Navigating the rugged mountains and forests was no easy task, especially when the target was a very fast monster. Even if they caught a glimpse of the monster's back, it would become alert and vanish at speeds unmatched by ordinary people, leaving Yan Jue no time to react.
When passing the same place for the second time, Yan Jue did not think about why the monster did not run away but preferred to linger in this area. He asked the others to stay where they were, covered the soles of his feet with spiritual energy, and chased after the golden thread at a speed that allowed him to float five meters away with just one step.
Ah Qing lay on Yan Jue's shoulders, grabbed his collar and swayed with the wind with a smile on her face, her face full of excitement, as if she regarded Yan Jue, who had increased his speed, as some kind of human transportation.
Yan Jue pursed his lips, dodging trees with a serious expression. In his hand, he held a round demon-trapping net the size of a ping-pong ball, ready at all times. With his heightened senses, he could clearly hear the crackling of fallen branches and leaves not far ahead, but he couldn't see any sign of the demon. This meant the demon was even faster than him, or perhaps even faster.
Gritting his teeth, he once again poured in his spiritual energy. Feeling the rapid flow of spiritual energy and the depletion within his body, Yan Jue dared not lose his focus for even a moment. Fortunately, his decision was correct.
Three seconds later, he finally saw the monster's appearance.
It was a gorilla-like monster, approximately 1.9 meters tall, with brown and yellow fur covering its body, and long white hair around its ears. Hearing the noise, the monster turned around and glanced. Even in that brief glance, Yan Jue could clearly see the surprise on its almost humanoid face.
The monster seemed surprised that Yan Jue had actually caught up to it. The surprise lasted only a moment, and the next second, the monster's expression changed. Yan Jue had a hard time describing it, but after much thought, he finally described it as the surprise of a child finally finding someone to play with.
Yan Jue's mind was full of thoughts, but he could not forget the main business. All those complaints and messy thoughts that were about to come out were actually completed in one encounter. The next second, Yan Jue threw the demon-locking net in his hand with spiritual energy without hesitation, and directly locked the monster that wanted to turn around and escape.
At the same time, the spiritual energy in his body was exhausted, his face turned pale, and he quickly held onto the tree trunk and sat down, preventing himself from falling straight onto the bumpy mountain road and causing secondary damage.
He wasn't injured from catching monsters, but was injured from falling because he couldn't stand steadily. If this gets out, will he still have any face left?
"Teacher, teacher, are you okay?"
Ah Qing was so anxious that he grabbed Yan Jue's ear, trying to climb onto the teacher's head from there, or even lie on the teacher's face to carefully see if he was injured.
Ignoring the monster that was trapped in a golden ball, Yan Jue breathed weakly, grabbed Ah Qing in his hands, patted his head and consoled him: "It's okay, it's just that the spiritual energy is exhausted. I can recover after meditating for a while."
"Then teacher, please meditate quickly." Ah Qing stopped moving and urged Yan Jue to recover his spiritual energy quickly.
Yan Jue smiled, took out the intercom from his coat pocket, placed it on the ground, and said to Ah Qing, "Look, press here to talk to the uncles and aunts who came with us. The teacher wants to meditate. Ah Qing, please tell them that we have caught the monster and ask them to come over, okay?"
Ah Qing slipped off Yan Jue's hand, ran to the intercom with one foot deep and one foot shallow, and nodded earnestly to promise: "Ah Qing will definitely complete the task, teacher, please take good care of yourself."
Turning his head to supervise Yan Jue to close his eyes, Ah Qing turned his head to see the black lump on his waist, reached out and pressed the button Yan Jue mentioned.
The button didn't move at all.
Ah Qing blinked, looked at Yan Jue with a blushing face, and pressed down hard with both hands.
The group of people who were left behind by Yan Jue were extremely anxious, but they also understood that if they tried to catch up with him, they would only hinder him and cause more trouble. It would be better for them to stay where they were and wait for news from Yan Jue.
Old Liu looked in the direction Yan Jue had left, his ears perked up to listen for any movement in the distance. So when his intercom rang, he rushed out in one step. After two steps, he realized it was his intercom ringing, and he just needed to stand still and answer it.
