The Otherworldly Adventures of a Super Naive Girl

Chapter 431-432: The Plague Village; The Woods

431: Plague Village

And so Feng Wu learned why the village was abandoned from the mice. josei

What was the plague? Feng Wu had heard about it before coming to this world. Sometimes when she went down the mountain, she would catch the villagers talk about it, and whenever they did, their expressions would turn strange. She was curious and so asked her master.

He said the plague was a kind of extremely contagious disease. Anyone who caught it would most likely die if they had no effective treatment.

“Where is this place? There isn’t anyone around. Where’d everyone go?” Kaibu had circled around the area but had only found wildlife like spiders, mice and cockroaches.

“Look around and see if you can find a school badge.” Luo said as he opened a half-broken door.

“No, there’s no way it’s here. How can we find it so easily?” Anma spoke hopelessly.

Most of the others in the group felt the same way. It was impossible for level clearing items to be found at the starting point. But though they agreed, none of them wanted to give up hope.

One by one, they got up to begin searching and see if they could find anything.

“There was a plague epidemic here. We should leave.” Feng Wu knew the plague was very contagious. Even though the village looked like it had been abandoned long ago, they would be in danger if any of the bacteria still survived.

“Epidemic?!”

“How do you know?”

A torrent of surprise and questions came all at once. Some people couldn’t believe there had been an epidemic.

“It told me.” Feng Wu pointed to the mouse on the ground that was happily nibbling at the steamed bun in its paw.

“That?!”

“You can understand what animals say?” Ober asked in surprise.

Being able to communicate with animals wasn’t that fantastic an ability to have. Most adult beasts could learn to speak the human language and all holy beasts were born with the ability to speak. Therefore, the ability to understand animals was a relatively useless skill.

However, even lame abilities were useful in the right time, and place and right now all their magic and qi were sealed, so Feng Wu’s ability to talk to animals would make it much easier for them to complete the group task.

Wait, understand animal language? Wasn’t that an innate ability? Was this girl actually an innately gifted person?!

Though the people in the group were surprised Feng Wu had an innate ability, they weren’t too jealous because of how useless it was when compared to other innate abilities.

“Yes.” Feng Wu answered honestly and freely. Her master had told her being able to understand animal language was not a big deal in their current world so she didn’t have to worry about being discovered like she had before.

“Is there really a plague here?” Xinda frowned while looking around at the village.

“Yes.” Feng Wu nodded again.

“Wow! Then we need to get out of here fast. Even if it is just the virtual world, it’s still very dangerous. The plague has little effect on people who practice the arts like we do, but currently we’re just ordinary people and we can get sick easily.”

“Yes, true. Senior Ober, we should leave immediately.”

No one thought Feng Wu would lie about it, after all, what good would the lie do her?

“Feng Wu, ask them how we can get out of here.” Ober said to Feng Wu.

She asked the little mouse the question and it answered right away but. . . 

The little mouse answered in a worried tone. “You want to leave here?”

“Yes.” Feng Wu said to the little mouse.

“The way out of here was sealed long ago by the lord. You’ll have to go through the big woods in the east if you want to leave, but there are a lot of monsters there. If you go in, you may not come out alive.”

The little mouse thought of all the villagers who wanted to escape through the woods. All of them probably died because none of them ever came back alive.

Feng Wu relayed everything the mouse said.

The group never expected the village to have a lord or that the lord would lock the place down.

A few people were sent out to check; obviously they weren’t going to blindly believe the words of a mouse.

The news they shared when they returned was that there was indeed a strong seal around the village. They wouldn’t be able to leave.

The only way out of the plague infested village was through the dangerous woods the mouse mentioned, so out of desperation, the group decided to go through the woods in the east.

Meanwhile, images of the teams were posted on the screen for the audience to view. The contestants fell from the sky and landed in different places, some were tangled in tree branches, others were caught in the water, while some landed in the nest of powerful beasts.

The landing point was very important. Unlucky contestants could conceivably die, being eaten by beasts, before even getting an idea of their surroundings.

Feng Wu and her group landing in a plague village wasn’t fantastic, but they did better than some of the other groups who had also landed in plague villages like they did. Her group discovered what was wrong with the village and left immediately.

“Vice Principal, I would like to ask, are there any differences between the plague villages? I saw you laugh when you heard one of the teams were going to enter the houses to inspect. Are there perhaps some kind of trap awaiting these contestants?”

Tamansha, with her acute observation, pointed to a screen and asked her question upon discovering the vice president’s off expression.

“In fact, the plague villages are a test. As long as the contestants enter a home and remain in the village for an hour, they will immediately become infected.

