Two hundred years ago, there was no Songhai City, only Song Prefecture; the flourishing metropolis of today had once been nothing more than a modest fishing village. Two centuries drifted by, and Song Prefecture became a suburban district of Songhai City.
Songfu University.
At eight-thirty on a sweltering summer evening, hormones surged restlessly in the veins of young students.
On the third floor of the female dormitories, Zhu Hanjing, the department belle of the finance department, sat beside her bunk, applying skincare products to her face.
Her two other roommates were occupied—one scrolling through the campus forums, the other chatting online.
The girl browsing the forum suddenly spoke up: "Lately, there’ve been tons of posts on the forum saying the little grove next to the sports field has magical powers. As long as you take someone you like there, they’ll fall in love with you, and then, beneath the grove's canopy, you'll take that final step of love. It’s so absurd—I don't buy it for a second."
The other girl continued typing away, her keyboard clattering as she juggled online chatting with real-life banter: "Obviously, it’s just some story cooked up by guys trying to trick girls. Remember freshman year? They said our dorm was haunted, too. A whole year’s gone by, and absolutely nothing has happened."
Zhu Hanjing chimed in with a laugh. "Even if it were true, I’d never go. That grove is infested with mosquitoes—you can’t even stand there for a few minutes. If you took your clothes off to do that sort of thing, wouldn't you end up covered in bites?"
As she spoke, she leaned closer to the mirror and patted her cheeks, thoroughly pleased with the condition of her skin. In the reflection, her complexion was fair, her eyes large, her lips rosy, and her face a delicate, sharp oval. Even without a drop of makeup, she outshone those heavily painted coquettes.
Naturally, she had no shortage of suitors. While they might not stretch from Song Prefecture to downtown Songhai, there were certainly enough to form a line from the dorm doors straight to the university gates.
The forum-browsing girl giggled. "Jingjing, you care way too much about your skin. During the day, you complain about the sun; at night, you complain about mosquitoes; in the morning, you say poor sleep ruins your skin. You haven't exercised in over half a month—you’re getting a little belly!"
"Nonsense! I won't eat anything tomorrow—three-day hunger strike!" Zhu Hanjing shot her roommate an indignant glare, then glanced at the empty desk beside her. "Where's Xiao Lan? She's barely been in the dorm the past couple of days, only sneaking back right before lights-out."
The girl at the keyboard suddenly stopped typing. Winking and making faces, she whispered, "I saw her hobbling back early this morning, covered in dirt. Do you think that little minx snuck off into the woods with a boyfriend?"
"Xiao Lan doesn't have a boyfriend," Zhu Hanjing said, shaking her head. "What time did you see her?"
Tilting her head, the girl thought for a moment. "Around daybreak, I think. Four or five in the morning? She stayed out all night."
"That can’t be right. When I went to bed yesterday, Xiao Lan was still in the dorm," Zhu Hanjing said skeptically.
The girl on the forum said, "I think she left around ten-thirty. You were already asleep by then."
To preserve her skin, Zhu Hanjing kept a very strict routine: in bed by ten at night, up by six in the morning, rarely waking in between. Even though both roommates agreed, Zhu Hanjing remained unconvinced.
Xiao Lan was an exceptionally well-behaved girl who never stayed out overnight.
Just then, the dormitory door opened, and a round-faced girl walked in. She had delicate features and a quiet, demure demeanor—it was Xiao Lan, the subject of their conversation.
Zhu Hanjing, who was very close to her, furrowed her brow and asked, "Xiao Lan, Huihui said you didn't sleep in the dorm last night and only came back limping around dawn?"
The girl named Huihui immediately piped up, "Did you go into the woods with a guy?"
Xiao Lan spat playfully and laughed. "You’re the one who snuck into the woods with a guy! It's full of mosquitoes in there—who would go? If a guy can’t even afford a hotel room, who'd date him? I learned my lesson freshman year—a boyfriend with no money is totally worthless."
She had dated someone during her freshman year, but they broke up due to relationship issues.
Zhu Hanjing nodded repeatedly, her brow smoothing out. "Exactly. What era are we in that people are still sneaking into the woods..."
Her voice caught abruptly.
She noticed that Xiao Lan's fair neck and wrists were covered in dense red clusters—clearly mosquito bites.
Their room had mosquito spray, and everyone had netting around their bunks. Even if an occasional mosquito broke through the defenses and took a few bites, it wouldn't leave such an excessive amount of welts.
And under her clothes, where skin wasn't exposed, there were likely even more.
This didn't just look like she had visited the grove; it looked like she had slept stripped bare in the woods all night.
