Cang Hai seemed completely unaware of the three souls. After standing up, he first glanced around cautiously. Suddenly, his eyes fell on the bodies lying on the ground. His gaze fixed on one familiar figure, and he immediately crouched down, holding Santan tightly as he called her name. After a while, he hesitantly reached toward her nose, but pulled his hand back as if burned. He clenched his fist tightly, then, unsatisfied, reached toward her chest. He stared at her for a long time, before lowering his head and sobbing, holding her body close.
Watching Cang Hai's trembling back, the four souls remained silent.
Santan cleared her throat and forced a smile. "I used to ask him what he would do if I died. He always said he didn't know. Heh, now I finally know."
Her voice grew choked with emotion by the end of her words.
"It's a pretty strange thing, seeing how others react to your death… I wonder how long it'll take for anyone to notice I'm missing…" Du Chen gave a dry laugh, speaking with a bit of an air of carelessness.
However, suddenly Cang Hai, kneeling on the ground, raised his head. It seemed like he had heard something, and began looking around frantically.
"Wait, can he hear us?" Little Yue suddenly stood up.
"Of course, we're in a party, so he can hear us," Du Chen replied nonchalantly.
"Who? Who's speaking? Jingqiu, is that you?" Cang Hai called out, looking wildly, unable to pinpoint the source of the voice, shouting into the air.
"It's me. Right now, me and the boss, we're all in soul form, so you can't see us. But how come you're not dead? I thought we wiped..." Du Chen explained.
Cang Hai took off his glasses, wiped away the tears with his sleeve, and said hesitantly, "I was a bit dazed. I seemed to see some words in front of me, asking if I wanted to use a soul stone to revive. I thought I was still in the game... Ah!"
"What an idiot—so you just realized it? We crossed over with the game's system! Hurry, hurry, try using your priest skills! See if they still work!" Du Chen urged.
Everyone immediately perked up.
Cang Hai also gathered himself, stood up, and chanted, "Resurrection!"
He raised his arms uncontrollably, as if holding something, and countless sparkles of spiritual light gathered in his hands.
There's hope!
After a few tense, long seconds, Santan let out a soft "Oh" and said, "Yes." The transparent soul disappeared, and the woman lying on the ground slowly opened her eyes.
The remaining three souls silently watched as the two reunited and cried, giving them the time and space to grieve.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Five minutes.
…
"How long are you two going to hug? Can you please revive us first, just a little?" Du Chen finally couldn't hold it in and spoke up.
Cang Hai wiped his tears, put his glasses back on, and smiled brightly. "Alright, right away."
Cang Hai first revived the mage Tongxinfen. After casting the spell, he felt all his strength drained. Perhaps because he was out of mana, he tried to open his inventory but only found a few cups of morning dew wine. He tried to take a sip, but a line of red text appeared: (Your level is too low to use this item.) With a helpless sigh, he put the wine back in his bag.
The two sat down together, waiting to regenerate mana. Once he had enough mana, Tongxinfen became the "water" for mana regeneration. They repeated this process—reviving one person and waiting for mana to recharge—twice, before finally managing to bring everyone back to life.
Although the Druid also had a resurrection skill, it required the necessary material, the Maple Seed, which was unavailable. Santan, left with nothing to do, began experimenting with the game's various functions. She soon discovered that by using commands, even without speaking out loud, she could succeed by merely thinking them. After silently muttering "interface," a scene that looked very similar to the interface of the Warcraft game appeared in front of her:
On the top left was her avatar and health/mana bars. Beside her avatar was a large "1" to indicate her level, with the avatars of the other four people below hers. Seeing that Du Chen's health hadn't fully recovered, she cast a healing spell on him. Sure enough, Du Chen's health bar jumped twice and filled up. She glanced at her own mana bar, noting that she was missing about one-fifth. Now she had a basic understanding of the situation.
After everyone had their health fully restored, she shared her findings with the group.
They all tried it out for themselves. Du Chen, flipping through his bag and skill book, was having a great time experimenting.
Cang Hai pushed up his glasses and said, "It seems like the system works the same as in Warcraft. As long as we issue a command, we can see the corresponding panels. But there are some differences: the numbers for health and mana are gone, and we can only estimate the mana cost of skills by trying them. We've all reverted to level 1, so many high-level items and gear are unusable. But there's something strange: the skill list is complete. It seems like we don't need to learn them or meet level requirements to use the skills."
"Obviously, the boss added those for us with commands earlier," Santan remarked. "I see we've got plenty of talent points too. Enough to max out all our talents."
"Yeah, but high-level skills consume a lot of mana. Some of them can't be used because there's not enough mana," Tongxinfen said, using Blink to teleport to a nearby tree. She immediately noticed her mana had dropped by almost half.
"And there's no gear to wear. In soul form, you don't feel it, but now it's a bit cold," she added, looking down at her clothes with a frown.
The others looked up at the sky. The sun had risen high, warming their bodies, but perhaps because of the season, a cold wind blew by. Du Chen started shivering as the wind brushed against his bare arms.
"You two are barely dressed," Cang Hai said as he rummaged through his bag, glancing at Santan and Little Yue, both of whom were in long-sleeved, long pants home wear.
"Ah, you guys don't know, the dorm in our building is so stuffy. I live on the top floor, and when I turn on the computer, it's like a big furnace!" Du Chen lamented his blood, sweat, and tears. But then he realized that he no longer had a place to stay, so it made him feel even more miserable.
"I'm from the furnace city, Chongqing. It's hot, and everyone in the dorm dresses like this," Tongxinfen said nonchalantly.
