Chapter 301: The Dense Forest Frontier

With the help of Spades' whip, Bai Liu made it through the fog without encountering any monsters.

The rainforest, which had been filled with trees, was filled with a grey mist, trees were burning on a large scale, the air was filled with ashes from the burning flames, and the sky was so grey that only a faint light came through, making it difficult to distinguish between night and day.

A strong, pungent smell of exploding gunpowder hits you, and the moment you open your mouth you can taste the bitterness of carbon.

Tang Erda choked and coughed twice, covering her mouth and nose, "What has happened to this war world in the hour or so we've been out?"

"The war world doesn't flow at the same rate as time outside." Bai Liu glanced around the room. "The timeline here fast-forwarded to the end of the Great War after we left."

Liu Jiayi waved her hand at the tip of her nose as she tilted her head towards Bai Liu: "- is that the node Elena was talking about, the one where the whole crew died after the explosion?"

"Usually, at these points, a good horror game will have some really exciting climaxes." Bai Liu looks out into the mist-filled rainforest, "like a big chase."

Tang Erda was stunned: "How can there be a chase? Isn't everyone at this node dead and about to enter the next seven-day cycle?"

Liu Jiayi took the poison from the back of her waist and took two guarded steps back, her eyes narrowing slightly: "It is because all these people are dead that this is the most dangerous place to be before entering the next seven-day cycle."

Bai Liu looked straight into the rainforest as if something was about to emerge: "Because it means that, apart from us players, this war replica map is full of monsters, the living dead."

Tang Erda was also alert, pausing before drawing his gun and glancing back at Spades, who had been silent the whole way next to him.

Spades looks at Tang Erda silently, his hand on the whip handle at the back of his waist, his fingers seemingly twitching a little, as if he is still trying to stop Tang Erda from drawing his gun.

Tang Erda: "......"

As if sensing the silent exchange behind him, Bai Liu glances back at Spades with a flippant glance.

Spades stiffened inexplicably and silently turned the whip handle in the direction of Tang Erda.

Tang Erda breathed a sigh of relief before she dared to pull her gun out and aim it at the grey mist rainforest that kept shaking as if something was about to emerge.

But the rainforest just shuddered and nothing ever emerged, and all that could be heard was the crackling of burning leaves and branches.

As Tang Erda looked suspiciously at Bai Liu, Spades suddenly threw a whip from Bai Liu's side and slammed it into the ground, denting it and splitting it open.

The dirt splattered to either side of the ground along the blossoming pattern, spilling not only dirt but a few fingertips as Tang Erda looked from the Spades' smashed pattern to the ground and stared.

Buried in the grain beneath the ground were countless blown apart, white and bloodstained and gunpowder-stained shattered limbs - half heads, hands with wrist bones exposed, writhing waists, all with their own severed mouths aimed, like eyes, at Bai Liu them.

The pieces, which could not be pieced together into humanoid limbs at all, squirmed densely in the mud and came closer as if they had sniffed out prey, hiding underground.

Numerous charred hands burst out of the mud beneath Bai Liu's feet, grabbing his ankles and dragging him downwards. Tang Erda didn't hesitate to fire at the limbs, opening a large hole in the centre of the palm with uncanny precision.

But to no avail, the things continued to twist and drag.

"The attack is ineffective." Bai Liu, who had been caught, instead analysed calmly, "These shattered limbs are already in a living dead state, they can't be beaten, we have to find their weaknesses."

Spades threw a whip around the living dead hand and tried to rip it right off Bai Liu's foot, but he only gave it a tug and then quickly stopped moving and slowly looked up at Bai Liu.

Bai Liu looked back at him calmly, "It won't come off."

Liu Jiayi snapped her head down to look at Bai Liu's ankle. She knelt down to get a closer look, but was stopped by Bai Liu.

Bai Liu lowered his eyes to the few shattered limb hands on his feet, "These grew with me and couldn't be torn off."

"Grown together?!" Tang Erda scowled in astonishment.

The greenish-black fingers on Bai Liu's ankle pinch into the ankle, half of the knuckles sink in and the skin bonds perfectly, as if a hand had grown out of Bai Liu's ankle, while half of the knuckles on the end of Bai Liu's left hand have also turned greenish-black.

"This monster's attack method is called [Fusion of Life and Death], as soon as the corpse pieces come into contact with the player, they will become part of the player's body." Bai Liu raised his head, "When I am attacked by all the corpse pieces of a person's body parts, these corpse pieces will completely merge into my body, turning me into a living dead person."

As soon as the words were spoken, the hand on Bai Liu's foot disappeared, and his entire left hand turned greenish-black, dropping motionless to his side.

The body parts kept coming closer and closer, but they all seemed to have a purpose, passing over the others and lunging straight for Bai Liu.

Tang Erda knocks a few blocks away, Liu Jiayi draws a circle with poison, Spades sweeps a clean area in this circle with a whip, he looks straight at Bai Liu: "What did you do, why did these blocks only attack you?"

Bai Liu shrugged, "Maybe it's because I'm the player with the lowest overall panel rating here? Do they see me as a bully?"

Spades retorted, almost without thinking, "You lie."

"Forget about what Bai Liu has done for now!" Liu Jiayi interrupted Spades' questioning, "These things won't kill us, we'll all be completely corporeal if we keep going here, don't let Bai Liu touch the ground, take Bai Liu on your back and go first!"

As soon as Liu Jiayi's words left his lips, Tang Erda and Spades, standing to the left and right of Bai Liu, almost simultaneously grabbed Bai Liu, who was standing in the middle.

