Fang Zhen slowed down.
Faintly, he saw the light of torches about two hundred ters ahead.
He stopped, and Avera hopped off the front seat.
Fang Zhen took out a pair of binoculars and peered toward the dots of firelight ahead.
In the magnified view, he saw seven or eight people, dressed mainly in sea-blue, waiting before a cliffside cave.
The central figure of the group was a man of about forty, wearing a blue coronet and dressed head-to-toe in sea-blue. He was standing motionlessly at the cave's entrance, waiting.
The cliffside cave looked like the horizontally split maw of a beast, ready to swallow a person whole at any mont.
Fang Zhen lowered the binoculars and handed them to Avera.
Avera took them, her curiosity piqued. She looked through them, and an expression of surprise blood on her face—not because of the people holding torches, but because of the binoculars themselves.
"It's the Sea Tide Family. They ca straight here after getting on the island," Avera said, her tone turning grave.
Fang Zhen wasn't surprised.
After he and Avera had shaken off the Lei Ming Family, they hadn't co imdiately to wait at Anlon Lie Feng's burial ground. They had anticipated that they would run into others from the Thirteen Families.
An early encounter would be a bad thing. Starting a conflict now would just play into soone else's hands.
"The man in the middle is Connor Hai Chao. He inherited the Sea Tide Family's ability," Avera said. "The Sea Tide Family's Crystal Bone ability stirs the flow of energy within a certain area. When he first uses it, it's nothing special—looks quite ordinary, in fact. But the energy flow grows stronger and stronger, until it's like an ocean tide."
"Once it's fully deployed, the resulting Energy Tide is even stronger than the Lei Ming Family's lightning strike ability."
"Especially in a relatively enclosed environnt, Connor Hai Chao can even make everyone in the entire area experience energy suffocation."
Fang Zhen nodded slightly.
'This kind of enemy is tricky.' He was like one of those opponents in Martial Arts who grows stronger the longer you fight. If you can't secure a swift victory in the early stages, the rest of the battle becos incredibly difficult.
"What do we do? It's not ti yet, and Connor Hai Chao is waiting for the forbidden ground to open naturally. With him guarding it, we'll have a hard ti getting past," Avera said with a frown.
"Charging in head-on isn't worth it. Fighting the Sea Tide Family will just play into soone else's hands," Fang Zhen said. "You know a lot about the Isle of Rest, don't you? Is there another way into the forbidden ground?"
"There is..." Avera hesitated for a mont. "But we might not be able to make it inside."
"The Land of Rest has a Path of the Dead, which is an alternate route. But we might encounter ghosts inside."
"I'm powerless against ghosts, and they have a chance of turning aggressive. If we don't have a way to deal with them, we'll be srized and wander the Path of the Dead until our physical bodies starve to death."
Fang Zhen said, "I might have a way to deal with ghosts, though I'm not certain it will work."
"If we can fall back, then it's worth a try."
"You have that kind of ability?" Avera was a little surprised. "It seems I've underestimated you."
"Alright. In that case, let's take on the Path of the Dead."
Fang Zhen and Avera changed directions and headed for another location.
He drove the motorcycle, but Avera didn't get on, jogging alongside it instead.
Soon, they entered a dark, dense forest.
The trees in this forest were different from those by the lake, growing in bizarre shapes like the strange, twisted pines of the mountains.
Under the night sky, the dense woods were full of whirling, ghostly shadows, like the outstretched arms of countless hags.
Fang Zhen and Avera moved through the woods.
For so unknown reason, Fang Zhen had the faint but persistent feeling of being watched.
His brow furrowed slightly behind his iron mask.
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