Inside the secret observation post, what the masked people saw was nothing but a flow of shifting blackness.
“Where’s Lin Xiaohe?”
Nuwa: [The Chaotic Region operates under different rules than the outside world. This is all we can see.]
Even Nuwa hadn’t anticipated that a contestant would actually succeed in charging into the wormhole.
This didn’t align with the algorithmic logic at all.
Since things had come to this, everyone could only wait for Lin Xiaohe to come out on her own.
At that moment, Lin Xiaohe was clinging tightly to the tentacle monster’s head.
“Argh! You humans are so annoying!” The tentacle monster sliced off a large chunk of its own head and, with a fwoosh, disappeared into the thick fog.
Lin Xiaohe fell to the ground with a splat.
Fanfan gulped down the gelatinous chunk in one big bite. Unable to digest it and shrink back down, it had to maintain its ten-meter-tall original form, carefully following behind Lin Xiaohe.
The air was filled with a light gray fog. Visibility was less than one meter.
Lin Xiaohe didn’t dare let her guard down. She extended her mental power, probing into the fog.
This time, she could see a little farther ahead.
It was a massive jungle of plants. Everywhere she looked, there were thick, intertwining vines. Some of them glowed with a faint green light. It was quiet and eerily secluded.
Lin Xiaohe lightened her footsteps, stepping onto the humus-rich soil. The ground was bumpy and uneven, and thick aerial roots—taller than Lin Xiaohe herself—appeared here and there.
Fanfan twisted its vines into a seat, gently placed Lin Xiaohe onto it, and moved forward.
With her view raised higher, Lin Xiaohe could see more clearly.
As Fanfan walked, some glowing, fluffy seeds drifted through the air like snowflakes.
One of them, shaped like a dandelion seed, floated lightly down onto Lin Xiaohe’s shoulder.
It was fuzzy, and its soft glow pulsed rhythmically, brightening and dimming like it was breathing.
A thought crossed Lin Xiaohe’s mind. Well, since I’m here anyway…
Quick as lightning, she pressed her hand down on the fluff on her shoulder.
Doudou used its own branches to weave a little cage with a lid and stuffed the fluff inside.
Lin Xiaohe knew she was inside the Star Network. Even if she caught this fluff, she couldn’t take it back to the real world with her.
But that was okay. The phrase “since I’m here anyway” was the most powerful reason of all.
The surroundings remained perfectly silent. Lin Xiaohe amused herself. She spotted a large tree bearing red fruits.
The fruits looked like little ginseng babies, with faces and mouths. They were chubby and very cute.
Lin Xiaohe turned into an emotionless fruit-picking machine. With lightning speed, she used both hands to pluck two fruits and stuffed them into her little jar.
The tree, now bare of its fruits, froze for a moment. Then it pulled its roots out of the soil and took off running.
“What are you running for? Let’s just be friends.” Lin Xiaohe shook her head regretfully.
Suddenly, Lin Xiaohe felt a pair of eyes watching her from behind.
She turned, following the sensation, and saw a black beetle lunging out of the gray fog!
“Doudou!”
The green bean shot hit the black beetle, riddling it with holes.
But the beetle’s dying screech summoned even more trouble.
Within the gray fog, dense clusters of red eyes appeared, faintly visible.
There were thousands of black beetles!
Lin Xiaohe’s scalp tingled. Had she just stumbled into a bug nest?
She tossed a tomato. A whole patch of black beetles was blown away.
But the blast also flipped over the black soil. The air filled with the stench of decay.
The light gray fog mixed with the dust. The air itself seemed to grow thick and sluggish.
The fog began to bubble like a pot of water coming to a boil. First one bubble appeared, then a second, then a third. Gurgle, gurgle.
When the bubbles reached a critical point, a small white dumpling crawled out of one of the bursting bubbles.
The dumpling slowly unfolded, like a spread-out white tablecloth. If you looked closely, you could even see crisscrossing blood vessels and pea-sized eyes on its surface.
