Despite the chill that he felt at the tragic sight of Azsa and Hedi Curry, Sheyan’s worries were actually completely unfounded. This was because he already had one of the most horrifying parasites possible inside his body — the ‘Stairway of the Sun’. It was just that the ‘Stairway of the Sun’ had completely lost its own consciousness, so it would not hurt Sheyan.
If the Slaad planted its fertilised eggs into Sheyan, nothing would come of it. The tendrils of the ‘Stairway of the Sun’, which grew along Sheyan’s blood vessels, would eat the fertilised eggs for dessert. The tiny fertilised eggs could never hope to compete with the powerful ‘Stairway of the Sun’!
Both MTs had to deliberately suppress their strength to cut themselves open, so the wound they caused to themselves were quite serious. They walked behind with their arms wrapped up and their faces gloomy. It would be fine if the team had decided to leave right away, but the team had decided to continue to explore the surrounding areas, which meant that there was a high chance of encountering other Slaadi. Being MTs, they were obligated to take hits for the team. If they had to “self-mutilate” after every battle, that would be a real tragedy indeed.
After performing some simple maintenance on the raft, the team moved out again.
Based on Ronnie’s information, they carefully searched along the way for possible places where the fight between the Slaad and Private Douglas had taken place. After several more turns, the river narrowed and the water became rapid. Underwater rocks also became as frequent as trees in a forest. If it was not for the frequent use of Pokan’s natural ability to disintegrate the bigger rocks, even Sheyan’s impressive boat-control skills could not have taken them further down the river.
The raft continued to travel with extreme difficulty. Sheyan pushed hard against a green rock wall to the side to generate enough power to push the raft into the right channel, enabling the raft to smoothly travel past two towering cliffs on either side of them. The cliffs were several hundred meters high, guarding the river like the gods of gates.
Past the cliffs, the river widened and the water flowed calmly. Everything suddenly became bright!
In front of them was a vast wetland swamp. A large number of densely-growing aquatic plants dominated the area, covering their sights with a green colour. There was also a kind of reed-like aquatic plant with purple spikes swaying gently in the wind.
From time to time, they could see the a type of water bird with fiery red feathers circling and dancing around, adding vibrant strokes to the blue sky. A refreshing feeling filled the air. Looking at the vast wetland, they felt as if this was the way the whole world should rightly be.
Looking back, they saw a plateau so vast that its end could not be seen, rising from the ground straight into the clouds. The cliffs were at least thousands of meters high. They could only stare at it in awe.
It turned out that the “plain” where the mushroom rock was located on was actually a part of the plateau. There were also mountains on the plateau, so one could imagine its magnitude. The river Sheyan and the others were traveling on was a very strange existence that drove straight through the bottom of the plateau like a long scar that was forcefully carved into it.
“Look over there,” William suddenly said. He was always quiet, but whenever he spoke, his words carried weight. He was an expert sniper, so he naturally had exceptional vision.
There was a saying that all that was natural was beautiful. The closer something was to nature, the better we would feel about it and the more we would appreciate it. For example, the closer a woman’s butt was to the shape of a full moon, the more pleasant it would look.
All of them looked towards the direction William pointed at and immediately saw a slight bulge among the purple reeds in the distance, which seemed to be a little out of tune with the whole natural landscape. The more they looked at it, the more out of place it felt, like a flaw in a perfect painting.
They instantly rushed over to take a closer look and found that there were indeed signs of battle left there. The huge footprints of a Slaad were very vivid in the mud. Next to the footprints were traces left by the shots from a laser gun, in the form of scorched pits about eight square meters in size among the purple reeds. If this was not a wetland, there would have been a forest fire for sure.
“There’s something hidden here!” Ronnie was not only strong in battle, he also had top-class abilities in scouting and searching.
But that was to be expected. Everyone who could make this team was very strong. Among all the contestants Sheyan had come into contact with, possibly only Zi and Aziz have reached the standard of being able to join this temporary team.