This plague is exceptionally contagious. A team member will automatically infect the other team members as soon as they spend more than half an hour with each other. . . ”

432: The Woods

“Unless they find the medicine that treats this specific plague, they will become severely tired from blood loss. Eventually they will die and naturally be booted from the challenge.”

The vice principal touched his white beard as he smiled.

“No way! Untrue! That’s too much. There should at least be a sign in front of the village, otherwise how would anyone know people had been infected with the plague?!”

Many students discussed in low tones after hearing the explanation from the vice president.

“That’s right! It’s way too hard!”

“Vice President, do you hear that? Some students think there should be a sign in front of the village, otherwise it would be too difficult. After all, none of the students know the affairs of the village. Is it right to put an epidemic like this in there? Isn’t this being too unfair to our contestants?”

Tamansha sat on stage with a graceful smile on her lips.

Unruffled by the question, the vice president laughed as he spoke. “There is no injustice. Each village is seeded with information by the lord of the area. The contestants’ skill of observation and intuition for danger will be tested the moment they enter the village. If they can not find the clues left behind by the lord, then being eliminated can only show their lacking observational skills.

We made it very clear at the start of the competition that this would be a test of survival. Those who win are those who will survive to the end, but luck alone will not get them there. They must also have strong comprehension and synthetical abilities.”

“I see, thank you for the explanation Vice President. Let us continue to watch the games. Oh! A team is already leaving the plague village? Don’t they want to explore inside and see if they can find a badge?”

Tamansha was talking about Feng Wu and her party. They had exited the village and were entering the eastern woods.

The eastern woods were a strange place filled with oddly shaped plants and fruits never before seen.

“They’ve entered the woods! Vice President, are there any traps in the woods?” Tamansha asked with interest.

“Yes, the forest is a large maze and we have asked the lord to impose multiple diversions. So the students, who are now just ordinary people, will have a difficult time leaving the maze.

Their current stores will only last three days, after which, they will have to analyze which plants are edible and which are not. It will be a difficult task for them as we asked the lord to make 80% of the plants in the area poisonous. They are a mix of plants created based on the lord’s personal preference and extinct plants from ancient times. This will hinder those contestants looking for food tremendously.”

“Wow!”

“So devious!”

“Eighty percent poisonous plants. . .  that means there is an eighty percent chance they will get poisoned to death in the woods.”

“The vice president is too much! It’s already difficult enough that the plants are so rare. Even a pharmacist would have to reference a book, no way can they memorize an entire book on plants!

But now the contestants have to chose from ancient extinct plants which are poisonous and which are not. Some of them aren’t even real plants, just made up ones from the area lord. That’s crazy!”

The students in the audience had a heated discussion about how devious the vice principal was.

Tamansha looked at the calm vice principal, then to the poor students in the audience. She sighed, wondering if they were unaware just how petty their vice principal was.

Honestly, they needed to be more careful, otherwise the vice principal would sort them out.

Even the teachers standing on the sides cast the students pitying glances.

Little guys, you are still too young. Don’t you know not to speak ill of the vice principal in front of his face?

Feng Wu and her party were unaware what was waiting for them inside the woods. They walked inside the devious forest and quickly discovered a problem.

“These plants are so strange! I’ve never seen them before!”

“Anma, can you tell what plants these are?” Ober, the only fifth year in the group, asked.

“These. . . ” Anma walked closer to the front to take a look. Rows of colorful plants lay in front of her. The colors were vibrant and very beautiful but were all unfamiliar species she had never seen before. “These may to be extinct plants from ancient times. Be careful, don’t touch them, they’re highly poisonous.” Anma said sternly.

Poisonous?! The girls immediately stood up and backed away from the plants they were about to pluck for a closer look. Even the boys took a few steps back.

“Everyone, be careful. This place is really strange. I don’t know what most of these plants are, so don’t walk around carelessly.”

“Even you don’t know them?”

“Sister Anma, you’re a genius in the fourth-year pharmacy division! How can you not know these plants?!” Camille said with eyes wide in disbelief.

“Yeah Anma, do you really not know these?” Ober looked at the unfamiliar plants around him. He started worrying. If even Anma didn’t know what the plants were, what would happen to them when they ran out of food?

The serious problem hadn’t occurred to most of them yet; only Ober and Anma had thought of it.

Anma shook her head heavily. As the top fourth-year pharmacy student, she was confident she had completely memorized the herbal medicine encyclopedia.

There were a few plants she didn’t recognize. She suspected 80% of the plants were extinct and not recorded in any books. This would make their progress much more difficult. If they failed to find food after three days, odds were extremely high they would starve to death or consume the wrong plant and be poisoned to death.