"The greening department in the capital is really incompetent. This forest is practically sentient and no one is cleaning it up."
Zhang Xiaojuan grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and cracked them open, mumbling her complaints indistinctly.
The magnificent and vast forest before them was quite a shock to the group of people who had grown up in a heavy industrial environment.
The lush, ever-growing leaves, the intertwined vines and towering trees, and the dense, almost black, green expanse create a powerful sense of oppression, as if the sky is blocked out.
A light mist enveloped the entire dense forest, reducing visibility to just a few meters in front of you.
"This forest covers at least several hundred square kilometers, so finding a living person here would be extremely difficult."
Xiao Yu took out two fog lights from her backpack, hung one on her waist, and gave the other to Xu Yi.
"Tie up your cuffs and trouser legs." Lu Sheng took out a handful of pink hair ties from his pocket and handed them to a few people. "There are bound to be mutated insects in the forest, so be careful not to let them crawl into your clothes."
The group carefully arranged their clothes and lighting equipment outside the woods before slowly entering the dense forest.
Once inside the woods, visibility was immediately reduced to only half.
The tangled branches and various wild plants crowded together, vying for sunlight and nutrients, leaving no place to even step in many places.
Xiao Yu and Xu Yi walked at the front of the group, scouting the way while constantly hacking at the branches and vines blocking their path with their machetes.
Lu Sheng and Sun Tiantian walked side by side in the middle, while Zhang Xiaojuan and Zhuangzhuang brought up the rear of the group.
"Han Rui!"
Zhang Xiaojuan was using a traditional method to call out to someone from a distance when she suddenly felt a tightness in her neck, followed by a piercing pain.
"Holy crap, that hurts like hell."
Lu Sheng and the others turned around and saw something the size of a palm flash by, revealing a bloody wound on Zhang Xiaojuan's neck.
This thing was so fast that Lu Sheng and the others didn't even see what kind of creature it was before it bit off a piece of Zhang Xiaojuan's flesh and escaped.
"Can you still walk?"
Xiao Yu hurriedly manipulated the water balloon to help Zhang Xiaojuan clean her wounds.
"It's nothing, a real man's injury is nothing." Zhang Xiaojuan winced in pain, tore off a strip of her inner lining and hastily bandaged the wound. "This place is full of traps, do you think the girl we're looking for is still alive?"
Sun Tiantian took out half a strip of ibuprofen from her pocket and gave it to Zhang Xiaojuan; it was the leftover from when she had menstrual cramps last time.
"The old engineer installed a biosensor on his daughter. Currently, the institute's system can still detect Han Rui's vital signs, so she should not be dead."
Zhang Xiaojuan took two ibuprofen capsules and washed her face with the remaining water in the bottle. "Let's keep looking, just keep going."
Lu Sheng fed Zhuangzhuang two bags of beef jerky to cheer it up.
With Zhuangzhuang's radar assistance, Lu Sheng and his group avoided most of the dangers and reached the center of the dense forest in an hour.
Xiao Yu first found a clue.
“Here’s a little Lingna Belle keychain.” Xiao Yu used a machete to pick up the dirty little doll from the grass.
Sun Tiantian carefully took the doll, shaking off the dust and grass clippings stuck to it. "It's a new model that just came out last month. It must have just fallen here recently."
“Look, there are some footprints nearby.” Xiao Yu lay down on the ground and held up the fog light to shine into the grass. “Judging from the footprints, there is more than one person, and some sets of footprints are in opposite directions.”
Lu Sheng bent down to examine the footprints. "There's a set of size 36 footprints here, which disappear a few meters ahead. They should be Han Rui's footprints."
“Now that we’ve found the footprints, the person must have gone missing in the vicinity.” Zhang Xiaojuan took the fog light from Xiao Yu. “Let’s split into two teams and search the area to see if there are any other clues.”
After he finished speaking, he took the lead and walked into the bushes not far away. After taking only a few steps, his body adopted an odd forward-leaning posture, with one arm still holding up a lamp.
It hangs motionless in mid-air like a sculpture.
"Juan, what's wrong?"
Xiao Yu, out of curiosity, gave Zhang Xiaojuan a push from behind.
"Yu, don't move." Zhang Xiaojuan turned her head with difficulty, revealing an awkward, bitter smile. "I feel like I'm being held up by something."
He struggled to shake his arm, his lips turning purple from biting them, but he only managed to slightly bend his fingers.
It seemed as if something was binding Zhang Xiaojuan's body in the shadows.
"Let me see." Xu Yi held the fog light up above Zhang Xiaojuan's head, examined it carefully, and then frowned slightly.
"Don't move, you're tangled in a spider web. The more you move, the tighter it gets."
By the light, Lu Sheng and the others finally saw that Zhang Xiaojuan's limbs were bound and entangled by strands of transparent spider silk.
The spider silk was about half a centimeter thick, crystal clear, and somewhat resembled the vermicelli used in spicy hot pot. It was difficult to see clearly in the dark, dense forest.
"Damn it, I hate spiders the most!" Zhang Xiaojuan struggled desperately and couldn't help but plead with Xiao Yu for help, "Quickly, use the knife and help me cut this damn thing in half."
Xiao Yu hurriedly raised his knife and slashed fiercely, but the spider silk was extremely resilient, and after several slashes, it didn't even damage the skin.
"Don't move." Xu Yi pulled Xiao Yu back. "Spider silk is far more durable than metal, and this mutated spider silk is even more resilient."
"Then what should we do?"
"Do you have a lighter?" Neither Xu Yi nor Xiao Yu smoked, so they turned their attention to the unlucky Zhang Xiaojuan.
"Dude, I'm allergic to tobacco..."
At the crucial moment, Lu Sheng stepped forward.
She snapped her slender fingers, and a flickering flame shot up from her fingertips.
"Don't move, we won't be responsible if you get burned." Lu Sheng quickly drew a few lines on the spider web with his fingers, and the web soon softened and formed a ring.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Zhang Xiaojuan twisted and turned a few times, finally managing to break free from her restraints.
"Finally, we got it open."
Still shaken, Zhang Xiaojuan immediately picked up her fog lights and shone them around.
You won't believe it until you see it, and what you find will shock you.
The dense forest around them was covered with countless spider webs.
Even in the weeds at our feet, there were several sheets lying there.
Judging from the overwhelming amount of spider webs, they had probably broken into a spider's nest.
"Zhuangzhuang, can you sense how many mutated spiders are around?" Lu Sheng patted Zhuangzhuang on the back.
"Several hundred."
Zhuangzhuang said something surprising.
"But they were all gathered somewhere in the southwest, and they didn't come close to us."
"Caw! Caw caw!"
Before Zhuangzhuang could finish speaking, a cry of an animal suddenly came from the end of the spider web.
Lu Sheng picked up the binoculars.
Several hundred meters away, a giant, zombie-like white goose was trapped in a spider web.
"All the spiders are hunting down the goose that has wandered into their webs. We need to find Han Rui as soon as possible."
Lu Sheng had complete confidence in the fighting ability of the white goose.
When she was a child, she was chased for five blocks by the village's big white geese while staying at a farmhouse. It is said that the fighting power of one goose is equivalent to that of two dogs, making it a veritable bully in the fields.
They should be even stronger after the mutation, which will help buy them some time.
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