Reef and Mogensha were much less outstanding in comparison. It was just that both of those guys had unbelievably powerful equipments supporting them. Recall that Hedi Curry’s shield was only silver storyline grade, while Azsa was only using a highly-strengthened dark blue shield. Reef’s shield was so much better than theirs that the actual gap between their fighting prowesses was not that vast.
Ronnie had pulled out a raft from a place covered by purple reeds. The raft was much inferior to the one Sheyan and the others arrived on; it could only sit three to five people on it. Moreover, the items on the raft were also very crude. Broken steel helmet were used in place of cups for drinking water. There were a few knives on the raft, but they were very crudely made and had unique shapes. The contestants could tell with a single look that they were grinded from steel plates.
“He was not by himself. There was a group behind him,” exclaimed Vassily in excitement. He had claimed so because he saw a number of things tied up beside the raft, such as cut-out gourd ladles, some hunted creatures, and so on. Besides that, there were also several pairs of shoes made from grass, and two spare gas masks. Recall that there were also four steel helmets being used as cups on the raft.
Next, they discovered a temporary camp nearby. They found some high-tech items in the camp, namely four sleeping bags produced by the Empire. These sleeping bags were much more advanced than today’s sleeping bags. They ran on solar energy. Not only could they insulate water and heat, they were also bullet-proof and could withstand attacks from wild beasts. Once the zippers were pulled up, they would automatically inflate, dehumidify and regulate the temperature inside.
This kind of sleeping bag was a standard on the exploration spacecraft, so Sheyan and the rest of the contestants each carried one. In the middle of the camp were the embers of a campfire, beside which were the bodies of some strange creatures, some of which had been skinned and smoked.
It was obvious that this group of four had come here to hunt. Three of them had gone out to hunt, while the last one stayed to guard the camp. Presumably due to the lack of salt, they had simply cut and smoked the prey for preservation. It was probably their first time here, so they did not expect to encounter a horrible monster like the Slaad.
“Hahahaha!” Ronnie suddenly burst into hysterical laughter. Everyone thought he had lost his mind, but he proceeded to pull out a piece of rock from one of the sleeping bags and held it gingerly in his palm like it was a priceless treasure. The rock was only the size of a coconut, and its surface was shining with a familiar grey light. They could tell with one glance that it was a high-purity Pi ore!
After Pi element was extracted, the high purity Pi element was very close to a gaseous state, similar to cotton. The Pi elements that Paul obtained before had undergone a high-pressure compression into something like Pi crystals with very high density.
Ronnie’s crushing extractor had sadly been taken away by Sheyan, so he could only borrow Hedi Curry’s. The initial test revealed that the Pi content of this ore had reached an astonishing 13.7%! It had broken the record of the highest known purity among Pi ores. Ronnie immediately performed the extraction, and eventually obtained a small piece of Pi crystal the size of a fingernail. He was elated beyond words!
The discovery immediately flushed all of them feverish with excitement. They now firmly believed that the survivors who had reached Uplos before them must possess an astonishing amount of information on Pi veins. Even Sheyan believed so. After all, all kinds of coincidences had overlapped into irrefutable proofs.
Little did they know that this high-purity ore was only found by chance by one of the “survivors”. Pi elements had a soothing effect on the mind, so he had kept the Pi ore because felt that sleeping with the Pi ore next to his pillow was highly-effective in fatigue recuperation….
After a round of discussion, it was almost dark. They had no way of knowing where the survivors had gone to hunt, so they decided to wait here for the survivors to come back. However, until the suns had fully set, there was still no trace of the survivors.
All of them had an ominous premonition.
Hedi Curry said with a gloomy face, “Those guys probably just arrived to this area. Do you think something has happened to them?”
“It’s very likely,” Dardanian nodded earnestly.
“Those idiots….” Azsa also said with a frown. “No, we can’t wait here. We have to take the initiative to track them. If all three of them die, all the clues will be gone!”
“But how do we track them?” asked Ronnie helplessly. “This whole place is a swamp, so there’s no way to track their footprints. They should’ve departed early in the morning, at least nine hours ago, so there’s no way to track their smell either.”