The white dumpling moved very slowly, drifting back and forth within the white fog.
Lin Xiaohe stared intently at it, but she never expected that, from the fog closest to her, another white dumpling would burst out.
Instantly, she felt a powerful sense of suffocation. The white dumpling had plastered itself over her face!
Panic surged through Lin Xiaohe. She grabbed the skin of the white thing and pulled hard, but it wouldn’t come off.
What made her even more panicked than the suffocation was the feeling of a slightly cool liquid seeping through the pores of her face, trying to get inside.
Fanfan hopped around anxiously beside her.
The white dumpling was too thin, and it was almost seamlessly fused with Lin Xiaohe’s face. Fanfan was afraid of hurting her and didn’t dare make a move.
Sweetie couldn’t help either. Its shield couldn’t peel the white dumpling away from Lin Xiaohe.
In a flash, Little Red dropped a chili pepper at Lin Xiaohe’s feet.
Boom!
The nearby white dumplings were blasted into mist, merging back with the fog.
After the explosion, a pungent, eye-watering pepper smell filled the air.
“Ah-choo!” Doudou immediately shrank down and hid in Lin Xiaohe’s pocket.
Fanfan hadn’t finished digesting yet and could only stand there, toughing it out. “I don’t eat spicy food! And since when do tomatoes go with chili peppers?!”
The white dumpling covering Lin Xiaohe’s face squirmed for a moment, then, as if it had lost all its strength, fell to the ground with a wet smack and lay completely still.
Lin Xiaohe, finally free again, gasped for air.
She glared angrily at the fog around her. The fog, which had been bubbling furiously, seemed to have been extinguished. The bubbles grew fewer and fewer until they disappeared entirely.
The rest of the journey was remarkably quiet and peaceful.
So peaceful that Lin Xiaohe suspected a trap.
She sat nervously in Fanfan’s seat, watching her surroundings warily.
But she didn’t suffer a single attack, all the way until a familiar wormhole appeared before her. Not only that, but the fog around her seemed to be deliberately avoiding her, as if afraid to get anywhere near her.
Lin Xiaohe frowned deeply. She looked back.
At the far end of her vision was nothing but thick fog, but her intuition told her that deep within that fog, something was watching her.
Lin Xiaohe narrowed her eyes, turned her head, and decisively ordered Fanfan to stride through the wormhole.
“Lin Xiaohe is out!”
“School doctor, come and check her!”
As Lin Xiaohe opened her eyes, she saw Cassian and Chu Huaizhi, both looking tense.
“Did I win? Who’s the champion?”
Cassian saw that Lin Xiaohe’s complexion was rosy and let out a long sigh of relief. “You, of course. Your performance throughout the match was obvious to everyone. Even though Nuwa hasn’t announced the final results, after a vote by all the faculty and students of our school, we unanimously agree that you are the well-deserved champion!”
Lin Xiaohe blinked. “So, the 25 billion credits?”
Cassian: “You’ll have to wait until the results for second and third place are out, then you can divide it up.”
Having been tricked by Chu Huaizhi before, Lin Xiaohe had to confirm it several times. “Champions get the right to pick rewards from the resource library, right? I should have that too, shouldn’t I?”
Cassian pounded his chest, guaranteeing it. “Yes! Definitely yes!”
Lin Xiaohe climbed out of the connection pod.
“Congratulations, Lin Xiaohe. We’re from the Federation Security Department. Please cooperate with us for a routine investigation. Relax, it’s just a standard inquiry. Nothing major.”
A team of soldiers in dark blue uniforms appeared in front of Lin Xiaohe.
Lin Xiaohe glanced at Cassian. Cassian said, “It’s nothing. They’ll probably just ask what happened after you entered the wormhole. Just answer truthfully.”
Lin Xiaohe felt relieved. There was nothing about that experience she couldn’t talk about.
She put her hands in her pockets. Her fingertips seemed to touch something. A flash of surprise flickered in her eyes.
