Barr

The situation suddenly changed, and Shi Youchen had no time to react. He only turned around and looked at the person behind him after the ripples on the lake subsided.

"How did you find this place?"

Pei Chanbai flipped his right palm, and the longbow he'd been holding transformed into a large, worn piece of iron, resembling a broken car door. He carried the iron and slowly walked toward the lake. "We met a group of people on the road, and they told us so." The incoherent words left Shi Youchen speechless.

After confirming that no other help was coming besides Pei Chanbai, Shi Youchen gathered his thoughts and decided to settle Apsu and Diya first. He walked around the back of the giant tree and saw a young man and woman slumped on the ground, hugging each other tightly. "Apsu," he called out, knowing only one word.

The boy stiffly raised his head that was buried deep in the girl's shoulder, and whispered with a pale face: "Mr. Shi... Shi." His arms were wrapped around Tia's body, protecting her in his arms. The sticky blood stains that almost covered his entire right arm showed that it had been cut off.

Shi Youchen reached out to pull him up, but he suddenly shuddered and shrank back against the tree trunk. "Don't kill me!" Apsu closed his eyes tightly, hunched his neck, and lowered his head. His voice was completely hoarse as he begged.

"Huh? Is this the person who tied you here?" Pei Chanbai's lazy voice suddenly sounded from behind.

Shi Youchen withdrew his hand and answered him, "Yes, he used me to exchange for this girl." After a pause, he deliberately raised his voice a little and continued, "But the other party doesn't intend to let them leave alive." As soon as he finished speaking, a cool breeze blew at night, and Apsu began to tremble and cry again.

"Oh." Pei Chanbai glanced at the two people on the ground indifferently, not wanting to ask what had happened. "So who was that birdman just now?" This name made Shi Youchen choke for a moment, and then he suddenly realized: "He should be the messenger of a ritual here. I wonder what the consequences will be if I kill him..."

"Impossible." Pei Chanbai raised his head to observe the huge tree and directly refuted, "Looking at his appearance, he must be a mutant, but since he attacked you, he must be a fugitive."

"No district would dare to requisition fugitives. That would be a clear violation of the association."

Shi Youchen suddenly realized something. He looked at Apsu deeply, took a step back and stood beside Pei Chanbai, and said in a low voice: "Something is wrong in this area. The messenger of God they believe in has special abilities, but the locals are not surprised... And that summoning ceremony, many things are very strange." He stared at the calm lake shrouded in mist and took a deep breath.

"Let's go back first..." Before he finished speaking, a strong wind suddenly blew, and the branches of the giant tree grew rapidly, extending two long whip-like branches. In the blink of an eye, they wrapped around the waists of Apsu and Tiya respectively, and swung them violently, throwing them into the air above the center of the lake.

"Ah—" Apsu's cry was instantly swallowed up by Lake Eridu.

Pei Chanbai reacted quickly, the iron sheet in his right hand transforming into two swords. He thrust one into Shi Youchen's hand and swung it to cut through the branches that were attacking him. "Run!"

Shi Youchen's right arm sank, nearly losing his grip on the iron sword. Inertia forced him to sidestep, barely dodging a blow that was coming through the air. "Crack!" Pei Chanbai swiftly chopped off another branch. Turning his head, he saw Shi Youchen hesitating in place and shouted, "What are you standing there for! Run!"

Shi Youchen let out a light "tsk" and was about to turn sideways to defend and retreat when he heard a sharp and clear cry of "Save me!!!" coming from the distant lake. The desperate scream made both of them pause at the same time, and the next moment, they were both pierced in the right shoulder by the sharp tip of the newly grown branches.

The two people who were suddenly injured and in pain both lost strength in their right hands. As the iron sword fell to the ground, the vine whip pierced them and threw them into the air. Before Shi Youchen was submerged by the lake water, he only felt the wind cutting his left ear, tearing the already unhealed wound a little more, and stimulating his brain with pain.

...

The "gurgling" and "gurgling" sounds of the surging bubbles kept coming into Shi Youchen's ears. He was not very good at swimming and could only open half of his eyes with force. He adjusted his body direction a little, and then saw a vague long figure not far ahead.

Is it Apsu and Tia?

He held his breath, stretched his limbs, and swam toward that spot, getting closer and closer. Just then, something grabbed the hem of his clothes. Shi Youchen turned his head and looked down a little, and saw Pei Chanbai, with his cheeks puffed out, holding him with his left hand, and pointing his right index finger downwards, and motioning him to look down with his eyes.

Shi Youchen didn't hesitate this time and looked over.

A massive black shadow surged from the depths of the water, its extreme distortion palpable even with limited vision. Bumps occasionally appeared on the surface of the black mass, as if something was encased within.

In an instant, several seaweed-like "long hands" stretched out from the black shadow and rushed towards the figure in front of Shi Youchen in a breath. They instantly wrapped up the man's entire body, like dragging a huge black cocoon, and retracted to the depths of the water.

