The Bewildering Ash Fog

Lin Shan dragged his battered body back near the camp, not disturbing the others who were still resting.

He found a tree not far from the campsite to lean against, closing his eyes to rest.

Sleep was out of the question. A searing pain like fire constantly burned through his internal organs. He did not know how he had endured it; perhaps the agony had simply numbed him.

Not only that, a stench of rot radiated from inside and out of his entire body. Even he felt sick smelling himself, gripped by an urge to vomit.

Aside from his appearance, nothing else about him resembled a living human.

Just like that, amidst the half-waking torment, the sky grew light. He prepared to give the others a quick heads-up before searching for Ashatu's Horn.

As he approached the camp, he saw the Green-Robed Cat Girl carrying Black Tiger on her back as she headed out. The other party evidently spotted him too. She sniffed the air, frowning as she looked at Lin Shan.

She could sense that this human opposite her was on the verge of death. There was no need to guess; such injuries meant he had encountered an anomaly. She sighed, having no way to deal with the damage caused by that sort of thing unless she used the Sequence Potions from her tribe. But her tribe did not even have enough of those to go around, let alone for an outsider.

She shook her head, and with a few bounds carrying Black Tiger on her back, her figure vanished from sight.

Everyone was present in the camp.

"Lin Shan, you're back!" Zhao Xiao An's joyful voice arrived.

"Mn." Lin Shan nodded and asked, "How come that cat girl left?"

"Sister Yan said she's returning to her own tribe, but she'll come back after a while. It seems she wants to form an alliance with us," Zhao Xiao An replied.

Then she frowned again and asked:

"Do you smell a stench? It's like the smell of a rotting corpse."

Lin Shan replied, "I've been smelling it all night. It's just the smell coming off me. I came to say goodbye to you all."

"What happened to you?" Zhao Xiao An asked in a panicked start.

Lin Shan said indifferently, "I was cursed by an anomaly and don't have many days left to live. I'm going to find a way to lift the curse, and I'll be leaving shortly."

"Last night's business?"

At this point, Wu Wang chimed in from the side, asking.

"Yes."

For a moment everyone fell silent, not knowing what to say.

Strictly speaking, their bonds weren't all that deep-they had only known each other for two days-yet a living person was about to vanish once more, giving one an indescribable sense of heaviness.

"There's still hope, you won't necessarily die," Lin Shan explained, then said solemnly, "Never go downstream in the river at night-that's the place where we passed out that day."

"An anomaly?"

"Yes." Lin Shan nodded, joking, "Facts have proven that carrying a torch doesn't guarantee safety."

Zhang Zhonghua looked at Lin Shan. "I hope you can survive. By then, perhaps you'll be Transcendent. According to the cat girl, before long people on Earth are going to start crossing over to this world in large batches. We're all pioneers; hopefully you can lend a hand when that time comes."

They could all sense that something was wrong with Lin Shan. Perhaps he had some fortuitous encounter allowing him to touch the power of Transcendence.

"Rest assured, I am and always will be human, provided I can survive," Lin Shan answered.

"I'm off." Lin Shan waved a hand and walked toward the direction marked on the map.

Once Lin Shan's retreating figure slowly vanished from sight, Zhang Zhonghua called out, "Let's get to work. We must get the wooden house built today."

"You got it!"

Journeying onward for two hours, Lin Shan was already huffing and puffing with fatigue, his complexion deathly pale.

He found a shady spot to rest, took out wild fruit picked from the roadside, and slowly ate.

The weather in the otherworld right now was somewhat like the transition period from spring to summer on Earth, a bit hot.

Fortunately it was hot. Had they crossed over during winter, everyone would have long since frozen or starved to death-to say nothing of staying warm, the trees certainly wouldn't have had these wild fruit scattered everywhere.

After resting for over ten minutes, Lin Shan's complexion gradually regained a ruddy hue. He stood up, preparing to continue his journey.

If his physique previously had been several times that of a normal adult, his current physique was probably about on par with a child's.

Every hour he walked, he had to rest for more than ten minutes.

His gaze turned to the cloth bundle tied around his waist. Wrapped inside was precisely the spirit ash of that Specter Thread Fish. His clothes had no pockets, so he could only crudely gather the opening with a grass rope and tie it to his waist. This thing was tied to his very life and limb now, so Lin Shan kept constant vigilance to prevent it from suddenly falling off.

He walked for another three hours, resting three times midway.

At this moment, a bizarre phenomenon appeared in his vision. Space seemed to be split into two halves: the inner circle was where Lin Shan currently stood, while the outside of the circle was shrouded in ash fog, just like the ash fog everyone encountered when they first entered this land, where visibility within the fog did not exceed ten meters.

He could not help recalling that Jade Tome. That Jade Tome had emitted a golden light to dispel the ash fog, and to think it had directly cleared a ten-kilometer radius! Was his encounter with zero danger along the way related to the ash fog being dispelled?

There were still ten kilometers remaining to the location marked on the map, and the rest of the journey had to be walked inside the ash fog. Lin Shan harbored an ominous prefiguration.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped into the ash fog. When he looked back, his pupils instantly contracted-the path he had come by was actually gone!

Behind him was also shrouded in ash fog. He tried retreating a few steps, but the surrounding environment didn't change at all; he was still deep within the ash fog.

He had only taken a single step into the ash fog. Normally, taking one step back would have returned him to the inner circle. The current situation was somewhat like the ghost-wall phenomenon from folk horror stories...

"A ghost wall?" Thinking of this, Lin Shan reacted. It truly was similar to a ghost wall; this ash fog could displace his sense of direction. His position couldn't possibly change-what changed was the direction of his own movement!

He consciously observed the Parchment in his mind. Sure enough, the direction of his movement had deviated. He immediately walked several steps to the right, the surrounding ash fog vanished, and he returned once more to the area where the ash fog was dispelled.

It was truly terrifying. If he did not have the Parchment, it would have been useless even if he knew his sense of direction was wrong, and he could only have been lost in the Ash Fog.

Lin Shan was secretly alarmed. They had only just entered the Ash Fog, yet they encountered such a bizarre matter. A normal person would absolutely be unable to survive in this Ash Fog.

That Jade Tome could disperse the Ash Fog here, so it seemed it was not simple either, and perhaps even no worse than the Parchment. He just did not know if it had any other functions.

He walked with difficulty to the left. If one looked at the punctuation marks on the Parchment, they would discover that he was actually walking straight ahead. This was a very strange feeling; everything in the Ash Fog was chaotic.

Furthermore, every time he walked for a period of time, he had to change directions and continue forward. In his perception there was no change, yet as he walked, his direction would deviate.

Half an hour later.

Lin Shan leaned against a tree to rest. If there was no Ash Fog, the environment outside the ring was no different from inside the ring-sparse fruit trees and hills visible everywhere.

"Roar!"

Of course, there were also the occasional roars of beasts that could be heard, which were likewise something that did not exist inside the ring. Every time he encountered the roaring of wild beasts, he would detour in advance.

With his current physique, he could not even fight an ordinary wild beast, and whether this world had ordinary wild beasts was still up for debate. The only wild beast he had seen so far was that Black Tiger, so he could not rule out the possibility that all wild beasts in this world were Transcendent.

Just at this moment, the matter that worried Lin Shan the most still happened.

From the distance came the huge sound of "Boom boom boom-!"

The distance was growing closer!