Chapter 2446: Mutual Suspicion
Chi Cai caught up and asked the three young men, but they said they hadn't encountered any other players at all—they had been traveling together as a group of three the whole time.
"Could he be looking for someone else?" Yang Tian said. "He and that eyebrow-piercing guy cooperated seamlessly when they were chasing me. They wouldn't fall out so easily."
Whether it was true or not, Chi Cai decided to follow the three young men for a while, just in case they died without knowing what hit them.
Yang Tian's injuries hadn't healed yet. His first instinct was to return to the village. Although Xu Huo and the others had treated him poorly, they wouldn't stand by and let other players kill people.
Chi Cai hesitated, and Yang Tian couldn't help but sneer, "I don't believe you're actually a good person."
Chi Cai didn't defend himself. "Then go alone."
Yang Tian let out a cold laugh, turned around, and walked back. In just a few steps, he disappeared into the fog.
Meanwhile, the three local young men didn't want to get involved in player affairs, but they still waited for Chi Cai. They were curious about outsiders and wanted to ask some questions, and the easygoing Chi Cai was their best choice.
Soon, they too walked into the fog one after another.
A mutant ant the size of a pinky finger crawled over a mark carved into a tree by a player. The next second, a figure suddenly strode out of the space—it was the middle-aged man who had left earlier.
He stood in front of the tree, his face dark as he stared at the mark on the trunk. Then, enraged, he punched the tree trunk with his fist. After pulling his hand out of the dent he had made, he activated a space item and vanished from the spot.
About five minutes later, he returned to the same place. Looking at the same mark and the same hole in the tree, the veins on the middle-aged man's forehead bulged. In the end, he had to give up on using the space item to leave and honestly started walking toward Central Wood Village.
He felt that the direction he was walking was correct, but he couldn't find the next marker for a long time—this was very abnormal. Yesterday, when they were searching for people, they had clearly set up markers in several directions nearby. There was no way some of them could have disappeared overnight...
The middle-aged man stopped in his tracks and took a metal bird out of his item slot. He activated the mechanism on its wings, and the metal bird flew straight in one direction like a real bird, releasing a blue smoke from its tail. This smoke lingered for a long time, forming an accurate directional marker.
The middle-aged man followed the blue smoke and soon found the next marked spot. He had just breathed a sigh of relief when he suddenly heard someone calling him from not far away—it was the eyebrow-piercing man's voice.
The two had already fallen out and gone their separate ways. There was no way the eyebrow-piercing man would come through the foggy forest to find him. The middle-aged man's pupils trembled. He grabbed the metal bird and teleported away using a space teleportation item.
A few seconds later, the eyebrow-piercing man, Bubble Bean, and Yin Yang Master walked over. The blue smoke hadn't completely dissipated yet, proving that what they had seen was indeed a real person.
"Why is he running?" Yin Yang Master asked, baffled. "Didn't he see the three of us?"
Bubble Bean sneered. "Maybe he heard a sound and got triggered. Would he dare to come back and look at us?"
"If my guess is right, he's out here alone and not looking for anyone else to travel with. There's only one possibility. He must have gotten the Hidden Friend identity. Otherwise, they wouldn't have left the team to act alone. Only then could he safely call people."
The eyebrow-piercing man frowned. "We need to notify the others."
"Notify them for what?" Yin Yang Master said. "If they become targets, we'll be safe."
"We can't let him find his friend," Bubble Bean said. "Only one person can clear this instance."
He glanced at the eyebrow-piercing man. "Even if I can't clear it, I won't let anyone else clear it easily."
That made sense, so they turned around and went to look for other players.
However, the forest was huge, and there weren't many of them. Once they scattered, it wouldn't be easy to regroup unless they went back to the village.
So Yin Yang Master came up with a way to muddy the waters—leaving common game signal marks on some of the marked trees to warn other players that the middle-aged man was now playing the role of "Hidden Friend."
After they left, Chi Cai, who was following the three young men, was the first to see the signal. He had exchanged contact information with Yang Tian, so he passed this information on to him.
Yang Tian hadn't made it back to the village yet because he was also lost. He felt like he was going in circles in one place. He had used several items but still couldn't find his way out. So he came up with a crude and simple method—cutting down trees. By felling all the trees along the path he was walking, he could at least clear a road. By the time he received Chi Cai's message, he had already cut down several hundred meters' worth.
When he saw the message, his first reaction was that it was fake. Chi Cai wasn't trustworthy. It was hard to say who had left that message. It was probably just that the middle-aged man was alone with no witnesses. If someone attacked him because of it, that would conveniently eliminate two competitors.
Yang Tian didn't take the message seriously. Just as he was about to continue finding his direction, he caught a glimpse of a figure out of the corner of his eye. He was startled and immediately put distance between himself and the figure as he turned around. But the next second, the person opposite said something, and he stopped, his expression softening.
A sudden gust of wind blew a thick patch of fog over, gradually covering the forest of fallen trees.
At lunchtime, only Chi Cai and the three young men returned to the village. He saw the Painting Woman still sitting at the door playing games and asked, "Has Mr. Xu not gotten up yet?"
The Painting Woman shook her head.
Chi Cai nodded at first, then frowned. "He hasn't made a single sound all morning?"
Without waiting for the Painting Woman's answer, he quickly walked back into the house and kicked open the door to the room where Xu Huo was resting!
The door slammed against the wall with a loud bang. Xu Huo was standing right behind the door, keeping a slight distance from it, as if he had deliberately left room for Chi Cai to kick it open.
"Something wrong?" Xu Huo asked him.
Chi Cai was a bit embarrassed. "No, I just saw that you hadn't made any movement and thought something had happened."
"You underestimate me," the Painting Woman said, unconvinced.
Chi Cai quickly apologized and then asked about Yang Tian. When he learned that Yang Tian hadn't returned to the village, he couldn't help but be suspicious. "He just came out and turned back. He should have been here by now... I saw the signal on the tree and sent him a message, but he didn't respond. Could the signal have been left by him? He deliberately separated from me!"
"Not necessarily," Xu Huo said, washing his face to wake himself up before continuing. "He might just be lost. This foggy forest is strange. Items might not be able to determine the direction."
"It's a pity we don't have contact information for the others. Otherwise, we could warn them to be careful," Chi Cai thought for a moment and said. "Once the others come back, we should be able to figure out who made the signal. Hopefully, they're lucky enough."