"What's that up ahead?" Ding Shi muttered, watching the blue ground rush toward him. The moment his feet touched down, he slipped onto his back and began sliding rapidly forward across the slick blue surface. Moving at breakneck speed, he overtook Su Su within a few breaths.
Su Su cried anxiously, "Ding Shi, I want to play too!" She was stuck in the adjacent lane and could only run on foot. Still, she was doing far better than Wang Meng.
Wang Meng had wound up in a sand-dune stretch where running was out of the question, leaving him to scramble through the sand on all fours. But Yita was fair. As he crawled, his hand brushed against something buried in the sand and pulled out a playing card, leaving him utterly stunned.
Rounding a bend, Ding Shi glanced back and caught sight of Wang Meng holding the card. His heart nearly shattered on the spot.
Su Su's voice rang out: "What is this? A cliff? Ding Shi! Ding Shi, help!"
Su Su was driven to the cliff edge by the giant black sphere. Mounted on the brink was a large-caliber cannon. Channeling his inner Conan, Ding Shi saw through the system's gimmick in an instant. "Crawl into the barrel!"
Su Su obeyed. When Ding Shi looked back again, he blurted out in a panic, "Turn around!" Why on earth had this silly girl gone in headfirst?
*Boom!* With a thunderous blast, Su Su shot out like an artillery shell, soaring straight toward a lake over a hundred meters away. As she flew past Ding Shi overhead, he caught sight of her dazed, idiotic expression.
The next second, weightlessness struck. Ding Shi slid straight over the cliff edge, with a small lake waiting below. His pupils contracted in sheer terror. The drop was roughly thirty meters—he was dead! Even a ten-meter dive carried serious risk, easily injuring anyone without proper training. Twenty meters was the absolute safety threshold where even professional athletes could get hurt. And thirty meters? Who knew, but it certainly wouldn't end well.
Yet the Yita World never presented an impossible deathtrap.
Right beneath Ding Shi's feet was a green vine ending in a loop, clearly placed for players to grab. Spending a single second to convert his Origin Force into Strength, Ding Shi clamped both hands around the vine loop. His body swung outward, propelled high into the air.
Ahead of him floated a white cloud. Ding Shi let go without hesitation, his momentum carrying him cleanly onto the cloud. Then panic seized him. The cottony white cloud didn't budge an inch. Watching the timer tick down, anxiety flared inside him; no matter how sharp his mind was, he couldn't figure out a way out of this predicament on the spot.
A cannon blast echoed through the air!
Ding Shi looked down to the side. Wang Meng was straddling a cannon barrel, clutching it with a death grip, his face contorted in agony. Beneath him was the chasm; as man and barrel plummeted, the cannon fired furiously, using the recoil to launch both man and barrel upward at a forty-five-degree angle.
Ding Shi couldn't help recalling Wang Meng's childhood nickname, Iron Balls—it truly lived up to its reputation.
Wait, hadn't he seen this scene somewhere before? Ding Shi remembered—it was from the movie *The A-Team*, where they used a falling tank to shoot down drones and fired the main gun to let the recoil cushion their landing!
With that realization, Ding Shi grasped how to solve the puzzle. Taking a deep breath, he blew hard in the direction he was falling. Sure enough, the cloud beneath his rear shifted five centimeters. *Mother of God, isn't this just like an arcade game? Looks like Newton's coffin lid really can't be held down anymore.*
Ding Shi puffed, puffed, and puffed, and the white cloud gradually picked up speed. By the time he was seeing stars and his vision went black, the cloud had reached a speed of five kilometers per hour. There were thirty minutes left on the countdown, which meant only fifteen minutes in real time.
Ding Shi blew and blew until he was on the verge of passing out, finally making landfall on a grassy cliff.
The grass was no ordinary lawn either; one glance told Ding Shi what was going on. Sitting in a grass-sledding bag, he shot down the slope on a course built much like a ski jump. Accelerating faster and faster, he hit a small kicker and launched into the air like an artillery shell. Even then, Ding Shi kept a death grip on the sledding bag—after all, his nickname was Stone, not Iron Balls.
