Everyone gathered behind Huang Jinghe. Following his raised hands, they looked up at the sheets. With all four maps stacked together, they really did become one.
If they were not mistaken, the combined map was a terrain chart of this forest.
It was not a set of chopped fragments. It formed a ring around the mountains. The endpoint on the fourth sheet was not an endpoint at all. Once the four were merged, that mark became the new starting point.
They had a fresh clue, yet no one could muster much excitement. They could not keep holding the sheets in the air either. In a moment the nearby team members got busy.
They found four stones of similar height and made a simple four leg stand. They pinned the assembled map at its four corners, then everyone set their flashlights beneath the paper. Lit from below, the whole layout showed clearly even when seen from above.
With the shape displayed, Zhou Zhiye, the best artist in the group, copied the new map cleanly. With that, they set out again.
…
The route on this map led them somewhere new, a road they had not taken before. If there had been no mutant creatures near the cabins, here they were everywhere. The danger spoke for itself.
After shouting herself hoarse, Pei Xin asked helplessly, "How long until we reach the destination?"
Captain Zhang checked the sheet. "We have not even covered one third. It will still be several hours."
Hearing several hours, Pei Xin broke down on the spot. "I can't. I really can't go any farther. We hardly rested before. There are so many mutant creatures here. My legs are jelly. I can't move."
Pei Xin stopped dead and refused to take another step.
No one here would indulge her. She was a prisoner on probation, and that was that.
Xi Yu spoke up too. "Do not blame Pei Xin. I can't go on either. Ordinary people don't have your stamina. We climbed from the foot of the mountain and never really rested. If Pei Xin had not said it now, I would have said it soon."
Captain Zhang looked troubled. "It is not that I will not let you rest. How do we rest in a place like this?"
As Captain Zhang spoke, another wave of mutant creatures rushed them. Those with abilities handled them, one after another.
They had barely finished when vine tendrils snaked up from behind and wrapped Pei Xin's waist. Pei Xin panicked. Lao Shi reacted fast, chopped cleanly through the vine, and pulled Pei Xin free. A second later and Pei Xin would have been carried off.
Hearts still pounding.
Captain Zhang said, "You saw it yourself. It is not that I refuse to rest. We have to leave now. If something else happens, we may not be so lucky."
You could not blame Captain Zhang. The earlier stretch had felt easy. Who knew this place would be packed with threats.
Pei Xin sighed. Everyone else sighed too and followed Captain Zhang.
Maybe things were worse the deeper they went. Maybe Captain Zhang knew how to pace them. Either way, the march finally slowed. It was not enough to save the strength of the ordinary trio from the professors' team.
After barely ten minutes, Pei Xin fainted where she stood.
Zhou Zhiye, the only one with real medical training, hurried to Pei Xin's side and ran a quick check.
"Exhaustion," Zhou Zhiye said.
Faces darkened all around. Pei Xin might be under punishment, but abandoning a teammate in place was something none of them would do.
"I will carry her," Zhou Zhiye said. "But I am tired too. We still need to find a spot to rest."
They had not gone two steps when the other two members of the professors' team collapsed one after another.
In the end there was no choice. Lao Gao hoisted one onto each shoulder. "Move. Move. Don't waste time here. Let's get out of this stretch. Those mutant things make my skin crawl. I don't want to see another one."
Lao Gao had jinxed it.
And what came was an old acquaintance.
It was the big black cat that talked, the one they had seen when they first entered the forest and went down the mountain.
They called it a person only because of that speaking face.
Lan Jin didn't want a repeat of that scene. The moment the big cat padded closer, Lan Jin sent a bolt of lightning straight down.
The cat had not even opened its mouth. It spasmed and dropped, the human face smacking the ground.
Lan Jin exhaled. "I don't want to hear it talk. Nonsense. Scares people to death."
Zhou Zhiye coughed, snapping the stunned teammates back to themselves. Captain Zhang said, "Better not hear it either. Half man, half beast, who knows what it is. Let's move."
The cat was huge. It blocked the narrow path completely. Captain Zhang led them around in a short loop and they continued forward.
As if nothing had happened.
Along the way, Captain Zhang kept studying the map. When everyone's nerves settled, Captain Zhang said, "Looks like we have covered about one third."
Reality was not kind. That one third had taken three hours.
Shen Zhiyan said, "Is this forest really that big? One third in three hours. The full route would be nine hours, right? You are sure we will not end up at the foot of the mountain by then?"
"We will not. Even if the forest were that big, we are not walking in a straight line. The delays were all caused by those mutant creatures."
Put that way, it made sense.
Captain Zhang paused to observe the area, then marked the map with a pen.