Forge a path to success.

Chapter 81 Venturing into the Deep Mountains Alone is Like Entering a Haunted House
There is no calendar day in the mountains, and the year is unknown in the cold weather.

In the blink of an eye, twelve working days had passed. During these twelve days, Chu Hengkong had completely integrated into the simple town at the foot of the mountain, living a simple life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset. Every morning, he would go to the square to listen to the poetry recitation at seven o'clock, and after listening to the poem, he would go down the mountain to provoke the jade fox to throw stones.

Mount Yingluo towered into the clouds, and the boulders, already imbued with the Jade Fox's monstrous strength, rolled down the mountainside with an impact even greater than the Shadow Giant's punch. For the first three days, even Chu Hengkong's immobility was insufficient to withstand the onslaught; a single contact sent him flying, nearly crushed under the rocks. However, thanks to the sheer power of the attack, his willpower was forced into his bones, causing his physical attributes to visibly improve.

From the fourth day onwards, Chu Hengkong stopped spitting blood after being knocked away; from the fifth day, he began to regain his footing; by the seventh day, even direct attacks from rocks couldn't shake him in the slightest, and he began to confront falling rocks head-on with his fists and tentacles; by the ninth day, he could pierce through the rocks using only brute force, without employing any techniques. And now, on the twelfth day…

"eel!"

Chu Hengkong charged forward with his head down, crashing into the massive boulder like a savage triceratops. His eel-like head smashed through the enormous boulder, and amidst the shattering sound of flying debris, he raised his head and let out a proud, majestic roar: "Eel-eel!"

The fox on the mountain remained silent, probably too angry to speak.

Chu Hengkong quickly finished eating the stones, then casually ripped off the eel headgear. Vande, keeping a distance, asked, "How was the result?"

Chu Hengkong patted his stomach, gazed at the distant mountains, and remained silent for a long time. He removed his hood and sighed deeply, "Finally, I don't have to eat stone eels anymore..."

Van der was shocked: "That ending of your sentence is very ominous! Did something worse than stone get swallowed up?"

Chu Hengkong coughed a few times, silently channeling his inner energy to dispel the demon's influence. He was truly overwhelmed with mixed feelings; no one could have imagined that a single lapse in judgment in changing the method would trigger such a series of problems.

In reality, over the years, dozens, if not hundreds, of the many prodigies who survived the modified bone-forging method of Longxiang Boxing have all been protected by their masters and made thorough preparations before daring to attempt the modification.

Unfortunately, Chu Hengkong's arm was a tentacle, making his body already unbalanced. This haphazard attempt at cultivation only made things worse. Without Ji Qiufeng's guidance, his survival this time was truly a combination of talent and luck...

Fortunately, he managed to get through this ordeal by chewing on stones. Now, except for the 24 vertebrae that he couldn't train properly, all of his bones have been trained. If he weren't in the unstable divine kingdom, he would have been able to try to advance to mutation point 2 long ago.

Chu Hengkong removed his hood, put on his coat, and waved his tentacles toward the mountaintop as a way of thanking the fox who had been helping him beat him up. He turned and headed toward the town. Vande jumped into his coat pocket with practiced ease, muttering, "That fox kept beating you up for 12 days, didn't you feel something was off?"

"What would insist on doing the same thing regardless of objective circumstances?" Chu Hengkong asked.

“Machinery,” Van Der said. “Machinery that was programmed long ago.”

"Have we seen enough machinery since we came to these deep mountains?"

Fan De seemed to be deep in thought, nodding frequently.

When Chu Hengkong returned to the town, Qi Su's chanting was still going on. He mingled seamlessly among the townspeople, listening to the long-standing, obscure poems.

In the past twelve days, he has heard half of "The Candlelight Poems," a myth about an old dragon turning into the sun; a part of "The Chaotic Tale of the Heavenly Demon," a classic tale of adventures by wandering warriors and knights; and the entire enduring "The Long Song of the Mortal World," stories about giants, light, and shadow that were once talked about with great relish by our ancestors.