"Luckily, I kept a few shirts. Sigh, all of them are low-level equipment, but they're still cute. Remember to return them to me later—huh, there are still these items left? You guys are in luck," Cang Hai said, pulling out several pieces of clothing from his bag. They were low-level items made during his tailoring practice—linen robes, linen shorts, linen jackets, linen belts, and linen boots.
"Here's a no-level-restriction bridal gown. Anyone want it?"
"Leave it for your wife!" Du Chen teased.
The group awkwardly split up the clothes, finally not being completely naked. The two girls glanced at their exposed chests, then reluctantly put on the shirt vests.
"Too bad we don't have any more materials. Otherwise, we could make a full set for everyone," Cang Hai said regretfully.
Du Chen tugged at his somewhat tight short-sleeved shirt and said, "Let's just make do for now. I'm hungry. Little Pink, it's up to you now."
"Hm, I'm hungry too. But the food in my bag is too high level. We can't eat it," Santan said as she rummaged through her bag, then suddenly added, "Oh right, boss, try using the GM command to add some food!"
"You think I haven't tried? I just tried it earlier. The d*mn system told me 'Item database unknown, updating'," Du Chen said with a bitter smile.
Tongxinfen had already started silently using her Create Food and Create Water spells. Since they were low-level spells, each one could only create two items at a time. After a while, she finally handed out enough water and bread for everyone.
"This bread is actually pretty good. It's not like the Western kind of muffin, but it tastes a lot like the scallion pancake sold outside my house," Santan said, taking a bite and giving her review.
"Eating something made by magic just doesn't feel very reassuring. Do you think this is just to fool our taste buds? Maybe there's nothing in it at all," Du Chen said suddenly, stuffing half of the bread into his mouth.
"Do you think I haven't thought of that? But what else can we do? Not eating it?" Tongxinfen shot him a sideways glance.
But Cang Hai chuckled and said, "If you had carefully read the spell's description, you wouldn't have such worries. The words used in the description were 'summon' and 'sleight of hand,' so it wasn't made by magic. It was brought here from some unknown corner of the world—kind of like the 'Five Ghosts Moving Goods' spell."
The other two guys widened their eyes, nodding dumbly from time to time as they listened.
"Who studies other professions' spells when they have nothing better to do?" Santan said, then added, "But thinking about it, if these pancakes taste so similar to what we've eaten before, maybe we're still on Earth?"
Her words made everyone perk up with excitement.
"But we're out here in the wilderness, there's no sign of civilization, and we have no idea where we are," Santan said, finishing her bread and stretching.
"This air and landscape are so unpolluted, so most of the cities and regions in China are probably ruled out," Cang Hai said, still chewing on his bread, not even bothering to look up. His comment was met with general agreement.
After eating and drinking their fill, the group began exploring their surroundings.
The five of them circled around and realized that they were in a small valley surrounded by mountains on three sides. The mountain walls were steep and jagged, looking impassable. Du Chen noticed a yellow dot on the minimap. "There's a mine!" he said, his voice full of excitement. "Can we mine here?"
But after searching for a while, he couldn't find a path leading to it. Was it in the mountains? It made sense—real-world mines weren't exposed on the surface like in games. Still, he couldn't help but feel disappointed, thinking that he'd have to come back later.
Santan also spotted some herbs—some were on the grass, and others grew in the crevices of rocks. The group gathered around to try and identify them, but none of them could recognize what they were.
The process of harvesting also posed a problem. In the game, a simple click would do the trick, but in reality, it was unclear which part to pick and how to harvest them.
"If only someone here had studied Chinese herbal medicine," Du Chen muttered, thinking aloud.
"Hmph, when you regret not learning mining, don't come crying to me," Tongxinfen teased him.
In the end, Santan decided to dig up the entire plant. After putting it into her bag, she found that the system displayed question marks for the names and descriptions of the herbs.
"Looks like the database isn't updated yet," she said.
On the other side of the valley was a lush forest. Tall trees with thick branches formed a dense canopy, and the light in the forest was dim, making it impossible to see clearly inside.
It seemed that the only way out was through the forest. Though they were well-fed, none of them had any experience surviving in the wild. After discussing among themselves, the five agreed that the priority was to find a place with people before sunset. If that wasn't possible, they would have to camp in the valley. Fortunately, they had the system map and didn't have to worry about getting lost.
Ready for an adventure, each of them felt a little uneasy. Who knew what wild beasts might be lurking in these deep mountains and forests? In the game, it was all fine, but actually rushing in and fighting—well, they were all law-abiding citizens, okay?
So it was necessary to prepare properly. The five began rummaging through their bags to see what weapons and equipment they could use.
They couldn't equip any items above level 10, but Du Chen found some basic forging products in his bag. He handed out some copper weapons to everyone and picked up a suitable two-handed sword for himself. He then put on a few pieces of basic plate armor. After getting dressed, Du Chen looked like a medieval warrior, holding a large sword, and he looked the part—though his friends had a great time teasing him.
The two who had learned Enchanting had also made a few level 10 wands, which were perfect for them. The four spellcasters each took one and held it in their left hand.
Before entering the forest, the team cautiously started applying buffs. Santan shapeshifted into a cheetah, using stealth to scout ahead. She used the "Detect Humanoids" skill and circled the area near the forest. The map didn't show any red dots.
"If only we had a hunter in the group. Then we could detect animals too," Du Chen lamented.
"Alright, stop dreaming and get moving. You're always the one running ahead, warrior!" Tongxinfen called out.