After a few minutes, the cold I felt slowly subsided, and silence filled the surroundings, rain continued and the rustling of the leaves, adding a touch of horror to this dark mountain range.

By now, the sun should also be gone, and the darkness around us had reached its peak, with thunder crackling in the clouds.

"What was that?" Emi asked in a worried voice, without lifting her head.

"How would I know? Just some random animal. After all, we are in the mountains," I replied casually, leaning back on the tree trunk. Hearing my relaxed voice, she finally lifted her head.

When she looked at me, she froze in her place, my hands able to feel how fast her body was turning cold, which almost made me freak out. While I was ready to burn whatever was behind, I saw a horrifying image of a broken skull appearing on the tree trunk. Its hollow eyes were straight into Emi’s eyes.

Seeing it, I quickly pulled Emi’s head down, breaking her eye contact with that skull. As I threw the ball of hellfire behind. I didn’t turn to see if I had hit that skull or not. I simply planned to burn this tree behind me in hellfire. Hoping that the other strange creatures hiding in the forest will stay away from us.

Sure enough, in a few seconds, the entire tree was burning with hellfire. Becoming a purple glowing torch in this dark forest. The hellfire was completely unaffected by the rain; the only downside of using it was that I was feeling a bit cold, which was a good trade-off for protection in this strange forest.

"This tree~ there is a ghost," Emi whispered, her hand tightly holding onto me. I placed my hand on her back and found it covered in sweat. She was seriously horrified.

I was also getting worried about the situation of my grandparents; the only thing I could do was hope.

Well, it wasn’t my first time coming to Wong Zhi Mountain, and I do remember there were legends of a warrior who died after getting entangled by poisonous vines. Everything used to be just a folk story, but now things from stories seem to get real.

I took a deep breath, calming myself. I took a look behind at the giant tree, which was burning under my hellfire. My back was touching its trunk, yet not a single mark of burn appeared on me.

"Don’t worry, all of this will end soon." I placed my hand on her head, not wanting her to attract trouble to herself.

This mountain trip had just begun, and it was already so interesting, I felt like I would need to use that evolution point soon; there wasn’t much time for delay. I don’t know what might suddenly jump out from this forest. It could be a demonic snake, a human-eating tree, or a dragon, and who knows if some lightning descended straight on our heads.

Thunder!

The clouds roared, acknowledging my worries were true. But the reason I was afraid to use that evolution point was that in most of the novels, this process used to be quite painful. So, going through so much pain in the middle of a forest filled with unknown horror was no way a good idea.

Of course, the possibility of evolution being quick and efficient without any torture couldn’t be denied. But from my earlier failure in summoning my undead army, I knew that there were going to be a lot more failures than these novels.

After a little internal debate, I decided to let my thoughts have some rest. While I felt sleepy, as time passed by, there was no sign of a storm coming to an end.

I was getting sleepy, but the fear of something attacking in my sleep was there, stopping me from taking my beauty sleep. Adding to my frustration, Emi was having a great sleep after being scared to death.

This girl had a lot of courage to sleep after seeing something as ugly as that skull. But that was the good thing, I could tell all of it was just a bad dream when she woke up. This way, there would be nothing to explain, or I might have to mock her a bit.

The storm finally came to an end, with morning light illuminating the forest.

I was lying against the charred black tree, with Emi sleeping right above me. While I sat there with red eyes, my body wanted some sleep quite badly. I didn’t even have the strength to enjoy the beauty of nature after the storm passed away.

"Hey, wake up, how long are you planning to sleep for?" I woke her up, wanting to reach the village as soon as possible.

"Huh," she woke up, rubbing her eyes, while sitting on my lap. As her vision cleared up, her eyes were frozen on the charred tree behind me.

"This tree..." She pointed at the tree blankly, but I didn’t want her to stick to the event of the past, so I quickly explained, while throwing her off my lap, "The tree got burned by lightning while you were taking your beauty nap. Luckily, the rain put out the fire in time."

I quickly got up, packing our stuff, getting ready to begin our journey. While I was doing so, she sat there in silence, avoiding all the work effectively.