Chapter 55: Nature Spirits
Translator: Lordbluefire Editor: Lordbluefire

By now, the shell girl no longer felt anything toward being bound and confined like this.

She had already treated the briefcase as a place for her to sleep, and it was safer than when she had slept in a shell in the past.

After being woken up by Chen Shouyi’s actions, she opened up her eyes sluggishly, yawning.

By the time she saw the environment clearly, all her sleepiness had disappeared. Her eyes kept darting around, and after the giant got up to pack his stuff, she immediately stood up, jumped off the bed, and ran to a corner under the bed. She searched around for a bit, and a glass marble quickly appeared in her hand.

She gently wiped off the dust on its surface, feeling uncontrollably agitated as she looked at its glistening glow.

She had thought that she’d never be able to retrieve this lost gemstone and had even felt sad over this on multiple occasions.

She hadn’t expected that a surprise would come when she had just opened her eyes.

However, this time around, she mustn’t let the giant find out about this.

She suppressed the agitation in her heart and rapidly ran out from under the bed.

She raised her head, looking at a corner of the blankets that were draping down. She jumped up hard, leaping up to a height of about 30 to 40 centimeters, grabbed onto the corner of the blanket, and rapidly climbed back onto the bed.

Her face was flushed red, but she pretended like nothing had happened. Throwing a glance at Chen Shouyi, seeing that he wasn’t paying attention to her, she rapidly hid the glass marble under her princess dress.

Chen Shouyi didn’t notice the shell girl’s actions at all. He kept all of his luggage into the backpack he had just bought.

There was still four to five hours before 6 p.m.

Therefore, he took out a common language dictionary, leaned against the bed, and memorized some terms while he rested.

His intelligence was now at 12.6, and learning was now a very simple thing to him.

A language tended to be able to reflect the degree of the material culture behind a civilization.

The more precise and detailed a language was, with fewer ambiguities, the more advanced the civilization’s material culture was. The opposite was also true.

The common language was clearly quite rough.

Every term had several explanations.

For example, the term sun could also be explained as sunlight, day, light, male, and many other explanations. One would only be able to understand the meaning behind them from the relative situations they were used in.

There were only over 1,000 terms in the entire common language dictionary, but there was a myriad of meanings.

However, this didn’t imply that a lagging civilization was weak.

In fact, given the Otherworld’s relatively suppressive environment toward chemical reactions, it was hard for production capabilities to develop. The place would probably maintain the same even after 10,000 years had passed.

If Earth’s material world was formed from the four fundamental forces—electromagnetic forces, gravity, weak interaction and strong interaction, then the Otherworld was a supernatural world that was formed from five fundamental forces.

Under such a unique environment, the upper limits to lifeforms’ strength could be increased to a higher degree. They could then produce all sorts of supernatural powers and even give rise to gods.

…

Chen Shouyi memorized terms in the dictionary for one hour and finally felt a little tired. Therefore, he lay down and took a short nap.

When he woke up naturally, it was already 5.30 p.m..

Chen Shouyi ate five pieces of hardtack and had canned meats for dinner.

Thereafter, without any hesitation, he carried the arrow quiver as well as the bag with the camouflage suit. He was then going to tie up the shell girl again.

At this moment, he noticed that the shell girl was acting strangely. Her feet seemed like they couldn’t close up.

“What are you hiding inside?”

The shell girl pressed down on her dress, wearing an innocent look as she shook her head strongly. “Nothing. I didn’t hide any gemstones.”

She didn’t even know how to lie.

Chen Shouyi was dumbfounded, but it wasn’t appropriate for him to flip up her dress. Therefore, he just pretended to not have seen anything.

After all, he would still need to rely on her to point the way out when they headed out to sea. If she was angry and refused to do the job, it would be troublesome.

…

He put the elated shell girl into his briefcase and pulled the zipper close.

It was already dark outside when he walked out of the motel. He pretended that he was rushing on his way and walked very quickly.

When he reached the dilapidated building, he rapidly turned and entered it while the patrolling police officers didn’t notice anything.

…

It was still early in the morning in the Otherworld, and the sun had yet to rise. However, the light rays were already lit up.

There were no clouds in the sky, and this was undoubtedly a good omen for Chen Shouyi.

