However, Haoyun and his companions seemed to have been overly optimistic. After a bout of intense coughing, Little Tiger's breathing gradually returned to normal. He removed the dagger from his throat and casually tossed it aside. Rubbing the wound on his throat, Little Tiger grinned at Haoyun. Then, he raised his head, displaying the healed wound on his throat once again. Haoyun was shocked to see that the knife wound in Little Tiger's throat was rapidly healing before his eyes.
What? The poison didn't work? Could it be that the poison given by the White Tiger was fake? Was he deceived by the White Tiger? These thoughts burst into Haoyun's mind in an instant. However, he quickly dismissed this speculation. Although Little Tiger seemed to have recovered, occasional muscle twitches on his face and a somewhat stiff tongue indicated that the paralysis effect of the toxin was still present. Thus, Little Tiger immediately drew a conclusion he was reluctant to accept: after fully transforming into a beast, he not only had strong resistance to external toxins, but even his internal organs were resistant to the poison from the mushrooms.
"Uh-oh! The toxin didn't affect him! Get away from him!" Dream Jia, standing on the tree, also immediately noticed the problem. She quickly reminded Haoyun and Dao Lao, who were still confronting Little Tiger, while she herself hurriedly turned and hid in the lush canopy.
Seeing Little Tiger's increasingly hostile expression as he recovered, Haoyun immediately felt uneasy and moved to hide in the nearby forest. However, what both Haoyun and Dream Jia didn't anticipate was that just as they turned to evade Little Tiger's anticipated counterattack, they both felt a sudden sharp pain in their abdomen. This unexpected sensation not only caused Haoyun to almost collapse as he turned, but also nearly caused Dream Jia, who was perched on the treetop, to fall.
"Injured?!" This was Haoyun and Dream Jia's immediate reaction.
In extremely tense situations, due to factors like a sharp increase in adrenaline, people can enter a state of extreme excitement, making them temporarily insensitive to pain after being injured. Haoyun and Dream Jia must have been in this state when they completely ignored the injuries to their abdomens just now.
However, how could they have been injured when they hadn't engaged in direct combat with Little Tiger just now? How did they get hurt? Could it be—both of them almost simultaneously thought of the same possibility, and as a result, both harbored a very bad premonition. Then, they quickly looked at Dao Lao, who had landed behind Little Tiger's head and was still kneeling.
"Dao Lao! Are you okay?!" Haoyun asked loudly.
"I'm... fine!" Dao Lao replied with a gasp, struggling to stand up.
At this moment, Dao Lao was clutching his abdomen with his hand, and as soon as he stood up, Haoyun clearly saw that his abdomen was dyed red with blood. It turned out that, in order to create an opportunity for Haoyun to attack Little Tiger, Dao Lao, while leaping over Little Tiger's head, failed to completely avoid Little Tiger's attack. As a result, Dao Lao's abdomen was still scratched by the long, thorny tongue of Little Tiger, causing multiple wounds. Then, just like during a circus performance, as long as one of Haoyun's trio was injured, the other two would feel the pain as well. With this bizarre rule where one person's injury affected all three, Haoyun's trio, who were already at a disadvantage in battle, found themselves in an even more precarious situation.
"Ah—! I have to say, although this poison mushroom powder is a bit choking, it tastes pretty good. Hmph! Your diversionary tactics are indeed good, but unfortunately, Little Tiger is no longer afraid of any damn poison mushrooms!" Little Tiger smacked his lips, savoring the taste of the toxin in his mouth, and spoke in a domineering tone.
"Now, it's my turn!" Seeing Haoyun's trio panting in place, Little Tiger took a step forward with a "click, click" of his neck and launched an attack on Haoyun first.
Haoyun naturally had to endure the severe pain from his abdomen as he prepared to fight back. However, just as Little Tiger rushed towards him for two steps, he made a sudden stop with his powerful body control. After taking a step back and performing a backflip, he instantly landed in front of Dao Lao.
