303: Chapter 303 No matter what, we'll find out once we arrest them and ask them.

[Notice: This area is suspected to be the outer buffer zone of the island's mutant creature cluster nest. The core area is located inside the fog-covered range, and the specific scale cannot be detected at present.]

[Recommendation: Do not enter.]

The heartbeat in Lin Fan's chest had not completely calmed down yet.

That scene just now was fucking dangerous.

That snake had first used the loud noise of tearing broken wood to attract his attention, and then attacked from the side.

If it had not been for System's early warning being a fraction of a second faster, he would already be digesting inside the snake's belly now.

But tonight's trip was not in vain, and the biggest harvest was not finding the location of the nest.

It was confirming one thing: that gray monster was not a beast.

Beasts do not set ambushes, and beasts will not, after confirming they are being tracked, deliberately slow down, lure the hunter deep in, use the dense fog to cut off line of sight, and throw the person into the encirclement of other predators.

This was a human's method.

A monster whose body had been thoroughly modified, but whose brain still retained human intelligence.

Su Qingxue was right.

That thing used to be a living person, and perhaps it was still a living person now.

Lin Fan retreated back along the route he came from.

Triple Enhancement brought not only muscles and reaction speed, but memory also jumped up several tiers.

Every iconic large tree, every depression in the ground, and the direction of every section of vine he passed while tracking along the way were all engraved in his mind.

He did not need to look at landmarks or guess based on a sense of direction.

Every path was crystal clear.

He had not walked far before he looked back.

That mass of fog inside the woods was gone.

The dense forest was dead quiet.

Even the screeching sounds of those mutant monkeys from just now could no longer be heard.

That large snake was gone, the Giant Lizard was gone, and the swarms of monkeys on the treetops were also gone.

Everything had vanished, as if they had never appeared at all.

Lin Fan's footsteps paused; something was wrong.

According to normal predatory logic, if the prey entered the encirclement and ran out again, would they chase it or not?

They would definitely chase.

Letting a meal at hand run away—no predator would be resigned to that.

Unless something was stopping them, something had given the order not to chase.

Those monsters were being controlled.

Controlled by whom? That gray fellow?

From coming to the island until now, all the behaviors exhibited by that thing pointed to the same conclusion: it was the master of this area.

Standing at the top of the food chain was often one who could think independently, and that beast happened to be able to.

The snakes, lizards, and monkey groups were all its subordinates.

It lured Lin Fan into the dense forest because it knew that fighting alone might not necessarily win against a human with Triple Enhancement, so it used group attacks to make up for the gap.

This was fucking much harder to deal with than a simple monster.

Lin Fan's hair stood on end, and he quickened his pace.

The density of the woods began to decrease, the bushes became sparse, and the air faintly carried the salty smell of seawater.

He was almost at the beach, and then his footsteps came to a halt.

Ahead, a grayish-black silhouette was crouching on the broken stump of a fallen palm tree.

Its limbs were curled up, and its back was arched high.

That posture completely violated human anatomy, exactly the same as what he had seen on the beach just now.

It did not have anything in its hands.

Liu Feifei was nowhere to be seen, but Lin Fan was in no mood to care about Liu Feifei's life or death right now.

His gaze swept over this thing once.

On its torso covered in short gray down, there were five or six additional fresh cuts.

The skin and flesh were turned outward, and dark red blood was trickling down the splits.

It got beaten? This thing got beaten?

Who hit it?

Lin Fan's eyes narrowed slightly.

If it truly was the master of that area, who would dare to hit it?

Unless it was not, which would overturn his previous guess.

This thing was not the leader of those beasts.

Even its status among that bunch of beasts was inferior to that snake.

It was just an errand runner, a bottom-tier tool dispatched to catch food.

Catching prey and turning it back in, if it was handed in late or there was too little, it would get beaten.

No matter what, catching it and asking would make it clear.

Lin Fan's right hand felt for the dagger at his waist, his body sinking slightly, pressing his center of gravity to the lowest point.

That gray shadow seemed to have sensed something.

It slowly straightened up its body.

Its hind legs supported the ground, and its back stretched upward vertebra by vertebra.

Its forelimbs... no, those seemed to be arms, hanging on both sides of its body with extremely long finger joints that almost hung below its knees.

It turned around.

A thread of moonlight leaked down from the gaps in the clouds.

The pale light hit that face.

The short gray down did not completely cover its face.

Its brow bones protruded exaggeratedly, its cheekbones sprawled outward, and the skeleton of its entire face looked as if it had been forcefully enlarged by a circle from the inside by something.

The skin was shriveled and cracked, covered with a layer of grayish-white horny hard shell.

But its facial features were still there; after looking a few more times, he could see them clearly.

This face, he had seen it before.

Not just seen it.

He had personally engineered this person's death.

He arranged for Zhang Tao to finish the job and then kill Chen Jian, and then he carried a shovel and walked out, sitting on the reef for a very long time.

That day, he thought this matter was over.

Chen Jian was bound to die.

Even if Zhang Tao turned cowed, Wang Lan would do it for him. Because for every day Chen Jian lived, Wang Lan had one more day of risk of being retaliated against.

And the result?

This good-for-nothing did not die?

Not only did he not die, but he fucking evolved.

Lin Fan's temples throbbed.

That piece of trash Zhang Tao.

Either he held back under Wang Lan's instigation and did not use lethal force, or Chen Jian had a harder life than imagined and crawled out while those two people were complacent.

Whichever it was.

The result was the same.

Chen Jian had survived, completing his mutation in some corner of this island.

No wonder Su Qingxue said that face looked familiar.

She had seen Chen Jian before.

It was just that no one could connect this grayish-black deformed monster before them with that man who was cowardly to his very bones.

"Chen Jian."

That grayish-black figure paused for a moment.

In its turbid eyeballs, something flashed.

Then it opened its mouth, and a voice squeezed out from deep within its throat.

Muffled, grating, and intermittent, every syllable sounded like it was produced by a throat swallowing burning charcoal, but it could be heard clearly more or less.

"I... did not expect... that you... still remember me."

He really fucking could speak.

Lin Fan stared at that unrecognizable face, his mind thinking of Wang Lan's miserable death.

"Was your wife killed by you?"

"How did you become like this?"

Chen Jian tilted his head.

His cervical vertebrae made a crunching sound, twisting into an angle that human bones definitely could not achieve.

On that shriveled and deformed face, an arc split open.

He was smiling, and that smile was similar to a clown's.

"Want... to know?"

The grating voice squeezed out from his throat, "Go... to the underworld and ask her."

Before the words fell—

Chen Jian's hind legs kicked hard against the ground, and a circle of wood debris and soil exploded outward.

The grayish-black figure stretched into a straight line under the moonlight.

Wind pressure rushed toward his face, carrying a sickening stench mixed with rot and blood.

Claws aimed straight at Lin Fan's chest...