Chapter 87: The Ghostly Mask

On the thick trunk of a great tree, one ghost orchid after another surged into view.

With a faint rustling hiss, Yu Yan backed away in bewilderment. The branch she had been standing on had been bare a moment before, yet now several newly sprouted ghost orchids had pushed through, their leaves still tender, crisp-looking, and fresh.

Their rank was not high, perhaps only first- or second-grade.

And yet... before they emerged from the branch, Yu Yan swore that her spiritual senses had not detected even the slightest anomaly!

This was far too abnormal.

As a fourth-grade spiritual vein enhancer, Yu Yan’s plant spirit was the Heavenly-Rank Twelfth-Grade Space Illusion Lotus.

And yet she had failed to sense even the approach of a first- or second-grade plant-type instance monster. If anyone heard of it, it would be humiliating beyond words. But this utterly illogical thing was happening right before her eyes.

And it was not just here and there; nearly every tree branch within sight was packed full of these ghost orchids.

Before sunset, Yu Yan might at most have found three to five ghost orchids on a single tree.

But after nightfall, every tree had at least a dozen ghost orchids, and some had as many as a hundred!

How on earth had they appeared?

Yu Yan’s small head was filled with huge question marks.

But there was one thing she was certain of: whether it was the ghost orchids in the trees or the Soul-Devouring Grass on the ground, all of them seemed to fear sunlight. In daylight, they appeared harmless, no different from ordinary plants.

Yu Yan had tugged and pulled at the Soul-Devouring Grass, and had also tested the ghost orchids in the trees.

Unless they revealed killing intent, at which point they would either counterattack or simply withdraw, they basically let Yu Yan do as she pleased, as if they had no temper at all.

But once the sun went down, Yu Yan did not even need to get close to them. Just looking at how vigorous they were made it clear that if she dared to provoke them carelessly, the outcome would surely be far from pleasant.

Yu Yan was not foolish enough to go out of her way to stir them up.

This forest was too strange, and within an S-rank instance, earth-rank instance monsters appeared with very high frequency. Yu Yan feared that if she was careless, she would blunder into the territory of an earth-rank monster, so if she could lay low, she would do her best to lay low...

Still, to be fair, after night fell, aside from these eerie oddities, the Firefly Soul-Devouring Sea was truly breathtakingly beautiful.

The glowing yellow insect shadows flitting through the woods were probably the firefly-patterned yellow butterflies mentioned in the instance briefing.

Yu Yan admired this rare spectacle for a while.

Then, with a slight thought, the tree leaf she had transformed into became a firefly-patterned yellow butterfly. Its wings fluttered gently as it merged into the swarm, utterly unremarkable.

Compared with a tree leaf, a flying butterfly was obviously much more convenient for her movements.

And on the other side of the forest—

"Quick, run!"

The usually cool voice of the young man, Yu Lei, carried a rare trace of panic.

He dragged desperately at the girl’s body, heavy as a stubborn rock, retreating toward the "safe" area. "Brother Wei, Brother Rui, help me! Hold on to my sister’s other arm. Her injury missed the heart, so there’s still hope of saving her!"

After running for so long, Yu Lei’s stamina was nearly exhausted.

Yu Wan had lost the ability to move, and he truly could not carry her anymore. He could only cast a pleading look at his two best brothers.

Yu Rui and Yu Wei exchanged glances, then both looked away.

They could not bear to tell Yu Lei that his sister still had two injuries on her back, both deep and grievously damaging her internal organs. Unless divine healers walked the earth, even if they managed to save her, the end result would still be death. And dragging along one more person would only slow their escape.

The iron hedgehogs behind them, bristling with sharp spikes, would not show them any mercy.

If they ran too slowly, being torn apart and devoured would happen in the blink of an eye.

Wasn’t Yu Zhiyie and those uncles from the same village exactly the lesson they should have learned?

"Bro... little brother."

Yu Wan struggled to steady her breathing, her face ashen. "Don’t... don’t worry about me. Just run yourself! If you manage to leave the instance, and someday get the chance to see Big Sister again, remember to tell her I’m sorry."

As she said this, her tightly clasped hand around Yu Lei’s loosened slightly.

A look of release surfaced in her eyes. "Over these years, Big Sister has had it hard. I shouldn’t have argued with her last time."

Yu Wan’s voice grew softer and softer until it was barely audible.

Yu Lei’s eyes nearly split with rage as he clenched his second sister’s hand. "What nonsense are you talking? If you want to apologize to Big Sister, wait until you see her and say it yourself! I’m not doing that for you... Brother Wei, Brother Rui?" Unaware of it himself, tears had already streamed down his face.

The boy lowered his proud head, his voice thick with pleading and a hint of forced restraint.

Their parents had never been reliable people, and they had muddled through life all these years.

Big Sister was thirteen years older than them. Since graduating from university and starting work, she had taken on part of the family’s expenses. His and his second sister’s tuition and living costs had almost all been paid by Big Sister, but the age gap between Big Sister and them was simply too large.

Among them, Yu Lei had always been closest to his second sister.

The two of them had grown up together in constant roughhousing, and they were twins with a profound spiritual connection.

Though they were fraternal twins and did not look alike, their bond was far deeper than that of ordinary brothers and sisters in most families. Yu Lei had always prided himself on being calm and self-possessed, but when faced with the life-and-death separation of the person closest to him, he too was thrown into panic and helplessness.

"Why beg them?"

"The two of them are just cowards. They act all brotherly and loyal when times are easy, but do you really think they can be relied on when it matters?"

A firm hand, like that of a deity descending from heaven, suddenly reached out, seized Yu Wan’s arm, and lifted her straight onto someone’s back. Lou Yuhui drew the flexible sword from his waist and charged to the front. "What are you standing there for? If you don’t run, are you waiting to be fed to the iron hedgehogs?"

"Oh, oh, oh!"

Yu Lei nodded dazedly.

In truth, the group had never stopped retreating even while speaking.

While Yu Lei was pleading with Yu Rui and Yu Wei, he had also been dragging Yu Wan onward with all his strength. Sweat poured from his forehead and back like rain, and his whole body seemed as though it had been hauled out of water. With the heavy burden of Yu Wan’s body suddenly gone, Yu Lei only felt light all over.

His body, strengthened by spirit-beast meat, recovered astonishingly fast.

Very soon he caught up with the others. Seeing Lou Yuhui ahead, carrying Yu Wan as if it were nothing at all, gratitude flashed in his eyes.

Lou Yuhui was Yu Wei’s cousin, someone Yu Lei had never met before today.

He had only heard Yu Wei mention this cousin occasionally, saying he had been elusive since childhood and was supposedly sent by the family to some mysterious place to learn martial arts. Today, he had appeared together with Yu Wei, and throughout the instance his performance had seemed rather ordinary. Yu Lei had assumed he practiced nothing more than some common method for strengthening the body.

He had not expected this man to be hiding such depth.

But fortunately for them, he was.

Otherwise, his second sister... would have had no escape today.

"Huff, huff!"

Amid the ragged panting, if at this very moment someone were high in the sky and able to see past the obstacles of all the tree leaves below, they would find Yu Lei’s group of more than ten people aligned on the same horizontal plane as another strange firefly-patterned yellow butterfly, which fluttered gracefully ahead as though strolling in a garden.

If nothing unforeseen happened, within at most half an hour, the two parties would meet.