Chapter 288
“Xiao An, you’re amazing!”
The giant changed into his clean new clothes, let Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi fly back into his pocket, then sliced off a chunk of meat from the giant crocodile and placed it on a plate before setting off again.
As Tang Yu’an looked at the map, the fog covering it was rapidly clearing. Since they had started this journey, the explored area had already exceeded everything they had previously uncovered combined.
Truly, it was nice to enjoy the shade under a big tree!
They continued walking downstream along the river, and gradually, the river grew wider and wider.
Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi lay at the edge of the pocket, peering out across the water. All they could see was the river stretching endlessly—there was no sight of the opposite bank.
Only with a high-powered telescope could they barely make out the other side.
A month passed, and they still hadn’t left the river region, but faint wisps of smoke began to appear in the distance across the water.
“Looks like someone lives over there?” Tang Yu’an asked while the giant was resting.
“Oh, yes,” said the giant. “That’s Uncle Bo’er’s place. He has an adorable daughter.”
“What about his wife?”
“She and Uncle Bo’er split up. She lives over there,” the giant pointed in another direction. “Just a month or two’s walk. Pretty close.”
Tang Yu’an: “…”
A month or two on foot counts as close? And that’s by giant standards?
Tang Yu’an shook his head and decided to change the subject. He said to the giant, “We’d like to build a house here. Would you be willing to wait for us?”
“Oh, no problem. I promised you guys, didn’t I?”
The giant happily agreed. He had kept a relaxed, easygoing attitude throughout this journey and was never in a rush to get anywhere.
Upon hearing Tang Yu’an say they wanted to build a house, he pulled out the “picnic blanket” they had traded him, laid it out on the ground, and lay down on it, peacefully closing his eyes under the blue sky and white clouds.
Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi ignored him and searched for a suitable spot nearby, then released the construction robots to begin surveying.
Tang Yu’an also released their pets from the pet slots where they had been resting.
As soon as they entered the unfamiliar environment, Black Pearl and Yuan Bao began sniffing around cautiously. Wang Cai was also looking around curiously, while the little red bird flew onto Tang Yu’an’s shoulder, chirping affectionately.
Only Yin Bi was immediately drawn to the giant, running curiously toward him.
Hearing the sound of running, the giant opened his eyes and saw a snow-white pup bounding over. He instantly sat up.
“Wow! What a beautiful puppy!”
Yes, even though Yin Bi had returned to its original form and was now nearly four meters long, it was still just a “puppy” to a giant nearly 18 meters tall.
Tang Yu’an flew over in a bit of a panic, only to find that the giant wasn’t hurting Yin Bi—in fact, he was petting it and playing with it. Relieved, Tang Yu’an finally relaxed.
“Mr. Giant, we’re going into the woods to look for building materials. Could you keep an eye on the robots for us?”
The robots were preparing the land, and Tang Yu’an had released the pets so they could help keep watch too.
“Go, go!”
The giant waved them off, already playing happily with Yin Bi.
Despite the size difference, Yin Bi wasn’t afraid of the giant at all and wagged its tail enthusiastically.
Wang Cai, sitting off to the side, watched nervously as the two played.
So, Yin Bi and Wang Cai stayed behind. Black Pearl transformed into her kitten form and nestled into Tang Yu’an’s pocket, while Yuan Bao curled up in the hood of his coat.
In their current forms, they were probably smaller than a fingernail to the giant and naturally went unnoticed.
As for the even tinier Ruby… it was probably mistaken for a bug.
With that, they flew into the forest.
After Zhou Qi absorbed the powers of four spirit bugs, he could release a powerful aura—like he did at sea—that kept the creatures of the giant forest from approaching them.
This made moving through the forest much safer than before.
Zhou Qi continued gathering building materials using his powers, while Tang Yu’an used his appraisal skill to collect rare materials along the way into his portable storage.
This world was a natural treasure trove, and every resource came in extra-large sizes!
They stayed in this world for a month, though only a little over a day had passed in their original world.
During that time, Tang Sheng had opened a branch in the northern part of the city and hired a full-time staff. His experience points skyrocketed.
Just as Tang Yu’an entered the forest, he received news that Tang Sheng had reached level Lv21. He immediately granted his father the authority to activate the protective shield.
With that shield in place, the over 100,000 survivors in the city’s north were finally safe from mutant attacks!
[PillowMan: Keep going! Reach Lv25 soon so we can reunite as a family!]
Tang Yu’an smiled and was about to reply when a system notification popped up:
[Alert! New Standard Mission: “Emergency Rescue”]
[Description: A potential customer nearby is in danger and critically injured.]
[Objective: Help this customer escape danger and complete three profitable transactions with them (0/3).]
[Reward: 30 Points, 1 Lucky Wheel Spin]
Tang Yu’an let out a small “huh?”
A potential customer in danger nearby? Where?
He looked around and quickly noticed something strange.
“Brother Qi, look at that!” He pointed at a massive boulder in the distance.
Zhou Qi followed his gaze and saw part of a foot sticking out from behind the rock.
“A giant?”
