I'll cover the retreat!

Bai Ling had to admit that Lin Yuan did have a point.

Still, being stared at so viciously by so many Rubber Beasts really was unsettling.

"Can you hide in my coffin? Once the fighting starts, I might not have time to protect you."

Lin Yuan suddenly spoke.

Bai Ling froze. Though somewhat reluctant, she had little choice under the circumstances and could only steel herself and say:

"I... I'll try."

Lilia, however, protested from the side:

"Capitalist Captain, that's not your coffin! It's mine, mine!"

Despite her words, the doll girl obediently opened the coffin lid and let Bai Ling lie down inside.

Although it did not heal Bai Ling as it did when Lin Yuan lay inside, she felt no discomfort either. There was no restriction preventing a living person from lying in the coffin as she had imagined.

Lilia's coffin really did accommodate everything.

With that worry out of the way, Lin Yuan straightened up again. The light blade instantly appeared in his hand as he looked at the Rubber Beasts already packed densely around them and taunted:

"What are you waiting for? Come and die!"

As he spoke, he even took the key out of storage and deliberately dangled it in his hand.

The trick worked perfectly. The moment all the surrounding Rubber Beasts saw the key, their eyes turned red, and they charged with piercing roars!

Five minutes later, Lin Yuan brought his blade down and split the last Rubber Beast in two.

Though there were many Rubber Beasts, numbers were of little use against his Wooden Armor ability.

As for Lilia, she had not actually drawn much aggro. She merely slacked off around the edges of the battlefield and had not even been beaten back into her coffin to revive by the beast tide.

That conveniently spared them the trouble of explaining to Bai Ling why Lilia had suddenly appeared inside the coffin.

Looking at the corpses covering the ground, Lin Yuan felt rather reflective.

A few days earlier, facing these hundreds or thousands of Rubber Beasts would probably have been extremely difficult, even if he could win.

Back then, he had a mere 10,000 durability, his Wooden Armor was only 20 cm thick, and his means of attack were hardly worth mentioning.

Now, after this whole fight, the damage the Rubber Beasts had dealt him was not even as much as he had lost from activating the Holy Hall Light Blade.

After all, the Assembled Beasts among these Rubber Beasts would definitely rank among the best of the Magical Creatures, even in the sea.

Without realizing it, Lin Yuan's strength had already completely surpassed the limits of the Shallow Sea.

With my current strength, I should be ready to start exploring the Main Sea. It should be full of Transcendent Creatures and materials.

Lin Yuan thought to himself.

Of course, he would absolutely not rashly enter the Main Sea before completely resolving the shadow problem.

Setting those thoughts aside, Lin Yuan walked over to the coffin and knocked on its lid.

"Come out. Everything outside has been dealt with."

The coffin lid was pushed open from within, and the fair-skinned Bai Ling climbed out.

"How did it feel?"

"Very good, except..." Bai Ling seemed unsure how to explain, but before she could think it through, she noticed something else.

"Huh? I can sense the Adventurer Group's ship. It'll be here soon. It's so fast! Oh, there's a pack of Rubber Beasts chasing them."

Lin Yuan nodded.

"In that case, let's deal with this batch of Rubber Beasts too. Leaving them around would only mean trouble."

Before he had finished speaking, a ship racing along on caterpillar tracks appeared in the distance. It was the Adventurer Group's ship.

They seemed to be pursued so urgently that they could not even spare the effort to use their invisibility smoke, simply racing toward them in a billowing trail of dust.

Upon spotting Lin Yuan and the others, Spotlight at the bow shouted:

"Watch out! For some reason, all the Rubber Beasts have gone berserk! You should run too!"

His tone was practiced, as though he was already accustomed to situations like this.

This was also why the Adventurer Group had a rather poor reputation. They often stirred up all kinds of trouble for the sake of adventure, then ran faster than anyone else.

After being burned a few times, others would often refuse to work with the Adventurer Group ever again.

Spotlight assumed Bai Ling and the others would be no exception.

But to his surprise, Bai Ling did not run. Instead, she waved from afar and called out:

"You go on ahead! I'll cover your retreat!"

At those words, Spotlight trembled all over.

"The veterans all said we'd never meet genuine partners, that everyone was just using one another."

"But she's actually volunteering to cover our retreat?"

"And I thought she was crazy and heartless before... I'm such a bastard!"

For that instant, he even wanted to stop the ship and fight alongside Bai Ling!

But it lasted only an instant. The next moment, he left them with a "We can never thank you enough for this kindness!" and led his teammates away aboard the adventure ship toward the edge of the woods.

Although his opinion of Bai Ling's character had changed, the sight of Lin Yuan and the open coffin beside him raised Spotlight's assessment of Bai Ling's strength even further.

"We'd only hold her back if we stayed. We'll find a way to repay her later!"

"This is the first time we've met someone who doesn't think we're a nuisance and is even willing to clean up our mess. It really makes you think. We absolutely have to repay this kindness later!"

Unfortunately, the searchlight had left in a hurry without getting close to the three of them.

Otherwise, upon seeing the corpses littering the ground around Lin Yuan, he would certainly have reconsidered just who had caused this trouble.

Meanwhile, once the Adventurer Group's ship had passed, Lin Yuan repeated the same process: he had Bai Ling hide in the coffin, took out the key to lure the beasts, then slaughtered all the red-eyed Rubber Beasts.

The whole process flowed seamlessly, and this time he finished in under three minutes.

With a little time still left, Lin Yuan collected all the rubber seeds he could. Only when he could hear the distant sound of an enormous creature snapping branches did he hurry away.

Fortunately, the Tree King moved very slowly, and Lin Yuan and the others soon left it behind.

"Strange. Why wasn't the Tree King guarding the giant turtle? Where had it been all that time?"

Lin Yuan could not help feeling puzzled.

If the Tree King had been beside the giant turtle, this trip certainly would not have gone so easily.

At that thought, something else occurred to him. He looked at Bai Ling, who had already left the coffin and was running alongside him.

"When that giant turtle looked at you, you seemed to be in pain. Are you all right now?"

Bai Ling fell silent for a moment, then said:

"I'm fine. It meant no harm. That actually let me absorb quite a bit of knowledge. It'll be very useful once I've digested it."

"Also, although having that knowledge poured into my head left me a little dizzy, this coffin of yours... seems to restore Sanity. I feel very relaxed now."

"Restore Sanity?" Lin Yuan glanced at Lilia in surprise.

The eerie coffin this doll girl carried reduced SAN when viewed from outside, yet actually lying inside restored Sanity instead?

How strange.

Unfortunately, neither he nor Lilia had Sanity, so that was of no use to them.

Bai Ling pressed her lips together and said nothing.

There was one thing she had not mentioned: only after actually lying inside the coffin had she sensed through her spiritual intuition just how powerful its presence was.

If the Tree King, Lin Yuan, and even the giant turtle were boulders and towering mountains that triggered her fear of enormous things and made her lose SAN...

Then what she had felt inside the coffin was the entire earth!

Vast, majestic, eternally unchanging, yet rather than inspiring fear in insignificant humans, it put them at ease.