Disappearance spreads

The axe pierced through the air with a sharp sound, and Mason drew his sword to meet it, and the sharp weapons collided and stalemated. The attack that should have been easily blocked was unexpectedly heavy, and the reaction caused the girl's wrist to make a crisp snapping sound.

It was hard to imagine that the opponent's petite body could actually burst out such a powerful force. Li seemed to be completely insensitive to the pain and raised the axe in her hand high again.

The golden fruit on the branch giggled, and the fragrance was alluring. Looking closely, it looked somewhat like Li's face, but the lines were fuzzy and it was not yet ripe.

Ace suddenly turned pale, not knowing what he was thinking of. He stared at the fruit, as if he had seen something terrifying. Li didn't take him seriously at all, staring at Mason with her chaotic eyes, trying to stop him from approaching the golden tree.

"Please be careful, Mr. Aurelius."

Ace exhaled heavily and reminded, "This is the golden guard of the kingdom of God. It should be an elder similar to a tree man. The [Mother of Ten Thousand Stones] uses it as a reward for believers. Pious believers who come here and pass the test can receive the gift of the Mother Goddess. But after the death of the Mother Goddess, this kind of guard has disappeared for a long time."

Although [Mother of Ten Thousand Stones] is a foreign god, she is very kind to her believers. Ordinary golden guards naturally won't have the effect of confusing people. As the fragrance spread, Mason became dazed for a while, as if he heard the murmurs from his mother.

He stretches out His bosom and gently calls His children, saying that as long as they step into His arms, they will not be afraid of pain and wind and rain. Those who reject Him will become a rock, suffering the pain of wind and rain for endless years.

The red-haired young man bit his tongue hard, and used the pain to wake up. He wanted to use the holy weapon to make a quick decision, but just as he raised his sword, the starlight in his subconscious flickered slightly, and he inexplicably gave up this idea.

Then we have to force it!

Mason swung his sword forward, and Li was hit, and the sound of hard collisions continued. Even though her bones were broken, the girl, whose body was turned into stone, did not flinch. Facing the young man's powerful attack, Mason suddenly slid away and jumped over him to rush towards the golden tree, and chopped the strangely laughing human-faced fruit on the tree with his sword.

Li hurried back, but was blocked by the interlaced stone teeth that suddenly appeared on the ground. Ace was sweating profusely. His blood came from a certain magic monster in the kingdom of God, and he could use magic. Taking advantage of the few seconds he had, Mason cut off the branch where the fruit was. The human face cried like a baby, and the whole tree withered and died in an instant.

"Huh...Huh..."

Li fell to her knees, her face twisted in pain. The stone skin on her body peeled off, and blood dripped out. Ace rushed forward to stop the bleeding. He calmed down after making sure her life was safe.

Mason examined the bones under the tree and frowned, "These bones have been here for a while. They are not our target."

"Luckily it hasn't eaten anything fresh recently, otherwise the contamination would be even more serious."

Ace smiled bitterly and threw him a cylinder: "Pour the contents on it and burn it. It will be a good ending for these people."

The cylinder was filled with special fuel, which Mason poured on the dead golden trees and corpses, setting them on fire and burning them clean. Ace carefully carried the unconscious Li on his back and returned to the camp together under the moonlight.

After they left, Dan stayed in the camp. He was not surprised to see Li and Ace return safely, and listened to Mason's account of what happened tonight with great interest.

The blond noble immediately looked regretful: "Such an interesting thing happened but I was not there. I have been to many kingdoms of God, but this is the first time I have seen a servant of God. Let me see the fruit. I have a seal that can judge the ability of items. Let me see where I put it..."

Dan went into the tent and rummaged around, then pulled out a lifelike wooden figure about the height of a thumb. The figure was playing a lyre and tilting its head to listen.

Dan placed the apple in front of it. The wooden man plucked the strings, creaked, and opened his mouth to sing: "Oh! What a powerful force this is. I saw that the one who possesses this thing is as shining as gold. Be careful! Be careful! Shadows are lingering all the time! Power and curse coexist. Pitiable, pitiful, even the brilliance will be distorted and obscured!"

Some obscure and winding tunes lingered in the air. When the song ended, the little wooden man lowered his right hand, closed his eyes, and remained motionless.

The nobleman collected the contaminant and said, "You are lucky. This is a blood material that can be preserved for a long time."

After checking on the two, Ace came out and said, "According to the teachings of the Mother of Ten Thousand Stones, those who eat the gift will have flesh and bones like gold. They will not be afraid of ordinary iron, poison, or cold, nor will they be troubled by poverty. They will be energetic for three days before needing to rest."

The Golden Apple is indeed a gift from God, and its power is quite good. As for the curse mentioned by Xiaomu? It would be strange if a bloodline person is not polluted and troubled. Although he was very tired, Ace still sat down and fulfilled his promise very tactfully, telling them all the knowledge he knew about the Kingdom of God.

The next morning, he said goodbye to the two on behalf of the team. The captain and he were both injured, and Li's condition was unknown, which completely discouraged them from continuing the mission.

"Thanks to you two for being here this time, we are safe. These two instruments are useless to us, so you two can take them. If you find the missing team, you can come back to claim the reward. We will go back to the mission center to submit an application and change it to you two to receive the reward."

The survey equipment needed to be collected after paying a deposit. Dan handed them to two bloodline members who had not known each other for a long time, which was undoubtedly a gesture of goodwill. Mason accepted them without hesitation and nodded to him: "We will look for you when we return."

