The next morning, Shang Jianyao shared the events of his dream with the other members of the "Old Task Force."
"Xiao Chong lives there?" Jiang Baimian asked, quite surprised.
That street belonged to the Red Wolf Zone, near the Golden Apple Zone, and far away from the Green Olive Zone.
This didn't align with Jiang Baimian's previous speculations.
Of course, her speculations were based on the premise that the 'Heartless Disease' outbreak in the Green Olive Zone was related to Xiao Chong, but this was just a hypothesis.
"Maybe he just moved there recently," Bai Chen offered another possibility.
Jiang Baimian nodded slightly.
"We've completed one of the three major tasks for this trip to the Northern Mountain Range. Of the remaining two, one already shows promising signs of success."
She meant that the task of finding Xiao Chong's whereabouts by locating the Nightmare Horse could be considered complete. As for the task of capturing the White Wolf and repaying the debt, although they hadn't captured the White Wolf, the No. 13 Wasteland Ruins had proven to be a 'rich mine,' allowing them to quickly accumulate valuable supplies and books. Another exploration should suffice, maybe with a little help from the company's funding. Since they could repay the debt, capturing the White Wolf was no longer essential.
In any case, failing to complete a hunter mission without restrictions on the number of participants or mandatory requirements wouldn't affect their credit.
The only task without any progress was finding the ruin hunter Freeton, who knew about the Mirror Church.
This could be combined with the third exploration of the No. 13 Wasteland Ruins, as Freeton might have mistakenly entered that urban ruin.
In short, if everything went smoothly and they explored the ruins one more time, the "Old Task Force" could return to First City and make it to the Gladiator competition.
In the evening, Pangu Biology sent a telegram back:
"The current plan is very stable, just pay attention to one thing:
"Do not enter the radio station's one-kilometer radius..."
"One kilometer?" Jiang Baimian couldn't help but complain. "The company is really stingy! We explore once, and they only squeeze out a little new information."
At this time, Genava found a point of conflict:
"If it's just a matter of not entering the one-kilometer radius of the 'Dao and Electrical Appliance Repair' radio station, then the First City's regular army wouldn't just be guarding the outside and not exploring the No. 13 Wasteland Ruins much."
"Maybe they just didn't explore the area we went to," Bai Chen helped think of a reason.
At this time, Jiang Baimian sighed and said:
"I haven't finished translating yet."
"..." Bai Chen was rarely a little embarrassed.
This almost made Long Yuehong laugh, but he managed to hold it in, and Shang Jianyao didn't applaud for it.
Jiang Baimian continued translating:
"And do not exceed the area delineated by the exploration plan."
After reading, she smiled:
"So..."
The answer was obvious: other parts of the No. 13 Wasteland Ruins had other dangers.
…………
The next day, at the usual time, the two teams, a total of eight humans, arrived at the double metal door again.
Looking at the overgrown park outside, Jiang Baimian pondered for a moment and said:
"Everyone should be clear about the other precautions. I will only emphasize one point now:
"Regardless of the harvest, regardless of whether there are still target areas to explore, once the time spent in the ruins exceeds one and a half hours, you must turn back.
"I don't think anyone wants to end up like the ruin hunters who were brought here by the White Wolf, inexplicably committing suicide in various ways, right?"
The one-and-a-half-hour limit was because during the last exploration, they stayed for a total of one and a half hours without being affected. Therefore, it could be appropriately extended a bit, and the return trip time was also calculated.
"Okay," Weter responded immediately, as if Jiang Baimian was the leader of their hunter team instead of Wang Fugui.
Grey, Fars, and Wang Fugui exchanged glances and all indicated that this was exactly what they were thinking.
The "Old Task Force" had naturally discussed this issue long ago, and there were no objections.
The two teams successively exited the metal door and entered the park.
This time, they changed direction again.
Jiang Baimian and others did not ignore the inspection of the surrounding environment to look for possible traces of human activity.
This was highly likely to belong to the target hunter, Freeton.
As they walked fully armed, Jiang Baimian, with the best eyesight, stopped.
She pointed her gun at the side:
"Someone should have walked there."
Following her gaze, Shang Jianyao and others saw the fallen weeds.
It extended forward, forming a "road."
However, because of the summer heat and the lack of recent rain, the soil was relatively dry, and there were no obvious footprints on the "road."
"I don't know when it was left... but it won't be too long," Bai Chen judged based on her experience.
Jiang Baimian nodded and looked at Wang Fugui and others:
"Follow it and see?
"Anyway, the direction overlaps with our target area."
At the same time, she secretly prayed in her heart:
"I hope it's Freeton."