Both of them are a full head taller than Bai Liu, and grabbing Bai Liu's shoulders left and right and lifting him up at the same time can only result in one thing -

--Bai Liu was lifted off the ground with his feet dangling like a schoolboy, and his feet swung twice from side to side in the air.

Spades: "You're short, Bai Liu."

Liu Jiayi: "!!!"

Tang Erda: "!!!"

It's over, Bai Liu is going to be pissed!

Bai Liu slowly, slowly lifted his head to smile at Spades: "Yes?"

On the way out, Tang Erda keeps her head down and covers her mouth, not daring to look up at all, looking around to clear the ground of any approaching body parts, while Liu Jiayi takes a deep breath, stifles the upturned corners of her mouth, and looks away from her face to use the poison to disperse the body parts following her.

Liu Jiayi approaches Tang Erda and whispers, "Did you take a picture?"

Tang Erda wonders, "Not so good ......"

Liu Jiayi rolls her eyes, "Don't you think it's funny?"

Tang Erda tried her best to be serious: "Luckily, I'm highly trained not to laugh at my own team's tactician so easily ......"

And Spades took the lead, smashing the ground with his whip and clearing the body parts in front of him.

Bai Liu, with his feet spread wide, rides on the shoulders of Spades, who carries Bai Liu as he staggers along.

"Am I still short?" Bai Liu asked Spades slowly.

Spades paused: "No, you're tall."

--The idea of getting taller by riding on someone else's shoulders is just childish, especially when it's done by the jovial Bai Six.

This is just too funny!

Tang Erda in the back finally couldn't hold back her laughter.

Liu Jiayi was speechless: "Unless you can't help it, right?"

Spades in front of him scurried to clear the approaching body parts, and he took a moment to ask Bai Liu, "Are you angry at yourself for not being tall?"

Bai Liu was quiet for a second and said nonchalantly, "No, I don't sweat such trivialities."

Spades took a deep breath as he whipped out his whip and wrapped it around the trunk of a large tree nearby, pulling it upwards so violently that Spades was pulled upwards with Bai Liu on top of him.

He stepped lightly on a tree trunk, lending his strength before whipping out his whip and wrapping it around the trunk of another, taller tree, while clearing his gaze to knock off several body parts that had fallen from the shaking trunk.

After a few round trips, Spades jumped with great ease to the top of one of the tallest trees in the rainforest, enough to overlook the entire forest.

Bai Liu shakes before stabilising his position on top of Spades.

Spades' chest rose and fell slightly and his voice was serious: "Now you are the tallest man in the world."

Bai Liu looked slightly shaken and was about to speak when he heard Spades continue flatly, "- we can make up for our innate deficiencies with such external things, Bai Liu, don't be angry with yourself for your physical deficiencies. "

"It's not your fault you're short like that." Spades said, word for word.

Bai Liu: "......"

Bai Liu exhaled a long, slow breath and whispered a few quick words.

Spades was confused: " Bai Liu, what are you talking about?"

Bai Liu said lightly, "I'm reading an old limerick that has been passed down to this day."

Spades: "What's the limerick?"

Bai Liu smiles: "Mo Angry."

Spades Slowly: "? Why are you reading this?"

"Because it fixes my mental values that have dropped due to emotional ups and downs." Bai Liu said.

Spades nods his head.

He gets it, it's a spiritual bleaching poem, and he'll learn it sometime later.

But the immediate priority is something else.

Spades carried Bai Liu here, partly to soothe the emotional damage Bai Liu had caused himself by being too short (......), and partly to see what had changed throughout the rainforest map.

The ground was littered with huge craters, with cracks in the ground, with broken limbs crawling out of the cracks towards the tree where Bai Liu was, and from an overhead view it looked dense and black, like a bunch of ants looking for a nest and food.

The closer he got to the town, the source of the explosion, the more fragmented the limbs Bai Liu saw, while the closer he got to the lake, the more intact the bodies he saw.

And the intact corpses, gathered in one place on the opposite side of the lake, seemed to be jumping around something in joy, their limbs and heads swinging wildly as if they were about to be flung off in the next moment.

Bai Liu narrowed his eyes as he pulled a telescope from his prop to look over, adjusting the focus to finally see what was in the middle of the group of corpses that surrounded him.

A pieced-together sculpture of an evil god, five stakes, and five men being tied to stakes.

The pile of black stuff piled up beneath the five men tied to the stake looked like firewood, but Bai Liu looked closer for a moment and noticed that the pile was moving.

Bai Liu took a moment to look at the pile and finally decided that it was not a fire at all, but a shattered arm and leg that had been blown up and dried up like a fire.

The charcoal blackened and dried limbs were piled like wood under five stakes, each with a bucket of red paint next to it, and six "fire" piles - piles of broken limbs - were placed around the five stakes.

The shattered limbs were moving and struggling, trying to climb up to the men on the stakes, but were being stomped on again and again by the dancing bodies, each time dumping red paint on the faggoty, shattered bodies

-- This is clearly a process in progress, a bizarre ritual sacrifice of the living.

Bai Liu adjusted his focus further, trying to see exactly who the five men tied to the stake and used to sacrifice to the evil god were, before he raised his eyebrows subtly.

" Spades, I saw four of your teammates get tied up by the monster."

Spades nodded unresponsively, indicating that he knew, and then asked, "I saw five stakes, and who was the other one tied up?"

"It's someone we wouldn't have thought of." Bai Liu smiled, "It's Alex."