Chapter 183 - 172: Smoke Illusion Mountain Stone Boundary Stele

Chapter 183: Chapter 172: Smoke Illusion Mountain Stone Boundary Stele

"What... in the world is all this? Are they sure we’re not here just to get ourselves killed?"

"This is absolutely terrifying! We barely managed to take down four Tier One Soul Beasts, and then a Tier Two Soul Beast immediately started chasing us. I haven’t eaten in a day! Is this any way for a person to live?"

"First a horde of soul beasts, then a ten-meter-high waterfall, and now another Tier Two Soul Beast. Do they even want us to make it out of here alive?"

"This route from the city gate is way too hard. If I’d known, I would’ve picked a different one!"

"We’ve only gone a hundred-some miles, and I’m already at my limit. A three-hundred-mile round trip... how are we supposed to finish that!"

...

By the fourth day of Meteor University’s "spring outing," most of the students on the three city gate routes were grumbling nonstop.

Never mind the Tier Two Soul Beasts on the path; the terrain was also growing more and more complex. A land route would have been manageable, but halfway through, they discovered waterways and even swamps!

This wasn’t an outing. It was an event deliberately designed to mess with their heads and push them to their breaking point in every way imaginable!

Eighty percent of the freshmen, at some point during the outing, felt like they were losing their minds.

Moreover, the freshmen had noticed that many of the "roadblocks" along the way seemed to have been placed there deliberately.

Some areas even had signs posted with warnings like, "Danger Ahead. Please Detour!"

At this point, if it wasn’t man-made, what else could it be?

Gradually, the freshmen came to understand. Calling it an "outing" or "military training" was just a front. It was really a rude awakening from the university, meant to beat them into submission and leave their heads spinning.

However, while most freshmen felt the outing was just designed to mess with them, a smaller group found the event not only easy, but also a bit strange.

These freshmen, the ones who found the outing both easy and strange, had all chosen the route from the South City Gate.

Within the two-hundred-mile stretch of forest, some felt immense pressure, while others found it a breeze, having encountered hardly any soul beasts along the way.

And after passing through the forest, these freshmen who had chosen the South City Gate route found things getting even stranger.

Stone thorns!

A pit!

Frozen earth!

These were all things or places that looked "problematic," but when the students actually passed by or walked over them, it was surprisingly easy.

The stone thorns, though densely packed, weren’t scary at all. After all, they were all lying limp on the ground, completely incapable of attacking.

The same went for the pit. It was originally incredibly deep, but it had been conveniently filled with those same stone thorns and a thick layer of snow, turning the chasm into level ground.

The strange part was how easily they passed through these places that should have been obstacles. For about fifty miles, they felt no pressure whatsoever!

And so, as these students from the South City Gate route met up with one another, they slowly arrived at a guess—or rather, a shared theory.

The student who went ahead, Li Heng, and his team must have solved all the problems and difficulties along the way!

It wasn’t just the stone thorns and the pit—it had to be the same for the Tier Two Soul Beasts in the forest, too!

"So... does this mean we’re... kind of riding Li Heng’s coattails?"

"Who cares? It’s only three hundred miles in total! We can’t be that far from the end. Let’s just keep following!"

"You know, it really does feel like a proper outing now! That stretch in the forest earlier? If you’d given me a picnic blanket and a tent, I could’ve happily camped there for two weeks."

"Anyway, let’s just focus on finishing this three-hundred-mile round trip before we think about anything else!"

And so, after passing the field of Stone Thorn Flowers and the enormous pit, the freshmen from the South City Gate route continued slowly onward.

Meanwhile, Li Heng and his party, who had also chosen the South City Gate, were staring at the scene before them, lost in thought.

A village!

Thatch-roofed huts and stone-brick houses were interspersed with gravel paths. The scent of wine drifted through the air, mingled with the smoke from cooking fires.

Bai Shasha and the other two were lost in thought for only a moment before their attention shifted to Li Heng.

They couldn’t help but focus on him. After all, ever since they’d left the forest, Li Heng had single-handedly dealt with every situation they encountered, from the dense field of stone thorns to the wide, deep pit.

Aside from Bai Shasha, who still felt guilty, the other two had grown numb to it. They had completely embraced the mindset of riding his coattails. Jiang Hongtao, in particular, had started to just slack off and cheer him on from the sidelines.

"Boss... this village... what do you make of it?" Jiang Hongtao had wracked his brain for a while but couldn’t come up with anything. Besides, the information he’d gathered beforehand hadn’t mentioned any village.

’This must be Xiaoshi Village, the one recorded on the map of Li Liang City. It seems there are quite a few similarities between the areas around Li Liang City and Meteor University.’

Li Heng didn’t say anything, merely comparing the scene before him with the information on his map in his mind while surveying his surroundings.

As for the dense fields of Stone Thorn Flowers they had encountered earlier, he and his Ice Simurgh Bird had "cleaned" them all up.

In total, he had harvested about 20,000 soul qi points. They were all just Tier One Soul Beasts, but their strength was in their numbers.

Originally, Li Heng had wondered if there would be any problem with him clearing out so many Stone Thorn Flowers alone. But when he saw the massive pit right after leaving the flower fields, he understood.