It was clear that Little Tiger's move was intentionally showing off his formidable agility. However, his sudden change of attack target caught Dao Lao, who had just reminded Haoyun to be on guard, off guard. Plus, Dao Lao was already injured, so he was powerless to defend himself against Little Tiger, who suddenly attacked him. Dao Lao could only allow Little Tiger to wrap his neck with his long tongue and slowly lift him up.
As Little Tiger's tongue wrapped around their necks, Dao Lao felt the thorns tightening and deeply piercing into his neck, causing blood to spurt out like a fountain. What was even more eerie was that Haoyun and Dream Jia, as if their necks were entangled by the thorny tongue, both showed obvious strangulation marks while a circle of puncture wounds appeared on their necks.
Haoyun and Dream Jia were both desperately reaching out, trying to grasp something strangling their throats, making it impossible for them to breathe.
Little Tiger naturally noticed the strange occurrence happening to Haoyun and Dream Jia. Although he didn't understand why these two were also covered in wounds from the thorns on his tongue, just like Dao Lao, this peculiar phenomenon piqued Little Tiger's interest. So, after revealing a sinister smile, he reached for Dao Lao's shoulders. Then, with a crisp sound, Dao Lao's shoulders were crushed by Little Tiger's strong and powerful claws. Similarly, less than a second after Dao Lao's shoulders were crushed, Dream Jia and Haoyun's shoulders were also crushed under an inexplicable force. For a moment, the agonizing screams of the three echoed through the entire shimmering forest.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
"Ahwoo! Ahwoo!" Watching Haoyun and the others struggling in agony due to their simultaneous injuries, Little Tiger exclaimed excitedly. The more excited he became, the more cruel he turned. So, in the following time, Little Tiger, enjoying it thoroughly, crushed Dao Lao's limbs bone by bone, like squeezing dry instant noodles, just to relish the horrifying sight of Haoyun and Dream Jia's limbs being crushed into meat strips out of thin air.
After thoroughly playing with Haoyun and his companions, Little Tiger was finally satisfied. Haoyun and his companions, whose bones had been crushed into powder by him, or rather, the three piles of flesh without skeletal support, were lumped together. Then, humming an offbeat tune, Little Tiger contentedly indulged in his dinner.
"No! No!" Haoyun woke up again with a start, and upon recalling how he had just been beaten into a pile of mud and served as Little Tiger's meal, he immediately began vomiting uncontrollably. Perhaps Haoyun's vomiting was too loud, which soon woke up Dao Lao and Dream Jia who were still asleep. Then, like two people who had just had a disgusting nightmare, they also involuntarily rolled over and vomited on the side.
After a while, the three finally came to their senses. Then, after taking a deep breath and brewing their thoughts for a while, Haoyun angrily cursed, "Ugh! That Countess is such a psycho sadist!"
Actually, Haoyun had intended to curse Little Tiger. But upon second thought, all the torture that Little Tiger subjected them to was actually part of the Countess's scripted storyline. So, instead of cursing Little Tiger, this scripted character, the dead Countess was the one who deserved the most curses for orchestrating such sadistic acts.
"Ugh! Now what do we do?" Dream Jia didn't pay attention to Haoyun, who was venting his anger at the Countess through words, but turned to Dao Lao.
In fact, the task at hand was already very clear. Although Haoyun and his companions had experienced two mission failures, they had basically confirmed through these two failed missions that the task here revolved around the conflict between Little Tiger and the village chief. However, the most difficult problem now was that if they wanted to complete the task, then Haoyun and his companions had to kill Little Tiger, the victim, and refine him into a tiger pill. But judging from the situation in the last mission, it was probably a pipe dream to challenge the transformed Little Tiger with the current strength of the three of them.
For the time being, let's set aside whether killing an innocent victim, even in a virtual scene, would violate the moral bottom line of the three priests.
