Chapter 163: The Forest of Mist

Poor Lin Zhe had no idea that while spiritual veins are wonderful, they come with a hidden trap.

Every refined spiritual vein must be recultivated starting from the unranked stage. Furthermore, if the grade of the spiritual material that granted them their supernatural abilities did not exceed the seventh rank, those abilities would be swallowed by the spiritual vein due to the spiritual source being too weak.

The good news was that the spiritual energy within their bodies would not go to waste!

Once a spiritual vein refined the body's spiritual energy, it would gain a certain degree of enhancement.

Take Sun Ruohua, for example. After her third-rank wood-type supernatural ability was refined and absorbed by the blood-vine plant spirit, her plant-spirit enhancer rank directly advanced to the first rank.

Then there was Guo Wei, who also became a first-rank metal-type bloodline enhancer.

In the long run, absorbing and refining the spiritual vein would bring numerous benefits to both Sun Ruohua and Guo Wei. But in the short term, instead of boosting the team's strength as Lin Zhe had expected, the two of them were actually weakened to a certain extent.

We shall leave aside for now just how depressed Lin Zhe felt when he discovered this reality.

Meanwhile, seeing that basically all members of the Fire Phoenix Base had achieved spiritual armor freedom, Yu Yan began organizing them to march toward D-grade dungeons!

Every day, each hunting team was required to enter a D-grade dungeon and bring back the carcass of a spiritual beast of the second rank or higher—this was a mandatory quota for every hunting team. Teams that failed to complete the mission would have their weekly team benefits deducted.

As for the Special Operations Team and the Youth Team, needless to say, they no longer bothered to "play around" in dungeons below the D-grade.

As early as a week or two ago, they had raised the difficulty of clearing dungeons to the D-grade. While the hunting teams marched into D-grade dungeons, they set their sights on C-grade dungeons.

According to plan, in a week, the hunting teams would make their first trial entry into a C-grade dungeon.

Yu Yan's goal was to have all combat team members in Fenghe Village accustomed to the difficulty of C-grade dungeons within three weeks. Only then could she lead everyone to the newly selected base when the fourth week arrived.

Among the three backup dungeon candidates selected last time, the D-grade dungeon "Mirage Sea Horror" was the first to be ruled out.

That left two C-grade dungeons: "Mist Forest" and "Canglan Flame River."

After careful selection, and after leading core members such as Lou Yuhui inside for inspection, Yu Yan finally decided in a meeting on the new base dungeon—"Mist Forest."

Canglan Flame River was actually quite good.

The adjacent dungeons were quite suitable as targets for leveling up, both in terms of level and the dungeon monsters inside.

It was just a pity that Canglan Flame River was not very suitable for living.

The vast majority of it was covered by water bodies, with land occupying only a small fraction, and the attributes of the dungeon monsters were relatively single-themed.

With the dungeon choice finalized, the rest was easy to handle.

While the hunting team members were busy adapting to the intermediate-difficulty dungeons, Yu Yan was not idle either. She led the members of the Special Operations Team and the Youth Team in taking turns entering the "Mist Forest" to scout the environment.

Every dungeon was boundless.

The Mist Forest was no exception.

It consisted of an entire stretch of continuous mountain ranges, and the attributes of the dungeon monsters encompassed all five elements.

Derivative elements such as wind, lightning, ice, light, and darkness were slightly scarcer.

For three full weeks, Yu Yan frequented the dungeon day after day, resting not even for a moment except to eat and sleep. Yet she had only managed to scout the conditions of a tiny patch of mountainous terrain within the "Mist Forest"!

One could easily imagine just how vast this dungeon was.

Fortunately, she had already grown thoroughly familiar with the surroundings of the "Mist Forest" entrance located near Fenghe Village.

Lou Yuhui and the others, who had been constantly by her side, even took time to draw maps and compile a bestiary of monsters.

