. The worms will come out of the corpse at that time…”

Everyone’s scalps went numb listening to his words, and they couldn’t help but look around.

“Aaah!”

Jiang Xiaowen let out a scream.

Wang Chao, in front of her, was lifting up his clothes to wipe off his sweat. When he heard her cry, he turned his head in confusion, “What’s the matter? What is it? Were you that amazed by fatty’s figure?”

Everyone gasped when Wang Chao turned around. His back had some large bumps that protruded. His entire back was covered with these dark red lumps, which felt like they were sprouting out of his skin. This scene made their skin itch; those were clearly the bloodworms they had just heard about. There were as many as twenty to thirty of them, and none of them had grown to be more than half the size of a ping-pong ball. No one knows how much blood they already sucked.

Xiao Yu stopped Wang Chao from catching them with his hands, took out a lighter, and burned them one by one until all twenty-eight blood worms burned and fell to the ground.

Wang Chao was so enraged that he stomped on them all. With a burst of heartache, he couldn’t help but feel down when he saw his blood all over the ground: “No wonder I felt a little dizzy just now. I actually lost so much blood; damn it!”

Xiao Yu checked Wang Chao’s back, frowned, and said, “There may be some eggs left!”

“Then what should I do? Can I still be saved? Boss, what is that thing in your hand? What are you doing? Something’s smeared on my back… Ah, shit, why the hell is it so painful?! “

Xiao Yu crushed several plants and applied their juice on Wang Chao’s back, “The juice of this plant destroys bloodworm eggs inside the skin. The plant has a minuscule amount of muscle toxin, which is harmless but causes little ache and pain to your skin.”

Wang Chao yelled in pain, “I feel hundreds of needles piercing in and out of my body, ah! It hurts so much fatty is gonna die!… Is this the little pain you talking about?”

Xiao Yu cleaned his hands and said lightly: “You must endure. If the egg hatches in your body, you will die.”

Wang Chao’s face turned green from the pain, and he was sweating profusely. He could only walk with the support of two other people.

But before they took two steps forward, the guy named Li Dapeng yelled in a panic, “Wait, Xiao Yu, come and take a look; a classmate has fainted!”

A man in the team fell down without warning. Li Dapeng tried to support him, but the man violently convulsed as if he had an epileptic seizure, and before long, his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears were bleeding continuously. Everyone encircled him in shock, but they had no idea what had happened to the guy, and they had no way to save him. In the blink of an eye, the blood flow accelerated, and the ground was dyed red.

Everyone just stood there, watching him lose his breath steadily till he lost all vitality and died. The strange thing was that he had no visible wounds all around his body.

After inspection, Xiao Yu found a row of thin wounds on his left thumb, and he made a judgment: “If it wasn’t eating some kind of highly poisonous poison, then it was definitely the cause of a highly poisonous caterpillar piercing his skin. I’m aware that such caterpillars exist in the wild. According to the symptoms of bleeding, they are extremely similar; it uses a toxin that hinders blood coagulation and causes internal bleeding, as well as rapid organ failure. It is so strong that it is nearly impossible to save.”

Most of the caterpillars in the forest were very small, and their color was not particularly eye-catching, as they blended in with their surroundings, but they were mostly highly poisonous. If you accidentally touch it and get pricked by its thorns, you won’t feel anything, but death has already fallen upon you. The forest was full of dangers, and they had no time to bury the body. Even if it was buried, it would still be discovered by certain critters and monsters with great senses of smell, so he simply removed his weapons and equipment and hid the body inside a bush.

The tragic death of this boy made the others more cautious, as if they were trekking on eggshells, not daring to touch anything lightly.

“No need to be nervous; our destination is near. We are within the territory of a specific group of monsters. And normally, no other powerful monsters would be around.” Xiao Yu finally breathed a sigh of relief and said, “We were really lucky this time. We weren’t attacked by any kind of beast along the way, though one person accidentally died.”

Jiang Xiaowen was holding a wooden spear and was about to speak, but then she started hearing a strange croaking sound from all around her. It sounded a bit like a frog, and it was a very unpleasant noise. She shrank her neck nervously and took a step back timidly.