So, in this regard, if they wanted to avoid the formidable edge of Little Tiger after his transformation, then Haoyun and his companions could only, as planned by White Tiger, set up an ambush when Little Tiger approached the shining grove and kill him before his transformation was complete. But this would lead to another problem: whether the three priests, who always adhered to high moral standards and absolute sacred and ethical norms, would design to ruthlessly kill this innocent victim before Little Tiger lost his sanity due to transformation?
Although Haoyun and his companions also knew that everything here was illusory and unreal, even so, it was difficult for the three priests to accept completing the task by violating their faith and moral bottom line, just to ensure that they could leave here as soon as possible. It seemed that the Countess wanted Haoyun and his companions to succeed in completing this task through the darkest path. This was simply a mockery and insult to Haoyun and his companions.
What made Haoyun and his companions even more indignant was that even if they found it difficult to accept this way of completing the task, would they really be willing to be trapped in this virtual world, waiting for Elina to cause trouble in the real world, just to uphold their noble moral sentiments?
"If we can't, we'll just have to find a way to make them kill each other, use White Tiger's hand to get the tiger pill first, and then we'll talk." Finally, Haoyun gritted his teeth and said a seemingly compromising idea. Of course, Haoyun also knew that this method of killing with a borrowed knife would ultimately be equivalent to killing Little Tiger himself. However, given the development of the future, Haoyun felt that this was the best choice for now.
"Damn it! But based on what Little Tiger said before, even if we can get the tiger pill back, will the village chief really fulfill his promise?" After cursing once, Dao Lao calmed down and questioned with skepticism.
Dream Jia hesitated and said, "Then if we change our thinking. Perhaps everything about Paradise Island really exists, and the village chief doesn't want the chosen ones to set foot on the island. It's just a plot setting? As for these 'chosen ones,' it actually refers to the three of us? Don't forget, everything here is illusory, all fabricated by the Countess to make us complete this damn task. So, as long as we can complete the task, the village chief will keep his promise. Or, as long as we can get that ticket, we can trigger the subsequent plot and leave this damn place."
"Do you mean that as long as we can get the ticket from the village chief, we should be able to go to Paradise Island, and whether we need to give the tiger pill to the village chief doesn't really matter?" Haoyun seemed to understand the meaning in Dream Jia's words and asked.
"Perhaps, the so-called exchange of the tiger pill for the ticket is just a standard procedure for the task. The tiger pill needs to be refined, but the ticket has always been there, right? So is there a possibility that if we can find a way to get that ticket in advance, maybe we can skip the middle part of this task and directly go to Paradise Island to find out what's going on?" Dream Jia nodded, then further explained her thoughts.
"Perhaps, the so-called exchange of the tiger pill for the ticket is just a standard procedure for the task. The tiger pill needs to be refined, but the ticket has always been there, right? So is there a possibility that if we can find a way to get that ticket in advance, maybe we can skip the middle part of this task and directly go to Paradise Island to find out what's going on?" Dream Jia nodded, then further explained her thoughts.
Upon understanding Dream Jia's thoughts, Haoyun and Dao Lao nodded repeatedly, indicating that her idea was indeed the optimal solution to deal with this situation. This way, they could avoid the psychological burden of killing Little Tiger, an innocent victim, and also avoid the risk of facing the transformed Little Tiger again.
With this in mind, Dao Lao stroked his white beard and looked at the distant flickering light, chuckling bitterly, "Dream Jia is right, maybe we've been overthinking things ourselves. Perhaps searching for the tiger pill is just a decoy set by the Countess to buy time in this task. Maybe we should bypass these immediate obstacles and focus on the village chief."
"Then let's give it a try, see if we can find a breakthrough directly from the village chief! Anyway, we can always start over if need be!" Haoyun gritted his teeth. After determining the new strategy, the three of them sat down by the campfire one after another, adjusting their mental and physical states while waiting for the seemingly harmless Little Tiger to approach them.