Wen Xiang Yuan leaned forward to take a look, and Luo Liu moved to grab her to prevent her from falling, but Gu Xiang Kai wordlessly stepped in between them and offered a hand instead.
Failing to make contact, Luo Liu spoke sheepishly, "The river is very deep. There is only a stretch further ahead where the water is shallower, and we have built a path with stones."
"Don't stray too far from the bank normally; there are many places with sudden drop-offs."
Luo Liu looked at the water, lost in thought. "When I was a kid, I ran down to the river to play and my mom nearly beat me to death for it."
Nan Yue observed the river. Near the bank, the water was relatively clear, revealing small pebbles and aquatic plants on the bottom. There seemed to be fish as well, causing ripples to dance across the surface.
After walking for a few minutes, they reached the stone bridge Luo Liu had mentioned. The terrain was higher there and the current slower, with large stones laid out to form a narrow path.
Everyone helped each other across before splitting up to follow their respective leaders.
"Be careful." Nan Yue's gaze swept over He Jiang, who had been wearing a sullen expression the whole time.
Gu Xiang Kai understood, nodding as he shouldered his sickle and walked away.
Nan Yue and the others followed Luo Liu, listening to him talk about the customs of Antswamp Village.
"I wanted to ask earlier, why does your village worship the Ant God?"
Receiving a subtle hint from Nan Yue, Wen Xiang Yuan began to fish for information from Luo Liu.
"Hmm? Did I not mention it? Hah, they say our village has always been in a remote location, isolated from the rest of the world, so we were self-sufficient."
"One year there was a famine and there was nothing to eat, but the villagers dug up a nest of ants on the back mountain."
Luo Liu's face contorted into an expression of slight disgust as he spoke. "I heard that the queen ant back then was as large as a young calf."
"During a famine, anything can be food. Never mind insects, people are willing to eat mud."
"The village ate that nest of ants back then and survived the famine. To show gratitude for the ants saving their lives, our village was renamed Antswamp Village, and we have worshipped ants for generations."
Luo Liu looked around before whispering, "Actually, I always thought it was weird to worship something like that. Ants are so many and so crowded, it's quite disgusting."
"But this is a tradition passed down from our ancestors, so there is no helping it. Everyone just worships that massive Ant God; if there were an ant infestation in real life, it would be a real nuisance."
Luo Liu's words allowed the listening scavengers to breathe a sigh of relief. They had previously thought the village was bizarre, but now they realized that as time passed, the villagers themselves weren't particularly keen on worshipping tiny ants as deities.
The Ant God and the rituals were still honored, but in their daily lives, the villagers found the small insects quite annoying.
No wonder there were insect-repellent circles everywhere in the village.
"You mentioned that abandoned ant nest—is that where we are going today?"
Luo Liu hadn't expected Nan Yue to speak to him. In school, Nan Yue had always maintained the persona of an ice queen, and he both loved and feared her.
"Yes," Luo Liu puffed out his chest as the only male present, perhaps afraid they might be scared. "Don't worry, those are just legends. How could there be ants as big as calves? Wouldn't those be monsters?"
No one answered him, because in a mission world, nothing was too strange to occur.
Nan Yue glanced sideways and saw Zhu Xi Ning frowning. "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
Zhu Xi Ning whispered, "I feel like someone is watching us again."
"It is even more obvious than last night."
Zhu Xi Ning kept looking around restlessly, trying to find whatever was watching them.
"Could it be..." Nan Yue had a bad feeling. "The ants?"
It wasn't that she was being overly imaginative; it was mainly because the indicators in this mission were so strong that the scavengers felt the ants would likely be the final boss they had to face.
Zhu Xi Ning felt uneasy. "But I feel like it is something very large..."
She looked down at the ground beneath her feet. "And I have been observing since yesterday. In fact, from the moment we entered the mission until now, I haven't seen a single ant except for the ones by that corpse."
The group sharpened their focus, fearing something might suddenly leap out and attack them.
But although that sense of being watched followed them like the humid, sticky air, they reached the ant nest without incident.
The sensation made Nan Yue and the others very uncomfortable. Whether it was due to the weather or not, they felt entirely clammy and gross.
Even breathing and walking felt like moving through a viscous barrier, as if they were walking through jelly.
Nan Yue unbuttoned her collar, diverting some of her mental energy to observe the ant nest.
Upon seeing the nest, everyone knew that Luo Liu's so-called legend might not be just a legend.
Because the nest was massive.
This part of the back mountain was originally supposed to be flat, but a giant mound like a small hilltop had been thrust out of the earth. If Luo Liu hadn't mentioned it, Nan Yue would have thought it was another hill.
And on the level ground, dozens of pits large enough for a person to walk through were visible to the naked eye. Peering inside, one could see nothing but pitch-black darkness.
However, the structure of a normal ant colony was already sophisticated enough to be called ingenious. If this ant nest was the same, the tunnels inside were likely a complex maze.
Nan Yue sniffed the air. There was a fishy stench—the smell of a wild beast.
She estimated that even if there were no ants in the tunnels, there would be other animals.
"Everyone, watch your step. The soil here is a bit loose and collapses easily."
Luo Liu walked to several of the openings, bent down to pick a flower, and held it up for everyone to see. The flower was the size of a woman's palm and an incredibly vivid red. Its shape was somewhat like a peony, but the petals were long and thin, lacking the softness of a peony.
"This is the Ant-red Flower. Everyone, pick as many as you can so we don't have to make another trip later."
The scavengers understood the logic. No one objected, and they all began to work.
Luo Liu handed each person a basket for the flowers. Currently, each basket also contained two steamed buns, which were their lunch.
"This ant nest is huge. Just walking around it once takes four or five hours. The Ant-red Flower grows around the nest. Everyone, gather back here at four in the afternoon, and we will return to the village."
Although the phones in the mission had no signal, they still functioned perfectly as timekeeping tools.
Nan Yue checked the time; it was eleven in the morning, meaning they had five hours.
The openings of the ant nest were spread far apart, and due to the nature of the soil, they couldn't move in a large group, or the weight might easily cause a cave-in.
Everyone had to spread out. Nan Yue and Zhu Xi Ning kept Wen Xiang Yuan between them.
Nan Yue was tall and weighed more than the other two, but her movement was exceptional, allowing her to leap and walk across the soft ground as if it were level pavement.
As she picked flowers, her gaze never left Wen Xiang Yuan and Zhu Xi Ning.
The few of them stayed close. If anything really happened, with her skills, she definitely wouldn't let anyone fall into a hole.
Nan Yue carefully examined the red flower in her hand. Its appearance was unique and its fragrance was heavy, but she wasn't sure if it was just her imagination—she felt that within the rich floral scent, there was a faint, fishy smell.
It was a bit like... the smell of the drainage ditches at the village entrance.
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