Chapter 101: This Is a Team

After dealing with the six-winged flying serpents, the group did not rush to continue their journey. Instead, they searched through the jewels, hoping to find something they might have overlooked.

To their disappointment, they found nothing good among the treasure. A few pieces of jewelry with attributes did turn up, but most were Lv0 blank items. Things like that held no appeal even for Liu Zong, let alone Xu Ying and the others.

In the end, after getting excited for a long while, they still found nothing. They only sorted the jewelry, appraised it, and estimated that it could be sold for a hundred units of currency.

By the time they were done fooling around, it was already noon. Though Liu Zong had said they needed to hurry back and check on Lü Shang's situation, a little delay made no real difference.

So the group cleared a small patch of open ground, and Yuan Ying stepped forward to prepare a pot of soup, planning to rest for a while.

Perhaps because the flying serpents had harassed them for half the day, Yuan Ying showed no mercy to the snakes this time. She spent nearly an hour searching for ingredients and cooking, using nine serpents to make a pot of snake soup.

[Grand Snake Feast (Purple): Serves up a feast for five people. If consumed over the course of one minute, grants Constitution +1 and Speed +1, lasting twelve hours.]

The attributes were beside the point. Looking at the snake feast before them, Liu Zong and the others all asked the same question: why did this snake soup look so bizarre?

On a normal day, even if the soup Yuan Ying made had mediocre attributes and mediocre ingredients, it would still be a feast for the eyes, nose, and tongue. But the soup before them was nothing like that. The soup itself was purple in color—and not because it was meant to be made purple.

And what was the deal with the snake heads bobbing up and down in the broth, their eyes wide open? Was that supposed to show they died with their eyes open, refusing to accept their fate?

On top of that, the vegetables didn't even look like they'd been cut. What the hell were those large, withered yellow leaves? Why did the whole thing look so disturbingly strange? Could it be that Yuan Ying had been so traumatized by the six-winged flying serpents that she'd gone dark?

With such thoughts running through their minds, Liu Zong and the others stared at the snake soup, hesitating for a long time. In the end, only because they were all comrades and couldn't put too much pressure on Yuan Ying did they finally drink it.

The moment the soup touched his lips, Liu Zong realized that appearances were the least of the problems. The taste was absolutely horrible. Drinking it was like downing Chinese herbal medicine that had already been steeped ten times over, with an extra dose of bitter gallbladder added on top.

Liu Zong even suspected that this taste had been deliberately designed by the game system to make it impossible for anyone to drink.

Just as Liu Zong was about to spit the soup out, a strange sweetness appeared at the back of his tongue. Then a wave of warmth spread through his entire body. His stamina recovered rapidly, and he felt as though he had boundless energy.

He silently finished the soup, set down his bowl, and after a long pause, said, "Yuan Ying, next time you make this kind of soup, could you make it taste a little better?"

Yuan Ying shot Liu Zong a glare. Her expression seemed to say, "Drink it if you like it, get lost if you don't." But when the words reached her lips, they came out completely different: "You don't like the snake soup? If you don't, please tell me. I'll find a way to make something else."

Watching Yuan Ying suppress her temper like that, Liu Zong shook his head. "Forget it, forget it. Let's rest a bit and then get back on the road right away. Oh, by the way, what should we do with the extra bowl of soup?"

Xu Ying, normally serious and honest, also set down his bowl, his face a bit green as he said, "At this pace, we should be able to see Lü Shang today. Why don't we bring the soup along and heat it up for him tonight?"

Liu Zong wore an expression that said, "Even you, with those honest eyes and thick brows, would betray me like this?" He was about to say something to lighten the mood when Lena, standing nearby, had already chimed in with approval: "Sure, sure! Bring it to Lü Shang. No need to heat it up—I have a way to keep it warm. I guarantee it won't lose its flavor."

Do you people have to go this far? Liu Zong was speechless. Finally, he said in a tone of utmost righteousness, "Enough, all of you. Don't you know we should save more for Lü Shang? He's been running around outside all this time. He's earned it."

With their jokes, the atmosphere lightened, and the pressure from all the attacks along the way dissolved. By the afternoon, the group's pace had picked up noticeably.

They didn't stop to fight monsters, nor did they worry about getting lost. Before nightfall, they returned to the spot where they had first discovered the amber.

Lü Shang had not yet returned. Liu Zong had the others set up camp first, while he sat down, took out the amber that had started the quest, and savored it once more.

Liu Zong felt that the quest was growing stranger and stranger, as though some force was pushing him, steering him away from the battlefield and toward something else.

He had sensed this from the very beginning. But since entering the game, he had never received a corresponding quest, which left him at a loss. He could only rely on his own judgment.

And most importantly, there was no standard to measure against. Liu Zong had no idea whether his thinking was right or wrong, nor whether the direction of his efforts was sound.

He had now gathered a considerable amount of new information, and he needed to use this rest time to sort out his thoughts and see whether he had made any mistakes.

Just then, Lü Shang appeared before them, travel-worn and weary. Seeing that the group was making camp, he understood at once that while he was away, they had gone to the place Lena had pointed out and had come back with something.

They had come specifically to rendezvous with him. With this thought, Lü Shang's heart swelled with confidence. He felt that the team Liu Zong had brought together was a united one, an efficient one. Perhaps they only gathered together for two or three months each year, but they would surely accomplish great things in the game.

With such thoughts, a smile crept onto Lü Shang's face. He strode toward Liu Zong, waving the map in his hand, and said smugly, "Captain, look here—this is a map of the battlefield before it opened. And over here, I have the most original map. This one was the first aerial map obtained from the Adara insectoids, drawn when they first explored this continent. And this is—"

Watching Lü Shang pull out map after map, Liu Zong nodded in satisfaction.

But Lü Shang's voice seemed to be growing quieter and quieter, because he noticed that Xu Ying and Lena had somehow appeared behind him. Though there were hints of smiles on their faces, they gave off an inexplicably unsettling feeling.

Lü Shang tilted his head and said, "How did you... hey, what is this? It looks... no, don't! What are you doing... gulp... it's awful... is this..."