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

Ou Yun was immediately displeased: "What do you mean by throwing me out? Am I some kind of biological weapon?"

"You are not a biological weapon, you are a causal weapon."

"..."

Leng Ruolan turned her head, her expression serious: "Look, every time you get into trouble, the forbidden area sends you good stuff. Last time you were almost infected by the abyss energy, they immediately sent an armed helicopter. The time before that, you were trapped by the forest lord, and when you got out, you picked up the Abyss Sword. The time before that—"

Ou Yun snorted coldly: "I've suffered so much, shouldn't I get some emotional compensation?"

So that's why.

Leng Ruolan gave a kind smile, "If we really can't beat them, I'll just throw you into the lord's mouth. Either it'll choke to death, or the forbidden area will give you an emergency cheat code—"

Chen Hao quickly covered her mouth with his hand: "Captain Leng, you can't say that—"

Ou Yun chimed in with a couple of "Mmm," adding, "Yeah, Captain Leng! How could you just so casually leak our tactics like that?!"

Leng, whose mouth was covered by Chen Hao: ?

Head tilt.jpg

Chen Hao immediately gave a dry laugh to the people around him: "Um, well, just listen to what I said earlier, but please don't imitate it!"

"..."

"..."

Imitating style!

You call this a tactic?

Isn't this just a hundred ways to send someone to their death?

Douglas, listening nearby, was dumbfounded: "Is this how you usually discuss battle plans?"

Ou Yun said, "That's right: This is already considered quite serious. Last time when they were discussing how to deal with that Abyss Winged Bat, Captain Leng said to try firing one shot first, and if it didn't kill it, then we'd see."

"..."

Douglas suddenly wondered if he had made this decision too hastily.

But then he suddenly shook his head.

In forbidden territory, the line between madness and genius is very thin.

Thinking about it this way, choosing to surrender to the Chinese players was absolutely the right decision I could ever make!

*

After half an hour.

Chen Hao unfolded the energy distribution map filled with red and blue markers, and Leng Ruolan began her tactical analysis:

"I checked the data that Douglas brought, and it basically matches the information we detected before."

He pointed to several locations on the map with a sharpened wooden stick. "The abyssal energy network in the forest area has thirteen main nodes, distributed radially. The energy flow of all nodes points in the same direction—"

The stick drew a line on the map and eventually stopped in a circled blank area.

"Here. North-southwest, about a day and a half's journey from our camp. This area is surrounded by mountains, the terrain is extremely complex, and—"

Leng Ruolan paused, her expression becoming somewhat subtle.

"Moreover, this area is completely blank on our maps. Not because it hasn't been explored, but because no reconnaissance force that entered this area has ever returned."

"Including lynxes?"

"Including lynxes."

Chen Hao's voice came from the side.

"Last week I sent three lynxes to scout north, but only one came back. The one that came back had scratches on its body that I had never seen before. They weren't teeth or claws, but more like they were from some kind of barbed tentacles."

Don't even mention the forbidden area; tentacles are no good anywhere!

"Where's the lynx?"

"It's recovering at the veterinary station, and Green Bean is taking care of it."

Ou Yun exclaimed, "We even have a veterinary station?"

"It's just a storage room next to the kitchen, which I converted on the spot."

"Is that the place where that beautiful Chinese person lives?"

"right."

"How come I didn't know?"

"Because you were sleeping all day yesterday."

"..."

Ou turned to Douglas: "When you were scouting in the north, did you approach that empty area?"

Douglas nodded, but his expression wasn't good.

"I got close once. I just circled the perimeter and then left." He opened his notebook, found a page, and handed it to Ou Yun.

"It was a cloudy day, and visibility was very poor. But we could still see it across the valley—there was a mountain in the center of that area, and its surface was completely black, not the color of rock, but covered by something. And..."

He swallowed hard.

"And that mountain is glowing. Not the whole mountain is glowing, but the mountain is covered with patterns, exactly the same as the abyssal energy patterns we see. Those patterns glow at night, with a frequency like a heartbeat, bright and dim, bright and dim."

The campfire crackled.

Everyone fell silent.

Then Chen Hao cursed in dialect: "Here we go again with this damn thing."

"Heartbeat?"

Leng Ruolan looked at her with an expression of nonchalance. "You think that's a heartbeat?"

"I don't know, but that frequency is definitely not random."

Douglas spoke softly, as if afraid of being overheard, "My gut feeling told me that the mountain was alive."

Allen gasped, "Why haven't you ever told me this before?"

"Because I don't want you to have nightmares."

"I'm already having nightmares!"

"It's okay."

Ou Yun comforted everyone, "When you actually see it, the nightmare will become reality, and then you won't be afraid anymore."

"..."

Is that how you comfort someone?!

Leng Ruolan stared at the blank area on the map, her fingers unconsciously tracing the patterns on the hilt of the knife.

Heart rate, living, black mountain, abyss patterns—

"Isn't this the pillar we saw in the basin?"

She looked at Ou Yun, "Do you remember those roots at the base of the pillar?"

"I remember. It was embedded in the soil like a blood vessel, specifically to absorb the energy left behind by corpses."

Ou Yun thought for a moment, "What if that mountain also has a similar structure, only on a larger scale—"

"That means the pillars we saw earlier were just branches."

It's like a base station, one here and one there. However, these are all branches—if there are branches, then there is a main line.

Ou Yun continued, "If that's the case, then that mountain is the main root? Or rather, that mountain is the forest lord itself?"

That conclusion is a bit too broad.

Like a stone thrown into a calm lake—

As if with a thunderous roar, everyone's eyes widened.

"Wait, wait, wait—"

Alexander raised his hand, his expression as if he'd been elbowed in the back of the head with a frying pan. "You mean, the Forest Lord isn't a monster living in the mountains, but a mountain itself? A living mountain?!"

"It's not impossible."

Leng Ruolan stood up and quickly drew a diagram on the tactical board.

"Think about it, what form did the Forest Lord take when it first appeared?"

"It didn't walk over; it emerged from the ground. After it appeared, all the surrounding trees withered, the ground cracked open, and black mist billowed out."

"These characteristics are exactly the same as the reactions when those energy nodes are activated."