Ita Era

Chapter 20 Peach Blossom Village (18)

After entering the mountains, Ding Shi began packing his luggage.

With one hand lifting the load and the other making a hand gesture, he obtained a luggage card and then began organizing the props.

Each person has only four item slots. First, the bell card cannot be removed. The bell card has the function of attracting ghosts and cannot be placed on your person. Otherwise, it will shake as you walk, and you will instantly transform into Tang Sanzang, attracting countless demons and monsters.

Luggage cards are also essential; only a madman would carry 35 kilograms of luggage up a mountain.

I haven't learned how to make talismans yet. Although I can carry them on my person, they are precious, so I need to reserve a place for them.

The remaining items include sweet potatoes, water, cigarettes, matches, a flashlight, and a nail puller.

Ding tried to put sweet potatoes and water into his luggage, but the system refused to convert it into a card. The reason given was that the luggage was packed by the village chief and could be considered a single item unit. Players can turn bags into cards, but they cannot fill a bag with items and then turn it into a card. This is to prevent players from exploiting loopholes. For example, a card album could hold hundreds of cards.

However, this rule does not apply to small items. Any similar item that a player can hold in one hand can be used to form a card. For example, many earthworm cards, many small stone cards, etc.

If you can hold two sweet potatoes in your hand, you can make a card with them. The concept of holding them is that the area covered by your hand is more than 50%.

If you can lift or hold a single object, such as a stone, with one hand, you can also stack the stone into a card.

The mechanism of forming cards is relatively complex, and even though Ding Shi spent a lot of time studying it, he still didn't fully understand it.

Before the sun set, Ding Shi found a spot and ate a sweet potato. He carefully put away the second one and stuffed the third into his left pocket. His right pocket held cigarettes, matches, and water. With a nail puller tucked into his lower back, Ding Shi grabbed a flashlight and began his journey.

The mountain path is less than 30 centimeters wide, and the long leaves of the weeds on both sides basically cover the road surface. Every quarter, Master Baiyun would walk this path to the village, and the village chief would prepare food, vegetable seeds and other daily necessities for Master Baiyun to take away.

Thinking of this, Ding Shi felt great admiration for the seventy-year-old Daoist Baiyun. A round trip from Baiyun Temple to Taoyuan Village took six hours, and they also had to carry dozens of kilograms of supplies.

Conclusion: This Taoist priest has hair that can be plucked.

Having made up his mind, Ding Shi quickened his pace. After walking for about half an hour, it was completely dark. The starry sky indicated that the moon would not appear for the time being, so he could only rely on a flashlight to keep going.

Suddenly, a fork in the road appeared ahead, and Ding Shi immediately drew his nail-pulling hammer. According to the village chief, there was only one road to Peach Blossom Mountain, a road leading to White Cloud Temple. If he wasn't mistaken, he had encountered a mountain demon.

What a load of rubbish casual dungeon.

The insects in the grass were incredibly noisy at night. Ding listened quietly for a minute but didn't hear any unusual sounds around him.

Which road should we take?
Ding chose to return via the same route.

Ding Shi's thoughts were: First, the original route was safe. Second, if he retreated, the mountain demon would face the dilemma of whether to follow or not. If it followed him, the illusion of branching paths it had set up would not be able to maintain, and if he turned around and sprinted, he could pass through this area before the mountain demon could rearrange its path.

The mandrill was clearly a little smarter than Ding Shi had thought. Ding Shi retraced his steps for about 20 meters and found that there was another fork in the road. The problem was that the two roads were exactly the same, like twins.

Ding Shi thought of a problem: Zhao the Blind hadn't told him how many mountain demons were in the mountains.

Sure enough, there are scumbags everywhere.

Ding Shi turned and walked away, resuming his journey. After walking 20 meters, he returned to the fork in the road. The left path led into darkness, and the right path also led into darkness, with mandrills lurking in the bushes on both sides. Choosing the wrong path would lead him to a desolate graveyard, where he would be trapped by evil spirits. Ding Shi squatted at the crossroads, reached into the left path, grabbed a handful of yellow soil, snapped his fingers, and a yellow soil card appeared in his hand. Interestingly, the picture on the yellow soil card showed many small grasses, but Ding Shi's eyes didn't see any grass on the road. Therefore, the left path was the wrong one.

