He looked around, trying to pinpoint their exact location, but found that the compass was malfunctioning. He patted the needle, "This thing is broken, it's completely useless. What do we do? We don't even know where we are in the forest, this is very dangerous!"
The Azure Sky Forest is different from Taiping Mountain. Taiping Mountain doesn't have such dense vegetation, and spirit beasts frequently enter and leave, leaving heavy traces of their movements. It's also several times smaller than the Azure Sky Forest. Shi Mu was worried that they would be trapped here indefinitely. As the surrounding fog grew thicker, they couldn't rely on their eyes to determine their direction; they could only rely on these tools that didn't require sight.
Xu Yuehuai glanced calmly at the pointer in his hand. "There's some kind of magnetic field affecting it, that's why it's like this. The fog is getting thicker, everyone stay close and don't get lost. If you can't see your teammates anymore, shout loudly, understand?"
Xu Yuehuai's eyes were filled with unprecedented seriousness as she scanned the group of people gathered around her. The others nodded, their faces serious.
Xu Yuehuai continued walking towards the mountain, concentrating intently. However, after walking for a short while, she suddenly tripped and almost fell. Several people nearby rushed forward to help her up.
Xu Yuehuai steadied herself and, instead of leaving immediately, looked at the ground. "Look, aren't these bones on the ground?"
These words made everyone lower their heads and begin to examine the ground. What they saw startled them. Shi Mu tugged at Nangong Yu's sleeve, "No way, how come there are so many bones here, and heads too? It's so creepy..."
In a normal setting, Shi Mu probably wouldn't be afraid, but surrounded by strange, towering trees and with so many white bones under his feet, seeing those empty-eyed skulls sent a chill down his spine.
Xu Yuehuai squatted down and examined the bones of these people, carefully refraining from touching them. These things had been here for so many years, and in their current state, they might have been covered with some substances harmful to the human body. "These are the people from down the mountain. Almost all of them died here."
The surrounding fog dissipated slightly, and more things became visible. The visibility had increased from one meter to two or three meters. The mountains of white bones around us were truly horrifying. "We're not going to reach the end here. There doesn't seem to be anything special about this place now. Why did we all die here?"
Shi Mu hid, carefully observing his surroundings.
"I think there's something wrong with the air." Xu Yuehuai looked around. There was nothing unusual in the air. The sun was blocked by tree branches, so it couldn't shine down at all, creating a perfect closed loop in the environment below.
“Here? Is there something wrong with the air?” Xuan Chi walked to Xu Yuehuai’s side. He looked around and even sniffed carefully to see what was strange about the air.
"To be precise, it's not air, but the fog you can see in front of you. This isn't fog; it's poisonous miasma." Xu Yuehuai's words were startling, and everyone held their breath for a moment. They had been breathing in poisonous gas all the way here.
Xu Yuehuai continued, "Their bodies couldn't keep going after they got here, so they died here." Xu Yuehuai looked at the bones, her expression slightly changing.
This puzzled Xuan Chi. "If that's really the case, then why couldn't the people down the mountain see it? The woman said that someone had come to see it before. They live in this place, so they should know a lot about this kind of thing."
Xu Yuehuai chuckled, "That's what makes this matter so incomprehensible and fantastical. The poisonous gas in this miasma is very special; it can make people faint without them even realizing it, without any foreplay. They don't have much spiritual energy to support them, so after inhaling so much poisonous gas, their bodies can't handle it, and they naturally get poisoned. However, the signs of poisoning are very mild, and it may take ten days to half a month for them to show up. That's why those who observe the dead and find that they have no wounds believe it's a punishment from heaven. When the investigation yields no results, they cremate and bury those people to let them rest in peace. This is why they miss the changes in the bones of those who went up the mountain."
“Take a close look at the bones on the ground. They’ve all changed color a bit, though it’s not very obvious.” After Xu Yuehuai finished speaking, everyone lowered their heads to examine the bones on the ground. They found that it was exactly as Xu Yuehuai had described. Shi Mu’s gaze toward her became even more admiring.
"As for why you didn't react at all, it's because I gave you the Wan Du Dan (a poison-free pill) before we went up the mountain. It makes you immune to all poisons, but it only lasts for one day. You'll need to take it every day while you're here," Xu Yuehuai said with a smile.
She had already guessed it, which is why she made such preparations. However, the others looked at her with even more admiration, saying, "As expected of Senior Sister, she has foreseen everything."
Xu Yuehuai did not respond. She felt that she could not be considered to have foreseen the future. She had only speculated on what they said and thought that the most likely reason was that poisonous gas was spreading on the mountain, which was why there were no spirit beasts here and why anyone who went in would be doomed.
"What do we do now? There's so much miasma on this mountain, we can't see the path at all, let alone find the old valley master." Xuan Chi looked around, and the miasma showed no sign of dissipating.
Xu Yuehuai glanced at them and then came up with a solution that shocked everyone: "We'll break this place open. There must be a reason for the miasma. Once we find and solve that reason, the rest will be much easier."
When the group discussed the old Valley Master, they all believed that he had likely died tragically. The chances of him surviving were slim, and he was probably already seriously injured when he left. If he had stayed in a place like the Azure Sky Forest, where poisonous gas was rampant, even the living would have turned to death.
"So the task of finding the miasma will depend on Fu Ziyi." Xu Yuehuai turned his gaze to Fu Ziyi. Fu Ziyi's skills were completely unaffected in this place. Ghosts don't need to breathe, and their speed was also very fast, many times faster than Xu Yuehuai and the others searching for the place barefoot.
For a while, the group sat on the spot and lit a fire. Although the sun was shining in the sky, only a few scattered beams of light came down, so they couldn't feel any warmth at all.
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