Xia Nan's original plan had been to make a wide detour after escaping, circling around the area where they had encountered the beast herd and the Owlbear before.
Then he would return by the original route and leave the forest, waiting for his teammates in Green Wheat Village.
But unexpectedly, he had not gone far before he keenly sensed a few unusual movements nearby.
After a brief reconnaissance, human footprints left on the ground, branches and grass stems snapped underfoot, and a little blood entered his field of vision as well.
He trailed them all the way, amid the ever-thickening smell of blood and the gradually clearer sound of human conversation.
His two teammates came into view.
Xia Nan observed them very carefully. In the instant before Kash and Veris saw him, what came first was vigilance and wariness.
That was easy to understand.
In Thin Mist Forest, which was filled with all sorts of dangerous Monsters, footsteps suddenly approaching from the dense woods nearby naturally warranted a guarded stance.
But next, after the two discovered that the person approaching was him, their reactions became very interesting.
First came a start. The hostility in their eyes seemed to recede slightly, but the weapons in their hands did not lower, and their bodies still instinctively maintained their pre-combat posture.
Then the expressions on their faces abruptly changed from their original blank shock to stiffness. They instinctively squeezed out a smile, then seemed to realize that this was too abrupt and withdrew every expression, putting on a look that appeared relatively normal: a taut seriousness tinged with the relief of finding a teammate.
Xia Nan did not have the ability to read minds, so naturally he did not know the thoughts behind the two people's rich changes of expression.
Yet a strange