Crack.

Combat boots stepped on the damp, rotten layer of fallen leaves, squeezing out sticky brown juice.

The primeval Old Lin deep in West Mountain had already been completely swallowed by darkness.

The grayish-white thick fog seemed like a living creature, breeding along the uneven ground, climbing all the way up the twisted tree roots, layer after layer wrapping the surrounding canopy.

Roughly a hundred meters ahead, the faint noise of a large group of examinees shoving and running drifted over, occasionally mixed with a few off-key exclamations.

Behind them, however, three people had deliberately slowed their pace, seemingly not interested in fighting for rankings.

Fang Cheng had both hands in the pockets of his training uniform, walking with steady steps, neither fast nor slow.

He lifted his eyes, swept a glance at the rolling fog ahead, turned his head and said:

"Just maintain this distance. I said it before we set out, don’t get greedy for quick gains."

"Let those few hundred people in front clear the mines for us. If there really is any danger, we’ll at least have some buffer to react."

"Got it, got it, steady and methodical, right."

Ma Donghe nodded repeatedly, agreeing with extreme cheerfulness.

Only, at this moment, he looked a little comical.

A burly man of over two hundred jin was hunching his neck, shoulders slumped wide, his right hand gripping the flashlight tight. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The bright beam swept back and forth across the shrubs on both sides, like a dorm supervisor doing late-night checks but scared of running into a ghost.

Walking on the right, Hou Peng was in a completely different state.

This thin, wiry young man always lowered his center of gravity when he moved, toes touching the ground first, then slowly transitioning to the heel, landing in utter silence.

Every ten-odd steps, he would habitually pause for half a second.

Then he would tilt that pair of protruding ears to catch the echoes in the wind, his gaze quickly sweeping around, skimming over the interlaced canopy above.

This practiced set of jungle reconnaissance movements didn’t look like a standard subject you’d learn at the police academy; it carried more of a seasoned Martial World flavor.

The three trailed far behind the main group, following the messy footprints on the ground.

The surrounding fog grew thicker and thicker, nearly condensing into droplets on their eyebrows.

From time to time, the "hoo-hoo" calls of a Night Owl drifted into their ears.

Walking in this fog-choked forest always made one feel like something in the darkness was silently watching them.

Crack!

Hou Peng suddenly stopped, his combat boots grinding a crisp sound out of the leaves.

He snapped around, wrist flipping.

The standard short Dagger was already reversed in his palm, blade pointing straight at a thick Chinese fir that would take three people to encircle.

"Who’s there?"

Hou Peng lowered his voice and barked.

However.

Other than the rustle of wind stirring the leaves, there was no response at all.

Vaguely, only a blurry dark shadow surfaced beside the fir’s trunk, twisting and drifting with the fog.

"Damn it, quit with the spooky crap!"

Ma Donghe swallowed a mouthful of saliva, cursed under his breath to steel his nerves.

He then bent down, dug a fist-sized rock out of the mud, wound up his arm, and hurled it hard at that shadow.

"Bang!"

The rock slammed into the trunk, knocking off a chunk of old bark covered in moss.

It also stirred up a gust of air, blasting the surrounding fog apart.

But behind the tree, aside from a few tangled dead vines, there wasn’t a single figure.

Seeing this, Ma Donghe drew his Dagger and strode forward, craning his neck to carefully look behind the tree.

Still nothing but emptiness.

"This is some real ghost shit..."

He muttered as he sheathed his Dagger.

Whoosh—

A gust of cold wind skimmed along the ground, drilling straight up under the hem of their training uniforms, icy and carrying a chill that cut right into the bone.

"Damn!"

Ma Donghe shuddered, simply clamped the flashlight under his armpit, crossed his arms over his chest, and vigorously rubbed the goosebumps on his arms:

"For fuck’s sake, why is this damned place as cold as a morgue? My bones are freezing."

Beside him, the reed-thin Hou Peng just pulled his collar tighter, not even shivering once.

His cold resistance clearly far outstripped that bull-strong Ma Donghe.

However, he also looked puzzled, turning his head to Fang Cheng:

"Brother Fang, this drop in temperature is too freaky. Even the droplets on the leaves are about to freeze."

Bear in mind, it was early summer now.

Even if West Mountain’s elevation was high and the day-night temperature difference large, at night it should at most be a bit sultry with a hint of coolness.

It absolutely shouldn’t be as cold as a drafty ice cellar.

Fang Cheng stretched out his right hand, opened his palm, feeling the resistance of the fog threading through his fingers, and said calmly:

"It’s not that the temperature’s dropping too fast. It’s that this fog is continually sucking the heat from our bodies."

Hearing this, Ma Donghe nodded, half-understanding, and immediately urged:

"Then let’s move faster. Once we get moving, it won’t feel so cold."

Hou Peng slid his Dagger back into his belt and chimed in:

"Yeah, best to get out of this fog zone before we lose too much body heat."

The three of them continued deeper into the dense forest, boots pressing into the slick mud.

But as they advanced, the environment grew increasingly harsh.

The deep night and ghastly white fog entwined, compressing visibility to the limit.

The high-lumen beam of the tactical flashlight shot out as if it had hit a solid white wall.

The light spot was heavily scattered, dissolving into a hazy chaos a few steps away.

Even though Fang Cheng’s senses were far sharper than ordinary people’s, under this bizarre magnetic field fluctuation and dense fog pressing down together, his vision was still heavily disrupted.

He stopped, closed his eyes, and stirred the True Sun Fire within his Inner World.

When he opened them again, two golden flames suddenly flickered to life in the depths of his pupils.

The white fog before him instantly thinned and turned transparent; the terrain within roughly a hundred meters ahead, even the grain of the bark on dead trees, finally came into sharp focus.