Chapter 104 - 102: Mountain Climbing

Chapter 104: Chapter 102: Mountain Climbing

Pei Xianjue and Huangfu Miaomiao stared at each other, speechless.

Li Qing, meanwhile, closed his eyes, a look of exasperation on his face.

Feng Ling stared at the lake’s surface in disbelief, completely dumbfounded.

She turned to Huangfu Miaomiao and Li Qing, her patience worn thin. "How did you guys design this game? What’s the point of special items? Are they just pure feed? You use it, and that’s it? No plot gets triggered?"

Huangfu Miaomiao and Li Qing remained silent.

Unwilling to give up, Feng Ling asked Huangfu Miaomiao, "Did you see any system prompts just now?"

Huangfu Miaomiao shook her head. "No prompts at all... And that giant python didn’t have a Maze Boss marker on it."

"It didn’t?" Feng Ling turned to Li Qing. "If the giant python isn’t the Maze Boss, what other monster on Sanqing Mountain could be?"

Li Qing sighed. "I honestly don’t know. I’m just in charge of guarding the Maze. I’m completely in the dark about its evolution."

Feng Ling’s expression turned extremely sour. She felt an infuriating sense of being toyed with.

Seeing this, Pei Xianjue tried to comfort her in a low voice, "Look on the bright side... At least we don’t have to worry about how to kill a giant python, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Huangfu Miaomiao quickly nodded, terrified that Feng Ling was about to fly off the handle.

Still not resigned to it, Feng Ling stared menacingly at the lake’s surface and said in a low voice, "The python’s existence can’t be meaningless. The Oxhead and Horseface patrol the mountain, the Fox Demons are responsible for confusing travelers, and every Monster we’ve encountered so far has been trying to stop us from going up. The giant python must also have a purpose we just don’t know about yet."

As she mulled it over, she suddenly turned and asked Huangfu Miaomiao, "What’s your Exploration Value at now?"

Huangfu Miaomiao paused for a moment. "...It’s at 51%."

Feng Ling frowned. "When did it go up so much?"

Huangfu Miaomiao counted on her fingers for her. "I unlocked 13% for discovering the safe house, 2% for opening the treasure box, 8% for finding Fox Village, 10% for discovering the lake, another 2% for opening the second treasure box, and 10% just now for finding the giant python... I also got 5% for my first Fox Demon kill in Fox Village, and before that, I killed a Yellow Demon and got 1%..."

Feng Ling quickly picked up on the discrepancy. "You didn’t gain any Exploration Value when we found the Oxhead and Horseface, but you got a whole 10% for finding the giant python?"

"Yeah..." Huangfu Miaomiao answered hesitantly. "I thought it was strange, too. Normally, you have to kill a new type of Monster to increase your Exploration Value. For example, with the Yellow Demon and the Fox Demon, my Exploration Value only went up after I successfully killed them."

"In other words, in this instance, the python is more like a location. Players don’t need to kill it; just discovering it is enough," Feng Ling mused. "That leaves 49% of unknown areas, or unknown monsters. 49%... 49%..."

Muttering to herself, she suddenly turned, left the wooden plank path, and strode toward the shore.

The other three hurriedly followed her.

「Back on the mountain path.」

Feng Ling climbed upward without a word, her silence unnervingly quiet.

"Where are we going now?" Pei Xianjue couldn’t help but ask.

"I don’t know," Feng Ling answered without hesitation. "In any case, we’re following this mountain path all the way up. We’ll finish the whole route and unlock the remaining 49%."

Everyone tilted their heads up, silently gazing at the distant, unattainable peak shrouded in clouds and mist.

Aside from Li Qing, who looked relatively calm, both Huangfu Miaomiao and Pei Xianjue had looks of agony on their faces.

More climbing...

Climbing...

The mountain...

...

At first, the group stayed relatively close together, but as they climbed, they started to spread out.

Only Li Qing, who was used to mountain trails, could keep up with Feng Ling’s pace.

Pei Xianjue fell behind by eighty or a hundred meters, while Huangfu Miaomiao was so far back she had started crying. You could hear her sobs, but she was nowhere in sight.

