Chapter 2169: Chapter 2169: Narrow Escape from Death
Xu Huo was imrsed in a vast black ocean.
He didn’t know when he woke up, or if he ever truly awoke. He just found himself subrged in dim water from the mont he regained consciousness. Tools, instrunts, and characteristics were unusable, the library couldn’t be summoned, and he was completely unable to sense spatial rays or ti force. He could only see a faint light seemingly shining from above his head.
Everything around was pitch black, and being underwater, he couldn’t breathe. Instinctively, he desperately swam upwards, but the water’s surface, which seed just a few ters away, always remained out of reach. So he repeatedly drowned during his ascent, and each ti he awoke from drowning, the distance to the water’s surface seed to have increased.
At first, he could rember how many tis he had drowned, but as the line between waking and sleeping blurred, his consciousness began to muddle. It felt as though he was sinking into Shen Yuan, and the weak light from the surface turned from a patch to a cluster, then from a cluster to a strand, and finally like a thread dimly visible in the water, so feeble it seed it might disappear at any mont due to the flowing water.
Throughout the cycle of drowning, he clearly realized that he had fallen into Dou Shengnan’s trap. The last black light that entered his eyes was likely her spiritual power, similar to the tricks used by the shadow personality in Zone 01. He still didn’t understand how it was done, but he couldn’t summon his spiritual world and could only die over and over again.
It’s unclear how long this went on, but eventually, no light was cast from above, and it seed he sank to the bottom. The realistic water pressure accompanied by a sense of suffocation assailed him. He coughed violently, continually expelling air as if squeezing out the last bit of oxygen from his body... Gradually, his coughing frequency decreased, his body’s tremors lessened, and the flowing water surrounded him, holding his body aloft, slowly tipping him toward the bottom...
Xu Huo understood that if he drowned again this ti, he might truly never wake up, but the fatigue from death numbed his mind and body, pushing him to instinctively choose the easier path...
A small hand suddenly grabbed his own, pulling him away from the bottom.
The sense of oppression and suffocation gradually diminished. With external help, Xu Huo felt a lightness throughout his body and his mind cleared sowhat. The light from the water’s surface began to shine through again. He saw his childhood persona above, holding a black cube. The black cube carried the childhood persona, the childhood persona carried him, slowly swimming towards the surface.
Was that sothing he had stolen from Dou Shengnan’s spiritual world? He hadn’t expected it to co in handy here...
The mont he erged from the water, Xu Huo was fully awake and understood his current situation in just a second.
The black vortex he fell into was likely a spatial transmission channel, and as for where he was transmitted to, it was most likely random. His luck was both good and bad; good because there was no one around when he erged, bad because he fell and broke so bones, ending up buried among various toxic fungi.
Indeed, he was now like a human-shaped protrusion growing out of a wild fungus cluster. The hardy fungi treated him as nutrients; every bit of exposed skin was now occupied by fungi. The fungi’s mycelia and toxins devoured and destroyed his muscles and ridians. If it weren’t for the King Fungus within him still tenaciously growing, he might have beco fungial nourishnt even if the fall hadn’t killed him.
The area was a jungle, filled with various mutant plants. Likely due to their toxicity, even mutant animals avoided this place, and there were no signs of human activity.
But beside him lay several withered flowers.
The childhood persona appeared beside him, crouched at his head, watching for a while before reaching over and pulling mushrooms off his eyelids, nostrils, and mouth.
"Thank you." Xu Huo finally managed to open his eyes and speak, finally able to breathe normally, "No wonder I kept drowning; my nose was blocked."
The childhood persona frowned at him, seemingly disapproving of his joke.
"Surviving a calamity and falling into such a remote place, and for once not headfirst, isn’t that worth laughing about?" Xu Huo spoke and suddenly coughed, vomiting a few mouthfuls of black blood amidst the choking and gagging. Once his breathing stabilized, the childhood persona lifted the prop on him, indicating it was the prop that saved him.
The passive defense prop on him had been mostly depleted by Dou Shengnan, and he wasn’t sure which one had activated to save his life.
"How long has it been?" Xu Huo felt no sensation throughout his body, and his head couldn’t be lifted, so he asked his childhood persona to help find so food and assess his physical state. Such a weakness was likely not just due to injuries and fungi.
The childhood persona improvised nearby and stuffed so mushrooms into his mouth.
The taste of poisonous mushrooms was nothing pleasant, but it was better than starving to death.
"The mushrooms have grown so big; it probably hasn’t been a short ti." Xu Huo remarked as he chewed, "Soone’s been here."
The childhood persona suddenly turned its head to look beyond the mushroom field, then disappeared into the ground.
Footsteps approached, belonging to a youth wearing a simple Protective Suit. He ca to Xu Huo’s side, carefully observed his condition, then leaned in to check if he was still breathing. After a while, he exclaid, "You’re alive? I thought you were a dead man."
He said this and poked Xu Huo, finding no reaction as Xu Huo kept his eyes closed, then seed to suddenly understand, "Had I known you were alive, I’d have taken you back. It’s been days without food; even a living person could starve to death."
"eting
is your luck; few dare co here."
The youth muttered to himself while chopping so branches nearby to make a stretcher. He struggled to place Xu Huo on it, then dragged him away. Every few steps, he would stop to sprinkle insect and beast repellent. They were fortunate enough not to encounter any mutant animals on the way out. Nearing the forest’s edge, the youth t a few acquaintances and asked them to lend a hand in carrying Xu Huo out.
Despite their disdain for the poisonous mushrooms on Xu Huo, they helped switch shifts carrying him, making the task much easier and giving them extra energy to chat and speculate about Xu Huo’s identity.
"We rarely have outsiders here. Could he be a player?"
"Aren’t players supposed to be quite skilled? Besides, they have tickets; if they co, it’s in style, not in such a sorry state. Look at him, not even wearing decent clothes."
"Perhaps he’s a player in distress." Another person said, "I pulled off a few mushrooms, and his clothes are different from what we have here."
Upon hearing this, the others stopped guessing and angrily said, "You have no idea what kind of poisonous mushroom it is. What if spores flew out and poisoned us?"
"Don’t we have protective suits?" The person who had removed the mushrooms spoke ekly.
"That doesn’t an you can just pull them off. So mushrooms on people need to be treated with dicine. What if he dies from your randomness? We’d have carried him for nothing."
"Alright, alright... We’re almost to the town. I’ll go to inform the town guards and have them co to register him." Soone quickly ran off.
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