20: Chapter 20 Infiltration

"They're really gone?"

After a while, some players scouted from behind and discovered that the people from the Great Axe Gang had indeed left.

"Is this... fatigue tactics or attrition tactics?"

Someone spoke up, and an ominous premonition immediately welled up in the hearts of the others upon hearing it.

As it turned out, they were worrying too much.

Every few hours, arrows would rain down from the sky; even if they didn't cause any damage, they were incredibly annoying.

In the middle of the night, even if they braved the rain of arrows to search, it was hard to find anyone; after a while, they would all slip away, leaving the players with no choice but to stay hidden in the trees.

Fortunately, the people from the Great Axe Gang didn't dare to charge up either, but this only made the players more frustrated.

They had the strength but nowhere to use it.

"Damn it, we'll kill them tomorrow morning."

From time to time, players would speak out, resonating with the group as they secretly steeled their resolve.

Ye Qing turned and left after chatting with Mo Bai for a few moments.

As soon as he left, Mo Bai looked toward the north, his brow furrowing slightly.

"Is this... that kind of elemental fluctuation?"

"What are they doing? Are they conducting experiments again?"

Mo Bai couldn't help but think; this elemental fluctuation was quite unique, making him feel a bit curious.

Glancing over, Zhou Rin was already fast asleep, snoring slightly, while Yang Hao was sensing something with his Spiritual Power, becoming increasingly excited.

Mo Bai detected a trace of elemental fluctuation coming from him.

Clearly, after seeing Mo Bai's earlier actions of capturing wind element particles and receiving his advice, Yang Hao had also grasped some of the tricks.

Of course, the pure wind element zone that Mo Bai had spent time creating was the key factor.

Without his maintenance, this wind element zone would probably only last for a few hours.

What Yang Hao could learn in these few hours would depend entirely on his own comprehension.

Seeing this, Mo Bai nodded slightly toward him before vanishing into the darkness.

In the forest at night, nothing could be seen clearly; the occasional moonlight filtering through the gaps in the canopy only left behind fragments of light and distorted shadows.

In such a complex environment as a forest, unless one was extremely familiar with it, it was absolutely impossible for a normal person to move around at night.

However, Mo Bai moved through the large trees, shrubs, and vines as if he were taking a leisurely stroll in a courtyard.

Within the perception of his Spiritual Power, the darkness was essentially no different from daylight.

In fact, Mo Bai could even pick up some sporadic traces of the Great Axe Gang members who had previously come and gone without a trace.

Following the traces, it wasn't long before Mo Bai stepped out of the forest and a mountain village came into view.

On the flat ground, patches of wheat fields were arranged neatly like a grid stretching into the distance, and a river wound around the foot of a large mountain as it flowed through the hills.

At the foot of the mountain, a path wound upwards, with scattered houses dotting the mountainside and summit. A wooden fence blocked the way in the middle, and swaying torches could be seen on either side of the path, though things seemed a bit chaotic up there at the moment.

Mo Bai checked the coordinates against the forum.

"The location provided is indeed here, and the source of the elemental fluctuations is here as well.

What's happening up there?"

Mo Bai sensed the increasingly intense elemental fluctuations above, which sent ripples through his Spiritual Power perception.

Without wasting any time, he hurried toward the Mountain Stronghold, noticing something was off as he passed the wheat fields.

"Why aren't these wheat fields being tended? Where are the villagers?"

Mo Bai thought instinctively, but then he remembered that ordinary NPC villagers were also within the Great Axe Gang's capture range, serving as expendable materials for their experiments.

Realizing this, as he looked at the abandoned wheat fields, a sense of reality suddenly hit him, and he couldn't help but recall the movie "Years of Peace" released last year.

"How did this end up like the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, where human life is treated like grass?

Isn't this a unified empire?"

Mo Bai recalled the background introduction he had seen on the forum, and a thought suddenly occurred to him.

"Could it be the end of a dynasty here too?"

Muttering to himself, Mo Bai crept forward bit by bit.

Approaching the mountain path, he didn't dare go up directly but instead climbed up a cliff face on one side under the cover of darkness.

With the advance perception of his Spiritual Power and the precise control of the ink box, Mo Bai, who had never tried rock climbing before, quickly got the hang of it.

His training during this period made it easy for his heart to remain calm; even looking down from a height, he felt no ripples of fear, and his hands didn't shake or stiffen.

Before long, Mo Bai had climbed halfway up the mountain and pulled himself up.

After walking a few steps, the terrain turned into a gentle slope with a wall blocking the way, behind which stood several houses.

Spreading his Spiritual Power, he found no one around, and even the houses inside were completely deserted.

With a short run-up for momentum, Mo Bai leaped, grabbed the top of the wall, and flipped himself over.

Here, the elemental fluctuations inside were even more obvious, as conspicuous as a bonfire in the dark.

He moved quickly between the houses, making no sound other than the faint thud of his footsteps.

Suddenly, however, Mo Bai's footsteps halted.

"There's a hidden sentry."

In his perception, a gang member sat by the window of a house, yawning, with a machete and a wooden whistle clearly visible by his hand.

Seeing this, Mo Bai looked ahead.

According to his perception, the source of the elemental fluctuations was only about two to three hundred meters away.

After a brief hesitation, Mo Bai decided not to alert the enemy. Instead, he used the darkness to slip past the house silently; the sentry didn't notice a thing.

As he moved forward, the hidden sentries became more frequent as he neared the core, but in the middle of the night, more than half of them were fast asleep.

This made Mo Bai mutter to himself.

"Why isn't the other half asleep? Is the discipline of this gang actually this high?"

Muttering as he advanced, he reached an area about fifty meters from the elemental fluctuations, where gang members began to inhabit the nearby houses.

Many houses had three or four gang members sleeping inside, while some had only one.

At the heart of the village, several buildings came into Mo Bai's view.

A stone house was fully lit by oil lamps, with faint voices drifting from inside.

Next to the stone house was a warehouse guarded by two gang members. When he scanned it with his Spiritual Power, the scene inside made Mo Bai catch his breath.

The warehouse was packed with people—dozens of them crowded into a single small granary, shoulder to shoulder, with absolutely no room to move.

These people looked sickly and were covered in scars; they were all children, youths, or middle-aged men and women, with not a single elderly person among them.

The stone granary's door was completely locked. Beside it, near a single window, was a pig trough containing some leftover scraps of what might have been food.

In a small adjacent compartment, more than a dozen players, their bodies and mouths tightly bound with hemp rope, lay scattered on the ground, also covered in wounds.

Seeing all this, a surge of indignation rose in Mo Bai's chest.

But when his Spiritual Power swept over the last small stone hut nearby, his eyes widened instantly.