Chapter 3058: A Sense of Ritual
Xu Huo had already stripped off his blood-soaked clothes. There was no helping it—even the protective suit was tattered after fighting this long, and since it was soaked through with blood inside and out, there was no way to keep wearing it.
He pulled two clean sets of clothes from the corpses, and while wiping the bloodstains off his body with water, tossed the self-healing agent he'd picked up to Ding Xiang. "You probably won't die in the next hour or two, but if you want to, I won't stop you."
Ding Xiang's eyes lit up, and she quickly grabbed the potion. She was restrained enough to drink only a third, leaving a little for Zhang Mi and Marg.
Marg's arm wound had stopped bleeding, so it wasn't a major issue. Zhang Mi, however, had internal injuries—hard to recover from and inconvenient to move. Even if Marg gave him all the potion, he was still too weak to move.
Old Duan washed the blood off his hands. He had stitched up Zhang Mi's wounds and knew his condition best. He turned and gave Xu Huo a slight shake of his head.
"Can't we exchange points for potions in Little Bear City?" Xu Huo asked. "Let's rest up a bit and head into the city first."
The others paused. Marg spoke with a hint of hope, "But in his condition, he'll probably be challenged the moment we enter the city."
"Staying outside is even more dangerous," Ding Xiang said. "We might even get targeted just trying to enter Little Bear City."
Xu Huo pointed to another relatively intact protective suit. "Let him wear this for now. Maybe we can fool the others. There's still some distance to Little Bear City. If we run into other players with potions along the way, we can trade items."
There were plenty of injured players in the Bear Hug Zone. When fighting wasn't an option, the wounded could tacitly avoid each other.
"I have a potion. Do you want it?" A voice came from a distance. A female player, most of her body hidden behind a tree, held up a self-healing agent toward them. "I want an instrument."
"It's you." Ding Xiang was a little surprised. The newcomer was the companion they had been looking for the day before, but she had slipped away midway. They hadn't expected to run into her again.
"No problem." Xu Huo agreed. They had all sorts of instruments on hand, most of them weapons. Space-type instruments with a larger coverage area were actually rare—either because they had taken heavy losses, or because the players who entered were all dirt poor.
The instruments in his backpack clattered as he dumped them all on the ground. He gestured for her to pick one.
The female player chose a hidden weapon and handed over the potion. After Zhang Mi took it, his complexion indeed improved somewhat.
But the female player didn't leave. Instead, she sat down not far away and introduced herself, "My name is Yi Lan. I misunderstood your intentions before, so I left without saying goodbye. You're all heading into Little Bear City too—why not stick together?"
"What, not afraid of our intentions anymore?" Ding Xiang said with a hint of sarcasm.
Yi Lan glanced at Zhang Mi. The meaning was clear: if even someone this badly injured was still alive, she didn't have to worry about being stabbed in the back.
Ding Xiang said nothing more and turned her gaze to Xu Huo.
After spending these two days together, her impression of Xu Huo had long since changed. At first, she thought he was just a pervert with weird hobbies but average strength. Now she saw that while his spatial evolution wasn't strong, he used it very well. That was why he had the lightest injuries among them. His physical combat wasn't outstanding, but he was very experienced with instruments, which made up for his shortcomings.
All of this proved he was very smart, with top-tier adaptability. Even Old Duan and the other two, who had joined later, were gradually leaning toward his opinions.
Xu Huo agreed to let Yi Lan join and asked her, "Have you been into Little Bear City yet?"
"Not yet. I got the potion from someone else." Yi Lan glanced at the points above their heads. After that chaotic battle, everyone's scores had gone up.
Normally, since they had killed quite a few people, their scores should have risen quickly. But there was no helping it—in the chaos, they had been hit all over. Each wound cost 20 points, and often they didn't even know where the injuries came from, only that their points were being deducted.
Xu Huo had deliberately controlled his score. He was currently the highest among them, at 575 points.
"Exchanging for potions and other items requires points. I suspect once you exceed a certain score, you have to leave the Bear Hug Zone. So some players probably shuttle between Little Bear City and the Bear Hug Zone to stockpile supplies," Yi Lan said. "I heard from others that the area ahead of the Bear Hug Zone is the Wasteland Zone. By then, even food and drink might be a problem."
"How about we smoke some jerky?" Marg suggested. She thought smoking jerky was more cost-effective than spending points.
Ding Xiang glanced at the person who was already picking up items and, out of habit, taking one thing from each corpse to hang at his waist. She held back but couldn't help saying, "If you string any more, they won't hold."
At first, he had worn them on his wrist. Now they had turned into a keychain!
Xu Huo unfastened the flying rope, stretched it out, and tied it around his waist—the keychain had become a belt.
He still picked flowers and placed one on the face of every person he had killed.
There was no such thing as an action without reason. Sometimes, seemingly sudden words or actions had reasons behind them. So what he was doing definitely had a reason.
Ding Xiang and the others wisely didn't ask. Based on their past experience, there were only two outcomes to pressing the issue: either they'd get a boring story that had nothing to do with them, or he'd turn hostile.
Xu Huo observed a moment of silence as usual, completing the final step of this ritual, and then said, "How much dry food do you still have?"
The Fang Snake Zone and Bear Hug Zone weren't short on food, but sometimes they didn't have the energy to look for it, so they ate the jerky or dried fruit they had collected. These were ready-made, easy-to-store items. Now they didn't have much left, most of it taken from other players.
"Players are everywhere. Smoking jerky probably won't work," Old Duan said. "We can't stay here too long either. Better to dig into burrows. Animals are more talented than us in that regard."
His words made everyone fall silent.
Digging into burrows wasn't their first time. Once Zhang Mi had recovered a bit, they searched all the nearby animal dens, finding plenty of dried meat and nuts.
Old Duan also caught a few small mutant beasts that were easy to carry, planning to take them into Little Bear City for a good meal.
Traveling this way, stopping and going, they finally reached Little Bear City.
The name "Little Bear City" was quite plain, but at the entrance stood two enormous, ferocious mutant bear carcasses. The gate was carved into the shape of a giant bear's open mouth. Players entering could only walk through the bear's mouth, while the sides of the entrance connected to the blockade barrier of the Bear Hug Zone. A triangular marker hung high in the sky, warning players not to cross.
Just as Xu Huo and the others reached the entrance, they heard a scream. Following the sound, they saw a player thrown onto the barrier a few hundred meters away.