Chapter 67 - 65: Poisonous Fog Spreads, Tallying the Harvest
Although they couldn’t see what was happening inside the mist, a loud, pained shriek from the eagle indicated that the Giant Eagle had been injured after the battle moved to the ground.
But immediately after, a large chunk of bloody flesh covered in dark-red Snake Scales flew out of the mist and slammed onto the ground, accompanied by an agonized roar from the massive snake.
Both sides were severely injured and fighting for their lives...
"Ah, AAAAAHHH!!!"
A member of the group came into contact with the purple mist. The searing pain made him look down, only to see half of his clothes corroded away and his skin ulcerating.
The others were shocked, now noticing that all the weeds and trees touched by the purple mist showed varying degrees of corrosion.
The longer the purple mist lingered, the more obvious the corrosion became!
This was... a poison mist!!!
"Run!"
Fan Kai’s face paled, and he was the first to turn and sprint away.
There was no time to worry about the countless snakes on the ground. If they ran, they might get bitten, but as long as it wasn’t by a venomous one, they had a chance to survive.
But if they didn’t run, contact with the poison mist was certain death!
Even an idiot could make the right choice in that situation.
The other members of the Fighting Club did the same. Minds blank, they instinctively followed Fan Kai and ran for their lives.
Snakes on the ground were trampled underfoot, instinctively striking upwards in response.
The lucky were fast enough to dodge.
The unlucky screamed as they fell, only to be swarmed, bitten, and constricted by more snakes.
Everyone was racing against the poison mist. Behind them, in the Sky Pit, the battle between the Giant Eagle and the Blood Python raged on...
...
"We’re finally back..."
Downstairs from the faculty apartment building, Chen Chong, who was carrying a fish box, and Wang Biao, who had an eagle egg on his back, were panting for breath.
The two had been running all day without a break. They had picked up the pace and hadn’t stopped since they discovered the Stone Claw Eagle had returned to its nest.
"Wang Biao, did you hear anything just now?"
"My lord, I heard nothing."
"That’s strange. I feel like I faintly heard something..."
Chen Chong muttered to himself as he headed upstairs.
On the way back, he kept hearing faint noises coming from the west side of the school.
It sounded like a cry, or maybe a muffled tremor, but it was so faint it felt like an auditory hallucination.
’Was I really just hearing things?’
’Or did I actually hear something, thanks to my beast-like intuition and Perception Ability being sharper than a normal person’s?’
CREAK—
"Brother Chong, you’re finally back! It’s been dark for almost two hours. If you hadn’t come back, I’d have thought an eagle carried you off!"
When the door opened, Xu Jun stared for a moment before breaking into a joke.
"Oh, get lost."
Chen Chong laughed and shot back, squeezing through the door with Wang Biao and the fish box.
Besides Xu Jun and Jia Wen, Shen Xinrou was also in the room. It looked like they were all waiting on the sofa.
Seeing Chen Chong and Wang Biao return, she quickly got up, went to the kitchen, and brought out a large pot of stew.
"Brother Chong, Brother Biao, time to eat."
The stew was made from pheasants and other birds caught in their nets. Though it was a motley mix, the aroma was incredibly appetizing.
"You all waited for us?"
"Yeah."
"You guys could have eaten first, really. There was no need to wait for us."
"No way. Brother Jun said if you didn’t get back soon, we weren’t just skipping dinner—we weren’t going to sleep either. We were all going to go out and search for you until we found you..."
Chen Chong glanced at Xu Jun.
Xu Jun flashed his usual mischievous grin.
Neither of them said a word, but the look they shared spoke volumes.
They weren’t brothers by blood, but their bond was just as strong.
The meal was pleasant, but brief.
Exhausted from the day’s work, Wang Biao and Chen Chong wolfed down their food, making short work of more than half the pot of stew.
"We’ve been running around with the wild rabbits all day. We need to get them out before they suffocate."
Chen Chong said, taking the backpack from Wang Biao.
"Brother Chong, we caught more live wild rabbits?" Xu Jun asked, surprised.
"That’s right. Two of them, in fact—a male and a female!"
Chen Chong grinned and pulled two wild rabbits from the bag. They weren’t quite as lively as they had been that morning, but they were still energetic, a clear sign they were unharmed.
"Does that mean we have a breeding pair? They can have little baby rabbits?" Xu Jun’s face lit up as he hurried over to get a closer look at the two wild rabbits.
"Exactly. Ah Jun, you expanded the bathroom with the Vacant Land Card, right?"
Chen Chong asked, looking at the corner where the enclosure used to be.
"I did. I used both Vacant Land Cards. The bathroom is now about 70 square meters—bigger than a standard two-bedroom apartment. It’s more than enough space for animal enclosures."
Then, as if remembering something, Xu Jun quickly added, "But I only moved the enclosure inside. I didn’t go into your room for the Beast Cage. I figured I’d wait for you to get back and move it yourself, Brother Chong."
Chen Chong just smiled, said nothing, and went straight to his room to carry the Beast Cage with the other wild rabbit into the bathroom.
The bathroom was completely transformed.
Aside from the original tiled walls and floor, the newly added area was identical to the expanded space in the living room—a pale, gray, cement-like material.
The bathroom window was wide open.
An enclosure stood in the corner, where the wild duck was resting, its head drooping by the fence.
Even when someone walked right up to it, it would only lift its head slightly before turning away to go back to sleep.
Clearly, after a few days of being fed and cared for, it had grown accustomed to the people in the apartment and no longer had the skittish reactions it showed on the first day.
It was the same with the wild rabbit. While it was still afraid of humans, shrinking to the back of the cage whenever someone approached, it was at least eating normally.
Considering that different types of animals needed their own space, Chen Chong placed the Beast Cage in the opposite corner, a good ten meters away from the wild duck.
He then placed the two newly caught wild rabbits inside the Beast Cage.
"So now we have three wild rabbits. I hear rabbits can have a lot of litters each year. Does that mean they reproduce really quickly?"
Xu Jun asked with great curiosity, staring at the wild rabbits in the cage.
"That’s right." Chen Chong nodded. "A five-square-meter Beast Cage is fine for one wild rabbit, but it’s a bit crowded for three. I wonder if we’ll be able to get more Beast Cage Cards, or even higher-level Cards of that type."
"Yeah. If worse comes to worst, we’ll just have to build a cage for the wild rabbits ourselves. It’s a shame we’d lose the accelerated growth effect from the Card, though."
"Let’s just leave it for now and keep them like this. We still have fish to put in the pond..."
The group carried the fish box over to the fishpond.
With the experience from sorting their first catch, they worked quickly and finished in no time.
This catch weighed seventy-odd pounds, with over thirty pounds of that being fish suitable for the pond.
Of the remaining forty pounds, half were dead or injured. They would either be fed to the wild duck or eaten by the group.
The other half consisted of swamp eels, loaches, crabs, small carnivorous fish, and river snails.
Much of their first haul of eels, loaches, and crabs had gone to waste simply because there were too many miscellaneous fish to eat in time.
Plus, that kind of catch was a hassle to prepare, so most of it had been fed to the wild duck.
But this time was different. Chen Chong now possessed a Mud Pond Card.
It was perfect for holding the creatures that couldn’t go in the fishpond. And there was also the Incubator Card, which needed to be set up right away...
...