But is the right side correct? Ding Shi followed the same method, and there were also some small grasses in the yellow soil on the right. This indicates that both the left and right paths are incorrect.

In folklore, this condition is called "ghostly blindness," where a ghost covers your eyes, allowing you to see only a portion of things. In the world of Ithaca, it is considered a form of illusion by mandrills.

Ding Shi reached out and grabbed at the grass in the middle of the fork in the road, pressing his palm into the soil and scooping up a handful. After the card was completed, it was clear that the yellow earth card contained no grass. This meant that the correct path was obscured by illusion, and regardless of whether Ding Shi chose left or right, he would be led to the desolate graveyard.

This thing is really weird!

While Ding Shi was playing in the mud, a mandrill slowly approached him from the side and rear of the bushes on his left. The mandrill's fighting strength was close to that of an adult. But what if it was a sneak attack? What if it was two against one?
Just as the mandrill got within half a meter of Ding Shi, Ding Shi suddenly turned around and ruthlessly smashed the mandrill's skull with his right hand's nail-pulling hammer.

With a crack, the mandrill's skull shattered, and it collapsed to the ground with a scream. Ding Shi pounced forward, grabbed the mandrill by the neck with one hand, and raised the nail-pulling hammer with the other, repeatedly striking the mandrill's forehead until it showed no vital signs before standing up.

It was only then that Ding Shi picked up the flashlight that had fallen to the ground to look at the mandrill.

It had an ugly monkey face, some muscles, but was far from being a chimpanzee. Ding Shi used his foot to flip the mandrill over, glanced down, and saw it was male. He already had a good idea of ​​the mandrill's fighting ability.

Ding Shi disliked mandrills that didn't wear clothes, as it meant they had nothing of value on them.

Did Ding Shi forget about the mandrill? Of course not. Mandrill B fled after seeing Mandrill A's skull smashed, and only then did Ding Shi pounce on Mandrill A. Mandrill B, startled and fleeing, might regain its senses and return to support Mandrill A. Ding Shi's decisive action was precisely to kill Mandrill A before Mandrill B could return.

How did Ding Shi discover the mandrill A?

The mandrill weighs around 70 pounds. Although it moves in the grass, it is agile and theoretically doesn't make much noise; the chirping of insects also masks its movements. Unfortunately, the mandrill forgets one thing: its presence causes the insects in the surrounding grass to stop chirping.

When the mandrill approached within five meters of Ding Shi, Ding Shi had already noticed the problem. The mandrill's strategy of slowly closing in gave Ding Shi time to think and act, allowing him to successfully cripple it with a single blow.

For an ordinary person, facing an attack from two mandrills, there would be virtually no chance of survival.

Not everyone can decisively swing that full-force hammer, and not everyone will rush forward without hesitation to kill the mandrill completely, regardless of the blood and brains splattered on their body and face.

……

The mandrill died, and although there was no experience point, the correct path appeared. Ding Shi pondered the problem as he traveled. Theoretically, no player should take this path, as neither the mandrill nor the ghosts in the abandoned graves have a very low appearance rate.

In Earth terms, the production team used a lot of resources on Taoyuan Mountain, but the utilization rate was extremely low, making it very uneconomical. So why invest resources in Taoyuan Mountain in the first place?
Ding Shi thought of Zhang San and Zhao Liu, who both had scheduled tasks: Zhang San would burn an incense stick every morning, and Zhao Liu would deliver a jar of pickled vegetables every morning. Furthermore, Li Si was part of the night patrol team, and Sun Qi would not be punished even if he failed to complete his task.

In other words, all four of them had ample time to explore the instance world. But the players didn't have this concept; they were unfamiliar with the village, let alone exploring the mountains, and lived there passively.

Ding Shi's trip up the mountain was due to mission requirements, not his own will. If Li Si and Zhao Liu hadn't acted recklessly, he wouldn't have known there was a blind man named Zhao in the village, wouldn't have come into contact with the San Niang Temple, and wouldn't have gone up Peach Garden Mountain in the middle of the night.

Conclusion: Exploring dungeons is a very important and necessary task.

(End of this chapter)