Without any delays, he took out his weapons from the cave and immediately got onto the canoe.

By this time, the sun was slowly rising from the surface of the sea, like a big flame ball that was bathing in the sea. It was a majestic sight.

Breathing the damp, cold, and salty smell in the air, Chen Shouyi felt slightly more awake.

He picked up the oars and started rowing.

…

After the previous experience, his speed was faster. He only rowed for about two hours and the island was already within sight.

However, this time around, he didn’t discover any canoes.

It might be because of the disappearance of a canoe yesterday that the barbarians had started to become alert, or they were on the other side of the island.

Chen Shouyi was in no hurry. He would be able to find them eventually.

This operation was quite dangerous. Before he came, he had already set up a plan.

Firstly, before ascertaining that it was safe, he wouldn’t take the risk to probe deep into the island.

Ever since he heard of that “holy tree” the dying barbarian mentioned, he kept feeling unsettled. There were too many mysterious things in this world, and there were countless lifeforms that could cause him to lose his life.

Secondly, he planned on destroying all of the barbarians’ canoes.

He planned on going around the island. This would allow him to find them.

In fact, this was also his primary goal for today. As long as he could complete this step, the space channel would be basically safe. There wouldn’t be any problems for half a year, or even for a few years.

…

What that looked near might be in fact very far away. It was the same for the small island. By the time he had really gotten close to the island, another hour had already passed.

He tied the canoe to a boulder on the shore.

After that, he took off his clothes, changing into his camouflage equipment. He then painted his face with some camouflage painting.

The shell girl instantly felt a little unsettled the moment they embarked onto the island. She stood on Chen Shouyi’s shoulder, grabbing onto his hair nervously and whispering to his ear.

“Giant, this place is dangerous. Let’s go back.”

Chen Shouyi’s heart skipped a beat when he heard the shell girl’s warning.

In fact, he had also sensed a certain feeling of suppression ever since he got onto the small island. This feeling was similar to the low pressure before the arrival of a storm. It made one unable to breathe normally.

“Which places are dangerous? Do you see them?” Chen Shouyi asked with a grim countenance.

The shell girl had some mysterious abilities. She might have really discovered something.

The shell girl said nervously in a soft voice, “Yes, a lot, a lot!”

“Where?”

“Everywhere!” The shell girl pointed to a big tree and then to a boulder not far away.

“They’ve all gone into hiding and will come out after the sun sets.”

Chen Shouyi was perplexed. He could still understand if she was referring to the tree. However, it was beyond his comprehension when she pointed to an ordinary-looking boulder and said that it was dangerous.

“What are they?”

“Spirits. There are very strong nature spirits here.”

Chen Shouyi instantly understood. He had heard of nature spirits before. There had been many popular science programs that specially introduced these mysterious things.

In fact, this was an address that had been directly translated from the common language. On Earth, they were also called ghosts.

These things were almost everywhere in this world. As long as living things existed in a place, there would definitely be nature spirits. Most of them were souls of dead animals. Therefore, they didn’t have much intelligence and only had instincts.

During the day, they would hide amongst the trees, under boulders, or underground.

The weaker ones would secretly absorb the blood and vital energy from dead creatures. And since these nature spirits weren’t even able to get close to living creatures, they were naturally trash.

However, some nature spirits were innately powerful. They would possess the mountains and rivers, absorbing the lives within their domain like leeches. They would engulf souls and even be treated as mountain gods or water gods, revered by the people.

These existences were terrifying.

Many times, at the mention of nature spirits, people generally were referring to the second group. No one paid any heed at all to the first group.

There were basically not many lifeforms on the small island near the space channel. Therefore, there weren’t many of these existences there.

However, the plants were thriving here, and the place was brimming with vigor. Therefore, there’d naturally be quite a lot of these things.

Thankfully, it was in the day now. Other than some extremely powerful nature spirits that had already developed godly characteristics, there weren’t many nature spirits that could be active in the day.

He summoned his courage and walked up to the boulder that the shell girl had pointed to.

He did sense a hint of eeriness coming from it.

He looked toward the forest in the distance. It was no wonder he kept feeling that the environment here was a little gloomy. It was as if even the sunlight that passed by here had been filtered. There wasn’t any warmth at all.