The Journey of Immortal Cultivation-Chapter 521 - 301: Labyrinth
An hour passed. The light of the setting sun grew weaker and weaker. Everyone became irritable because the dense forest still showed no sign of ending.
Ali, too, walked among a group of women with a restless heart when she suddenly heard panicked shouts ahead. It was the screams of the two men leading the way, filled with despair and fear. For some reason, she thought that the young man they had just met would never scream like that.
The men had discovered a strip of cloth on a tree—it was the strip that had been torn from that woman’s clothes earlier. Everyone realized that for the past hour, they had been walking in circles in this dense forest.
Yet the men, including the Chief, swore they had been moving in a straight line! People who live off the mountains would never be unclear about directions.
Two of the women were so scared that they immediately burst into tears, quickly silenced by slaps from their men. Everyone looked at the Chief, waiting for his instructions. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶
Lines seemed to deepen on the Chief’s face. After pondering for a long while, he quietly pulled aside two of his confidants and whispered something. Ali saw those few men’s faces immediately turn pale. Possessing unusually keen hearing since childhood, she heard the Chief say: "We’ve encountered a ghost wall; it’s probably not going to be easy to get out this time." The women accompanying her also knew about her ability and quietly asked Ali: "What are they talking about?"
Ali shook her head, staying silent. If she let them know that the whole group had fallen into a trap, they would probably run away in panic immediately.
The Chief took out a small paper talisman from his bosom, bit his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of essence blood on it, then he began muttering words. Once his voice fell, the paper talisman ignited without fire, turning into a small fireball that drifted forward. The Chief visibly relaxed, instructing everyone to follow the direction of the fireball.
The route of the fireball was peculiar; sometimes it moved forward, sometimes it suddenly took a sharp turn to the right, and sometimes it paused for a long time before making a large arc... According to the Chief, this paper talisman was a Treasure bestowed by the immortals, which could guide them to the correct path. The path taken by the guiding fireball was the true straight line, and their group had been blinded by the maze, thinking they were walking straight while actually circling around in the dense forest.
"Who is making us go the wrong way?" blurted an ignorant fellow, only to be met with a furious glare from the Chief, who then fell silent with a gloomy face.
The fireball slowly flew for half an hour, and everyone parted the branches in front of them, suddenly finding themselves in an open clearing—they had finally escaped the endless forest and arrived at a large open space! What was more delightful was that there was a farmhouse on the clearing, though somewhat dilapidated, it was a true wooden building with a thatched roof, which appeared so inviting under the increasingly dim sky.
Everyone cheered and surged forward without waiting for the Chief’s command.
There was no one in the farmhouse, the furniture was old and covered with thick dust, and spiders and insects dwelled on the ceiling. However, the mountain villagers were not afraid of these. Despite their tiredness, the women started cleaning inside and out. The house was too small to accommodate everyone, so several strong men, glancing at the dim forest, said: "For safety’s sake, we better start a fire."
The Chief quickly instructed everyone to light a bonfire on the clearing, to drive away the night’s moisture and chill. This place was indeed very eerie, and the warmth of the fire was a strong comfort to people’s spirits.
Before long, a cheer from the women came from inside the farmhouse. Another piece of good news followed: in the kitchen’s corner, they found a bag of rice!
Rice, it was actually rice. People in the village knew that this area, with its mountainous terrain, narrow space, and infertile land, was only good for growing grass; even trees couldn’t grow tall, and the damp and malevolent land energy was not suitable for rice cultivation. The reason there was still a village here was because this vast canyon was so poor that even demons would not want to live here.
Many villagers, who had never left the area around the village for a hundred miles in their lifetime, had never had the chance to taste rice. What they usually planted was a crop very similar to corn; after harvesting, they crushed the grains into powder, then made paste soup or cakes as food for the family. Even so_productivity of this crop was very low, thus villagers often had to gather wild vegetables, hunt, or catch river fish to improve their diet.