As Chu Hengkong listened, he found it increasingly interesting and was happy to linger. The old stories, though difficult to pronounce, were undeniably entertaining; the chases between those gods, heroes, and demons, their origins uncertain, were like a storytelling performance from another world. If a pretty young girl were to tell stories in the teahouse every day, customers would surely be happy to attend, regardless of the quality of the tales.

Today's poetry collection again focuses on the three old friends' "A Long Song of the Mortal World," which tells the story of a cunning shadow who, wanting to play a prank, makes a bet with wise light to see who can solve the other's difficult problem. The shadow poses a simple riddle, which light solves immediately. But light poses an extremely difficult arithmetic problem, so difficult that even the shadow is bewildered by it.

It simply conceded defeat and made the same bet with the giant. The giant, a slow-paced fellow, chuckled and said, "You go first, Shadow. I am the greatest and most powerful being; my wisdom can solve your riddle."

The shadow then showed the giant the arithmetic problem it had obtained from the light. The good-natured giant stared at the problem for a long time, during which many dust islands disappeared and reappeared. Finally, it brought the light over, and the light solved the arithmetic problem in a flash.

"I won!" the giant announced happily.

"You asked an outsider for help, is that considered wisdom?" Shadow mocked.

"My super intelligence tells me to let the light help me," the giant said proudly. "The problem is indeed solved, so I am very clever."

The shadows laughed heartily, praising His wisdom. Then they discovered that the giant had generated many meaningless thoughts while solving the problem; these thoughts fell into the sea, leaving some creatures somewhat dazed. But these dazed beings also inherited the dust's virtues; when faced with difficulties, they knew how to ask others for help. Therefore, although they weren't very intelligent, they lived quite well, even better than the most intelligent creatures.

"...Solitary travel is foolish, gathering is wise. One person is weak, many are strong. Original spirits are pure, past events are like songs~"

Qi Su (in ancient Chinese, several times more complex than the previous text) finished reading the entire story. The townspeople bowed to the statue in unison and then dispersed. Fan De poked his head out of his pocket and said sarcastically, "I really need these bedtime stories. They're a true necessity of life. I don't know how I'd be a master of eye magic if I didn't listen to them."

"It won't hurt to listen," Chu Hengkong said dismissively. He went to the task board and took down the most recent tasks one by one. Recently, most of them were small jobs collecting miscellaneous items; it seemed that everyone had already killed all the monsters they wanted to kill, so there were no large hunting tasks.

"Have you recovered, brother?"

Chu Hengkong turned around and saw Xiang Fuzi looking over from afar. "He's basically back to normal," he said. Xiang Fuzi was relieved to hear this and congratulated him repeatedly. After chatting about this and that for a while, he whispered, "I have something I'd like to ask you for help with, brother."

"But it doesn't matter."

“A few days ago, I heard that you killed the centipede that was causing trouble in the mountains.” There was a hint of hatred in Xiang Fuzi’s eyes. “To be honest, I have a deep hatred for that poisonous insect. I can only feel at ease if I see its corpse. If you go into the deep mountains again, could you cut off a piece of that poisonous insect’s claw and bring it back to me?”

"Alright." Chu Hengkong nodded. Xiang Fuzi was overjoyed: "In that case, thank you very much, brother!"

He walked away cheerfully, his steps seemingly lighter. Chu Hengkong couldn't help but ponder what kind of past a scholar would have to be at odds with poisonous insects. His first thought was naturally of his family being murdered, but judging from Xiang Fuzi's expression, that didn't seem to be the case.

He shook off his useless doubts and began packing his bags for the trip.

·
Deep in the mountains, in the old forest, all was silent. The tree canopies layered upon each other, like giant umbrellas covering the sky. A passerby broke a branch underfoot, making a crisp sound.

The sound of breaking branches echoed through the dense forest, and a furtive shadow approached. It was an ugly lemur, which silently descended from the treetop, its claws aimed at the passerby's head, and colorless wind blades spewed from its palms.

But the pedestrian vanished instantly. From the shadows behind the lemur, he casually threw a punch, his protruding middle finger striking the lemur squarely on the back of the head. The lemur collapsed to the ground, dead on the spot.

Vande jumped out of his pocket, saw the lemur's eyes sparkling with electricity, and complained loudly, "Another inedible one!"