Zhu Hanjing tested the waters softly. "Xiao Lan, did you really not come back last night?"
"Even you don't believe me?" Xiao Lan pouted, rapping Zhu Hanjing gently on the head before yawning. "I'm exhausted, totally drained all day. I'm going to sleep first."
With that, she climbed onto her bunk and pulled the netting shut.
Zhu Hanjing's brow knitted. She hesitated, swallowed her words, and when lights-out drew near, she went to bed as well.
In a drowsy haze, a faint rustling woke her. Opening her eyes, she saw that Xiao Lan in the adjacent bunk was up.
"Xiao Lan?"
Zhu Hanjing looked over. In that split second when their gazes met, she saw that her roommate's eyes were vacant and lifeless, devoid of any vitality.
Xiao Lan seemed deaf to her call. Without a word, she got down from the bed, not even bothering to put on proper shoes, and stepped into her slippers before heading out.
Zhu Hanjing's heart sank, a prickle of fear creeping in. Without even changing out of her pajamas, she hopped out of bed and shook Huihui on the opposite bunk.
"Wake up! Xiao Lan really just walked out!"
"Who cares... let her go if she wants to. Didn't she go out yesterday too..." Huihui mumbled groggily, drifting right back to sleep.
"I... I feel like something's wrong with her," Zhu Hanjing said.
This time, Huihui didn't answer, letting out a soft snore.
In the dark, after several moments of indecision, Zhu Hanjing decided to follow Xiao Lan.
*This is campus; there's nothing to be afraid of. If she really has a boyfriend, then fine, she went out to meet him. We're adults, and it's not my place to pry.*
*But Xiao Lan's state was clearly unnatural. It looked like sleepwalking. Could she have sleepwalked into the woods last night and slept there all night?*
As her close friend and confidante, she ought to bring her back.
There was another lingering worry in Zhu Hanjing's heart: the campus urban legend.
Yet the legend spoke of romantic passion, whereas what she felt from Xiao Lan was supernatural dread.
Slipping out of the dormitory, she glanced around at the building entrance. Under a distant streetlight, Xiao Lan's figure was steadily receding into the distance.
Lights-out had already passed, plunging classroom buildings and dormitories into darkness. The only illumination came from the streetlights. Fortunately, there were plenty of them; their warm yellow glow pushed back the dark and offered her immense psychological comfort.
She tailed Xiao Lan past several buildings, heading into increasingly secluded terrain, crossing the sports field toward a small grove.
Calling it a grove was an exaggeration; it was actually a small park meant for teachers and students to take leisurely strolls after meals and cultivate their minds. But because of its remote location, and because students and faculty preferred staying in their rooms playing games over cultivating their minds, the park saw few visitors and remained half-abandoned.
Yet here, the vegetation grew lush and wild, trees and undergrowth sprawling recklessly, exuding the untamed aura of a dense forest. Even if maintenance was neglected due to its remoteness, groundskeepers still trimmed the brush occasionally.
It was hard to imagine plants growing this rampant on their own.
Watching Xiao Lan take the cobblestone path into the park, Zhu Hanjing hesitated.
The school's ghost stories flickered through her mind. Aside from the recent rumor, there were no other urban legends concerning this park. *Could this girl really have gotten a boyfriend? And is she willing to sneak into the woods for him?*
*I'll just take a peek. If that's really it, I'll turn right around...* Zhu Hanjing gritted her teeth and jogged into the woods.
Dim streetlights stood every few meters, offering faint illumination.
She walked along, searching for Xiao Lan's silhouette. Minutes later, a clamor of noise drifted from ahead.
Women moaning, men panting, and the crisp, rhythmic sound of flesh slapping flesh.
Following the noise around a bend, she froze, utterly dumbfounded by what met her eyes.
Ahead lay a circular clearing with two rows of benches surrounding a round table in the middle.
Two couples were on the round table, six on the benches, and more than a dozen young men and women writhed across the grass. They were fiercely, passionately indulging in one another's bodies, some disheveled, others stripped completely naked.
Zhu Hanjing spotted Xiao Lan. Her roommate was sprawled on the round table, hands clutching her own chest, legs slung over a boy's shoulders, eyes half-lidded as she sank into an ocean of lust.
A few meters away from the crowd grew a peculiar small tree. Standing about as tall as a person, it was a vibrant jade-green, looking less like living wood and more like a sculpture carved from emerald.
Yet as the breeze brushed past, its branches and leaves fluttered softly, displaying a lifelike grace beyond any sculpture.
These people had turned utterly bizarre. They paid no heed to her arrival, their eyes burning with manic lust as they copulated, their gazes consumed by nothing but raw instinct.
