Chapter 262 – The Eerie Chant
The scene was extremely bloody.
Blood flowed profusely from the severed limbs, streaming across the ground to Tu Ran’s feet.
Tu Ran tiptoed and shifted her position to avoid the central gathering spot.
Stepping on the piled corpses of the alien creatures, she struggled to reach the brown bear.
The panel displaying the core was still lit, and a fat wild chicken lay atop the brown bear.
Tu Ran grabbed its half-extended wing and dragged it off, then took out her dagger and stabbed it into the bear’s nape.
The skin on its neck was very thick. Tu Ran exerted all her strength, slicing at an angle until she finally managed to open a twenty-centimeter gash. Beneath the fur was even thicker fat, and despite feeling nauseous, she searched and eventually found the inner core.
Jumping off the brown bear, Tu Ran wiped the inner core on her clothes while quickly leaving the area.
Just as she stepped out of the mountain of corpses and the sea of blood, the sharp and eerie chant echoed once more.
Tu Ran froze. The last time, the chant had preceded the appearance of the alien creatures.
She immediately swallowed the inner core, gripping her laser gun tightly, and warily surveyed her surroundings.
The laser gun had fully recharged under the influence of the [Wheel of Time].
Tu Ran tilted her ear to listen for the source of the chant. The sound seemed to come from all directions, providing a three-hundred-sixty-degree immersive musical experience.
A strong wind blew towards her, forcing Tu Ran to take a step back to steady herself. Even though she wore insulated combat gear, she still felt the chill of the wind.
Through her night vision goggles, she spotted pairs of gleaming beast eyes peering out from behind sturdy tree trunks, densely packed and stretching out of sight. The icy wind froze everything around her, and a wave of coolness rose from her feet.
Tu Ran took the initiative to strike, and the blinding beam gathered the destructive power capable of annihilating everything in its path, leaving no blade of grass behind.
A large group of beasts was ruthlessly sliced apart once again. They didn’t even have time to roar before they whined and died in the cold wind.
Their steaming blood splashed onto the frigid soil, quickly cooling to the freezing point as it slowly oozed forward.
Tu Ran spun around in place, her gaze sweeping across every corner of the dense forest. After confirming that there were no living creatures left, she activated the [Wheel of Time] rewinding to a state of full energy three minutes earlier.
“Woo—”
The howling wind once again carried the distant chant.
Tu Ran gathered her strength beneath her feet and sprinted in the direction from which the wind came.
From behind, only a shadow, tinged with anger, could be seen.
At first, Tu Ran could clearly hear the chant growing louder, indicating that she was getting closer to its source.
However, as she continued to run wildly, the sound grew fainter until it eventually disappeared.
Tu Ran stood there in confusion, tilting her ear to listen. Aside from the wind’s whistling, she heard nothing else.
Taking another look around, the scene appeared unchanged from before.
Tu Ran steadied her thoughts, pondering what to do next, when suddenly, she realized she had overlooked an important point.
The panel for the ability [Sense of Direction] had not appeared.
In the past, whenever she consumed a core, the ability panel would show up in her mind.
Why was it absent this time?
Tu Ran went over her already acquired abilities again, confirming that [Sense of Direction] was truly not among them.
The [Ability Identification] had never made a mistake. Initially, the [Ability Identification] had indeed detected an inner core within the brown bear, but after she consumed it, it disappeared.
Tu Ran suddenly considered a possibility: perhaps the inner core she had ingested did not truly exist.
A chill ran down her spine.
This place was too bizarre, especially with that eerie chant.
The way the alien creatures had suddenly emerged from behind the tree trunks also felt unreal. She hadn’t heard any sounds from behind the trunks, yet these creatures could continuously appear from behind them.
As her confusion deepened, the chant emerged once more.
The sound came from all directions. Tu Ran calmed herself to carefully discern it; even the slight rustling of the wind through the branches of the spruce trees did not escape her ears. Yet she still couldn’t determine from which direction the chant was coming.
As the seconds passed, various forms of alien creatures unavoidably emerged again from behind the trunks.
It seemed as if there was a vast space behind each tree, capable of spewing forth endless alien creatures.
Amid the throng of aliens, Tu Ran accurately spotted the brown bear she had killed earlier. Above its head was an ability panel displaying the words [Sense of Direction].
The scene was identical, like a game where one had to restart endlessly until defeating the final boss.
There was no doubt that the final boss of this game was the one issuing the chant.
The aliens before her were merely the minions created by the boss to confuse the challengers.
Tu Ran chose not to directly use her laser gun to slaughter this group of aliens as she had done in the past. Instead, she resolved to take a different path.
Taking advantage of the moment before the aliens surrounded her completely, Tu Ran activated [Teleportation] weaving between the rhinoceroses and mammoths, leaving the group of creatures far behind.
However, upon reaching the next location, the chant followed closely, and another batch of aliens emerged from behind the tree trunks.
Tu Ran immediately changed her location again.
But that eerie chant clung to her like a stubborn adhesive; no matter how she tried to shake it off, each time she moved to a new spot, a new group of aliens would surround her.
It seemed that running away wasn’t an option either.
Tu Ran sought an alternative method and took out an ultra-high-power flashlight from her space.
As she flipped the switch on the flashlight, the entire forest suddenly lit up as if it were broad daylight, comparable to the effect of the sun rising.
The brightness blinded Tu Ran momentarily, and she hurriedly removed her night vision goggles, allowing her eyes to adjust.
Looking at the forest again, there were no aliens to be found. The spruce trees stood tall and straight, every detail visible, and even the strange chant had vanished.
Indeed, it had all been an illusion, one that only appeared at night.
To verify, Tu Ran turned off the flashlight, and the forest once again plunged into darkness.
Tu Ran closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again, finding only darkness. She strained her ears to listen for any approaching footsteps, but heard none.
After hesitating for a moment, she put on her night vision goggles.
The aliens were drawing closer, already forming a siege around her.
Tu Ran’s heart tightened, and she quickly switched on the flashlight.
In an instant, the light filled the entire forest, and the aliens vanished from sight.
Tu Ran concluded that the creatures only appeared when she wore the night vision goggles.
She realized that she had only worn the goggles during her nighttime outings, and during the previous nights, when she had rested in the trees without wearing them, she had not encountered a scene like today.
But why was it like this? Tu Ran couldn’t figure it out.
However, since she had identified the key issue, she no longer worried about wasting her energy on the minions. She could focus on dealing with the big boss.
