Back when they were in the Jing Mountains, the entire expedition group was on tenterhooks due to the disappearance of their teammate’s corpse. Before today, Ren Xiaosu could not understand why the fish meat and bones would vanish. The vanishing corpse could be explained as it could have been dragged away by the Experimentals.
But surely the Experimentals would not be so desperate they had to resort to stealing fish meat and bones.
Right now, the answer to this mystery finally played out in front of Ren Xiaosu. He inexplicably felt his heart beating faster and faster as he looked at the ground. However, he was unable to ascertain what might be beneath it.
Ren Xiaosu immediately manipulated “Old Xu” to start digging up the ground barehanded to look for that strange plant.
Cheng Yu and the others were left dumbfounded by this sight. They felt White Mask was way too daring. Wasn’t he afraid the plant would attack him?
Everyone looked at Old Xu in silence. But even though Old Xu had already dug half a meter into the ground, there were still no signs of anything strange. It seemed that those gray, mossy tentacles had already retreated deep into the ground after feeding on the corpse.
“Does it only devour dead bodies?” Cheng Yu’s assistant wondered. “We have so many injured here, and there’s a lot of blood dripping onto the ground, yet we didn’t see it appear earlier on. It only came out right after that man died.”
“We can’t simply deduce that.” Ren Xiaosu shook his head. “It might also attack us while we’re sleeping.”
The situation was too uncertain. Based on the situation in the Jing Mountains, the deduction by Cheng Yu’s assistant would have been correct. But at that time, the plant was proven to have not devoured any corpses in the presence of people.
Ren Xiaosu suspected the strange plants in the Sacred Mountains were much more powerful than the ones they had encountered in the Jing Mountains.
Of course, this deduction was also very logical. After all, the Sacred Mountains started undergoing changes much earlier than the Jing Mountains. Moreover, more than a year had passed since the expedition to the Jing Mountains.
“Then how are we gonna sleep at night?” This was the first thing Luo Lan was concerned about. “I noticed that many of us only brought along tents without the waterproof ground cloths. We can’t defend against this plant at
all.”
Ren Xiaosu said as he looked up at a tree and pointed at the forked branches, “Then we can only sleep in the trees.”
Luo Lan looked overhead hesitantly and attempted to climb up the tree. But when he tried to lay on a branch, it actually broke under his weight.
With a loud thud, Luo Lan fell from the tree and grimaced in pain. “Any other ideas?”
“If you want to live, you had better find a thicker branch.” Ren Xiaosu sighed and said, “Although we might be overthinking things, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Luo Lan thought about it and quietly went off to search for a thicker branch. Ren Xiaosu had only managed to survive for so long in the wilderness because he lived by this saying: Better to be safe than sorry.
In the evening, everyone remained silent as they sat in front of their campfires. Fortunately, Wang Yun had already finished gathering intel from the wounded personnel and treated their injuries.
Although the wounded personnel were still in a pathetic state, at least their wounds were not painful anymore. They also knew they would not die due to an infection.
Some of these people used their information to trade for the black medicine, while the others simply bought the black medicine off Wang Yun for 1.2 million yuan. Wang Yun did not push it too far either since he also wanted more companions to travel with them into the Sacred Mountains.
Wang Yun kept his promise and approached Ren Xiaosu. He said, “I’ve only five relatively important pieces of intel. Let me tell you them one by one. “The first one was told to me by that young woman standing to my 9 o’clock. She’s a superhuman. When we exited the canyon, she was the sixth person to regain consciousness.” Wang Yun said, “Based on my observation, she has six other companions traveling with her, but I’m still waiting to see which organization she’s from. If I get any clues, I’ll also share them with you.”
Ren Xiaosu looked at Wang Yun in surprise. This intel sharing was much more detailed than he had expected. He thought Wang Yun would try to fool him.
As such, Ren Xiaosu asked in a serious tone, “What do you want in exchange?”
“It’s always so easy to communicate with smart people.” Wang Yun said with a smile, “My demands are simple. I only hope that if you really manage to get into the core region of the Sacred Mountains and find the No. 001 Experimental, you can give me a sample of his DNA. I won’t need to take him away with me.”
Wang Yun had to provide such “premium service” to Ren Xiaosu because he was also trying to gain his support.
Since he was not strong enough, he would have to rely on the strength of others to aid him. This was the basic principle that intelligence staff followed.
Now that he was 80% sure that Ren Xiaosu was the Stronghold Destroyer, he would be a little foolish to not ride on his coattails.
Therefore, Wang Yun wanted to use his expertise in exchange for some benefits from Ren Xiaosu.
But Ren Xiaosu shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t promise you that.”
“Why not?” Wang Yun was a little surprised.
“I can’t provide you with what you’re asking. Do you have any other demands?” Ren Xiaosu said.
If the No. 001 Experimental were really Yan Liuyuan, how could he possibly use Yan Liuyuan’s DNA sample in exchange for intel from others?
Wang Yun immediately had another thought. It shouldn’t require much effort to extract a DNA sample of the No. 001 Experimental since the human body had so much blood and tissue. He was only asking for a DNA sample, so why was the young man before him unwilling to agree to that?
Unless the other party personally knew the No. 001 Experimental, or he knew there was something more to it and had a valid reason for not agreeing to the condition. But at least in Wang Yun’s opinion, he could not figure out what this reason was.
However, Wang Yun was not insistent on the matter either. He broke out into a smile and said, “It’s fine if you don’t want to give me that. We can just change it to another condition. I’d like to seek your protection to keep me from death. Whatever’s within your power to do so. If your friends and I get put in danger at the same time, you can save them first.”
Ren Xiaosu sized up Wang Yun. The other party’s condition was actually not asking for too much. Whether to save him or not was entirely up to Ren Xiaosu’s own judgment. Rather than calling this an exchange, it might as well be called a verbal agreement.
Ren Xiaosu asked, “Aren’t you afraid that I won’t save you even if I can?”
“I’ll take a gamble,” Wang Yun said with a smile.
“Alright, it’s settled then.” Ren Xiaosu said, “Tell me the rest of the intel.”
“The intel provided by this woman is regarding the Kong Consortium, which is also the organization I work for.” Wang Yun said with a smile, “There’s no need for me to hide my identity anymore. I believe that you also know I’m Wang Yun, the director of the Kong Consortium’s 2nd Military Intelligence Division. She said that Vanilla from the Anjing House was the one who created the accident that led to the death of Kong Erdong, the head of the Kong Consortium’s intelligence agency. I already knew about this, but she also added something that I didn’t know, and that’s that the Anjing House and the Wang Consortium have reached an agreement to assassinate more of the Kong Consortium’s higher-ups in the future. From the look of things, the Wang Consortium is only doing this because they’re ready to start a war.” Ren Xiaosu thought to himself, ‘As expected, the Anjing House and the Wang Consortium are already working together.’ Wang Yun said, “I just don’t understand something. In reality, politicians don’t like to resort to assassination as a means to an end, because it won’t look good on them. Besides, Wang Shengzhi, as a mature politician, should even be more like this. But now, it seems that he is also becoming unscrupulous. It’s as if… he’s getting desperate.”