A Terrible Situation
"This is truly awful," Lu Li sighed. After searching for almost half a year, he finally found the entrance to break through the Dreamlands and enter reality, which made Lu Li waste even more of his already limited time.
Of course, half a year is roughly equivalent to half a day, otherwise that forest would probably have been leveled long ago, and Lu Li wouldn't have been around.
Lu Li now standing in the back garden of a royal palace. In front of him is a well. No one would guess that this is the entrance to the real world. In the distance, a lovely princess is playing with her golden ball.
Seemingly engrossed in the game, the princess let out a joyful cheer. From Lu Li's perspective, a dirty, naked boy could be seen hiding in a bush in the distance, peeking at them.
The princess played with the golden ball for a while, but felt unsatisfied and let out a hollow cry. The filthy boy seemed unable to resist any longer, so he stepped out of the bushes and said, "Beautiful princess, I can help you, as long as you promise to be my friend from now on."
"No, you're as filthy as a frog," the princess said with a look of disgust.
The dirty boy, however, wasn't angry. Instead, he spoke sweet nothings, "Don't let my frog-like appearance fool you. If you kiss me, I can break the curse and Avatar into your Prince, allowing you to continue playing with the golden ball happily."
The naive princess, half-believing and half-doubting, agreed to kiss the naked boy. Whether the boy later became Prince, or whether the princess agreed to be friends with him, was no longer Lu Li's concern. He had already jumped into the well and traveled to the real world of this Land of Stars.
When Lu Li opened his eyes, he saw a face suddenly appear on the big tree next to him. The face said with some anger, "You're late, young shadow."
"You're a whole month late! Don't tell me you're a dream wizard, and it takes you this long to break through to the Illusionary Dream realm!" The face on the tree seemed to know Lu Li's background very well, and its tone was exceptionally impolite.
"I was a little slow because I had some personal matters to attend to." Lu Li smiled nonchalantly. He felt no remorse, nor was he annoyed by the other party's impolite words, because he would never feel that way again.
"Then I hope you can handle your official business as if it were a personal matter," the tree-face said, almost cursing. "For the past month since you arrived, I've been working hard to hold them off, but they've still destroyed almost a third of the forest. Now my energy is almost exhausted, and I'm going into a deep sleep. Damn it, I hope you can stay until I wake up."
After the face finished speaking, it released a green ball of light and then disappeared from the tree. According to Lu Li's perception, what was in front of him was just an ordinary tree, and the face that had been on the tree was only temporarily residing there. Now, he didn't know where it had gone to sleep.
He took the green ball of light, which contained a lot of information. Lu Li chose to read it and then understood the situation he was about to face.
About a year ago, the Cordila Group purchased the usage rights to the Dara Forest from the Alliance. They planned to clear the forest of trees and build a new industrial city on it.
A month ago, with funding, manpower, and the permits for deforestation all in place, Cordila Group workers and their own incident handling personnel began heading towards the Dara Forest to cut down trees and level tree stumps.
At this point, the helpers requested by the Spirit of Nature should have arrived and, together with the Spirit of Nature's avatar here and various measures, kept the Cordila Group out of the forest, making them believe that the losses from continuing to develop the forest were too great. In that case, the mission would be complete.
However, when Lu Li calculated the time, he realized he was a whole month late, plus this half morning. His solo nature spirit avatar was forced to retreat by the Cordila Group, losing about a third of the forest.
Now that the Spirit of Nature has exhausted its energy and gone into slumber, all the measures are almost rendered useless, leaving only Lu Li to support it. Moreover, an even more hidden difficulty has been amplified, namely the cost of the Cordila Group.
If it were a month ago, before the Cordila Group had even started construction, and if the strength demonstrated by Lu Li and the Spirit of Nature made the Cordila Group feel that the cost of developing the forest was too high, then the profit-driven Cordila Group would naturally have chosen to give up and swallow the previous losses alone, such as the cost of purchasing the forest usage rights.
But now, a month later, one-third of the forest has been developed, and a considerable amount of manpower, material resources, and financial resources have been consumed. If you ask the Cordila Group to give up at this point, their losses will be substantial, and naturally, Lu Li's mission will become even more difficult.
According to the information provided by the Spirit of Nature, Lu Li no longer needs to worry about large-scale military bombing, because this is just a group's development project, and supernatural events are quite common here. In fact, the Cordila Group has a special supernatural event handling unit.
Indeed, Lu Li's initial guess was partially correct. A small number of humans here possess a treasure called a spirit weapon. These humans can use spirit weapons to unleash powerful strength, so those who can use spirit weapons are also known as spirit envoys.
After the explanation from the Spirit of Nature, Lu Li roughly understood the worldview of this world. It was roughly that the Spirit of Nature and the supernatural source were on the same side, and humans relied on spirit messengers to oppose each other, but now humans had the upper hand.
Because of their opposition, the supernatural source and the spirit messengers are fraught with conflict. Humans call the supernatural source "monsters," while the supernatural source calls the spirit messengers "snacks." Humans can seal the monsters into weapons to create new spirit weapons after defeating them, while the supernatural source can devour the snacks to strip the spirit weapons of their opponents and further enhance its own strength.
Now that Lu Li has transformed into a shadow creature, becoming a standard source of supernatural events, he is the object of human fear and Greed. He stroked his chin, thinking, "Hey, in that case, those snacks should taste pretty good. I should try some and see how they taste."
"It seems this is a long-term battle," Dark River said, also materializing. "It looks like it will take quite a while. The forest map sent by the Spirit of Nature says there's a river there, so I'll guard that entire river."
"Don't let them catch you and seal you into a weapon. If they do, I'll laugh at you for the rest of my life," Lu Li said, waving his hand. Dark River chuckled and vanished into black mist.
"Then let's call out the helpers first." Lu Li opened the umbrella, which was covered with many patterns and designs that were annoying to look at. With a thought from Lu Li, the patterns disappeared, and three figures appeared in front of Lu Li, or rather, four.
It was dawn, and the Cordira workers would probably start work as soon as it got light. Lu Li smiled intriguedly. "Let's give them a surprise then."
That's all for today's fourth update. I'd appreciate any support you can offer. Thank you everyone.