Chapter 129: Big Trouble

“I… I don’t know either… But after you said my stamina was too poor last time, I’ve been jogging in the garden every morning these days…” Liu Hui explained to Lü Yang.

“It might be due to the Mysterious Domain’s settings?” Lü Yang thought for a while. A few days of exercise shouldn’t produce such good results. Just like how players’ wounds healed quickly under the Safe Point’s light here, their stamina was probably also set. It was just that Lü Yang, who always had very good stamina, couldn’t feel it.

For Lü Yang, who had never truly created a Mysterious Domain, many rules could only be judged by imagination for now.

“Settings? What settings?” Liu Hui asked Lü Yang a bit strangely.

“This isn’t the real world. Many things are different. You can… think of it as playing a computer game… Every game has its own unique rules…” Lü Yang couldn’t explain too much to Liu Hui, and explaining more was useless anyway. Once she left this Mysterious Domain, she wouldn’t remember anything.

“Wherever we are, as long as I can be by your side… I’m not afraid…” Liu Hui looked softly at Lü Yang, then leaned her head on his shoulder.

Lü Yang closed his eyes, experiencing this different kind of tenderness in the dangerous and cold Mysterious Domain… A beauty in his arms, if he just reached out…

Lü Yang, don’t forget why you entered the Mysterious Domain this time!

What about Yi Ya? If you pull Liu Hui into your arms, where would that leave Yi Ya!?

Sigh… A few days ago when you held Yi Ya in your arms, where did that leave Yi Yi?

Annoying!

Liu Hui suddenly lifted her head, her face blushing as she looked at Lü Yang. Her cheek was very close to Lü Yang’s, her small red lips partly open, her chest rising and falling. She seemed to want to say something to Lü Yang but couldn’t get it out.

“Enough rest! We need to hurry! Let’s go!” Lü Yang glanced at Liu Hui, suddenly stood up, and shouted to everyone.

Liu Hui looked at Lü Yang with grievance. Did he… dislike her closeness?

Lü Yang was not a fool. Of course he could see the different emotions in her eyes when she looked at him since they reunited. But he already had enough troubles and really didn’t want to attract more.

…

Another hour passed. After encountering over a dozen attacks from Dark Kidnappers along the way, Lü Yang finally brought everyone to the edge of the Donkey Drinking Stream, but at a considerable cost.

Lü Yang used up all his bullets, and everyone used up all their fireworks. Lü Yang was cut three times, Sun Haibo lost an arm, and Ji Zhen was seriously injured during the final wave of over ten Dark Kidnappers. Lü Yang and Liu Hui dragged him to the stream edge.

To Lü Yang’s surprise, there was a large bonfire at the spot where he and Liu Hui had roasted a pheasant last time by the stream. The flames burned very fiercely, illuminating the nearby area brightly.

Clearly, this was the Safe Point arranged by the Mysterious Domain after completing the second task of the third round game. It was a place where everyone could rest temporarily and heal their injuries.

After everyone gathered around the bonfire, the Electronic Voice indeed announced the completion of the second task. Besides providing healing and safety, Lü Yang also found a bow and a quiver full of arrows by the bonfire.

Weapon resupply!

This was exactly what Lü Yang wanted most now. With everyone out of ammunition and supplies, if they didn’t get resupplied here, they had no chance of safely reaching the third level’s end using only flashlights and cleavers.

This bow looked familiar at first glance… The bowstring actually seemed to be made from a sock… The same sock Lü Yang used to drill for fire before. But when Lü Yang picked it up, he realized the bowstring’s elasticity far exceeded his sock’s. It was as tough as sinew, impossible to draw open without enough strength.

The wooden arrows in the quiver all looked similar to the sharpened sticks Lü Yang used when drilling for fire, but they were much longer and thinner. The front end even had a firework with a fuse attached. Based on Lü Yang’s guess, these arrows were likely Explosive Arrows!

He didn’t find any bullets, so the handgun was basically useless. Finding this quiver of Explosive Arrows was an unexpected delight.

…

Although the second task of escorting Liu Hui to the Donkey Drinking Stream was difficult, it was ultimately completed safely. What worried Lü Yang most was that the gun-wielding Dark Kidnappers never appeared again. If they had encountered gun-wielding Dark Kidnappers while walking on the mountain path without reacting in time, facing off would have surely resulted in team members dead or injured.

But Lü Yang still hadn’t figured out what the Death Killer intended with the third round game. Was it testing Lü Yang’s intelligence?

If testing intelligence, then what clues were hidden in this third level game? Or were clues right before his eyes that he selectively overlooked?

