Chapter 239: Entering the Mysterious Forest of Traps
General Zhang narrowed his eyes. Despite his warm exhortations, in the end, he could only tell Murong Xue to be careful.
The general knew his soldiers were neither skillful enough in martial arts nor familiar with the traps in the forest. Thus, even if they went inside, they could do nothing to help. They might even add to the chaos instead. Thus, it would be better to let Murong Xue go alone. If she came across danger, she could avoid it or come out as quickly as possible.
Murong Xue nodded and assured General Zhang, “I know!” Then she took Ouyang Shaochen’s hand and slowly walked into the forest of traps.
Inside the forest there were tall trees, overgrown weeds, twisted roots and gnarled branches everywhere. Murong Xue moved forward step by step cautiously. It was in summer, but in the forest it was chilly, without sunshine or wind. The silence around her was terrifying…
“Ah!” A scream rang in their ears. Murong Xue looked ahead, only to see Wu Hen seven or eight meters away with a severe bleeding gash on the back of his hand. From his scarlet blood, there seemed to be indistinct black smoke coming out…
Murong Xue narrowed her eyes, stepped forward, took out the antidote powder and sprinkled it on the back of his hand while asking, “What happened?”
“I was accidentally scratched by a branch, and that’s all.” Wu Hen responded with an understatement.
Murong Xue’s cold gaze swept over the lifeless trees, as well as their branches and leaves. She then narrowed her eyes, and sensed that the air had been poisoned. Even the branches and leaves of the plants were poisoned as well. So, she warned, “This is a poisonous forest. Be careful when you walk. Never touch anything!”
“Sure!” Wu Hen nodded and went on striding forward, continuing to explore the road ahead. They had walked forward for more than 10 meters when his tall body suddenly sank, and half of his legs got stuck in the thick mud!
“This is indeed a forest of countless traps, which made it extremely difficult for soldiers to defend themselves. Thus, it should not be regarded as a humiliation that 300,000 of our soldiers are trapped here!” Wu Hen sighed in a low voice. He tried hard to pull out his feet, but the harder he tried, the deeper he sank. The thick mud clung onto him layer after layer, and in the blink of an eye, the mud had reached his knees…
Murong Xue’s eyes narrowed slightly as she hurried up to Wu Hen, saying “Wu Hen, stay still. The mud here is special. The more you struggle, the deeper you will sink …”
Wu Hen was stunned and stopped struggling immediately. He looked up at Murong Xue and asked, “Then what can I do?”
Murong Xue looked around but didn’t find anything useful. All of a sudden, she unsheathed the soft sword on her waist and stretched it out to Wu Hen, saying, “Hold the tip of the sword. I’ll pull you out!”
“All right!” Wu Hen nodded and grasped the tip of the sword.
Just when Murong Xue was ready to pull, she saw Ouyang Shaochen holding her wrist. In a blink of an eye, he pulled Wu Hen out of the mud and flung him onto the hard ground nearby.
Wu Hen lightly fell onto the ground. Looking at the knee-depth mud stained on his trousers, he could not help but gasp, “The mud here is really terrifying!”
The moment when he got stuck in the mud, he could feel it absorbing him, making him feel like he was entangled by death, and his soul was about to be devoured bit by bit…
“This is not ordinary silt, this is a swamp!” said Murong Xue, glaring at the gray mud thoughtfully.
“What is a swamp?” Wu Hen frowned and asked.
“It’s a very special trap,” Murong Xue said in a low voice. Her cold eyes narrowed slightly. She thought that no wonder their troops were annihilated here. The forest reeks of poison. But the most terrible thing was these hidden marshes. Once being trapped, people would be dragged underneath by the silt, and no one could walk out alive…
This forest had no dense black arrows, hidden steel nail beds, or secret tunnels or traps, but it was even more dreadful, because the lethal swamps were silent, mysterious and weird.
“Whoosh! Whoosh!” Quiet trees suddenly jumped among Murong Xue, Ouyang Shaochen, and Wu Hen. And in a blink of an eye, the three of them were separated. Branches and leaves swayed automatically without wind, rotating and blowing wildly towards her.
Murong Xue squinted her eyes. Holding her soft sword, she quickly and relentlessly chopped down the branches and leaves stretching out towards her.
Countless branches and leaves kept on rushing towards her in batches. Murong Xue frowned tightly. After tapping the ground with her tiptoe gently, she rose into the air. The soft sword in her hand was ruthlessly drawn towards the highest branch of the tallest tree in the center. With a sound of “crack”, the branch broke and fell to the ground. The whole forest instantly quieted down…
Murong Xue lightly landed on the ground and breathed a sigh of relief. Looking at the towering trees, her stare were as cold as ice. The traps set by people from Nanjiang were mysterious, strange and different. The fact that the soldiers of Qingyan died in them was not too humiliating…
Murong Xue looked around and saw no one except herself in the woods, while Ouyang Shaochen and Wu Hen were nowhere to be found.
She frowned and called out loudly, “Heir Ouyang… Can you hear me?”
Everything around her was quiet. The only answer she received was silence.
“Wu Hen…” Murong Xue called out again.
Still, the only response was dead silence.
Murong Xue frowned at the thought that these “trees” had separated the three of them. Ouyang Shaochen and Wu Hen might have been far away from her…
With the help of only one forest, they could create so many strange traps. People from Nnajiang were indeed cunning and tough to deal with. Judging from the density of the traps, this place should be the hinterland of the forest, where it would be dangerous to stay long….
Murong Xue looked around carefully and walked briskly towards one direction.
After walking for quite a while, Murong Xue found that the fog was gradually becoming thinner. The further she went, the thinner the fog became, which gradually turned from dark gray to gray, light gray, off-white, white and finally, faint pink…
What was happening?
Murong Xue frowned in confusion. She carefully avoided the swamp on both sides of her while stepping forward slowly along the middle of a one-foot-wide hard ground…
“Come on, let’s have a drink!” High-pitched voices rang one after another. Murong Xue looked up and saw several soldiers from Nanjiang. In shining armor, they were sitting around the bonfire on the open ground outside the forest, drinking and teasing each other.
In the middle of the open area stood three tall, thin wooden pillars, to which three soldiers covered in mud were tied with their heads lowered. Whether they were dead or alive was still unknown.
A soldier from Nanjiang grabbed a piece of meat and gnawed at it. He glanced at the captured soldiers of Qingyan, who was still unconscious, and mysteriously lowered his voice, “It is such a rare opportunity that we have caught living soldiers of Qingyan. Do you want to have some fun with them?”
“How?” asked the other soldiers with sparkling eyes.
“Well, that’s simple.” The man smiled strangely, put down the food in his hand, marched to the front of a Qingyan soldier, pulled out a dagger from his boot, and plunged it into the man’s shoulder maliciously…