This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 314 African Savannah

"Ah sneeze!"

Han Jiangxue sneezed. She touched her nose with a serious expression: "A cold? No, I don't."

Han Jiangxue was assisting with the construction of a cold storage facility in the old city when she took out a transfer order from her backpack during her spare time.

The higher-ups said that Nie Weiyang needed someone who could change the temperature. Although Han Jiangxue was not the most suitable candidate, after all, her athletic ability... although she could maintain endurance output for a long time, her explosive power was really insufficient. Although she wouldn't fall over and not jump far, compared to some of her competitors, she was indeed not good enough.

But Han Jiangxue still managed to snag the spot.

This is not only because she was originally one of Nie Weiyang's teammates, but also because—
-
"I'd die for him," Han Jiangxue said expressionlessly in the interview room. "Can they?"
-
...The higher-ups didn't really want to keep such a ticking time bomb at home, so she joined the team.

Yi Jian also joined the team at the same time. Yi Jian didn't make any scary remarks. He just sat down in the interview room with a smile, and the interviewer reluctantly agreed.

"Go away, old man with rheumatism!" Yi Jian shouted from afar, then gracefully dodged the flying ice axe, grinning and giving a thumbs-up to the person next to him: "She's angry. Here you go."

The person next to him stared in disbelief as they handed him a silver ring: "..."

"Hey, hey, you can't gamble!" A law enforcement officer waved his hand as he passed by. "By the way, what are you gambling on?"

Yi Jian brazenly stuffed the silver ring into his pocket: "I bet I can make that ice block generate emotional waves... Ouch!" He was hit on the head by the returning ice axe, making a 'clang!' sound. "Damn, that hurts..."

Han Jiangxue reached out and caught the ice axe stick. She slammed it into the ground, and a sheet of ice quickly covered the ground beneath her feet. She was actually floating on this thing, using the ice axe to control her direction. Her reaction at this moment was quite swift—as long as she couldn't move her legs purely, she would do anything.

"Let's go," she said, drifting past Yi Jian.

Yi Jian was stunned. He looked himself up and down, then looked at Han Jiangxue. After a long silence, he took out the bicycle he had won from Han Jiangxue in a bet from his backpack, angrily pedaled and followed her.

In the direction they were heading, a convoy of several hundred people was already prepared.

……

As evening approached, the scorching heat finally subsided slightly. The three of them stopped under a huge baobab tree and set up a makeshift campsite.

Nie Weiyang skillfully lit a small campfire, set up a pot, and began cooking food. The aroma of the food, mixed with local spices, gradually filled the air; this was what they had traded with the locals.

Russell remained slumped in Jin Huang's basket, listlessly gazing up at the sky. Bai Yu, meanwhile, was hanging upside down from a branch of an acacia tree, like a perched white bat, seemingly lost in thought.

The African plains at night present a completely different face from the daytime, wild and magnificent. The bright moonlight shines down, covering the vast grasslands with a layer of silver frost. The golden sea of ​​grass during the day has now turned into dark blue waves, rustling and undulating in the breeze.

In the distance, the silhouettes of a herd of antelopes drink water under the moonlight, their horns drawing graceful silhouettes in the night.

Further away, the hoarse howls of hyenas echoed, along with the deep, menacing growls of some large feline...

This is a serenade for the wilderness.

Some strange mutated creatures have also begun to move.

Clusters of fungi emitting a ghostly green phosphorescence shimmered at the base of the baobab tree, like the breath of the earth. A flock of nocturnal climbing birds with fluorescent blue edges on their wings rustled as they climbed the treetop and began to dance and sing, probably courting.

The three could even see several large beetles, each over a meter long, with brightly colored warning shells. They crawled slowly through the grass, leaving intermittent streaks of light, but no animals attacked them.

Russell bared his teeth and moved away from the beetles. He'd touched one of them earlier that day out of curiosity and was immediately poisoned; it took him half an hour to completely get rid of the toxins.

The beauty and vastness of the grasslands can only be fully appreciated by those who are actually there. Here, all sounds resonate, and one can only feel a profound stillness—as if one were infinitely small, while the world is infinitely vast.

But when they looked up at the night sky, they couldn't help but feel a little regretful.

The Milky Way is no longer dazzling; only the unchanging, false starry sky remains. The stars are rigidly positioned, and their light, which was once bright, now appears cold and lifeless, lacking any real vitality or mystery.

Although it was his first time seeing the stars on a real African plain—even the New World version—Russell got bored after a while.

He pursed his lips and complained, "These stars are so boring to look at, they look like they're pasted on, there's no room for imagination at all."

Nie Weiyang, who was stirring the soup pot, didn't even look up and casually asked, "Would you rather see this scene or Saturn?"

"?" Russell imagined the scene.

A massive planet occupied almost half the sky, its cold rings seeming ready to crush him at any moment, and he found himself on a plain, with not a single place that felt safe...

He shivered and shrank his neck: "...Never mind, let's just watch this."

Nie Weiyang chuckled softly, stirring the soup pot slowly with the wooden spoon in his hand, bringing forth an enticing aroma.

Russell opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to complain a bit more about the boring starry sky, but then he saw Nie Weiyang suddenly stop all his movements, raise his head sharply, and cast his gaze toward the distant plain shrouded in darkness.

The relaxed expression on his face vanished instantly, replaced by a serious, focused look.

Russell and Bai Yu noticed his abnormality almost at the same time and immediately went on alert.

Russell propped himself up from the basket, while Bai Yu, like a weightless leaf, silently tumbled down from the upside-down branch and landed lightly.

"What's wrong?" Russell asked in a low voice, his hand already reaching for the weapon beside him.

Nie Weiyang did not answer immediately. His gaze seemed to pierce through the vast distance, slowly sinking below the horizon, his brows slightly furrowed, as if deep in thought.

A moment later, he put down the wooden spoon and stood up.

“You watch the pot,” he instructed Russell, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Keep in touch with us.”

After saying that, he took a few steps out of the camp area, and with a thought, the lucky charm, which had been modified many times, appeared out of thin air and stopped steadily in front of him.

Bai Yu followed as if he had activated auto-follow, and in a flash, he nimbly sat down in the back seat.

With a low roar, the engine sent the two of them hurtling off like arrows, speeding in the direction Nie Weiyang was looking, their taillights disappearing quickly into the vast night.

Russell stood there, stunned, looking in the direction they had disappeared, then at the bubbling soup in the pot, and sighed helplessly.

As he picked up the wooden spoon, he tossed the eagle that had been perched on his shoulder into the air.

The eagle spread its wings, its wings gleaming with a unique metallic sheen, yet it blended perfectly into the environment, silently flying in the direction Nie Weiyang had left, acting as a high-altitude spy.

"That's amazing." He muttered as he sat down. "I knew there would be trouble."

(End of this chapter)