CH 466

466: Moving Towards the Desert

. . . even though it’s a competition, Senior Sister Zhu-en is still a senior. Why don’t you apologize and we’ll all move on. What do you think?”

Zi Cheng looked kindly at Feng Wu. Her proposal was a good one. It would increase her favorability score with Zhu-en while reconciling the two parties. Zhu-en wouldn’t bear a grudge against Feng Wu, so things wouldn’t be an issue for Feng Wu after they left the arena. It was good wasn’t it? And all Feng Wu had to do was apologize.

Neither parties would suffer a big loss and there wouldn’t be any hurt feelings. She never expected to encounter disagreement from Feng Wu though.

“I did nothing wrong; I won’t apologize. No one here is special and everyone is an opponent.” Feng Wu blinked and replied with a straight face.

“You’re right Xiao Wu. I support you!” Ink didn’t want Feng Wu to suffer under Zhu-en’s anger. It was obvious Feng Wu hadn’t done anything wrong, so there was no reason for her to apologize.

“Flower, let’s go.” Feng Wu ignored Zi Cheng’s group and called her friend to leave. Promptly enough, the Sister Alpaca pulled her and Ink away.

Zi Cheng looked on in disbelief as Feng Wu and Ink left. They actually left! Without so much as a by your leave!

It had been a long time since anyone treated Zi Cheng this way. She stood unbelieving for a moment. Why did Feng Wu reject her proposal? It was beneficial for everyone. Wasn’t Feng Wu afraid of offending a third year?

Did Feng Wu care? This girl didn’t consider things like that. The imaginary line between offending people and not offending them wasn’t something she could read.

“Xiao Cheng! Look at her! She didn’t give us any face at all!” Yifu notched another mark against Feng Wu in her mental book of grievances. One day she was going to collect.

Zhu-en looked gloomily at Feng Wu’s back. Who did that junior think she was? Acting so condescending toward her. Dared to not give her any face at all. Just wait until the challenge was over and they were all outside the arena. She would make sure Feng Wu understood the ramifications of offending a senior sister.

Zi Cheng was uncomfortable with the whole affair as well, but she still tried to comfort Zhu-en with some consoling words. Feng Wu just had a careless temperament and Zhu-en shouldn’t take it to heart. There was no real harm meant and so on and so forth.

Zi Cheng didn’t really care if Zhu-en believed her or not. It was Feng Wu’s decision to offend a senior sister; the girl would have to handle the consequences on her own. Zi Cheng was only a classmate, so all she could do was try to alleviate the situation with a few words.

Feng Wu and Ink ran to the front of the challengers, then sat down and grilled fish and drank fresh fish soup. Zhu-en had already faded from Feng Wu’s thoughts. Unimportant people were like passersby, and Feng Wu rarely spent energy to remember them.

“Xiao Wu, we should be able to reach the desert after today. But there won’t be much water there, so we should make sure we have enough food and water before entering.” Ink came to this conclusion after thinking about their situation.

It wasn’t a big deal to enter the desert one day later. The real difficulty lay in leaving the snowy mountain prepared for the next location.

“Catch fish!” Feng Wu’s eyes were bright when she spoke. She had been in love with eating grilled fish since yesterday.

“Yeah.” Ink replied absentmindedly.

After determining what to do, Feng Wu asked Sister Alpaca to find if there was a frozen lake or something similar nearby.

Sister Alpaca hadn’t been on the mountain long, but she already had a firm grasp of the layout. They found a frozen lake easily under her guidance.

They quickly broke through the frozen surface of the small lake and proceeded to fill their bags with water after catching a bunch of fish. They easily caught fish but it took them a long time to prepare their catch. Ink spent half the day roasting everything over the fire.

There was a lot of fish to cook but Feng Wu couldn’t help, so Ink was left to do all of it on his own. By the time he finished and they managed to pack everything away, it was already noon.

Sister Alpaca carried them down the mountain. From their vantage point, they could see the vast desert ahead. It was so unbelievable. The mountain was directly connected to the desert, truly worthy of being a virtual world.

While Feng Wu and Ink were gathering food, Zi Cheng’s group had rushed ahead. Zhu-en didn’t want to stay with Zi Cheng so they came to an agreement that she would part ways and each person would take a different path.

Zi Cheng didn’t object to the idea. She was not familiar with Zhu-en and didn’t want to risk someone stabbing her in the back.

On the other hand, Yifu was reluctant to let Zhu-en leave them. She and Zhu-en had bonded really well over shared commiseration about Feng Wu. As the saying went: an enemy of an enemy was a friend.

Other than Zi Cheng’s group, many others rushed from behind and entered the desert. This included Ming Xi, who had gone in along with Tian Ya.

Luis, Gerasi and Elena were approaching the base of the mountain as well. Feng Wu and Ink had fallen to the end of the pack.

Feng Wu didn’t know this, but even if she did, she wouldn’t have cared. She and Ink had already decided to enter the desert tomorrow anyway. They weren’t in a hurry and were slowly taking their time descending the mountain. It would be easy to get lost in the desert, so the first to enter wouldn’t necessarily be the first to leave. Other people also knew this, but the opportunity to enter early was too good to lose.

As more and more people poured into the desert, the number of those on the mountain dropped.

The next day, before dawn, Sister Alpaca took Ink and Feng Wu into the desert.

They put their thick clothes and heavy shoes away as these were inappropriate for the desert. The sled wasn’t usable anymore either without the snow. Feng Wu ended up riding on Sister Alpaca while Ink pulled them forward.

Ink was in charge of navigating and reading the large and complicated map. They couldn’t afford to make any mistakes; even a little error could mean being stuck in the desert. Ink felt better taking care of it himself; if left to Feng Wu, he was afraid they’d end up in a ditch or worse.

Unlike Feng Wu, Ink was able to quickly analyze the map and find the most efficient route for them to take.

The two people and one alpaca went deep into the desert.