Shi Youchen stretched out his hand to grab it, but his fingertips didn't even touch the black surface. The "cocoon" turned over, and its wide, lifeless eyes met Shi Youchen's, who had opened them despite the discomfort.

Weakness, paralysis, coldness...instantly swept over Shi Youchen's whole body.

His outstretched left hand froze in mid-stretch, and he could only watch as Apsu was pulled into the underwater abyss by the black tentacles.

...The feeling of weightlessness is something that shouldn't exist in water. It's like swimming through a vast, starry sky, my entire body suspended. But how could this be? I'd clearly fallen into the lake, my last bit of oxygen about to run out, and yet...

but...?

"Huh!" Youchen stretched out his left arm in a daze, opened his eyes, and woke up. There was daylight above his head. He sat up in a daze and found the thin blanket covering him and the soft pile of grass beneath him.

"Awake?" Pei Chanbai's unique lazy voice sounded beside him, "You've been unconscious for a long time." He handed a bottle of water to the person who had not yet fully woken up.

Shi Youchen took it in a daze, until his fingertips touched the cold bottle, and then his stomach acid suddenly surged, and he began to retch silently. Pei Chanbai just watched him suffer quietly, without the slightest desire to help him unscrew the bottle cap.

After a short while, Shi Youchen calmed down. This wasn't because he was weak, but rather because the cold sensation triggered an instinctive reaction before he lost consciousness. After all, the scenes he had seen underwater had been quite shocking.

"Where did this... come from?" Shi Youchen suddenly asked, the bottle's mouth close to his lips. "Are we out of danger?" There was no boundless lake or terrifying giant trees near where they stood, but Pei Chenbai's expression was unusually serious, and his words made the hairs on his back stand on end. "I don't know. It might even get more dangerous."

Shi Youchen was startled for a moment, then followed his gaze. Where he'd supposedly imagined a shadowless plain, a brown castle now stood, abrupt and magnificent. "The water was given by a passerby...who told us to get inside before dark." Pei Chanbai couldn't quite describe the feeling as he thought of the man, limping along with his bulging belly and supporting his lower back.

"I remember that the files on District 5 didn't mention a building this conspicuous." A chill slid down his throat into his chest, finally making Shi Youchen's consciousness clearer. "Where exactly is this?"

Pei Chanbai raised his wrist. "The bracelet has gone dormant. I've tried for a long time but there's been no response. Yours is the same." He glanced around and concluded, "This should be a separate space, or perhaps an illusion." Shi Youchen lifted the bottle and examined it carefully, shaking his head. "I'm afraid it's not an illusion. This should be 'Baal'."

"The production date of this bottle of water is the beginning of this year. It seems to be produced in District 5." Shi Youchen stood up and patted some grass fluff stuck on his lower back, and shook the thin blanket clean and folded it. "Can the illusion be so detailed?" Then he concisely told Pei Chanbai the rumors about District 5 that he had heard from Xiaowei.

Pei Chanbai, who felt as if he had heard this somewhere before, said: "Uh... So, we have now replaced that envoy and arrived at the territory of the oldest tribe in this area?" As he spoke, he took the blanket handed to him by Shi Youchen, and with a touch of his palm, the blanket turned into a black coat.

"If the time here is the same as outside, then tonight should be their originally scheduled ceremony." Shi Youchen was worried, because the "messenger" of the ceremony might have been given to them by the two of them...

Pei Chanbai put on his black coat and pulled in the long sleeves: "Then let's go inside the castle. The man before must have thought we were the same group that came in." No wonder he stopped to give him a blanket and water, and even reminded him gently to enter the castle before dark.

"That's all we can do," Shi Youchen agreed. "I wonder if there'll be any scrutiny, but we'll see." He was more concerned about the birdman who'd died at Pei Chanbai's hands, and the giant, attacking tree by Lake Eridu. Furthermore, he hadn't seen Tiya in the lake, so the number of people seemed to be a loophole...

"Hey, stop daydreaming." Pei Chanbai patted Shi Youchen's shoulder. "My number is 7066, Level 5 'Concrete Molecular Recombination' ability user. You can just call me Pei." Shi Youchen looked at his pupils, which turned light red in the sunlight and said, "8463, Shi Youchen, Level 4 'Healing'. Can you disguise your appearance with this... appearance? It's a bit too eye-catching."

Pei Chanbai looked innocent: "I can't change this, but the same goes for you." He had indeed tried to change his appearance, but then he found that his natural white hair, white eyelashes and blood-red eyes were not within the scope of his supernatural power reconstruction ability.

"...Forget it, let's go." Shi Youchen suddenly realized that Pei Chanbai seemed to speak and act entirely on instinct, with little regard for others' feelings—in other words, "natural." For someone like him to actually serve as vice-captain on an S-rank mission, he must have considerable mission experience, and he could worry less... perhaps.