16: Chapter 16 Humans Have Arrived!

"Su Xiaoyun!? Are you inside?"

The person calling out had a clear voice and steady articulation; it was not the kind of wild shouting by straining one's throat.

It was the habit of a veteran who routinely controlled his volume to avoid alerting other things in the forest.

Jiang Ming watched them through the eyes of the Infected Crow on the roof.

Exactly three people stopped about twenty meters outside the door of the Wooden Cabin and did not move forward.

This distance was calculated very precisely, right at the outer edge of the Tree Domain's core suppression circle.

Walking inside would cause a noticeable feeling of depression and headache, but being outside only brought a slight tightness in the chest, not enough to trigger immediate alertness.

The leading man was the one who had called out, holding a homemade spear in his hand.

It was made by binding sharpened beast bones to a wooden pole, polished very smoothly, and must have taken quite a bit of effort.

The person on his left behind him was rather thin, with a hand axe and a coil of fine iron wire hung around his waist, habitually looking around everywhere.

The person on the right was carrying a large backpack, with torches and ropes stuck into the sides of the pack, holding nothing in his hands.

But he had a loop of thick hemp rope slung diagonally across his shoulder, probably responsible for carrying goods.

"Brother Xu, on the ground!"

The thin one used the tip of his foot to brush aside a few rotting leaves at the doorway, revealing a section of Hyena bone fragments that Jiang Ming had intentionally left on the surface.

The bone fragments had turned gray, but the surface still carried bone marrow residual fat that was not completely dry, and the bloody smell was very faint.

Human noses could not smell it, but Carrion Crows could, which was also the reason Carrion Crows kept landing here.

The man called Brother Xu lowered his head to take a look and said nothing.

He pulled a gray cloth towel from his bosom and covered his mouth and nose with it.

The other two followed suit.

This action made Jiang Ming immediately confirm one thing: they had heard Su Xiaoyun's rescue message in the channel.

They knew that the cause of death of the people here was not simply a supernatural attack, but something more covert.

"The air might be problematic."

They put on masks.

"This place is not right."

Xu He shifted the spear to his left hand and pressed his right hand onto the hilt of the short knife at his waist.

"What did Su Xiaoyun say the last time in the channel?"

"She said the forest eats people, the roots move, all three companions are dead, and her own sanity value is thirty-seven."

The one with the backpack answered very fluently, obviously having repeatedly checked the channel records before coming.

"The coordinates of the Wooden Cabin were also sent by her, right here."

The thin one squatted by the edge of the mud pit, his fingers tracing along a drag mark on the ground.

That mark was left when Jiang Ming dragged Zhou Cheng's remains, later covered with soil, but the bottom indentation was too deep; after the new surface soil dried and shrank, the outline was revealed again.

His heart tightened.

Buried root traces were not hard to see through in the eyes of more experienced people.

The thin man looked up and said in a low voice, "It looks like a lot of things were dragged from underneath."

Xu He did not reply, turning his head to glance at the roof of the Wooden Cabin.

The Infected Crow tilted its head to look at him, its claws digging into the charred thatch, flapping its wings from time to time.

"There is something wrong with the crow!"

Xu He said.

"What is wrong?"

"It is too quiet! Carrion Crows keep calling after landing, but this one only called once from beginning to end."

He lifted his spear and pointed it at the bushes behind the Wooden Cabin.

"Ah Tang, go around the back! Do not enter the house, only look at the windows."

Ah Tang was the thin one, the trapper.

He nodded, unhooked the hand axe from his waist, and circled toward the back window of the Wooden Cabin.

The three people spread out.

Xu He was in the front, the backpack bearer on the side, and Ah Tang circling the back.

The formation was a standard triangular search-point formation, not something panic-stricken pleaders for help could display.

Jiang Ming mentally gave this squad a score: Brother Liu was a lone-wolf leader with outstanding personal ability, while Xu He was a team-oriented one.

He knew how to divide labor, how to position himself, and how to advance the search while maintaining vigilance.

Much more troublesome.

However, while Ah Tang was circling to the back, his Grey-haired Rat happened to crawl in through the back window of the Wooden Cabin.

That was his second pre-prepared infected rat, placed inside the house waiting for a signal.

At this moment, he controlled it to stick half its body out from the cracked wood seams under the back window, letting Ah Tang just catch a glimpse of a gray shadow flashing past inside the window.

"There is still something alive inside the house!"

Ah Tang's voice came from behind the house, kept very low but not nervous—it was a report, not a call for help.

"It might be a rat."