This is the only good news during this period.

Dan forced a smile, and the two parties said goodbye. The blond nobleman quickly put away the overnight supplies, his eyes shining brightly: "Where are we going next?"

"Don't you already know that?"

Mason glanced at him, who chuckled and said in a very excited tone, "What are you waiting for? I can't wait to see where the divine servants are."

The two returned to the Golden Forest, but what they saw was a dead forest. The golden trees that had sparkled last night were now dull, with withered branches that were fragile and brittle. Dan just touched them and they fell to the ground.

There was no need to explore such a forest. Even the native mineral creatures were unwilling to approach it. He shook his head and said, "Let's keep going forward. It seems that the golden tree is the center of this forest. After the fruit was picked, the forest withered during the day."

Dan sighed, but he didn't insist. The two continued to walk together as planned. Without a guide, they just went wherever they wanted. They encountered golden woods twice along the way.

Without exception, all teams were affected.

Mason saved one team, and Dan killed the golden tree. But when they found the second team, all the members of the team had been wiped out. The golden tree inserted its roots into the corpse to suck nutrients, and the fruits on the branches laughed secretly, and the whole forest was filled with sweet fragrance.

This was the largest golden tree they had ever encountered. It was ripe, and the faces on the tree were swaying and laughing, and one could even see their eyes moving. The golden tree, noticing the two men approaching, rose up from the ground, and the entire forest shook. When the two men stabilized their steps, the tree actually burrowed into the ground and escaped.

A few breaths after it left, the entire forest withered, and only shriveled bones remained where the culprit was. The stone man who had been standing under the tree wailed, and the stone skin on his body fell off, revealing the lifelike flesh and blood underneath that had also turned into stone, and turned into rubble all over the ground in front of the two people.

Dan made a disgusted expression: "I hate this tree."

Mason paid attention to the differences between the encounters and heard the voice reply, "They are evolving. This tree is more intelligent than its peers. At least before this, we didn't know it could run."

"Now that the Mother of Ten Thousand Stones is dead, these trees have gone crazy and decided to kill everyone who enters the Kingdom of God to avenge their mother? It sounds like a third-rate drama. I bet no one would watch it even in the worst theater in Partington."

Dan mocked sarcastically, manipulating the bones to dig a hole in the ground. Mason looked at him in surprise: "I heard that because corpses represent bad luck and bring pollution, few people would take the initiative to do this."

"Indeed, there is such a tradition in the border. After all, everyone is afraid of pollution. I spent some time in the Black Mist Border before I became an adult. It is very dangerous there. Your friend who was still chatting and laughing last night may die next to you today, and you can't do anything about it."

The blond noble shrugged his shoulders and spoke lightly of the past: "What can you do at this time? You are his only undertaker. All sacrifices in the face of the black mist are respectable. Choosing to ignore it is just for safety. For the weak, this is not shameful. As for me, if they crawl out of the ground, I will send them back with my own hands."

"I like your answer."

"That's right. From the moment I saw you, I felt that we would get along well."

Mason smiled and buried the body with him. Dan inserted the bone shovel into the grave as a tombstone. The dead bloodline returned to dust and dirt. Except for the two gravediggers, no one knew where they went.

Having done this, they moved on.

The ore mountain range is very large. Due to recent missing persons cases, the number of people taking on missions has dropped sharply, resulting in them not meeting anyone except for those unlucky people who came to support them but were caught instead.

The wilderness survival kit they bought before departure came in handy, including a warm tent for the night, a water purification device, and a wilderness cooking kit. Ken also taught them to identify several edible local plants during the mission, and with the dry food stored, life was not too difficult.

In this way, the two went deeper and deeper, unaware that something big had happened in the camp.

......

There were more bloodline members gathered in the mission hall today than ever before, and Ace noticed the change in atmosphere when he came in. For the first time, the free-spirited bloodline members gathered in unison, all looking at the parchment hanging on the wall of the hall, and none of them were willing to move.

Everyone in their team was injured. After lying in bed for two days, Ace, who was the least injured, volunteered to be taken out to see the current situation.

His face was still somewhat pale as he stood alone behind the crowd, also looking up at the parchment with flashing words on it.

In just a few days, people who entered the mountains to search for the missing team disappeared one after another. Only a few strong teams managed to escape from the mountains and returned, claiming that they had encountered the golden forest, and their companions had undergone changes after hearing the whispering.

As a result, people learned about the changes in the Gold Mountain Range. Not only that, but disappearances also began to occur in other mountain ranges. For a time, people were in a panic, and the Mineral Mountain Range became a vortex that swallowed up lives.

The ranking of the missing team mission was rising, hanging on the top of the parchment in the hall. The rank kept rising from B-rank, and under the attention of the bloodline people, it jumped over A-rank and turned directly into a bright red S.

[S-level mission: Please investigate the changes in each mountain range as a team. Rewards will be given based on the content of the intelligence.]

The bloodline members in the hall looked at each other. The release of S-level missions was related to the survival of the Kingdom of God. Its difficulty was not necessarily higher than that of A-level missions, but once released, all capable bloodline members had to accept it.

If their team had not been injured repeatedly, they would have been able to go to support them, but now they were powerless. Ace sighed quietly, and thought of the two people who were still in the Golden Mountains, and his expression became even more worried.

I hope Mr. Oleus and Mr. Dan can return safely.