Wen Yu was surrounded by pure darkness. He couldn't even see his own body and there was this unease that hung in the air around him causing goosebumps to dot his skin.
He spread his arms out and waved about. There was really nothing and it was so dark that he couldn't even tell if his eyes were truly open or not.
After moving about for a while he began to panic. Where was this? How did he get here? How could he get out of this desolate place? He soon slumped to the ground.
The ground felt really cold and weird. There was no way to tell what he was kneeling upon and he soon realized that there were faint static sounds coming from somewhere in the void.
It sounded just like electronic sparks. Using his hands to feel the ground, he tried to creep towards the source of the sound.
Sometimes the crackling sounds seemed as if it was coming from right beside him and sometimes it seemed like it was coming from a mile away.
SCREE!
A bright light accompanied the grating sound and Wen Yu gasped awake.
"Ah Yu!" Wen Lin called out in relief when she noticed the boy in her little arms was awake.
Wen Yu shook his head gently to clear the buzz that kept ringing inside. What was that place? And what was up with the weird sounds and stupid light? That was something he would've expected the moment he died and not now!
He soon became clearheaded enough to take note of his surroundings and the first thing he noticed was the fairly familiar warm stream of spirit energy coursing through his veins. It felt so comfortable.
The comfortable feeling was suddenly cut off and Duyi walked out from behind him. The warm spirit energy was his? No wonder it felt familiar. And then Wen Yu's eyes widened and he looked around.
When he spotted the little girl in the Feng Academy's uniform, he relaxed once again and pulled himself out of Wen Lin's death grip before clearing his slightly sore throat.
"Why are you both here? Did you run into trouble on your way?"
Wen Lin shook her head as she helped him up. When she was about to go into details he gave her a soft pinch indicating for her to shut up.
Even if he'd saved the little girl, she was still a Feng Academy person and both Academies were in the middle of an intense competition.
The little group of four soon left the cave and headed back to their camp. It wasn't a good idea to bring in another person, especially the 'enemy', but the little girl was lost and had nowhere to go.
And Wen Yu would rather chew his tongue than let a child try to navigate her way through this horrid forest alone. Being too softhearted might become a problem in the future.
But in the end, Wen Yu still had his moral bottom line from his former world and he'd already decided that, in this life, he wouldn't hurt anyone that had done him no wrong.
Duyi frowned slightly at his decision to let the little girl follow them but Wen Yu pretended to be blind to his dissatisfaction. There was really no other way, the girl's bracelet had been lost somewhere so she couldn't even send the emergency signal.
Along the way, they ran into the girl's teammates who were already searching for her and the Lingxiu Academy trio sighed in relief as the little girl shyly thanked Wen Yu and walked over to her teammates.
Oddly enough, the girl kept looking back at Wen Yu at short intervals but Wen Yu was too happy over to the fact that he'd handed over this hot potato to someone else to notice.
It was almost dark when they arrived at their tree camp and both Qi San and Huo Lan were pacing around the tree in worry.
"Big bro Yu!" Both boys rushed over once the trio appeared in their line of sight. After fussing over Wen Yu for a while, the boys were placated and then, began proudly telling him about their findings.
"Here." Wen Yu smiled as he threw the purple bamboo shoots to both boys once they were done with their report.
On their way back earlier, they'd walked by the same tree stump and Wen Yu was pleasantly surprised to find his backpack still well hidden in the shrub.
"Big bro you?" Qi San stared at the sticks before him and scratched his head whilst Huo Lan turned them every which way trying to figure out what was special about a bunch of mutated bamboo shoots. Why did big bro Yu give them this?
Since Wen Yu was going to make repellents, he of course needed containers to place them in. He didn't need to make too much, just enough to last them through the challenge.
With uneven distribution of strength it was best if they remained in tip top shape before they tried to go after the spirit beasts so he instructed them to carefully carve the purple bamboo shoots into small cylinders with their spirit energy.
Although confused by the request, both boys kept silent and vigorously tried to follow Wen Yu's words to the letter.
"Ah Yu, what do you need them for?" After observing their actions for a while and being unable to curb her curiosity, Wen Lin finally walked closer and asked with wide eyes.
Wen Yu smiled. "You'll see. If you want to help you could look for two low level spirit beast, like the gray ball rabbit and tie them up."
Gray ball rabbits were spirit beasts that closely resembled rabbits but with a larger build and lots of, thick, gray fur and protruding fangs. It was one of the few spirit beasts that remained low leveled for their entire lifetime. Gray balls were also extremely easy to catch as they were quite dumb and slow.
Wen Lin gave a fierce nod and went in search of gray balls. If Ah Yu needed them then she was going to catch as much as she could. They were everywhere anyways so there was no need to hold back.
Duyi was left with nothing to do and he felt a little out of this group as the only person he remotely interacted with was Wen Yu. He didn't want to owe any more favour than he already accumulated so he also went in search of gray balls.