Gorilla in Underpants!

About a kilometer from the village, the path ahead had vanished entirely. Ancient vines coiled everywhere, trees towered to the sky, rotting leaves gave off a foul stench, and even the light had grown dim.

At this position, Number Two Barbarian seemed to have used some kind of concealment technique, vanishing into the canopy above. If not for the certainty that he existed, one could have easily overlooked him.

Number One brought up the rear with a club over his shoulder, Number Three cleared the way with a door-plank-sized broadsword, and the girl gripped a broadsword of her own, staying close to Bai Yang's side, alert to their surroundings.

"I actually feel like I'm the king of the forest right now... what the hell?"

Bai Yang muttered to himself. He basically didn't need to worry about safety, so his eyes roamed everywhere, finding everything novel. He suddenly realized that over ninety percent of what he saw was completely unfamiliar to him!

When Bai Yang got curious and wanted to get a closer look at a mushroom as big as an umbrella, his shoulder was grabbed, and the girl yanked him back more than ten meters!

"What's going on?"

Bai Yang looked at her in confusion.

The girl flicked her toe, sending a fist-sized rock flying toward the giant mushroom. A small cloud of powder rose from it. The surrounding plants touched by the powder lost all their moisture within seconds, turning yellow and brittle...

Seeing this, Bai Yang wasn't scared at all—his eyes lit up instead!

"If I could get my hands on that mushroom powder, it'd be an essential travel item, wouldn't it?"

Number One Barbarian came up from behind to Bai Yang's front, gesturing frantically with a terrified expression. The gist was that this mushroom was scarier than a demon!

"Uneducated. Mushrooms are dead things. Once you know their properties, dealing with them is simple? Just carefully collect some powder, and whenever someone pisses you off, give them a dose..."

Bai Yang thought they were overreacting and decided he'd definitely collect some to carry on him if he got the chance!

Atomic bombs were dangerous too, but didn't every country still want to collect them?

They steered clear of the giant mushroom and continued deeper into the jungle.

They hadn't gone far when Bai Yang wanted to lean against a tree to catch his breath. The girl 'gently' pulled him away again. She tapped the tree trunk with her broadsword. With a crack, a palm-sized hole appeared in the bark, and a dense swarm of red ants, each the size of a finger, poured out!

"Let's take a detour."

Instinctively moving away from the tree, Bai Yang turned his stiff neck and walked the other way.

Shwoosh! An arrow flew from somewhere in the trees above and pinned itself into the ground at Bai Yang's feet. The soft earth split open, and a python nearly eight meters long writhed and twisted on the ground, its head pierced through and nailed to the dirt by the arrow!

A cold sweat slowly rolled down his forehead. If the arrow had been off by a little, he'd have been the one pinned. The key point was that he'd almost stepped right on that python...

"When are we going back? This jungle is no place for humans, alright..."

Endless repetitive muttering ran through his mind. Bai Yang was now rejecting his own decision to come into the jungle, but since he was already here, he had to grit his teeth and keep moving forward.

An hour later, Bai Yang was nearly broken. The jungle was full of dangers, like walking a road to hell. Every plant was untouchable, every deadly venomous insect appeared in the most unexpected places. If not for the few 'wilderness survival masters' guiding him, Bai Yang felt he wouldn't have lasted ten minutes—unless Lady Luck had a thing for him...

The reason he hadn't run into major trouble during his few hours wandering the jungle last time was purely because those sections had already been cleared by the barbarians. After all, he'd been following the safe routes they'd established.

During a rest break, the girl gestured and spoke in words Bai Yang couldn't understand. Her meaning was that in this jungle, aside from natives like them who'd grown up here, very few outsiders who came in ever left in one piece!

That was probably the gist of it...

"Each place nurtures its own people. Blundering into an unfamiliar territory either forces you to survive through blood and pain or leads to self-destruction."

That was Bai Yang's internal summary.

The fact that they could move through the jungle with such ease was probably the hard-won experience paid for by countless ancestors' lives!

Just as Bai Yang was lost in thought, the atmosphere around them suddenly grew tense. Number Three Barbarian held his broadsword horizontally in front of him, crouching slightly like a coiled leopard ready to strike, his neck covered in goosebumps.

Number One Barbarian, who had been at the rear, also came forward, holding his staff horizontally. His eyes flickered, and his body trembled slightly. Even Number Two Barbarian, hidden in the trees, revealed himself on an angled branch above, bow drawn and arrow nocked, slowly scanning the surroundings with terror in his eyes!

The girl held her broadsword across her chest with one hand and grabbed Bai Yang's shoulder with the other, slowly backing away, extremely tense.

"What's going on?"

Infected by the atmosphere, Bai Yang's throat went dry. Though he didn't sense any danger himself, he absolutely didn't doubt the crisis awareness these lifelong jungle dwellers were displaying.

Before Bai Yang could figure out what was happening, he felt his body lighten, as if riding clouds. His vision blurred as the girl grabbed him by the shoulder and carried him up a tree at least thirty meters high!

"How did we get up here?"

Bai Yang was dazed. He couldn't imagine how the girl had managed to bring him, a guy weighing over a hundred jin, up a tree. It was too fast—he hadn't seen it...

Looking at the girl beside him, her lips tightly pressed together as she scanned their surroundings, Bai Yang's worldview was shattered. Was this really the same soft girl who had cried in his arms like a pitiful little kitten? Had she been swapped out?

Then all other thoughts vanished from Bai Yang's mind. He was frantically wondering if he should ask the girl to take him even higher...

In the distance came muffled thuds. The ground trembled slightly. The crackling sound of breaking branches came continuously. A massive creature was approaching!

At some point, Number One and Number Three Barbarians had also climbed into the trees. Like Bai Yang and the girl, they held their breath, staring nervously in the direction of the sound.

The leaves parted, and a gorilla came into Bai Yang's view.

But seeing that gorilla, Bai Yang's face twisted like he was constipated. He wanted to laugh but didn't dare, holding it in painfully...

It was a huge black gorilla, comparable to the King Kong in Bai Yang's memory—thick and muscular, limbs looking ready to burst. But that wasn't the point. The point was that this gorilla was wearing a pair of shorts! A tiger-skin loincloth of unknown origin wrapped around its lower half...

The gorilla was huge and terrifying. One of its arms was thicker than the torso of the burliest barbarian among them. But the gorilla in shorts gave Bai Yang a strange sense of comedy. He wanted to laugh but didn't dare, nearly choking on his own suppressed mirth.

The gorilla clearly sensed Bai Yang and the others. It stopped moving and looked up at them.

Meeting the gorilla's gaze, everyone felt a chill run down their spines. This thing could probably swallow them in one bite without chewing!

But the gorilla just bared its teeth at them, then turned its butt and slowly walked away...

Bai Yang swore on his little dick that the expression on its face as it left was one of disdainful contempt, as if mocking them: 'You're all trash!'

To actually be looked down upon by a beast—he had to endure it even if he didn't want to...

Only after the gorilla's figure completely disappeared into the jungle did the few of them dare to breathe heavily, unknowingly drenched in cold sweat.

"This damn gorilla's practically become a spirit, hasn't it? Not only can it make human-like expressions, but it even knows how to wear shorts!"

Even after the crisis was resolved, Bai Yang's mind was still blank. As for his understanding of this world, he figured he was still stuck at zero...

"Gorillas themselves are intelligent primates. Growing that big, having some ability to imitate isn't completely unacceptable, right?"

In the end, Bai Yang convinced himself with this flimsy excuse...

(Plea for recommendation tickets and collection support—the New Book rankings are way too brutal.)