Man and bag sailed through the air for seven seconds before landing lightly on another slope, which was even longer and steeper...
***
Yu Yuan wore a grave expression as he watched the scouting trio trudge toward him.
Su Su was in the lead, her head spinning so badly she scuttled sideways like a crab.
Behind Su Su came Ding Shi—vacant-eyed, dazed, and covered in bruises from head to toe.
And behind Ding Shi was Wang Meng, waddling bowlegged with a grim face, wincing from time to time.
Yu Yuan couldn't help wondering: *What on earth did they just go through?*
Before he could ask, a slab of liver was slapped into his hand. Yu Yuan looked down at it and asked, "Pork liver?"
Wang Meng replied, "Human liver."
Yu Yuan flung the liver away, spun around, and retched violently.
Wang Meng picked the liver back up and explained, "The fire seed is inside."
Yu Yuan waved a hand weakly. "We have fire now... Go rest, you worked hard." He continued retching, scrubbing his palms against the ground in an attempt to rub off the slimy sensation.
The cave was vast and deep. Interestingly, it had a raised stone ledge 1.2 meters wide and a meter off the ground. It was practically labeled a bed.
Ding Shi climbed onto the platform. His aching body forced him to lie down excruciatingly slowly, hissing and wincing with pain every few seconds.
Wang Meng lay right beside him, the two of them head to head. Wang Meng kept his legs spread wide, hitched up his oversized shorts, and used his broad palm like a fan to waft air inside. He didn't dare make the movements too large, terrified that someone might notice something wrong.
Ding Shi murmured, "What playing card did you get?"
Wang Meng replied, "Why should I tell you?"
Ding Shi replied, "We're teammates. Don't I have a right to know at the very least?"
Wang Meng countered, "Why on earth would I tell you?"
Ding Shi said, "Because I know your balls dropped off."
"Your balls dropped off!" Wang Meng snapped angrily.
Ding Shi said, "I'll trade you the truth behind Sister Zhen's disappearance."
Wang Meng sat bolt upright immediately. Even though the motion yanked his sore spot, he didn't care. "You know why Sister Zhen vanished?" he asked urgently.
Ding Shi sat up and held out his hand.
Wang Meng hesitated, then said, "This is the Yita World. We can't go back."
Ding Shi countered, "You don't want to know?"
Wang Meng said, "Even if I knew, what difference would it make?"
Ding Shi said, "Suit yourself, then."
Sister Zhen was the only woman Wang Meng had ever loved. Yet one day, leaving behind a note with just three words—*I am leaving*—she had vanished from his life.
Wang Meng had thought he had moved on, but when Ding Shi brought her up, he realized he had never truly let her go.
Just as Wang Meng was about to press further, a woman's voice called out, "Wang Meng, right? Come down."
Wang Meng glanced over. It was a young woman wearing a wicker straw hat. On her small vest, a cross was drawn in charcoal; she was the camp's sole herbalist. A real-world herbalist, not one granted by some messy Yita profession.
Wang Meng rolled off the ledge and dropped down.
"Hand," the herbalist girl said coldly.
Wang Meng held out his right hand. The herbalist girl frowned at the sight. The skin of his fist was mangled and bloody, white knuckle bones visible beneath the torn flesh.
She took three kinds of herbs from a wicker basket and instructed, "Chew these into a paste yourself and apply it to the wound. Keep an eye on it for a few hours. If it starts festering, let me know right away."
Wang Meng said, "Thanks."
The herbalist girl's gaze dropped to Wang Meng's lower body. Realizing what she was looking at, Wang Meng snapped to attention instantly, gritting his teeth against a wave of agonizing pain.
The herbalist girl rummaged through her wicker basket, pulled out two stalks of grass, and held them out. "Chew them up," she said, then pointed toward his "iron balls."
"Thanks," Wang Meng mumbled, using up an entire lifetime's supply of embarrassment.
Chapter 73