Four hours later, Feng Ling arrived at the Maze entrance.

Further up was the Three Pure Ones Palace, which was the Maze’s safe house.

The journey had been smooth. They had only encountered a few Yellow Demons, all of which were taken care of by the Cat Spider and Cat Owl. The only real obstacle was their stamina.

Li Qing glanced back at Pei Xianjue, who was nearly collapsing from exhaustion, and at the out-of-sight but not-out-of-earshot Huangfu Miaomiao. After a moment’s hesitation, he said to Feng Ling, "Let’s rest for a bit. They can barely keep up."

’In their current state, forget about meeting the Maze Master; they’d probably get beaten up by a single fox.’

Feng Ling had no choice but to wait patiently for the two of them.

After a 20-minute rest on the spot, during which Huangfu Miaomiao and Pei Xianjue each sucked down a pouch of Jelly, the two finally recovered and, for some reason, developed a sense of mutual appreciation.

Pei Xianjue took the initiative to help Huangfu Miaomiao as they continued climbing.

Huangfu Miaomiao redeemed some Jelly and gave it to Pei Xianjue for free.

After reaching the Three Pure Ones Palace safe house and meeting up with Baozi, Pei Xianjue reorganized her pack, temporarily leaving the overly heavy food, water, and the metal box containing the ashes in the safe house.

Then they continued up the mountain path, with the now-recovered Baozi joining them.

"It is now June 3rd, 12:00 PM... After some discussion, we’ve unanimously concluded that the Maze Master is most likely located at the end of the mountain path, at the very peak of Sanqing Mountain. No Monsters are currently blocking our way, which suggests our earlier reasoning was likely correct: the Minotaur only patrols at night. After we eliminated the Horse-faced Monster yesterday, this mountain path has been, you could say, completely unobstructed..."

Pei Xianjue panted as she climbed, insisting on continuing her live recording.

"Even though we’ve lost a team member, we will not give up on our objective. I believe that any Inspector who enters this Maze would hold the same conviction as I do. I will not give up... I will see this through to the very end..."

Up ahead, Feng Ling cringed listening to her and couldn’t help but look back. "Didn’t you just have some Jelly? How are you still so weak?"

Pei Xianjue, with a swift movement of her hand, stopped the recording. Her tone returned to normal. "Well, I have to project a certain gravitas, a sense of crisis. Otherwise, when my superiors review this footage, they might think we had an easy time in the Maze, and that could affect my future performance reviews and ratings."

She sighed. "Besides, I don’t even know if I’ll make it out of here alive. Everything I’m recording is basically my last will and testament. A somber tone fits the theme."

Huangfu Miaomiao, following behind, added, "A somber tone is good! This whole journey has been so hard for us!"

Finding a kindred spirit, Pei Xianjue grasped Huangfu Miaomiao’s hand and nodded. "Yeah! So hard!"

Feng Ling was at a loss for words. ’Did you two really just bond and form a revolutionary friendship from climbing a mountain?’

Just then, the Cat Owl in the sky suddenly landed on a nearby tree branch and let out a low COO COO at her. Its body was several sizes larger now, and the branch shook, nearly snapping under its weight.

Feng Ling grew vigilant. She frowned and made a "hush" gesture to those behind her.

The group lightened their steps, quieting down and holding their breath as they continued upward. Faintly, they could hear coarse, deep breathing coming from the summit.

As they moved further up, the enormous Monster gradually came into view—it had dark red skin, a hulking body, and a ferocious, beast-like bull’s head with a pair of horns.

The Monster was cradling a steel fork, fast asleep under a large tree.

The tree was also extremely bizarre. Its bark was gnarled into shapes resembling human faces, and hanging from its branches were purple fruits, identical to the "giant python’s feed" they had found earlier.

Feng Ling cautiously stopped and looked back at the others. In a low voice, she said, "Have you guys ever seen those movies where, just as the plot gets to the part where the heroes find a sleeping monster, the party always accidentally wakes it up through some freak accident? We’re... not going to run into that kind of cliché plot, are we?"