Chapter 161: Wife Is Still Alive!

After a surge of intense joy, Lin Zhe felt as though a massive bucket of ice-cold water had been poured directly over his head!

A Grade-B dungeon, the Bloodthirsty Vine Forest—such an extraordinarily high level. If Yanyan and Yunduorou had unwittingly stepped into it when the dungeon world first descended... Lin Zhe's breath caught, and he didn't dare to imagine any further.

In that moment, a fleeting thought even crossed his mind—
How wonderful it would have been if inspecting these dungeon entrances had ended in disappointment, just like the hundreds of previous ones!

He would rather have found no news related to Yu Yan and her daughter than face the cruel reality that they had likely perished.

Yet, this cowardly thought was quickly cast aside by him.
What if Yu Yan and her daughter were still alive, but lost their last shred of a chance at survival simply due to his hesitation? If that happened, he would never forgive himself for the rest of his life! Lin Zhe took a deep breath and turned to look at his teammates.

"You all know what my goal is."
"Today, I have found my goal, and I am bound to leave through this entrance. But there is no need for you to take this risk with me. If you..."
"What are you saying, Boss?"

Guo Wei stood up and glared angrily at Lin Zhe. "I've followed you for so long; wherever the Boss goes, I go, no questions asked! When you say things like that, are you trying to ditch me? Do you want a wife and no brothers now, huh?"
"And me!"
"Boss, don't even think about leaving us behind."

Zhai Wenshan didn't speak, but he resolutely stood up, expressing his stance through actions rather than words.
Even Rong Qingtao and the other four silently got up and stood behind Zhai Wenshan.

Lin Zhe was deeply moved, and somewhat surprised.
Aside from him, there were eleven people in the team in total.
Six of them had accompanied him all the way through hardships, while the other five had joined halfway through after crossing paths in a dungeon. They got along well, and since they didn't know where else to go, they had temporarily followed him. It was somewhat normal for Guo Wei and the others to be willing to take risks with him.

The choice made by Rong Qingtao and the four others, however, was rather difficult to comprehend.
Lin Zhe knew he was not some chosen son of heaven or the protagonist of a novel.
The trope of unleashing an overwhelming aura of dominance that caused all directions to submit simply did not exist!

They were merely strangers who happened to cross paths, and the fact that Rong Qingtao and the five of them were willing to team up with him to clear dungeons had already struck him as slightly bizarre. Now, they were actually willing to disregard the danger and preferred to help him hunt down another twelve Grade-5 dungeon monsters rather than choose to directly leave the dungeon?

One had to realize that these were a full twelve Grade-5 monsters!
Think about how easily he had obliterated the Grade-5 bloodthirsty vine just moments ago—that was entirely thanks to elemental opposition and the power of the formation array.

Relying solely on their team's average strength, which was not even quite Grade-3, it was actually extremely difficult to kill any Grade-5 monster, even the weakest one. As for the Blazing Fire Array, given his current abilities, he could only set it up twice a day; any more than that would easily damage his foundation.

"Uncle Tao, there's a question I've held in my heart for a long time."
"Today, I must get it cleared up."
"Otherwise, I'd rather you all leave this dungeon right now and stop continuing to take risks by following me..."

"There's no need to ask."
Before Lin Zhe could finish, Rong Qingtao interrupted him with a faint smile. "I know what you want to ask. Little Sun, among all of us here, you are the one who had the most contact with and the deepest understanding of that female benefactor who saved you."
"Why don't you tell Little Lin what our situation is?"

"Mn."
Sun Ruohua gently nodded, holding Huanhuan as she stepped forward a couple of paces. "Little Lin, it's like this."

Sun Ruohua recounted the events in detail: how they had encountered Yu Yan and her daughter, and how the mother and daughter had saved them. Yu Yan had even given her a wind-attribute spirit fruit, allowing her to instantly acquire a powerful wind-attribute superpower. She had even effortlessly slaughtered a peak Grade-6 Golden-Eyed Alligator right in front of all of them!