"Yan Jue?" Old Liu grabbed the intercom and asked anxiously, "What's going on? Did they catch the monster? Are you hurt?"
"I, I'm Ah Qing..."
The expected deep male voice of Qingshe did not sound. Instead, a thin child's voice came from the intercom: "The teacher asked me to tell you that we have caught the monster. Come over here quickly."
"The teacher is not injured, he just ran out of spiritual energy and is meditating."
As Ah Qing spoke, the people on Lao Liu's side didn't dare to utter a word, fearing that a loud noise would drown out the timid, slightly awkward words from the other side. After listening, Lao Liu didn't dare to speak too loudly in reply, saying gently, "Okay, okay, we got it. We'll be right there."
"Right away."
After giving another subconscious reminder, Lao Liu put away the walkie-talkie, asked the soldier to take out the positioning device to identify the direction, and then he ran out.
Ah Qing released the button, clenched his fist and smiled happily, then carefully faced Yan Jue and sat on the place where there was no button on the black lump, swinging his legs and supporting his cheeks, waiting for Yan Jue to recover.
The monster had been caught, so Yan Jue only recovered 30% of his spiritual energy before he woke up from his trance. As soon as he opened his eyes, he heard Ah Qing's voice before he could do anything.
"Teacher, I've completed my mission." Ah Qing jumped off the intercom and tugged at Yan Jue's trouser legs: "They said they'd be here soon."
So he hadn't arrived yet? Had he actually run so far? By the time he'd recovered 30% of his spiritual energy, Director Liu and the others hadn't arrived yet?
"Thank you, Aqing." Yan Jue took out his mobile phone and bought a piece of jade in the game to give to Aqing as a reward, and asked him to go back to the kindergarten to have some snacks before coming out.
Ah Qing readily agreed and returned to the kindergarten, holding Feicui and communicating with Yan Jue.
Although there was still time to spare, Yan Jue had no intention of continuing to recover his spiritual energy. He spoke to Ah Qing for a few words and then took him to the locked monster to satisfy their curiosity.
From the outside, the Soul Locking Net is a fishing net-like object made of golden soft metal with extremely fine holes. When not in use, it is a small hollow ball. After use, it becomes a large ball filled with monsters.
The monster trapped in the Soul-Locking Net couldn't move or make a sound, and could only curl up into the size of a yoga ball, bound tightly by the net. Because the mesh was so fine, the monster's appearance couldn't be seen from the outside, only a few hairs poking out from the mesh.
What I want now is a "hairy" ball of yarn.
Yan Jue held up his phone, turned on the camera and let Ah Qing watch the monster ball while eating, while he himself was trying hard to recall the contents of "Classic of Mountains and Seas".
Like a gorilla, it can crawl and walk very fast, and it has white hair around its ears...
Aboriginal!
Isn't this the ape? The Classic of Mountains and Seas says that eating its meat can make people walk very fast. I didn't expect it to be so fast. Is this the saying that what you eat replenishes what you gain?
"Yan Jue!"
It was Director Liu and his men. Yan Jue stood up to greet them.
After being shown some concern and sharing his guess about the monster's species, Yan Jue contacted the people on standby outside and asked them to fly a helicopter to take over. Before that, they had to transport the monster ball to an open area so that the helicopter could land at a suitable height.
"Then let's go to the top of the mountain," Qi Xue suggested. "There's a relatively open flat area near the top of East Mountain. From the outside, it looks like it was carved out by someone, making it shorter."
"Some people in the village have been there in the past two years, so the changes shouldn't be that big."
Yan Jue and others naturally had no objection.
The monster ball was not light, and they did not have a rope of suitable length, so they had to have four soldiers stand in four directions, grab the monster-locking net and lift the monster ball up.
Honestly, lifting things wasn't a big deal; the tough part was the goosebump-inducing feeling of your fingers gripping the monster's skin and fur through the mesh. While the feel of flesh and blood wasn't much different from that of a large animal, it was a real monster. It was normal to feel a little uncomfortable the first time you came into close contact with one, and it wasn't like they were afraid.
Yan Jue, Lao Liu and Qi Xue walked beside them and chatted in low voices.