Wang Fugui and others were noncommittal and willing to respect the "Old Task Force's" choice.
The two teams slightly changed direction and walked step by step out of the park along the fallen weeds and onto the street.
Here, fallen leaves accumulated and rotted, and some places were sheltered and not directly exposed to sunlight. Therefore, the road on both sides was not so dry and cracked, and even appeared soft and rotten.
This allowed Jiang Baimian and others to find some footprints.
"The sole pattern is ordinary... the height is about 1.7 meters... the weight is relatively light... the traces should have been left today..." After comparing multiple sets of footprints, Jiang Baimian gave a preliminary judgment after a simple calculation.
She was slightly disappointed by this.
This shouldn't be Freeton.
"Left today..." Wang Fugui frowned slightly and said, "Are there other people who know that the cave leads here? I warned Longen and Harrison not to leak it. Normally, they wouldn't dare to sell this information before we left."
Longen was the previous guide for the "Old Task Force", and Harrison was from the solo hunter team.
"Let's go take a look," Shang Jianyao eagerly suggested.
As soon as he finished speaking, Long Yuehong pointed to a place not too far away and said:
"There's smoke there."
The others looked over one after another and saw that somewhere in front, blocked by several buildings, a bluish-gray smoke was rising, not dense, but quite thin.
"About one kilometer away from here," Jiang Baimian gave a rough judgment.
"Is it spontaneous combustion caused by the hot weather and dry air?" the solo hunter Grey guessed.
The temperature had been quite high for the past two days, and he felt very comfortable. Although he was still wrapped in a leather jacket, he no longer shivered.
"It may also have been done by the person who came in today," Bai Chen glanced at the footprints on the roadside.
"Let's go take a look," Shang Jianyao once again urged everyone.
No one objected.
For them, going there to take a look didn't affect their collection of supplies. There were plenty of things along the way.
While collecting and moving forward, they turned into another street, bypassed the buildings, and suddenly saw a wider space.
In front of them was a small square with a pool.
In the middle of the square stood a slender obelisk topped with a cross.
This was a common pre-cataclysm artifact in the Red River region.
Next to the obelisk, on the pool's railing, stood a large bunch of thick incense sticks, and the bluish-gray smoke was what they produced.
Facing these incense sticks was a woman wearing a gray-blue Taoist robe.
She had blonde hair and blue eyes and was very beautiful.
"Ghalaran Daoist!" Shang Jianyao shouted, with a feeling of encountering an old friend in a foreign land.
The woman was Ghalaran, the Taoist priest from the Eternal Everlasting Sect, whom the "Old Task Force" had encountered in the Blackmarsh Wilderness.
She was a Red River person, born into a noble family in First City.
Ghalaran didn't respond immediately and slowly bowed in a certain direction.
Then, she turned around unhurriedly and looked at Shang Jianyao and others.
A slight smile then appeared on her face, and she held her right hand with her left hand, raised it to her eyebrows.
As she bowed deeply, she said:
"Fúshēng Wúliàng Tiānzūn, we meet again. This is the arrangement of fate, this is where the Dao is."
When chanting the name, she used Ashlands language, but because there were Red River people present, she later switched to Red River language.
Seeing that Wang Fugui and others were a little dazed, Jiang Baimian stepped forward and said with a smile:
"Daoist, how did you come to be here?"
Ghalaran turned her body to the side and looked in a certain direction, as if there was nothing to hide, and said:
"My master's master, a former Celestial Master, helped First City seal a powerful monster here.
"For this, he sacrificed himself.
"Every time I pass by, I come in to pay my respects to him."
Uh... Ghalaran spoke so logically, but Long Yuehong had a ridiculous feeling.
It was caused by the disruption of the art style!
It was like how the Abbot Zhou Yue of the Nanke Temple used talisman water and Bagua mirrors to deal with Higher Heartless.
And the essence of the latter thing was the price paid for targeting Awakened.
Hearing this, Jiang Baimian moved her eyebrows and asked thoughtfully:
"Wu Meng?"
ps: Asking for monthly tickets at the beginning of the month ~
ps2: Recommend a book, Toad's new book, Immortal Fox. The name always reminds me of Immortal Gourd, but the actual content is different: I am Hu Huan, an old fox who is seven or eight hundred years old, watched the French cut off the queen, participated in the European Revolution, was a pirate in the Age of Navigation, opened a factory in the Steam Age, and funded the most accomplished artist of the eighteenth century, and now...
This is rare, Toad is writing about Eastern fairies traveling to the West, and the queen who was cut off, uh, she was too young at that time and didn't know that all the gifts of fate had already been priced in secret.