Every kind of dungeon monster they encountered was clearly marked with its level, attack power, attack skills, and defense power. These firsthand materials would play a tremendous role in the future!

In fact, this had always been one of the duties of the Special Operations Team.

They would scout the conditions inside the dungeon one step ahead of the hunting teams.

Then, they would map out the terrain and compile a monster bestiary within a radius of several hundred kilometers near the entrance of Fenghe Village.

This was to ensure the safety of the hunting team members who would subsequently enter. At present, every D-grade dungeon where hunting team members had entered for trials bore the sweat and blood shed by Lou Yuhui and the others.

"It's finally over!"

The deadline for scouting the "Mist Forest" dungeon, as set in the original plan, had arrived.

Yu Xiaoya fiercely raised her middle finger toward the sky!

She had had enough of the harassment from all sorts of insects inside the "Mist Forest."

If one were to compare it to the environment before the descent of the dungeon world, the Mist Forest was probably like the Amazon River basin rainforest. Except that this forest was far, far larger than the Amazon basin.

The conditions inside were also a thousand times more complex!

The only similarity was that the humid and sultry environment served as the best breeding ground for insect life.

There were blood-sucking leeches disguised as plant roots and leaves, spiders, centipedes, scorpions, and the like, acting completely out of nowhere and impossible to guard against! The only consolation was that, as far as the species encountered so far were concerned, the highest grade did not exceed the third rank.

Meanwhile, the members of the Special Operations Team, including Lou Yuhui, totaled only six people.

Among these six, even the one with the lowest strength, Yu Chengzhe, was a mid-tier third-ranker.

Coupled with the fact that Yu Xiaoya was the team's healer, she was a peak third-rank Water-Light Butterfly bloodline enhancer.

These bugs were not fatal to them.

Yet, as the saying goes, even if they can't kill you, they are still utterly disgusting!

Heaven knows that what Yu Xiaoya hated most were soft, squirming insect-like creatures that loved to arch their backs. Next were all kinds of venomous bugs, and this dungeon happened to feature both in full force.

Yu Yan patted Yu Xiaoya's shoulder, a sympathetic look in her eyes.

As a woman, she knew Yu Xiaoya's feelings better than anyone.

Before the descent of the dungeon world in her past life, she had also been terrified of these little things, but eventually, all those flaws had been cured.

Yu Xiaoya would adapt to all of this sooner or later!

"Let's go."

The group exited the dungeon, and the night passed in silence.

The next day was the appointed date for everyone to lead the hunting team members into the "Mist Forest."

Early in the morning, Yu Yan arrived at the basketball court, where three hundred and sixty hunting team members stood fully equipped and ready for action. The sub-team leaders of each hunting team stood at the very front of the formations, wearing first-rank spiritual armor with their chests puffed out!

They had been looking forward to this day for a long time.

The twins, Yu Wei, Yu Rui, Yu Wenjing, and Yu Wenmin—the six mid-level leaders of the hunting platoons—appeared much calmer.

They had already followed Yu Yan into the Mist Forest several times.

They were quite familiar with both the environment inside and the dungeon monsters.

Yu Yan gave a brief speech, slightly stirring up everyone's emotions. She then carefully inspected each person's spiritual armor to ensure that the armor worn was either brand new or had been repaired without affecting any defensive properties.

With a grand wave of her hand, Yu Yan led the crowd toward the "Mist Forest."

With nearly four hundred people, just entering the dungeon took a considerable amount of time.

Once inside the dungeon, even though Yu Yan and the others had swept through this area near the entrance hundreds or thousands of times,

the very nature of a rainforest dungeon dictated that the moment Yu Yan and her group left the dungeon, the entrance area would once again be occupied by ubiquitous and terrifyingly numerous insects.

"Ah!"

Dozens of startled screams rang out simultaneously.

Clearly, despite having been given a "primer" on the basic conditions inside the "Mist Forest" beforehand, quite a few people still could not adapt to the bugs' overly "enthusiastic" welcoming ceremony...