"It's from the Classic of Mountains and Seas again! This book is truly magical," Old Liu said curiously. "Besides the Classic of Mountains and Seas, do we have any other books about monsters? I can't just grab one."
Upon hearing this question, Yan Jue's first reaction was: "Journey to the West?"
This is a famous work and a classic. Many people's enlightenment about monsters started from "Journey to the West", at least Yan Jue was one of them.
Old Liu refused frantically: "Forget it, forget it. If you're bothering me, just pretend I never asked."
All the monsters in Journey to the West are human-eating. In comparison, the monsters in Classic of Mountains and Seas are milder, with not so many human-eating monsters. The types of monsters that appear also start with small monsters, so let's continue to pick them out.
He swiftly changed the subject: "I don't know if the ape is sane or not. This monster is incredibly good at escaping. Yan Jue, do you know how far away we are from where you caught it?"
Yan Jue shook his head.
When he was chasing the monster, he was only concerned with avoiding obstacles. He twisted and turned so many times that he had forgotten the direction he came from. How could we know where he was running to?
"You're right above us!"
Old Liu gestured, "Dongshan is cone-shaped. You're right above us. It took less than twenty minutes to walk all the way here. We've already been there twice this morning, and it's back again. Could this really be its territory, and it's reluctant to leave?"
Yan Jue paused and lost half a step to them, but before anyone noticed anything was wrong, he caught up with them again.
Just now, while meditating, his spiritual energy was depleted and his dantian was aching. Since the monster had been successfully captured, he hadn't paid much attention to his surroundings. And when he woke up and saw that Director Liu and the others hadn't come over, he assumed they were too far away. It wasn't until Director Liu told him the exact time that he realized the time was wrong.
In twenty minutes, he recovered 30% of his spiritual energy.
How could it be possible? With no progress in his cultivation, how could he have recovered 30% in such a short time? He had spent over an hour meditating at lunch, only to recover half of his spiritual energy.
Yes, he hadn't fully recovered before. He only recovered 50% because he thought he had the talisman paper and the demon-locking net to help him. If he delayed any longer, it would get harder to capture him as the sun went down, so he decided to resolve the situation quickly.
Why were the two locations on East Mountain so different? Given that his cultivation level remained unchanged, it seemed only the concentration of spiritual energy was the factor.
Thinking of this, Yan Jue once again sensed the concentration of the spiritual energy around him and frowned in confusion. There was no change. The spiritual energy concentration here was not greater than that at lunch.
Thinking of the strangeness here, Yan Jue couldn't help but connect what Ah Qing said yesterday with this place.
"careful."
Because he was thinking too deeply, Yan Jue was tripped by a stone that was stuck out of the ground.
"There are a lot of rocks on the ground, watch your step."
"Thank you, Director Liu."
Yan Jue thanked Lao Liu in a gentle voice, and after standing firm, he glanced at the stone assassin. In a flash, a guess formed.
The Stone Tribe, the Stone. What else could Ah Qing have sensed from such a distance, besides the Stone Tribe's food? And then there's the speed at which his spiritual energy regenerates...
His heart skipped a beat, and Yan Jue couldn't help but want to find Ah Qing to ask her.
At this moment, the phone in his pocket suddenly vibrated. It was a private message from Ah Qing.
The signal wasn't good in the mountains, but games that transcended nature naturally didn't have that problem, and the running speed was no different from that at the foot of the mountain. Yan Jue quickly clicked on it, his breath stagnating as he gripped the phone tightly.
Ah Qing: Teacher, I remember now! The taste of the mountain food is very similar to the taste of the spirit stone I once ate!
Ah Qing remembered his teacher's advice to keep this topic private, so he chose to send a private message instead of going to the real place. As for why he didn't wait until he got down the mountain? Of course, it was because he couldn't hold it in any longer.
Ah Qing: Because I tasted the spirit stone, I didn't realize it for a moment. It was only when the teacher gave me the jade that I remembered.
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①Translation from Encyclopedia: There is a wild beast in the mountains, which looks like a macaque but has a pair of white ears. It can crawl on the ground and walk upright like a human. Its name is Xing. Eating its meat can make people walk very fast.
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