Chapter Ninety-Three: Many Hands Make a Bright Flame

Liu Zong gave Reina's words serious thought. He did not know whether she was right or wrong. After all, in the past two days of contact, he had come to feel that she was the sort of person who took the knowledge in books as absolute truth, using everything written there as the basis for both life and study.

But when it came to knowledge beyond the page, Liu Zong had no idea how Reina thought. He also had no idea whether she possessed the ability to sort through the hidden threads woven into various stories.

Seeing Liu Zong's expression shift again and again after hearing her analysis, Reina seemed to grow interested. Glancing at his face while lowering her head, she searched through the book in her hands. In the end, she said only one sentence.

"This is the expression of a secret crush."

The moment she said it, not only Liu Zong but the other two present were drenched in sweat. None of them had expected Reina to reach such a conclusion. The air of certainty she had carried before vanished in an instant, and the same thought flashed through everyone's mind: was this woman just a fool? Was anything she said actually reliable?

Fortunately, Liu Zong understood how serious the matter was. He neither believed Reina nor dismissed her outright. Instead, he carefully wrote down everything she had said, planning to think it over slowly along the way.

Perhaps because Reina had spoken up first, the other two also offered their own opinions. Though there was nothing particularly novel in what they said, they had at least become involved in the task this time, and their attitude toward it shifted a little.

Liu Zong noticed all of this and nodded in satisfaction, already weighing his next move.

He also knew that he was not the sort of person born to lead. This time, he was no longer commanding undead who feared nothing and lacked thought, but living people with their own minds. He could not treat them as he treated the dead.

In fact, the present situation was the best one possible. Slowly, Liu Zong began to feel that he was learning a great deal.

Just then, Lu Shang returned, pushing a small cart piled high with supplies. The moment he saw Liu Zong and the others, he shouted out loudly.

"Come help me!"

Xu Ying and Liu Zong hurried over at once, and the two of them pushed the cart back to the spot where they had first gathered.

Yuan Ying immediately took the list from Lu Shang and began checking the items against the cart, while Reina also put her own abilities to use, judging the quality of each object one by one, and occasionally mocking Lu Shang for being hopeless at shopping.

With the cooperation of the group, everything was soon inventoried. Liu Zong nodded in satisfaction, because all the specified items he had requested were present.

Yuan Ying nodded as well, because after calculating carefully, she concluded that with these supplies they could remain in the wilderness for anywhere from three weeks to a month.

Reina and Xu Ying had no major objections either. Although the supplies looked abundant, divided among five people they would not be too heavy.

After some brief preparations, Liu Zong glanced at the map, then led the others toward the place where he had originally obtained the amber.

Of course, the amber Liu Zong had acquired had been in the underworld, whereas the place they were heading to this time lay in the world of the living. There was still a difference between the two.

If this had been in the underworld, Liu Zong alone could have handled the monsters along the way. But now that they were in the world of the living, he could not wander about recklessly, or he might draw the attention of wild monsters that had not yet been cleared out.

So they kept to the main road, then soon turned onto a side path, and from there followed it toward a hillside.

As they stepped onto the small hill, Liu Zong slowed. He looked around with some confusion, because when he had been in the underworld, unless a tree was exceptionally large, it was difficult for trees from the world of the living to cast a projection into it.

Back then, he had not made a special effort to memorize the exact coordinates. He could only remember a rough location. He had not expected that he would lead the group into such a large and difficult stretch of forest.

Outside the forest hung the corpses of wild beasts, each marked with signs left by the first players who had cleared the woods. The markings were meant to tell other players entering this place what kinds of beasts could be encountered here.

This way, anyone who needed to could enter on their own, while those who had no reason to go in or who could not defeat the beasts would simply take a detour.

The beasts in the forest ahead were not especially strong. Most were venomous snakes and the like, along with a kind of black panther that could travel through the trees.

The five of them were fairly capable in their own right, so they did not need to worry much about the beasts.

Only, Liu Zong could not remember where in this forest he had found the amber before. All they could do now was search and see whether they could uncover any clues.

The five of them walked through the forest for an hour or two, and even then they had only covered a little more than half of it. They had not examined things carefully, and many places had not even caught their attention.

At that moment, Lu Shang pulled Liu Zong aside and said in a low voice, "This won't do. Even if we spend several days, we still won't find any clues."

Liu Zong understood that too. After thinking for a moment, he said, "How about I go back to the underworld to get a fix on the location, and you all cooperate with me from here?"

Hearing Liu Zong's suggestion, everyone shook their heads. Xu Ying even said directly, "If you go to the underworld and then come back, that round trip will take several days. And if you go to the underworld, then among us only I will still be able to contact you. If anything happens, the rest of us split up would not have much fighting power."

Liu Zong heard that and realized it made sense. He thought it over again, then finally sighed helplessly. "Do any of you have any ideas?"

At that point, Reina said while flipping through her book, "I remember there is a kind of spell called Tracking. Hunters and other similar professions generally learn some variation of it."

Hearing this, Lu Shang seemed to remember something as well. "You can take out that amber. We can use the scent it left behind to search."

Yuan Ying, standing nearby, asked hesitantly, "Didn't they say amber comes from pine trees? Why don't we look for pine trees in the forest first?"

For Yuan Ying's question, Liu Zong could only feel speechless. He said, "It's true that amber comes from pine trees, but the amber I obtained didn't originate here. It was buried nearby by someone else. We can't look for pine trees. We can only trace the marks the amber left behind."

As he spoke, Liu Zong took out the amber. Lu Shang and Reina each found a way to track it: one summoned a pale blue bee, while the other produced a purple bottle.

The blue bee stabbed the amber once, then turned into countless bee-shadows that vanished into the forest.

Lu Shang placed the amber at the mouth of the purple bottle, releasing a stream of purple mist.

The mist circled the amber for a moment before slowly fading into the air.