In such a dangerous Mysterious Domain where the whole team could be wiped out at any moment, Lü Yang guessed even the most arrogant Death Killer wouldn’t mix among these players. What Lü Yang urgently needed to figure out was the secret hidden behind these three rounds of games.

…

“Do you think we’ll die here?” Li Ping sitting by the bonfire asked Sun Haibo quietly.

“Before, many times I thought I would die, but I survived in the end.” Sun Haibo glanced at Li Ping, then quickly looked away.

“If we can leave here alive, I don’t want to work anymore. I want to travel with a backpack.” Li Ping said wistfully while looking at the bonfire.

“Yeah, while alive, people should do what they want to do.” Sun Haibo’s usually fierce tone actually became gentle now.

“I want to travel to Myanmar. Will you be my guide?” Li Ping asked Sun Haibo.

“Okay… ah…” After agreeing, Sun Haibo showed some difficulty on his face. “Myanmar isn’t fun. I can take you to Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, those places…”

“Great! As long as it’s traveling, anywhere is fine!” Li Ping looked excitedly at Sun Haibo. Sun Haibo happened to look back at her too. After staring at each other for a moment, they quickly looked away in different directions.

…

“Since that night I spent with you on this mountain, I often dream at night about us returning to this mountain together… Now being with you again feels like dreaming…” Gazing at the burning bonfire, Liu Hui looked somewhat dazed and murmured to Lü Yang.

“Aren’t you afraid of such nightmares?” Lü Yang replied casually to Liu Hui.

“I just want to be with you. With you, I’m never afraid.” Liu Hui turned her head, looking directly at Lü Yang without caring about the other three people at all.

Lü Yang fell silent. This rich young lady clearly had feelings for him. Luckily this was in the Mysterious Domain. Knowing her thoughts, after returning to the real world, he should avoid her more.

Liu Hui was a good girl, very beautiful, and had repeatedly expressed affection toward Lü Yang. It wasn’t that Lü Yang felt nothing at all, but his heart already belonged to someone else, and Yi Ya’s fate was still unknown. So he absolutely couldn’t show anything to Liu Hui at this time.

“After returning from Donkey Head Mountain, I searched everywhere for you. I think of you all the time…” Liu Hui murmured again by the bonfire. Whether from the fire’s heat or not, her face was blushing, her expression seeming as if truly in a dream.

“Let’s go!” Lü Yang stood up and shouted to everyone.

The bonfire’s light had healed everyone’s injuries. Lü Yang didn’t want to sit here listening to Liu Hui anymore. A woman’s tenderness could make a man hesitant, timid, and gradually lose fighting spirit.

This wasn’t a place for romance. This was an extremely dangerous Mysterious Domain. One wrong step could mean death here. A clear mind was very necessary to face these dangers, while lovers could hardly maintain clear thinking.

The third task’s goal was to escort Liu Hui to the courtyard where the Mute Old Man who guarded the mountain forest lived. Lü Yang could guess slightly that the fourth task would definitely be escorting Liu Hui from the Mute Old Man’s courtyard safely to Donkey Tail Town.

A return to familiar places, but Lü Yang knew this definitely wasn’t just a simple revisit. If he still couldn’t find useful clues by the time they reached Donkey Tail Town, he felt he and Liu Hui might never leave this Mysterious Domain.

…

No one expected that this time, shortly after setting out, they encountered big trouble.

A group of pheasants wrapped entirely in Black Mist suddenly charged out from the darkness, attacking everyone. After everyone frantically used flashlights to drive back this group of pheasants, more pheasants surged from the darkness, flying and pouncing toward them.

Although the Black Fog Armor on these pheasants was weak, bursting immediately when flashlight light shone on it, and their exposed bodies would be directly killed by the flashlight light, their numbers were enormous. Destroy one group, and quickly more pheasants surrounded and attacked.

They weren’t large but moved swiftly, making them hard to defend against. Once they got close, their pecking and clawing quickly tore people’s clothes completely, flesh torn open, even revealing bones inside.

“Go back! Run back to the bonfire!” Lü Yang couldn’t care about anything else now. While using his flashlight’s strong light to shine on pheasants attacking him and Liu Hui, he pulled Liu Hui running wildly back toward the streamside bonfire.

Damn! Just because I caught one pheasant to roast and stole two pheasant eggs? Was it necessary for all of them to mobilize and seek such crazy revenge?

Seems like I shouldn’t be too cruel to animals in the future. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll end up in a Mysterious Domain and get retaliated against.