When system cheat becomes rampant!

Chapter 232 The Green Tree in the Forest

Tang He gritted his teeth, wanting to say something, but then deflated, swallowing his words.

He wasn't a fool, he understood that Xiang Beifei's decision was the correct one.

This withered forest was inherently eerie, those ghostly entities were formidable, and his school's team had met with disaster. Xiang Beifei's team was likely no match for these creatures either.

The priority was to leave this area, find a place where a Teleportation Talisman could be used, and then seek help from the referees, letting them deal with it.

The group immediately started to backtrack along the way they had come.

"That blonde woman was very odd, named Shi Renmei. At first, we thought she was a pioneer, but her clothes didn't seem quite right for one. She claimed she was from another department of the pioneers. Initially, our team leader didn't trust her and planned to leave right away, but soon we discovered that our SOS Talismans and Forfeit Talismans had become ineffective and couldn't be used."

As they walked, Tang He recounted the events to Xiang Beifei and his team.

"And then?"

"We were very puzzled, but Shi Renmei said that the area we were in had a very strong interference magnetic field, causing the talismans to malfunction. We would have to leave that area to use them. So, we followed her instructions and moved forward, until we ended up here. We aren't very clear about what this forest signifies, but soon after, a bunch of terrifying people suddenly appeared all around us. They were wearing various strange clothes, appeared to have sustained severe injuries, and then—"

At this point, Tang He's eyes showed fear again: "Tentacles emerged from their bodies, reaching to grab us. We had no way to resist."

"You trusted a strange woman that easily?" Xiang Beifei asked.

Tang He shook his head and said, "At first, we didn't, but she knew a lot. Whether it was about the Freshmen Competition or some matters regarding the alliance, she spoke with precision and seemed to know even more than we did. She said she had graduated from Qingzhou University and was carrying out missions in the external wilderness. Her current mission was to patrol that area to make sure the freshmen didn't wander in, otherwise their talismans would fail. Just as we found the problem ourselves, we believed her."

Xiang Beifei understood.

This "Shi Renmei" with Ghost Mustache of Remnant Visage had first blocked off that area and then appeared to remind Qingzhou University's team, leading the students to discover the issue with the Forfeit and Teleportation Talismans, thus gaining their trust.

However, what puzzled him was, if this person who had attacked them was indeed Ghostly Visage, how had Ghostly Visage suddenly become so articulate in speech?

He remembered the baby he'd encountered previously who, aside from crying and drooling, couldn't say anything else. The other corpses possessed by the Ghostly Visage were battered and broken, there were ones running around clutching their heads, and the words they spoke were screams for help and the like from before a person's death.

And that Shi Renmei could speak so much?

"Did that Shi Renmei have any fatal wounds on her?" Xiang Beifei asked.

"No, she just looked like a very normal woman, slender," Tang He said.

"Then, was there anything off about her? Or to put it another way, what about her made the deepest impression on you?" Xiang Beifei continued to ask.

After a moment of recollection, Tang He replied somewhat awkwardly, "She... she had a very slender waist."

"Huh, so all you cared about was checking her waist?" Long Guocheng sneered.

Tang He replied nervously, "Not exactly, I just felt that her waist didn't look quite human. If I really had to describe it, she looked rather like a gourd."

Xiang Beifei pondered, but at that moment, Li Zimu suddenly alerted them, saying, "There's a moving green dot over there!"

Everyone cast their gaze to the left and indeed saw the previously drab trees in the distance continuously interchanging, turning green and then yellow again.

Based on their experiences, this indicated that someone was running through the forest.

Sure enough, a figure soon leaped onto the treetops, showing half of his head.

He had also seen Xiang Beifei and his group and shouted urgently, "Help!"

It was a person whose face was smeared with mud, making it impossible to discern his appearance, but when he saw Xiang Beifei and his companions, he quickly ran towards them.

However, he hadn't taken two steps when he suddenly let out a cry of horror, as if he had stepped into a pitfall, and fell down again.

"There's someone else!" Long Guocheng said.

"Is it one of your teammates?" Ma Ziqian asked, looking at Tang He.

"That voice is Zhang Shu," Tang He said urgently.

Xiang Beifei, however, had seen the system interface above the person's head, and as he scanned the surroundings, he didn't detect that distinctive aura. It was just about a few dozen meters away, straight ahead and not really a detour. After a moment of thought, he said, "Let's go have a look."

Li Zimu commanded the wind and leaped forward swiftly. The green dot started moving slower and slower until it stopped moving altogether.

"It's over there."

