Survival of the Nation: My luck was a tiny bit worse.

Upon hearing this, the two were taken aback again.

Wow, that's a lot of information today...

"So there really is such a thing as the will of forbidden lands..."

Ou Yun muttered to himself.

He thought it was all just his imagination...

The behemoth, however, maintained its calm and half-dead tone: "Guess."

Ou Yun, Leng Ruolan: ...

Do you think I'm a kid who needs to guess?!

Dude, you're such a big lord-level monster, and you still know how to pull these tricks? Guess this is you!

The behemoth was quite considerate; it seemed to have guessed what they were thinking and even offered a few words of comfort.

"Alright, since you can't leave now, you can choose another wish. As long as it's within my power, that's fine with me."

"..."

Okay, in that case, we'll have to renegotiate.

Ou Yun quietly asked Leng Ruolan, "Do we want material assistance or intelligence?"

After thinking for a while, Leng Ruolan realized that they didn't lack anything materially—because if they really needed anything, their older brother would just open the supply box in the next second, so there was no problem.

On the contrary, they know very little about it...

After all, their purpose in coming out of here was to explore the forbidden area and gather information!

Then Europe spoke up:

"Then we want to know, just how many beings of your caliber are there in the forbidden area?"

The giant beast fell silent for a moment, its dark eye sockets silently staring at the two of them.

It didn't answer immediately, but gave them a meaningful look.

"Are you sure you want to waste your hopes on something like this?"

"This is not a waste, this is an investment in intelligence."

Ou Yun shrugged. "The more you know, the longer you live."

The giant beast let out a low, strange sound, somewhat like laughter.

"Interesting. I haven't seen such an interesting two-legged creature in a long time."

The eerie laughter echoed in their minds.

Then it raised its paw and made a casual gesture in the air.

A ring of silver light slowly appeared in front of the two of them.

Several differently colored panels appeared on the light screen, and when pieced together, they looked like a tangram puzzle.

Their location is precisely at the center of the entire light screen—the green section, which is presumably the forest.

The points of light representing them are twinkling—and there are quite a few other points of light of the same color in the forest area.

European Union speculated that it might represent their allies?

Other sections also have different colored dots, which are probably other beasts or mutated beasts.

"The Forbidden Zone is divided into seven sections, and you are currently in only one of them."

"Each section has a lord. Defeating the lord grants you access to other sections."

"Only by defeating these seven lords can you find the exit you seek."

"but--"

Suddenly, the dark-rimmed eyes looked at the two of them, and Ou Yun faintly heard a sneer.

"With your current strength, you probably can't even get a glimpse of the forest lord, let alone other regional lords. You should focus on becoming stronger first."

Leng Ruolan looked at it and scoffed, "I knew things wouldn't be that simple..."

Ou Yun looked a little bewildered. "Seven? That'll take forever..."

Damn it, they haven't even cleared the forest yet...

Does that mean there are seven more beings at the level of the Abyss Bone Demon?

Wait, this thing didn't say that the lord of this forest area is the Abyss Bone Demon, did it?

Does that mean it's even more powerful than the Abyss Bone Demon?

"..."

Ou Yun suddenly felt that just spending his days like this in the forbidden area wasn't so bad after all...

He sighed, "Alright... thanks for letting me know."

"You're welcome. It's just an equal exchange."

The giant beast waved its claws, and the light screen dissipated like smoke.

Ou Yun suddenly asked, "And you? Are you one of these seven lords?"

The giant beast's figure began to fade away, and its lifeless, emotionless voice echoed in my mind:

"If you manage to make it that far alive, perhaps you'll meet again."

The giant beast vanished completely.

Ou Yun and Leng Ruolan stood in the canyon, looking up at the sky that was gradually returning to normal.

The two remained silent for a long time.

Leng Ruolan quickly started packing her things. "Alright, now we finally have a main quest. We'll fight bosses one by one, and once we're done, we can go home."

"Yeah, I don't know if we can win."

"We haven't even fought yet, so of course we don't know if we can win."

"Let's go back now and tell Brother Chen this news—"

"Why go back? Just give him a call."

"Oh dear, I forgot we have a communication stone."

Ou Yun took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down after his brain had been invaded.

"But we should collect these crystals first. Maybe we can make a Transformer by throwing them into the furnace."

"That's true. If there really were Transformers, we wouldn't have to go through all this trouble of going from one section to another."

The two men, grumbling and cursing, began to sort through the ore.

Meanwhile, the live stream chat in China was already flooded with comments:

"Holy crap! One section? One boss per section?"

"So, Mr. Ou has only just left the beginner's area???"

"Strongly support Boss O'Neal breaking through the forbidden zone!"

"Well, at least I know some of the current situation in the forbidden area..."

"Sigh, am I the only one who thinks this wish is a waste? It would be so much better to just become stronger and destroy the forbidden area!"

"That's hilarious. Even if you promise, they might not be willing to help you make it happen. You might as well ask something more practical."

"It's alright, there are still so many crystals left, we're sure we can refine a great treasure."

*

"Big brother, look what this is?"

"Um?"

At the scene of death in the black mist, Leng Ruolan discovered a shiny object lying on the ground—the two of them had been so focused on the ring that they hadn't noticed the ground at all.

"Another type of ore?"

Ou Yun bent down and picked it up.

It was a dark red crystal, warm to the touch, and smooth as a mirror.

"It looks really high-end."

"After all, it's a lord-level item?"

Ou Yun put the crystal into his spatial ring, then looked around at the ravaged canyon. "Should we go back to camp or continue on?"

"Let's go back to camp first."

Leng Ruolan looked around. They had collected quite a bit of ore—since they could teleport anyway, they would just collect this much for now!

Ou Yun said "Oh," and added, "Going back now will be just in time for dinner."

He took out a sound transmission stone and pressed it:

"Hello, hello, calling Brother Chen, calling Brother Chen."

"Received, please speak."

"I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

"Uh... bad news."

"The bad news is that the forbidden area has seven districts, and we've only just left the starting village."

"……ha?"

"The good news is, we've got our hands on a really awesome crystal. We'll put it in the furnace and refine it; maybe we can even make a Wi-Fi device."

"..."