Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Mo Ka Forest

Ling Mo immediately stored the vegetable basket into pocket space and ran in the opposite direction without looking back.

She didn’t want to meet anyone. She didn’t need help, didn’t want to help others, and definitely didn’t want to be used as a scapegoat or a shield.

Not long after she left, two men emerged from the grass. Behind them trailed five or six people with vacant, sluggish expressions.

If Ling Mo had seen them, she would’ve recognized them as the group she’d run into by the stream yesterday.

“Looks like someone got here first,” the mild-looking man said, studying the pits scattered across the ground.

The other man drove his fist into a nearby tree. “If I find out who did this, I won’t let him off!”

A flash of coldness crossed the mild man’s eyes, but his voice stayed gentle. “Forget it. This place isn’t worth anything now. We need to move. The game’s already more than halfway over—we can’t waste time.”

Ever since everyone learned points in the vegetable basket could be stolen, plenty of people had suffered for it.

After robbing someone’s vegetable basket and transferring the points away, thieves would sometimes even return the basket—so the victim could keep collecting ingredients and earning more points, only to be robbed again later. Over and over.

The victims understood exactly what was happening. But they had no way out. If they gave up and quit, they would immediately lose their qualification.

And they still clung to hope—thinking that next time they’d go farther, hide better, and it wouldn’t happen again.

That hope was exactly what got them harvested like chives, time after time.

Meanwhile, one of the parrots Ling Mo had sent out returned.

It was the same one that had begged her for help before—and the smartest of the flock.

The parrot let out a sharp call, then shot off in a specific direction.

Ling Mo followed, arriving in a stretch of forest she’d never visited before.

To someone without wilderness experience, every patch of forest looked the same. That was why she’d never dared stray too far from the stream—she’d been terrified of losing her way back and missing the Silver Moon Fish.

The parrot landed on a tree branch and called out, “Here. Food.”

Ling Mo stepped closer, suspicion sparking. She knocked on the trunk.

Hollow.

She remembered watching documentaries where squirrels stored food in trees for winter. Did the animals in Mo Ka Forest do the same?

She thought of that brown shadow she’d seen flash past earlier.

There was only one way to know.

She pulled an electric saw out of pocket space, picked a spot, and cut into the trunk.

The moment the opening broke through, nuts poured out like floodwater—hammering down on her before she could react.

Ling Mo hit the ground hard.

“Ugh…” She pushed herself up, sore all over, rubbing the swelling bump on her head. On the forest floor lay chestnuts bigger than fists and a scatter of other nuts.

It hurt like hell.

It was also incredible.

She scooped everything into pocket space, then leaned in and collected the remaining nuts inside the hollow.

The parrot flapped once and said, “More.”

Then it flew to another tree.

This time, Ling Mo didn’t bother with the saw. After confirming the trunk was packed, she used mental power paired with pocket space to pull everything out cleanly.

She cleared more than ten trees that way before the parrot finally returned to her side, looking satisfied, as if it had run out of stashes to show her.

Ling Mo rewarded it with a huge chestnut, then stored it back into pocket space.

She scanned the surroundings—and something bright white caught her eye.

Up close, it was smooth as polished jade, shaped oddly like a brain.

She scanned it with the learning machine.

White Jade Brain. Named for its white-jade surface and brain-like shape. A rare fungus found only deep within Mo Ka Forest. Extremely high medicinal value.

Two things landed like stones in her mind.

First: it was valuable. The learning machine had never described any ingredient she’d found as having “medicinal value.”

Silver Moon Fish and Crystal Fruit had healing effects, sure, but their descriptions read like food. White Jade Brain sounded like an herb—medicine first, ingredient second.

Second: deep within Mo Ka Forest.

She hadn’t realized she’d wandered that far in.

Deep forest meant danger. The sensible move was to leave—immediately.

But as she stared at the White Jade Brain in her hand, she hesitated.

She’d gathered plenty of food since the game began. This was the first time she’d seen anything that might qualify as true medicinal material.

Ling Mo tightened her weed cloak.

Big rewards came with big risks. With mental power, she could detect movement early. And if things went truly bad, she could always hide in pocket space.

So she began combing the area—scooping up every White Jade Brain she could find, along with anything else that caught her eye. If it existed in her line of sight, it went into pocket space.

When she got hungry, she pulled out a boxed meal, ate a few quick bites, and kept going. She even collected stones off the ground without thinking twice.

Oddly enough, she didn’t run into danger—only brushed past other players several times.

Once she’d stripped the area of most of its White Jade Brain, she checked the time and started heading back toward the outer forest.

By the time the sun lowered, she still hadn’t found a good place to hide. And as darkness crept in, her mental power kept catching the movement of other creatures.

Ling Mo didn’t hesitate. She slipped into pocket space.

She meditated for two hours to recover her mental power, then got to work.

She’d collected plenty today, but she hadn’t fed anything into the vegetable basket for points. Everything had gone into pocket space.

When she checked the vegetable basket, the point total hadn’t changed much since yesterday—and her rank display had vanished entirely. It looked like only the top ten could see their ranking.

To test it, she started tossing ingredients in again.

After a long while, the number finally reappeared: 10.

So her guess was right. Only the top ten could see their placement.

Ling Mo stopped immediately. She didn’t need to climb higher—she just needed to stay within the top ten.

Behind her, she still had about half of today’s haul left.

With mental power and pocket space working together, she could gather as fast as any seven- or eight-person team. If she could see it, it was already hers.