"Our main task is to investigate the creatures that go deep into the outer periphery of the firmament forest five thousand meters away, according to our data, from here straight inside about twenty miles, there is a large area of swamp and lake, and the road in the forest is not particularly easy to walk, the purpose of our trip is to collect data twenty miles away, of course, we can complete the task of collecting data by ourselves, and you need to cooperate with us as much as possible, is there a problem?"

He Qixuan shook his head, this kind of work that didn't require him to take action himself, but just played off-field assistance, and he probably guessed the reason why they recruited him from the information in the words of the woman who was friendly with the ice element.

In the forest, the wood element affinity has a considerable field advantage, and the gap in strength under the home field advantage will also be shortened, so they don't care if He Qixuan has enough strength, but make sure that he does have the wood element affinity and meets the standard.

The Ice Elemental Affinity Girl also came to He Qixuan at this time, and said in a low voice: "The remuneration we have here is not much compared to those bounty teams, but I always feel that it is not what you value, but I will not ask, as long as I can complete the prescribed tasks and do not cross the line, I will not mind whether those people have evil intentions or just don't care about drinking." ”

"I'm sorry, it's not what you think," He Qixuan shook his head seriously, "Something happened at home, which caused me to be very short of money now and have to be self-reliant." In fact, the more pay, the better, but newcomers don't seem to be welcome here. I'm not very strong, but maybe the more you pay me, the more room I have to play. ”

The girl will savor the seemingly joking words suspiciously, and then laugh and say, "It depends on your performance to give you a bonus." My name is Lin Bingling, and I am also the captain of this team. ”

"He Qixuan, a small family who has been studying hard for decades."

The strength of the team is not bad, and even exceeds the strength of many bounty reclamation teams in general, in addition to He Qixuan, there is a medical doctor, a surveyor, and three hunters.

The boy named Qin An was the surveyor in the team, mainly to survey the surrounding terrain, which was a very important person in the wasteland development team, they were good at distinguishing the nearby leylines, judging the existence of danger, so as to define the danger level for those undeveloped wastelands.

According to the known information, it would take about half a day to go twenty miles into the area, and with enough dry food, the six-man team crossed the security line and entered the gray area.

Although Qin An had an unpleasant relationship with He Qixuan, but when he entered the forest, he also let go of that mustard, from the moment he entered the forest, he needed to maintain a high degree of concentration, and it was not easy to put all his experiences on the survey.

Bypassing a dense bush full of fallen leaves, Qin An picked up the slightly damp soil on the ground, put it in front of his nose and sniffed it, and made a quick decision: "We have to go around, the smell of dirt and blood here is very strong, even more than the smell on the territory of some beasts, there is a high probability that there is danger ahead." ”

Although the strength of the team is not weak, and it is easy to deal with the creatures that are closer to the security realm, this danger still cannot be ignored, there is no 100% safety and danger, just like there is no eternal inevitable event.

In this place where the degree of exploration is not high, the probability of danger has become the standard for people to move forward, they don't know what kind of danger will lie ahead, maybe it is dangerous, or it may be safe and sound, but they don't need to take this risk to bet on what danger lies ahead, even if it is the lowest level of danger, they can't move forward before it is still unknown.

Just based on Qin An's words, He Qixuan knew a lot.

Qin An's guidance on the direction and the perception of danger, the team did not encounter any fierce beasts along the way, and Qin An was a little puzzled. The march was only halfway complete, and as the team went deeper, the dangers of the team deepened.

"We'll take turns keeping vigil tonight, just in case, and don't sleep too hard." Lin Bingling admonished.

As the sun was about to set, the team stopped and set up their tents on the edge of a hidden grove, where many angles were obscured by the bushes, and the tent was completely fixed, and the corners were inserted half a foot into the ground to prevent a gap from flowing out.

After doing this, a few people carefully lit a light in the dark forest, because the tent was not transparent, it was still dim from the outside, and the night here was too faint by the light of the stars in the sky, so faint that nothing could be seen here.

Several people fell asleep one after another, He Qixuan pillowed his hands, looking at the top of the tent and not much sleep, just like a child who had just arrived at a place to play, the excitement was not over, if he was not really tired and couldn't open his eyes, how could he not continue to take a look.

After half a sound, his eyes were a little sour when he stared at the roof of the shed, so he simply closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

Night is when the eye loses its role, but it makes the ear more sensitive to hearing.

He Qixuan couldn't remember where he saw these words, but the subtle atmosphere in the immersive scene once again proved the correctness of this sentence. This atmosphere lasted for a long time, until the sound of rustling came from outside the tent, which was very faint.

He Qixuan's slightly closed eyes slowly opened, looking in the direction where the voice came from, at this time, in the tent, another girl who took turns on duty saw He Qixuan sit up slowly, and wanted to speak but saw He Qixuan make a silent gesture, only to see him staring at a place and slowly moving his gaze, as if he was watching a prey closely, his eyes were cold.

Outside, in the darkness, there was something.

Suddenly, at the tent where He Qixuan was watching, a palm print the size of a human palm clearly appeared on it, with distinct bone joints, but the two of them knew at a glance that this was not a human hand.

"Knock, knock, knock......"

Immediately followed by a series of crisp and magical sounds, which seemed to be able to penetrate their bodies, and even the energy in He Qixuan's body reacted again, wanting to rush out of He Qixuan's body.