“You all wait here, stone; stay and take care of Fatty.” Xiao Yu turned to Han Kexin and Jiang Xiaowen and said, “Miss Han, Xiaowen, come with me, grab your weapons, and keep your voice down.”

The crowd dispersed quickly and crouched down on the grass while Jin Shi helped Wang Chao, who was sweating buckets, to sit down beside him.

The trio crept into a one-meter-high patch of grass. The rough edge of this grass made it easy to cut the skin, and when the three of them emerged through the other end, they all had scars on their bodies. A shallow cut appeared on Xiaowen’s face, causing her discomfort and irritation, with blood oozing from it. She was almost terrified; after all, as a woman, appearance was akin to her life, especially for a beautiful woman like her. Fortunately, the cut was very shallow and would most likely not leave a scar behind.

From a distance, Han Kexin could see several wooden structures in the dense forest, and there was even a row of wooden walls surrounding them. Several strange-looking creatures were roaming around in the surrounding. They were 1.34 meters tall and looked similar to goblins, only significantly thinner. They were bald, with no hair, and their skin was greenish.

Han Kexin and Jiang Xiaowen both looked at Xiao Yu simultaneously, waiting for his timely explanation.

“This kind of monster is called the green goblin, and its strength is weaker than that of goblin slaves.” Xiao Yu pointed to the wooden wall and continued, “This is a small goblin village. There are one or two hundred goblins here. As far as I know, there is only a ‘first-order’ goblin among them. However, it is one of the weakest existences among ‘first-order’ monsters within a hundred miles around, though you must be careful. Let’s clear out the green goblins in the outside first, then gesture for the others to come over.”

Jiang Xiaowen gripped the goblin’s short spear and cast a brief glance at him, “then, shall we attack directly?”

“It’s too dangerous.” Han Kexin observed through the gaps in the grass, “Look, there are perhaps thirty or forty goblins outside, and they aren’t far apart from each other. It is impossible for us to kill them one at a time. Furthermore, if we gain the attention of others in the village, especially that ‘first-order’ goblin, it’ll be our end instead.”

Xiao Yu smiled with confidence, “Miss Han, don’t worry. I’m not an idiot, and I won’t let you die.”

Han Kexin blushed, “I didn’t mean that.”

Xiao Yu took off his backpack, “gray goblins and green goblins have many similarities. They are omnivores, but they prefer to eat meat more and are easily attracted by the smell of blood. I brought their favorite food! Here are the bits that you didn’t get to see yesterday. Some of the wild boar viscera I stored was specifically reserved for today, but before baiting them, we need to add a couple of new ingredients.”

“You want to poison them!” Jiang Xiaowen shouted, but probably realizing that her voice was a bit loud, she immediately covered her mouth and looked around nervously. After realizing that no one was alarmed, she whispered in a low voice: “No wonder along the road you introduced to everyone so many poisonous snakes, toxic insects, and dangerous vegetation while collecting their poison. It turns out that at this moment, all of this can come in handy!”

Xiao Yu didn’t deny her words and crawled forward till he reached a certain distance and came to a relatively conspicuous open space. Three large pieces of wild boar viscera wrapped in coal balls were taken out. A pile of wild boar intestines and offal appeared in front of his eyes as he quickly diluted the various poisons collected along the way with some water, stirred them evenly with the viscera, and sprinkled the viscera everywhere using a stick.

“Let’s hide; goblins have a keen sense of smell. They will come over soon!”

The three immediately hid in a nearby bush, waiting in ambush.

About five minutes later, a group of green goblins was attracted by the smell. There were about seventeen of them, and the majority were goblin slaves holding wooden clubs; they were ordinary monsters. However, two of them were relatively strong and held a large axe full of gaps in their hands. These were elementary green goblin warriors.

“Gu gu gu!”

The goblins who wandered here immediately found animal offal all over the ground and rushed up to eat it with excited screams. There were still a lot of cinders on this offal, but the goblins didn’t care and ate it with relish, to the point that two goblins nearly fought over the same string of intestines.

Jiang Xiaowen looked nervously yet excited at the goblins chomping down on the poisoned meat. And soon afterward, a couple of goblins began to froth from their mouths and collapsed while convulsing. The other goblins continued to eat as if they didn’t notice anything; however, one by one, they all gradually dropped down to the ground.

“Haha, it worked, stupid monsters!”