Every single detail was explained with crystal clarity.
At the end, Sun Ruohua asked, "Little Lin, is the sweetheart you're looking for actually in her thirties, traveling with a daughter in her early teens? Yet she looks remarkably young, probably only in her early twenties."

Lin Zhe: "..."
He was still in a daze, unable to fully process it.
The information Sun Ruohua had revealed was simply too insane and too hard to believe.

So, while he had been fighting bloody battles all the way and searching for Yu Yan and her daughter, had they actually grown this powerful? They were capable of saving so many people inside a Grade-A dungeon and casually giving away precious wind-attribute spirit fruits of Grade-4 and above.

As for slaying a peak Grade-6 Golden-Eyed Alligator, that was even more unimaginable.

"Yanyan does indeed look much younger than her actual age; she appears very youthful."
"Duoduo is twelve... No, now that August has passed, she should be thirteen."
"That settles it, then."

Sun Ruohua breathed a sigh of relief. "The big sister who saved us is named Yu Yan, and she has always called her daughter Duoduo. I suppose there couldn't possibly be such a coincidence in this world that another pair of mother and daughter happen to share both these names, with their ages and everything else matching up perfectly."

"After we parted ways with our benefactor, we went through some experiences and developed an extremely poor impression of certain bases."
"So we didn't want to join any base, and having no idea what to do next, we could only aimlessly choose some low-level dungeons to wander through."
"Then we met you, and by some incredible coincidence, you happened to be our benefactor's sweetheart!"

"And you've never given up on searching for her."
"I don't know what Uncle Tao, Xiaoyi, and Xue'er have in mind, but my life was saved by our benefactor. I don't have much faith in anyone else anymore, so from now on, I just want to follow our benefactor and do whatever she tells me to do."
"My old Hu always listens to me, and he fully supports my decision."
"But searching for our benefactor in this vast sea of people is easier said than done, so..."

"So you plan to follow me all the way until we find your benefactor?" Lin Zhe took over the sentence.

Seeing Sun Ruohua nod sincerely, Lin Zhe felt somewhat on the verge of breakdown. When he looked at Rong Qingtao and the other two, he realized the sentiment expressed on their faces was pretty much the same—they all wanted to throw in their lot with his wife, but couldn't find where she was.

Hence, they had no choice but to "condescend" to join him first.
What should one do when their impression of a frail and helpless wife suddenly turns into a powerhouse that others are desperately eager to pledge allegiance to? Waiting online, quite urgent! If not for the fact that Lin Zhe also found it highly unlikely for another pair of mother and daughter to share those exact names with all their ages matching, he would never have been able to believe that the woman Sun Ruohua described was actually his darling wife!

Hadn't his wife always been soft, cute, and utterly adorable?
How could slaying a peak Grade-6 Golden-Eyed Alligator be like taking a leisurely stroll, without even a single scratch on her skin—and reportedly, this incident had happened two months ago? What was he doing at that time? It seemed he couldn't even defeat a Grade-3 initial-stage dungeon monster.

Lin Zhe couldn't help but feel a twinge of embarrassment.
Following that embarrassment came a wave of insecurity and faint-heartedness: could he ever assert his husbandly authority in their household again?

Cough, no!
What on earth was he thinking? A massive surge in his wife's strength was a good thing!
It meant her survival capabilities had skyrocketed, and that he and his wife would eventually be reunited.
The possibility that he hadn't dared to dwell on before had now dropped to its lowest probability.

Moreover, since Sun Ruohua and the others had seen his wife elsewhere two months ago, it meant she had successfully cleared out of the Grade-B Bloodthirsty Vine dungeon near their home. Or perhaps, due to some other reason, she had never entered this fatal dungeon inside the elevator.

Regardless of which scenario it was, his wife and Yunduorou were both alive and well, and that mattered more than anything else!