In the dead of night, in a dim, deserted park, a crowd was shamelessly indulging in an indecent frenzy.
Zhu Hanjing's moral compass suffered a violent shock.
Just then, a young man noticed her. Pulling away from his female partner, he strode naked toward her, a leering grin plastered across his face.
"Isn't this our department belle?"
In an instant, every head turned. The men's eyes blazed with scorching hunger and desire.
Zhu Hanjing instinctively covered her chest, stumbling backward in horror.
"S-stay back...!" she yelled, glaring at the approaching student.
The young man's expression was ecstatic. He chuckled huskily. "This park has magical powers. Come just once, and you'll fall deeply in love with it. We come every single day. Look how much they're enjoying it."
Another boy shouted, "Belle Zhu is here! Welcome to the party, Belle Zhu!"
The coupling students turned their gazes toward her. Men uttered strange laughs, thrusting their hips provocatively, while women deliberately let out high-pitched moans, casting sultry glances her way.
Among them was her reserved roommate, Xiao Lan.
She had become unrecognizable, like a total stranger.
All of them were abnormal. Looking closely, their eyes lacked reason and intellect, as though driven purely by primitive, animalistic impulses.
Male and female alike, every single person surrendered to raw desire, reveling in lust. Society, morality, and law were cast aside in favor of pure instinct.
To her horror, Zhu Hanjing felt that instinct infecting her as well. Staring at the scrawny figure walking toward her, an overpowering urge for intimacy welled within her. Her mouth went dry, her breath turned ragged, and though no one was holding her back, her legs refused to flee.
Biological instinct anchored her in place.
As reason slowly dissolved into the flames of lust, despair flooded Zhu Hanjing's mind, yet her eyes brimmed with ravenous craving for the naked man approaching her.
Biting her lip, she closed her eyes, silent tears slipping down her cheeks.
*Snap!*
A crisp snap of fingers sounded behind her. Turning her head, she saw a tall, handsome young man.
His features were magnetic, his tall frame undeniably alluring. She longed to throw herself into his embrace, yearning for his warmth...
As the thought bloomed, her consciousness wavered. The next moment, she found herself back in her dorm room.
Xiao Lan sat nearby doing her makeup, while Huihui and the others were chatting and watching dramas, the room peaceful and cozy.
"What are you spacing out for?" Xiao Lan asked with a giggle.
"N-nothing..." Zhu Hanjing shook her head, picked up the skincare bottles on her desk with practiced ease, and resumed tending to her complexion.
She faintly remembered something terrifying happening to her, yet she couldn't grasp the details—like waking from a nightmare whose memory dissolved into thin air, leaving behind only an inexplicable flutter of palpitations.
***
In the overgrown park, Zhang Yuanqing scanned the dazed, hallucinating students, muttering inwardly:
*An open-air orgy? That's just wild!*
He had rushed over the moment his plane touched down. Unfamiliar with Songfu University, he had asked around for the location of the rumored "Love Forest."
As it turned out, most students and teachers hadn't even heard of it; only a handful of internet-savvy students had caught wind of it on the campus forum.
After getting directions, he activated Night Roaming, donned the Gale Gloves, and rode a gust of breeze right to the spot, arriving just in time to stop the situation from getting out of hand.
Absurd as the scene was, these young students were fortunate compared to those who met gruesome ends at the hands of loose artifacts.
And compared to items that claimed lives at every turn, this little tree was practically gentle.
Circling around the students, Zhang Yuanqing walked toward the jade-green tree. Barely three steps in, an intense wave of lust washed over him. His throat burned with thirst, and he felt a fierce urge to shove aside the boy next to him and claim the girl beneath him for himself.
*Hiss... this aphrodisiac effect is way stronger than the Mountain God Scepter's! Even at my level, I'm affected this badly. This has to be a Saint-stage quality item...*
Zhang Yuanqing raised a hand and wiped it across his face, activating Blue Face.
A mask of deep blue with an arrogant, wild expression replaced his features.
Bolstered by the fifty-percent endurance bonus, he successfully reached the jade-green tree and closed his hand around its slender trunk.
Evidently, this was an item without self-awareness—a free-for-all prize for whoever picked it up. But because of its unique properties, any student who wandered in was consumed entirely by carnal revelry, paying no attention to the tree itself.
*I’ve already been tempered by the Mountain God Scepter, yet this thing nearly broke my composure. It definitely feels like a Saint-stage item. The fact that it hasn't attacked me doesn't mean it lacks offensive capabilities; items without self-awareness require a master's control to unleash their true might.*
Zhang Yuanqing focused his mind to inspect the item's information.
Chapter 373