Two days had passed since they left the town, and after taking a long detour, they had finally embarked on their mountain journey. There was very little food along the way; anything that could run and jump was a cyborg. Aside from mushrooms, Chu Hengkong had to eat dirt while wearing an eel-shaped headgear. Neither of them wanted to try eating these cyborgs; who knew if they would end up as cyborgs themselves, or have their eyeballs modified?

Chu Hengkong kicked the lemur's corpse aside, gathered some fallen leaves, and barely managed to spread them out as a mat to sit on. The forest fell silent for a moment. Vande glanced at him sideways: "You're not breathing."

Chu Heng nodded silently, which was taken as an admission.

"What's the point of this?" Van der asked, deeply curious. "He doesn't even pant. What kind of strange skill is he practicing?"

It considered itself a traveler and always enjoyed observing the details of life. Living together day and night, it naturally noticed Chu Hengkong's strange habit. This assassin had many quirks, the strangest of which was his love of holding his breath. He would often fall silent and hold his breath for at least half an hour, only resuming breathing when he felt like he was about to suffocate.

After several days of bone-strengthening exercises, the assassin's breath-holding time had become increasingly longer, exceeding an hour today alone. Vande grew increasingly uneasy; an ordinary person would have died long ago if they didn't breathe for an hour. He wondered what kind of sinister internal energy this assassin was practicing…

Is this some kind of zombie kung fu? Did it run out of energy while practicing and start eating people?

The demon shivered and quickly moved to the side. Chu Hengkong, unaware of its bizarre thoughts, ignored it. He finished his cultivation, took several deep breaths, and then took out the Silver Eye Book to pass the time during his rest. The latest page in the book contained updated information about the gauntlets.

Iron Spider Gauntlets

……

[Effect: Once per day, allows movement within a 50-meter radius of shadows.]

[Longing: Everyone is evacuating, but I want to give up]
Running away won't help; we can't escape.
It's watching me.

I want to cry.

It was still a strange longing, the words overflowing with despair and fear, but there was no information to offer any clues. Vande shook his head, and Chu Hengkong patted him: "You can't even understand what you wrote yourself?"

"What do you mean I wrote this? This is the content of my longing! I'm just using this manual to express the information."

“My longing wasn’t this vague before.” Chu Hengkong showed it the previous authentication document.

“That’s because the things you used to identify were either instantly recognizable or had ample information in their environment,” Vande muttered. “This special case… is probably related to the state of the beasts. They might only know this much, so their power only contains a small, vague segment of emotions and memories.”

Chu Hengkong stared at the second-to-last line of text. It was watching him. He recalled the red light in the Shadow Giant's eyes, and the more he thought about it, the more uneasy he felt.

If, as Vande says, these events are indeed the memories of the beasts, then what did they experience before? They initially lived on the coast, were driven back by demons emerging from the sea, and then what? What great demon targeted them, causing the beast horde to go mad?
No. Ji Huaisu often said that sometimes he couldn't understand anything, but he just felt that something was wrong. Now he had the same feeling. He simply flicked his tentacle and pulled over the lemur's corpse, trying to cover the large book with it to see if he could figure out what was going on.

No words appeared. Chu Hengkong, refusing to believe it, pressed the button several more times before a line of small characters finally appeared with great difficulty on the page.

[We'll all die, we ......]

With lightning speed, Vande tore the page off, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it far away. He grabbed Chu Hengkong's hand, pleading earnestly, "Dad, please stop! I also think something's wrong, but the deeper you investigate these strange things, the easier it is to die. We've already fallen to this state, can't we just stop causing trouble?"

Chu Hengkong remained silent for a long time before closing the book.

“You’re right, this isn’t the time to worry unnecessarily.” He stood up. “Do you still have the energy?”

"I can manage." Seeing that he had given up, Vande felt relieved and replied listlessly, "I don't want to go back into those mountains..."

The forest rose higher and higher, with mist swirling in the distance. After all this trouble, they had returned to Yingluo Mountain. This time, they were going to kill the fox and bring back the centipede's remains.

Chu Hengkong had a vague premonition that, regardless of the outcome of the hunt, he was about to uncover the truth of this place.

(End of this chapter)