They soon arrived next to the greening trees. With caution, they carefully jumped down the dense branches, vigilantly surveying the area.

But there was no one to be found in the forest!

"That's weird, wasn't the person just here?"

Ma Ziqian looked around the forest in confusion. His figure flickered as he dashed out, quickly searching the area within a fifty-meter radius. The trees changed, mimicking his movements, turning yellow and green quickly.

But no trace of anyone was found!

"Wasn't that person here just now?" Ma Ziqian returned and asked, perplexed.

The trees of the Withered Forest would turn green when someone approached, clearly indicating a living person was present, but for some inexplicable reason, after they started to pursue, this person simply vanished.

"There's blood here!"

Long Guocheng suddenly exclaimed.

Exposed on the ground ahead was a bare rock, surrounded by yellow weeds and thorns. Splattered on the rock was a pool of blood, shockingly vivid—as if someone had just sprayed the blood onto it.

The blood showed a splattered pattern, but what was strange was that the weeds around the stone bore no traces of blood. Instead—

These weeds had flecks of both yellow and green.

"Why do these grasses look so strange?" asked Long Guocheng.

Like the trees here, the grasses were all withered, dry, and devoid of moisture, their leaves shriveled, and their stems weak and thin, seemingly utterly lifeless.

Yet bizarrely, some of the leaves by the rock seemed to suddenly flourish with green, turning lush and vibrant!

It was as if these leaves had grown for several months, so green they were startling!

Long Guocheng moved closer to the stone, but soon, the grass and trees near the rock began to revive; the shriveled stems filled with moisture and life anew.

Whenever someone approached, the withered plants would turn green, and this held true for the grass as well.

"Step back." Xiang Beifei said.

Long Guocheng stepped back from the rock, and just after moving two meters away, the rejuvenated plants withered again, but those few green leaves remained lush.

"Could it be an illusion? Are those green leaves around the rock green because they're stained with blood?" Ma Ziqian asked.

A pool of blood was on the rock, and blood would certainly splatter off it. But when the splattered blood landed on the surrounding withered grass, it seemed to be absorbed by the grass, causing several leaves to become exceptionally green; they continued to grow even without anyone nearby.

Xiang Beifei extended his hand and waved out a burst of Spiritual Power. The Spiritual Power swept forward and cut off a withered grass; when it touched the grass, there was no return to greenness. But when the withered grass fell onto the bloodstain on the rock, it immediately transformed.

The yellowed leaves appeared to absorb the blood, becoming incredibly green in an instant!

Everyone looked at one another, feeling a chill that wasn't from the cold.

Since entering this Withered Forest, every tree they approached would come back to life, as if awakened by them. But now, seeing the withered grass turn green upon touching fresh blood, everyone suddenly felt uneasy all over.

"Could it be that these trees are turning green due to the attraction of our blood?"

Xi Keyao glanced at the tree to her left, which had grown lush because she was close to it. The wind blew and the leaves rustled gently, creating a pleasant scene.

But at that moment, this vitality seemed strangely eerie in her eyes!

She quickly moved closer to Xiang Beifei, and the tree that had been flourishing instantly withered again.

"It's possible."

Xiang Beifei pondered deeply. He had no recollection of such a Withered Forest, and surprisingly, there was no record of it in the books.

"There are green leaves here too."

Long Guocheng, with sharp eyes, quickly spotted more traces ahead.

They rounded a tree and saw green and vibrant leaves at a narrow pass ahead, with signs of being trampled. Judging from the distribution of these green leaves, it seemed as if someone had just passed by, and then inadvertently—

Dropped blood on the grass!

Following the path where the leaves turned green, they walked forward and, after rounding a few trees, found a short pine tree no more than two meters tall, standing out meekly in the forest.

But that pine tree was still green!

"What's going on? I remember that trees would only turn green when approached within a meter," said Long Guocheng in astonishment.

They all stood on this side, and the trees within a meter had turned green. But by all logic, the pine tree, five or six meters away, was supposed to be yellowed.

Yet it was still green!

Most peculiar was that only this pine tree was green while the other trees around it withered, which made the pine tree stand out strikingly.

The direction of the green grass on the ground also extended right beneath this pine tree and then disappeared.

A similar thought suddenly emerged in everyone's minds, a notion that seemed absurdly bizarre to them.

"I can't be the only one thinking this, can I?" Ma Ziqian couldn't help but speak up.

However, as they pondered, the pine tree slowly withered, becoming just like the surrounding trees, as if it had lost its vitality in an instant.

The leaves of the grass that had turned green along the way also yellowed.