Chapter 99: Players from District One

“Hmm?!”

Halfway up, Ye Da spotted a line of black specks in the distance, moving toward his position.

From so far away they looked tiny, but the world was blanketed in snow, and that made the little dots stand out starkly against the white ground.

A migration?

Ye Da studied them with growing curiosity.

He assumed they were animals fleeing the cold for warmer regions.

Elephants, bison herds, things like that perhaps. Animals of that sort migrated many times each year.

For land animals, the distances might not be all that outrageous.

But if they were birds...

Needless to say, in the city where Ye Da had once lived, swans from Siberia would arrive every winter to escape the cold.

That alone was enough to show just how astonishing animal migration routes could be.

And yet...

Just as Ye Da was staring curiously at those black specks, trying to figure out what kind of creatures they might be, his analysis glasses fed him an odd piece of information.

A group of first- and second-tier black-iron warriors.

A group of black-iron warriors?

The message left Ye Da momentarily baffled.

And why were these players choosing to move when the roads were sealed by heavy snow? Weren’t they cold?

More importantly, their direction of travel...

Ye Da measured their course with his eyes. If he wasn’t mistaken, their destination seemed to be exactly where he was, which was...

The herb valley?

Could their goal be to gather medicinal plants?

Too bad for them; the herbs had already been picked clean by me. Heh.

And besides...

Even if those people really came charging in, it would not matter.

Ye Da had the stone house, after all. He could hide in the mountainside, and without the wall-climbing grapnel, there was no way they could reach the stone house at all.

“Forget them. First I’ll go get some dry branches and smoke out the hive.”

After confirming that the line of black specks was a group of players, Ye Da immediately lost interest in watching them any further.

He had no taste for slaughtering his own kind. They were the same species, after all.

Unless absolutely necessary, Ye Da truly did not want to kill anyone.

Besides...

He also worried that once those people reached the herb valley and found no herbs, they might notice the beehive instead and decide to covet it.

After all, the hive was rather conspicuous against the snow.

And anyone who knew to use smoke on a beehive probably wasn’t just him. If the hive were snatched away, that would be disastrous.

Crackling and rustling, Ye Da kept controlling the rope of the wall-climbing grapnel as it rose, and soon he was back at the stone house.

The door had already been blown shut by the wind.

Ye Da could only hang in midair, free one hand, and twist the doorknob.

Woof! Woof!

Woof, woof!!

The moment the door gave a strange creak, the two wolf cubs inside began barking furiously.

Until...

The instant Ye Da opened the door, the two cubs saw that it was him and instantly stopped barking, breaking instead into frantic tail-wagging.

They looked for all the world as though they were saying: Where did you go, Master? I’ve been waiting for you forever.

“All right, all right, good little ones...”

Ye Da reached out to pat their heads, then gently shoved them aside to make himself a path.

Otherwise the two little fellows would block the doorway completely, and he would not have been able to get in at all.

“Okay, okay, I was only out for a little while. Don’t be anxious.”

After soothing the cubs, Ye Da began packing his backpack.

While he cleared the contents out, he also stuffed it with a pile of dry branches, bamboo leaves, and the like to use as smoke fuel.

Smoking out such a huge hive would require a great deal of firewood.

After tidying up the backpack...

Ye Da glanced around the room and suddenly noticed the bamboo tube jar in the corner, marked with charcoal as a hallucinogen.

The hallucinogen was actually the poison sac of the bouncing mushroom.

Perhaps...

He could add a little poison to the smoke.

With that thought, Ye Da immediately packed the poison sac into his backpack as well.

This time, he did not descend from the cliff again with the grapnel.

Instead, he simply turned the dial behind the door so it pointed directly toward the ground.

Click.

When the door opened again, Ye Da was already back on the ground.

He had saved himself the entire descent from the mountainside.

Ye Da opened the door.

Sure enough, outside was once again the valley. He stepped out and felt the firm earth beneath his feet, which gave him a deeply reassuring sensation.

Woof!

As soon as Ye Da was about to leave, the two wolf cubs immediately started barking again.

After a moment of thought, he said, “Those dart bees are too dangerous. If you get stung even once, I’m afraid you won’t just become bee-wolves. You’ll become dead wolves.”

Woof!

Xiao Bai was unconvinced.

But Ye Da still shook his head.

“Be good and wait at home. I’ll be back very soon.”

“There should be a battle later. I’ll let you two come out and play then, all right?”

After speaking, he paid no mind to whether the two cubs were willing or not, and decisively slammed the door shut.

Bang!

Woof, woof, woof!

Woof, woof, woof!!

The two cubs howled in outrage inside the room, venting their dissatisfaction in a fury of barking.

But Ye Da did not have to worry about any neighbors filing complaints about the noise, so he merely shrugged and made his way around the back side of the cliff.

When he had looked from atop the mountain, it had not seemed all that wide.

But once he started walking it himself, he discovered the old saying was true: a mountain that looks close can still be a deathmarch.

Ye Da had been trudging through the snow for half an hour, sinking deep with each step, and still had not rounded the cliff.

Fortunately, the players heading toward the valley seemed to have at least two hours of walking ahead of them.

Only half an hour had passed so far. He should still make it in time.

But...

On the opposite side of the cliff, where Ye Da had not been paying attention, in the direction of the Gray Stone Mountains, another group of cannibals was also making their way toward the herb valley.

These people, of course, had come to settle scores with Ye Da.

And because they were approaching from the Gray Stone Mountains, they were closer.

By now they had already reached a place not far outside the valley. At this pace, they would likely be inside in another half hour.

If they really entered the valley, they would certainly hear the wolves’ endless howling echoing through it.

Yet Ye Da knew nothing of this danger.

He had finally arrived beneath the hive and was piling dry branches below it. Once that was done, he lit the pile with a torch he had specially brought out from the house.

After the branches caught, he covered them with dead leaves and twigs that were still coated in snow.

As expected...

Thick white smoke billowed up at once from the fire.

The smoke was so choking that even Ye Da, the very man who had started it, could not help coughing violently. It was far too acrid, enough to choke a person to death.

Hurrying, Ye Da raised the collar of his down jacket and used the short-sleeved shirt he had prepared in advance as a makeshift mask, wrapping it over his nose and mouth to avoid being suffocated by the smoke.