Along the way, Cheng Yu would eye Ren Xiaosu suspiciously every now and then.
This morning, he suddenly remembered that Ren Xiaosu had stopped singing nursery rhymes for several days. Now that the entertainer stopped singing and dancing all of a sudden, Cheng Yu felt somewhat unused to it.
To be honest, at least when the entertainer was singing and dancing, the atmosphere during the evening bonfire parties was quite good.
But now, they only felt stressed.
No one spoke as they kept moving forward in silence. None of them knew where they would end up or what they would be facing.
Cheng Yu suddenly said, “Hey you, why don’t you put on a performance….”
Cheng Yu’s assistant was shocked right then and there. He wondered if his boss had been brainwashed by the entertainer. Why would he even ask for a performance?
However, Ren Xiaosu only gave him a look. “Lunatic!” He continued moving forward.
Cheng Yu instantly felt like he had been insulted. Why did he get called a lunatic? ‘Aren’t you the one that kept asking to give a performance to everyone? Now that you’ve been asked to give a performance, you’re actually refusing to do it?!’
Next to him, Cheng Yu’s assistant said, “Let’s forget about the performance for now. Boss, we’ve got a more serious matter to discuss first.”
“What is it?” Cheng Yu wondered.
“We’re running out of food.” Cheng Yu’s assistant replied, “After we entered the Sacred Mountains, our journey was much slower than expected, and the consumption of rations was greater than we had planned. I think it’s not only us who are facing this, the others have the same problem as well.”
Actually, before everyone set off for the expedition, they had prepared additional supplies that would last them for at least 15 days. Although only 11 days had passed now, everyone was starting to run short of food. This was all within Ren Xiaosu’s expectations. After all, these people had not ventured into the wilderness often and were inexperienced in many areas related to wilderness survival, so they were very susceptible to exceeding their ration portions. Take, for example, when they were sitting by their campfire after dinner. Without any activities to keep them entertained throughout the long night, wouldn’t it feel better if they had something to snack on to keep their hands and mouths busy?
It might be enjoyable to kill time by having a snack, but it would become tormenting once all the food was finished.
For example, when Ren Xiaosu was still going out into the wilderness to hunt sparrows, he would calculate the rations he brought along very accurately. Unless he was extremely hungry, he would never snack on the supplies he brought.
But as these people did not have much experience in enduring starvation in the wilderness, they had unknowingly wasted their supplies as a result.
This was not to say that Cheng Yu and the others did not have any self-control or planning. If one had indeed not suffered from starvation in the wilderness before, it would be difficult for them to have the same conscientiousness as Ren Xiaosu.
Of course, this was just Ren Xiaosu ridiculing them in his mind.
More importantly, everyone had envisioned a good scenario before setting out for the expedition. It looked as though they could find an abundance of food out in the wilderness of the Sacred Mountains and thought there would be plenty of wild animals they could catch and eat.
However, no one expected the Pyro Company to be so ruthless that they would allow their genetically modified tarantulas to roam free and snap up all the smaller animals in the mountains ahead of this operation.
If this were the past, they probably wouldn’t have to starve to death since they could dig up wild vegetables to eat. But now that the plants in the Sacred Mountains had mutated, who would dare to eat them?
When Ren Xiaosu saw some coriander earlier on, he said it had turned poisonous.
Even coriander had become poisonous, so how could they be alright if they ate any other plants? No one would gamble their lives.
Cheng Yu sighed and said, “Ration our supplies properly. We’ll have to see how much longer they’ll last.”
His assistant had no choice but to drop the subject.
However, they did not encounter any more strange situations for the next two consecutive days. They slept in the trees every night and traveled a longer and more arduous journey during the day. Their sense of tiredness was getting more and more apparent. In the end, they still completely ran out of food.
It was not too bad for Cheng Yu’s own group, but some others had already gone hungry for an entire day. Someone picked some wild vegetables to cook and eat. In the end, that person did not wake up again after falling asleep that night.
Ren Xiaosu, who was on watch duty, saw with his own eyes how the gray, mossy tentacles appeared again and quickly devoured the teammate who had been poisoned to death. In the morning, he said to Yang Xiaojin, “Right from the beginning of our expedition to the Sacred Mountains, every step that we took was well within the Pyro Company’s expectations. First, a strange creature appeared and caused panic within the group. Then they let out those tarantulas to ambush us and clear out all animals in the wilderness that could be hunted for food. Finally, there was that canyon that caused everyone to hallucinate and attack each other. I somehow even feel that those people from the Pyro Company have already predicted that there’d be a shortage of food in our team, which is why they didn’t show up for the past few days. They’re just waiting for us to exhaust ourselves before taking us out without much effort.”
“So they will only start the real encirclement after our food runs out.” Yang Xiaojin nodded. “The Pyro Company’s people who planned this are very smart. We should be nearing the core region of the Sacred Mountains in another two days, but these two remaining days will be the hardest to get through.”
On the same night, everyone sat around their respective campfires as their expressions flickered in the glimmering glow. They even started daydreaming that a rabbit had suddenly run into the campsite before it was eaten by them.
They were absolutely famished.
To Ren Xiaosu’s surprise, the palace suddenly said, “Quest: Put an end to the dull atmosphere by cheering up your teammates.”
Ren Xiaosu looked at the people around him and wondered if the palace was asking him to put on a performance for them. But at this moment, everyone was starving. Even if he were to put on a performance, he could not cheer them up On the verge of death, who would get cheered up by the sight of someone doing the splits? Sometimes, when Ren Xiaosu was doing his quests, it felt more like he was taking a comprehension test. He would use his strong logic to analyze the question setter’s true intentions before completing the quests perfectly.
Ren Xiaosu got up and walked to the middle of the campsite. When Cheng Yu saw him getting up, he thought to himself, ‘Could this guy be thinking of putting on a performance again? Why is he so unpredictable?!’
Then Ren Xiaosu said to everyone, “Y’all should be running out of food, right?”
Everyone glanced at him, but no one said anything Ren Xiaosu continued, “How coincidental. I brought quite a lot of food with me this time. I still have a whole bag of hardtack with me.”
The word “hardtack” seemed to have a magical charm to it. Immediately, Ren Xiaosu had everyone’s attention.
But Ren Xiaosu’s tone took a turn as he said, “Some of you are probably thinking that I’m going to sell them for money again, right? No, I can give them to everyone for free, but I have one condition.”
Cheng Yu’s assistant wondered, “What condition?”
Ren Xiaosu pondered it for a moment before saying, “I want each of you to put on a performance for me.”
Cheng Yu was confused. So was Wang Yun.
Ren Xiaosu was very happy, because he felt he had found the correct way to complete the quest.
Since he could not make everyone happy by performing for them himself, he would just have to make them perform on their own!
Ren Xiaosu had come to this logical conclusion after carefully considering it.
In his opinion, he felt he was the only one with the talent to fully make use of the palace. If it had been someone else, they might not be able to complete all the quests assigned by it!