Tang Yu’an sent him the mission details and said, “Should we go check it out?”
“Grab the shadow umbrella.”
“Got it!”
Under the cover of the shadow umbrella, the two of them flew toward the massive boulder and finally landed on top of it, cautiously peering down.
To them, this boulder was like a small mountain—and lying beneath this “mountain” was an equally gigantic figure.
As they got closer, a green light dot appeared on Tang Yu’an’s map.
Lying on the ground was a female giant. Her skin was a dark bluish-black, and she looked extremely weak, barely clinging to life.
“She really is a giant!” Tang Yu’an said. “Is she injured? Or sick?”
Black Pearl leapt out of Tang Yu’an’s pocket and landed on the female giant’s body—but she didn’t react at all.
Zhou Qi observed carefully and said, “Looks like she’s been poisoned.”
“My Light Healing spell doesn’t work on her…”
Tang Yu’an thought for a moment, pulled out a Lucky Marble, and gave her a dose. Then he said, “Let’s go find Shan Feng. Maybe he can help!”
“Yeah.”
Tang Yu’an scooped Black Pearl back up, and the two of them retraced their steps, quickly finding the giant who was still playing with Yin Bi and Wang Cai.
When they told him what had happened, Shan Feng’s expression changed instantly, and he followed them into the forest without hesitation.
Soon, they were back behind the giant boulder.
“Auntie Shana!”
Shan Feng cried out as he rushed to the female giant’s side, flustered and shouting, “Auntie Shana, what happened to you?”
“Shan Feng, you know her?”
“Yes! She’s Uncle Bo’er’s wife!” Shan Feng explained. “We have to save her!”
“She seems to have been poisoned,” Zhou Qi said.
“Poisoned?” Shan Feng looked around urgently. “Then I’ll see if I can find any herbs that can counteract it!”
Tang Yu’an said, “I have a kind of fruit that can detox heavy metal poisons… not sure if it’ll work…”
“That’s great! Let her try it!” Shan Feng urged.
Tang Yu’an then took out some of his stock of mutated blueberries. There were about ten kilograms of them, but with the giant’s enormous size, it was hard to say if it would be enough.
Understandably.
Shan Feng pried open the female giant’s mouth and dumped all ten kilograms of mutated blueberries inside.
She was still somewhat conscious and instinctively swallowed them. Soon, the dark color on her lips began to fade. It wasn’t until she’d eaten the entire batch that some color returned to her face, though other parts of her body still showed signs of the poison.
“Ugh…”
She groaned and slowly opened her eyes. But the moment she saw Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi hovering nearby, a flicker of anger flashed through her drowsy eyes.
“You…”
Just as she began to speak, Shan Feng leaned in front of her, successfully distracting her attention.
“Auntie Shana, are you okay?”
“Huh? Shan Feng? Why is it you?” Shana blinked in confusion, and her angry expression quickly melted into one of grievance, like someone seeing a relative after a traumatic event.
“Waaah… I almost never saw you again…”
“Auntie Shana, what happened? Why are you here? How did you get poisoned?”
Just as Shana was about to answer, she saw the two tiny figures floating mid-air and her anger reignited. “It was them! They poisoned me!”
Tang Yu’an: 0.0
Zhou Qi immediately became alert.
Tang Yu’an quickly explained, “No, we didn’t poison you! When we found you, you were already lying on the ground!”
Shan Feng hesitated a little.
He didn’t believe these two cute little guys would poison Shana, but… it was them who found her, and they just happened to have the antidote fruit…
At that moment, Shana frowned and looked surprised. “Why… can you speak human language?”
“…”
Tang Yu’an took a deep breath and said, “This is our first time meeting, right?”
Shana nodded.
“Since we’re total strangers, why would we want to harm you?” he said. “And you were already poisoned for some time before we arrived. We’ve only been in the forest a little while—there wasn’t even time for us to do anything.”
“Right, right!” Shan Feng chimed in. “If Xiao An hadn’t brought out the antidote fruit, you might not have survived!”
“If they really wanted to poison you, why would they go to all that trouble to cure you?”
Shana’s expression turned to confusion. “Huh? So… they saved me?”
“Yes,” Shan Feng said firmly. “They’re the ones who called me over too. If they were the culprits, there’d be no reason to help.”
“But… the ones who poisoned me looked just like them—tiny people. But those ones couldn’t speak, just squeaked and babbled!”
As she said this, anger and disgust returned to her face.
Tang Yu’an and Zhou Qi exchanged a glance, both clearly surprised.
The little people Shana mentioned… could they be from one of the other fortresses? But why would they want to poison her?
“We don’t know those people,” Tang Yu’an quickly clarified. “We’ve been with Shan Feng this entire time.”
“Yes, yes!” Shan Feng said. “They even made me new clothes! Look how nice they are!”
He proudly showed his clothes to Shana.
“They really are quite nice…”
As she spoke, Shana’s voice grew weaker again. “I’m still a little dizzy…”
“The poison hasn’t been fully cleared yet,” Zhou Qi said. “You’ll need more mutated blueberries.”