Seeing that there was such a big fluctuation in the energy in his body, He Qixuan was suddenly startled, and a sharp pain followed, at this time, the energy in his body actually had an uncontrollable sign, they were feeling, trembling, excited, shaking He Qixuan's already weak body, even a slight vibration made He Qixuan feel a tearing pain in the muscles, meridians and nerves.

What's the situation?!

Now he had to force down the throbbing in his heart, and use his mental brute force to control the sudden situation in his body, fortunately, the voice disappeared into the woods after a few turns, and He Qixuan's body gradually returned to calm, and the sound disappeared with the paw prints of the hand that were close to the girl's cheek.

Could it be a bunch of creatures?

He Qixuan thought so, looked at the girl's frightened appearance, pointed to the tent with a smile, and said in a dumb voice: This tent is of good quality and very elastic.

The location of the sound should be some distance away from the tent, it is certain that there must be more than one creature near the tent, looking at their appearance, it seems that they are just curious about the tent, and have not found the vital signs in the tent, but why do they react to the sound?

He Qixuan didn't know, there must be something connected inside, and he couldn't detect it.

Wiping the blood stains that overflowed slightly from the corners of his mouth, the girl who was keeping vigil stared at him with a little horror, unable to understand how he held his breath and held his blood, He Qixuan smiled, shook his head to indicate that he was fine, and then closed his eyes again to recuperate, and this time, he did not guide the flow of the breath in his body like the first half of the night, but emptied his body and mind to recuperate.

In the second half of the night, until dawn broke, everything was fine.

In the early morning of the next day, the tip of the leaf hung frost and dew, and a cool feeling hit the tent, He Qixuan was the first to get out of the tent, and sure enough, there were many animal footprints near the tent, most of them were four-clawed, and there was more than one kind of beast wandering here, their footprints surrounded the tent, obviously they found something new inside, but they quietly retreated.

They moved slightly, and did not make a sound except for the initial movement of the vegetation, as if they did not want to disturb the sleeping people inside.

Qin An also came out of the tent, and just as he was about to study how to move on, when he looked down and saw the dense footprints of beasts, the first yawn in the morning that had just reached his mouth was replaced by an exclamation: "I'm a Teletubbies, why do I have so many beast footprints?" ”

"There were indeed wild beasts around last night, and they made strange noises, but you slept too dead to wake up."

He Qixuan said as he kept recording the number of these different footprints, and the location of some beast footprints was trampled by new beasts, and a ladder-like puddle appeared, and these footprints were actually driving in the same direction, and an orderly group of beasts seemed to circle around the tent they were in!

Is this some ritual from the orcs?

Qin An blushed, and pretended to be indignant that he couldn't hear what He Qixuan had just said.

At this moment, the girl who happened to be keeping vigil at that time also came out, and when she saw Qin An and He Qixuan looking at the ground in a daze, she also looked down inadvertently, and was jumped again.

"I ...... So much?! ”

Seeing that the girl's surprise was even more than his, Qin An nodded with satisfaction. Obviously, this girl's mental endurance is not as strong as Qin Anqiang, the girl is covering her mouth with her hand at the moment, and He Qixuan is standing not far away, and it can be clearly seen that her pupils are vibrating!

Qin An heard that the girl also knew that something happened last night that he didn't know, so he asked, "What happened last night?" ”

"I didn't notice anything wrong at first last night, and I didn't hear footsteps outside, but he woke up and reminded me to silence, and I realized that there was something outside, and I didn't go to find out what was going on, but I'm pretty sure one wanted to come in, and they were so quiet, so quiet that I couldn't hear a sound, and in the end they didn't mean to go in, and you see there's still a trace of that guy on it." The girl pointed to the paw prints on the tent, because the early morning humidity had left a few marks on the paw prints like water droplets.

Qin An moved his gaze from these footprints to the tent, and after carefully comparing them, he frowned slightly: "This is most likely the footprints of mountain badgers, they have a fierce and cunning temperament, and high-level hunters will be tricky when encountered, but isn't the mountain badger a strange beast that haunts the depths of the periphery, why does it appear here?" ”

Mountain badgers, as strong as bears, the three tails behind them are the basis for distinguishing whether it is a mountain badger, they are fierce as tigers and wolves, moving like arrows, this creature has been recorded as early as ancient times, and now there is no trace of them except for the traces found in the depths of the outer forest, and their most feared is that their voices have a special effect, which can make the prey unconsciously enter the illusion, so that the other party dies unconsciously in their sleep.

It is precisely because of this kind of special ability that modern people rank it in the ranks of alien beasts, and the difference between ordinary beasts is that these races of alien beasts have powerful special means, and ordinary alien beasts are rare and rarely seen in human activity areas.

The rest of the team also woke up, and when they saw the scene outside the tent, they all froze in place, Qin An also found several other fierce beasts in addition to the mountain badger in these footprints, and some footprints that he had never seen before, why the beasts came here, and why they were tossing and turning outside the tent, they didn't know.

But now, the notion that the Firmament Forest had a strictly distributed territory has been shattered, and the safe areas they had previously designated now look like a blank map, with the circles of the area now gray.

Lin Bingling suddenly thought of what the mentor had said before, the human security realm has different rules from the outside world, and the sad thing is that in reality, people apply the rules they know to those unknown areas.

People believe that through exploration, they can carve out more safe environments for human beings to live in the firmament forest. However, there was no quasi-white area here, and since they had stepped into this land, since they had left the edge of the security realm, they had been in the gray area.