"Come back!! Do not enter alone."

Xu He ordered.

But Ah Tang did not immediately walk back; he squatted under the window, lowering his head to look at something.

Jiang Ming knew what he was looking at.

In the mud under the back window of the Wooden Cabin was his newly laid root net, with its surface covered by rotting leaves.

But the arrangement direction of the rotting leaves was a bit different from the naturally fallen leaves around; it was too neat, as if deliberately laid out by someone.

Ah Tang reached out his hand wanting to brush away the rotting leaves.

At this moment, Jiang Ming did one thing.

Not an attack, but making the Infected Crow suddenly pounce down from the roof.

Pouncing on the backpack bearer.

The crow flapped its wings crookedly and slammed towards the backpack bearer's face, and the man instinctively waved his arm to block it.

He retreated three or four steps backwards, right onto the warning snare rope Ah Tang had laid in the Outer Ring outside the Wooden Cabin during the day.

That was a trap they had set themselves.

A small tripwire bent from fine iron wire, originally hung between two bushes to prevent anything weird from sneaking in from the flanks.

He stepped right into it, the snare tightened, and he fell backward.

The large pack on his back crashed into the muddy ground, and a torch rolled out from the side of the pack into the mud pit.

"Damn it!!"

The backpack bearer cursed halfway and cut himself off, reacting very quickly; his first instinct was not to get up, but to feel for his axe first.

But the crow had already flown away; Jiang Ming did not let it linger at close range for too long.

After pouncing, it pulled up, flying into the tree canopy through the fog and disappearing.

"Do not chase!"

Xu He stopped Ah Tang, who wanted to throw a knife at the crow.

He helped the backpack bearer up, and the three quickly gathered together, forming a triangular defensive formation back-to-back.

Then he glanced at the Wooden Cabin, glanced at the mud, and glanced at the roof where the crow had just landed.

"Fall back."

Just one word.

Ah Tang hesitated: "The supplies inside the house have not been checked yet!"

"There are no supplies! The drag marks in front of the door are old, there is no fresh blood on the ground, the chimney has no smoke, the window glass has been broken for more than three days—this is not a sanctuary!"

Xu He's voice was flat, but his speaking speed was noticeably faster than before by a beat.

"It is a trap!! Someone, or something, is here, intentionally leaving this place to lure people over."

When Jiang Ming heard this sentence, if he still had a face, he probably would have smiled a little.

Not out of mockery, but of recognition.

This person had figured out his hunting ground logic in just a few minutes.

That is right, the Wooden Cabin was no longer a sanctuary, but a trap.

The three retreated very quickly, without turning back to pick up the torch, and without hesitation.

They retreated to a position about eighty meters outside the Wooden Cabin, stopping at the edge of Jiang Ming's root system perception range.

They were squatting behind a dead fallen tree, discussing in low voices.

"Go back and call more people? Bring kerosene and burn this forest outward from the Wooden Cabin."

It was Ah Tang's voice, carrying a bit of unwillingness, probably feeling that it was a huge loss to have gained nothing and even lost a torch.

"Going back empty-handed, the people in the sanctuary might not believe it. Last time something happened to Zhou Cheng and their Wooden Cabin, half the people in the channel said it was fake."

"Regardless of whether it is true or false,"

Xu He's voice sank.

"That there is something in this forest is true. It is not just one or two supernatural entities; the whole area has a problem."

"After going back, tell Old Qin first, designate this area as a red-labeled restricted zone, and if we want to clear it, we have to wait until we have enough manpower and kerosene."

Jiang Ming listened to every word of the conversation without missing a single one.

They were going back to call people, bring fire, and designate a red-labeled restricted zone.

This meant that the next time they met, it wouldn't be three people coming, but ten people, each holding at least one torch in their hands.

Bringing kerosene and machetes specifically meant to deal with plant-type supernatural entities.

And his current hunting ground radius was sixty meters, the Root Spike cooldown was twelve seconds, and spores could control at most three.

The Infected Crow had already flown away, and one Grey-haired Rat remained.

There is no chance in a head-on team fight.

He could not wait for them to return!

He had to strike first.

Not in this hunting ground, but at their sanctuary.

His root system was still not long enough to reach two kilometers away. But he had spores, infected entities, and Fear Perception.

It was time to push the hunting ground outward.

The three people behind the dead fallen tree stood up and retreated toward the southeast.

The direction was their sanctuary.

Jiang Ming's roots slowly turned under the mud, spreading out the first batch of scouting roots following the direction of their retreat.

The death countdown had begun.