Chapter 336 – Holy Shit, Monkey?

In the distance, atop the canopy of an ancient tree standing alone on a small plateau, a lean young man sat perched on a branch, his small eyes blown wider than they had ever been. He stared at what had just unfolded in the center of the swamp lake, utterly unable to believe what he had seen.

His teeth were chattering. Zhang Xiaohou stared at the vast flat clearing below for a long time and couldn't pull himself back to reality. He even peered, half-paranoid, at the patch of weed-choked ground directly beneath him…

After a careful inspection — satisfying himself that it would not suddenly rise up — the cold sweat drenching his clothes had mostly dried.

*What in the hell kind of place is this?!*

Zhang Xiaohou had been genuinely terrified. His plan had been to trail the corpse and follow whatever tracks it left, but given that his own strength wasn't enough to move freely through this valley, he'd fallen in behind the Hunter-mage group instead, keeping a safe distance.

And in just a few blinks — they were all gone.

An entire Hunter Elite squad composed of intermediate mages, wiped out to the last person.

Not knowing whether to feel lucky or miserable, Zhang Xiaohou stood there without direction. This valley was far more dangerous than he'd imagined, and that colossal creature lurking in the heart of the swamp had clearly been something far beyond Battle-General-class.

Should he get out of here as fast as possible, or…

*Damn it. I haven't found who I came for. How can I just leave?*

At worst, he simply had to stay well away from the center of the swamp lake. Something with a body that enormous would have trouble moving around quickly — it probably wouldn't be roaming all over the place.

Gritting his teeth, Zhang Xiaohou made his move, putting as much distance as humanly possible between himself and the center of the swamp.

"No way — the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons are heading back to the Nest?!" Just as he turned to leave, he noticed the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons that had been massed on the western end and the western hillside now crawling en masse toward the swamp.

Like creatures that had finished their evening bath and nightly stroll, they were heading home to sleep. For Zhang Xiaohou, this was a disaster — because, as things stood, he was almost certainly sitting right next to someone else's Nest.

As it turned out, the center of the valley sat relatively open and empty for roughly two to three hours each day, because the vast majority of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons would collectively migrate to the western side and the western hills. Their timing and scale were uncannily like a brigade of middle-aged aunties converging on the town square for their evening group dance — creatures of pure habit, living their best lives.

The Big Hammer Hunting Party's entire plan had been built around acting within that two-to-three-hour window. Once the time was up, no matter what they'd found or hadn't, the order was to pull out immediately and try again the next day at the same hour.

It was simply their bad luck that no one had anticipated the monster coiled in the depths of the swamp.

Zhang Xiaohou was equally unlucky — he'd run straight into the "aunties," so to speak: the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons making their nightly return to the Nest. He hadn't known anything about their daily rhythm, assuming they would stay on the western side until dawn.

Watching more and more Lizard-Skull Giant Demons crawl his way, ice shot down his spine, and he threw every technique he had ever learned into getting himself out of there.

On the southern side of the valley, the swamp water was toxic. The poison did not merely spread on contact — it also seeped through a creature's skin via the gases the swamp constantly exhaled.

The creatures native to the swamp had long built up immunity. But for anything that didn't belong here, setting foot in this region was a slow death sentence: the intruder would gradually sink into the mire and join the countless bones carpeting the grey swamp floor.

"Your poison hasn't worn off yet. Why are you following me out here?" Mo Fan looked at this stubborn woman and wasn't sure what to say.

"I'm fine. What I want to know is whether that revolting fruit you made me eat actually works against the toxin." Ah Li Man said.

"It does. Otherwise I'd already be dead." Mo Fan answered.

"Then let's find that Hunter-mage group as quickly as possible and warn them — then track down that Wind Element mage." Ah Li Man said.

"If they're planning to move tonight, they're probably already dead. As for that sneaky Wind Element mage — the valley is enormous, finding him is going to…" Mo Fan was still speaking when he dropped into a crouch and slipped through a gap in the jutting cliff face ahead. The moment he cleared it and took in the view on the other side, the words died in his throat.

Ah Li Man followed close behind, ducking through the same gap. She finished his sentence without thinking: "He should be nearby—"

She stopped.

Mo Fan stood motionless, gaze drifting out across the stretch of muddy ground before him — across the masses of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons crawling across it in swarms — and finally settling on the lean young man sprinting for his life ahead of them, clutching his pants up as he ran.

The lean young man apparently hadn't noticed the gap in the cliff wall. He had already backed himself into a dead end, rock on all sides. But the small eyes on that thin, angular face blazed with absolute resolve.

"Come on then, you worthless lot — Grandpa Hou will fight every last one of you!" Zhang Xiaohou knew there was no escape. He drew a deep breath and steeled himself for a battle to the death against the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons that had chased him halfway across the valley.

There were quite a few of them — at a glance, no fewer than seventy or eighty. Each was far larger than a typical Servant-class creature, with the only flaw being that they didn't move particularly fast on land. They pushed hard toward him from about a hundred meters out, snapping their fangs in anticipation of a meal. To creatures that lived submerged beneath the swamp muck, land-dwelling humans were the finest kind of seafood.

"Is that the person you mentioned?" Mo Fan poked his head through the gap in the cliff and caught a glimpse of a face smeared black with grime.

Ah Li Man looked as well and nodded. "Should be."

She hadn't quite processed it, truth be told. She'd expected tracking this person down would take real effort — but he'd materialized right in front of them barely after they'd reached the western side of the valley. The coincidence felt almost too easy to be real.

"Hey — forget fighting to the dawn. There's a way out right here, come on!" Mo Fan called out from the gap in the cliff, waving the fool over.

Zhang Xiaohou turned. He saw a wild-looking man and the mysterious woman who had been traveling with the Hunter-mage team.

"Oh — oh!" Still thoroughly dazed, Zhang Xiaohou scrambled through the gap in the cliff.

The Lizard-Skull Giant Demons couldn't squeeze through the gap, so the chase was finished.

The three of them walked through the lightless passage. In the pitch black, Zhang Xiaohou was the first to speak. "Thank you both. You saved my life."

"Don't mention it. We actually have something we'd like to discuss with you. By the way, friend — your voice sounds oddly familiar." Mo Fan replied from the darkness.

"That's strange. Yours sounds really familiar to me too."

Still trading those words, they emerged from the passage. Moonlight spilled across both their faces. Four eyes met, each pair slowly adjusting to the faint silver glow.

A cold wind breathed silently between them. Somewhere in the mountain forest nearby, a night crow gave a strange, solitary cry…

"Holy shit — Monkey?"

"Brother Fan!!"