The forest was lush, and the warm morning sun bathed the mountain path in mellow light. A party of nine trekked along it. Bai Zhiyi walked lightly among them, looking all around.
"Huh!"
Her sudden cry of surprise startled the other eight. A man in his early fifties wearing reading glasses turned pale. "Miss Bai, have you spotted some danger?"
"Don't panic. Wait here while I take a look over there." Bai Zhiyi pointed to a dense grove several dozen meters to their left, reassuring them.
"All right, all right! Be careful, Miss Bai," the man in reading glasses said. "We've only just entered the Willowwood Mountains, so we're not deep in yet, but wild animals may still roam around here."
"Don't worry. Wild animals are nothing to fear." Bai Zhiyi smiled, a spirited, girlish confidence lighting her face. "And there might not be any over there. My instincts just tell me something isn't right, so I'm going to investigate."
"Your instincts?" The man in reading glasses had no intention of scoffing. Though he was no extraordinary himself, he knew a little about them. Many had remarkably accurate instincts; a sudden stirring of the heart was not necessarily without cause.
Rustle, rustle~
Bai Zhiyi headed toward the grove, stepping through patches of undergrowth. Her expression remained calm, while the Flight Apparatus in her left sleeve stood ready to strike.
She slowly entered the trees until her figure was only faintly visible. The man in reading glasses tensed and told the others, "Stay alert, but don't panic. It's easy to make mistakes when you lose your head."
"Got it. Don't worry, Engineer Han. We're all old hands at going into the mountains. Of course we know that." A muscular man in his thirties wearing a red cap swung the iron staff