Mir had more than enough reasons not to trust Reno. Although the possibility of him working for the Ravensworth family seemed low, Reno was getting on his nerves. Mir had enough problems in his hand without adding a babysitting job to the pile.

As he ran across the grove of white and green, he sent Murray several messages describing their situation and his plans.

"Good job."

That was Murray's response to it all. Either he was pissed for some reason, or he was in too troublesome a situation to send a longer reply.

Mir sent a message to Reno several minutes later, telling him that he was close to the river. Unlike what he had assumed, the crows hadn't given up on Reno the moment they separated. Instead, their groups had divided into two, chasing after both of them. This made Reno's chances of being a spy even lower.

Mir eventually caught a glimpse of the wide channel ahead. But he had to stop running at that moment. Because in front of him stood a thick layer of catkins surrounding a wet patch on the ground where a man was struggling to stay afloat.

Quicksand!

"Help! Please!" the man looked ready to sob, stretching his arms towards Mir desperately.

Mir paused for a second and nodded at the man. There was a short rope in his bag. It was a simple task to pull the man out of the sinkhole.

Before the man could thank him, Mir quickly fled. However, he dropped the stolen communicator inside the man's open backpack before running off.

Whoever tries to track that device would be in for a surprise...

The thirty seconds he had wasted there had already cost him. One of the crows was now circling in the air right above him, screeching loudly to signal his position to the rest of its team.

Once he reached the bank of the stream, he realized that he had traveled quite far from the area where he had first landed on this side of the stream. He couldn't see the junction anymore. A quick look at the map told him that the junction of two streams was more than a kilometer away, hidden behind the serpentine curves of the channel.

If the people pursuing him had finished interrogating the woman by now, they'd be on his tail within minutes. If there were any transcenders among their team, Mir didn't think he'd be able to evade being caught.

The good thing was, those guys were deep inside the grove by now. Mir still had a chance to run for it.

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He fixed his destination on the map and ran along the bank as fast as he could. The pursuers weren't the only people he was running against. He was still under the influence of the diary. This time, he had made multiple wishes at once. He didn't think the consequence could be good for him. The moment the influence stopped affecting his mind and the side effects started affecting his body, he would be done.

Feeling numb at this point, Mir ran like a machine, his lungs tired, feet about to give up, head throbbing like a dying fish. Just when he managed to cross the last bend of the channel and saw the junction ahead, he heard the sound of a gunshot from the grove near him.

Panicking, he cast a look at the sky and noticed three crows hovering right above his head like a target tag.

The pursuers had caught up with him!

Mir pushed every bit of his willpower into the sprint.

Bang!

A rock several feet away from him shattered, its pieces tumbling into the stream.

Bang!

A second shot nearly signed his knee. They were not trying to kill him yet! They were trying to slow him down!

Emboldened by the discovery, Mir made sure to quicken the speed of his feet rather than trying to exert more force to run faster. He didn't know if it was effective or not, but the next two shots didn't manage to hit him either.

By this time, he had reached his destination. The signs he had planted on the bank were still visible.

With one last burst of power, Mir leaped into the stream, disappearing beneath the water to look for his raft. It was rather easy to find it. The pile of rocks hiding it from prying eyes and the pull of currents hit his feet almost immediately in the waist-deep water.

With his remaining breath, Mir pushed the rocks away. He didn't even have to clear away half of them before his raft began to float up.

For now, Mir chose to keep the remaining rocks on the raft. Their weight made it hard for the raft to fully appear above the surface.

With his bags on his back and the rocks protecting his left side, Mir laid his body flat on the skewed, half-sunk raft and began to paddle with his arms.

A moment later, two of the rocks near his waist were shot off. Mir crawled further to the other edge of the raft, keeping only half of his body on it while the other half was in the water. The remaining rocks and his bags tumbled over towards his body, shifting the weight on the raft entirely to the right side.

The left side of the raft rose up until Mir's body could barely be seen from the Western bank of the Channel. Several more shots were fired at him, but they only managed to hit the left edge of the raft. Assured by the failed shots, Mir continued to swim towards the middle of the channel where the current was stronger.

The sounds of several splashes came from behind. It seemed that his pursuers were trying to swim their way to Mir.

Mir glanced back with some difficulty while paddling and finally saw his pursuers clearly.

Two young men, both slightly older than him. They didn't wear the hooded clothes he thought they'd be in. Rather, they seemed as normal as any other young explorer. However, neither of them was wearing the full-body jacket that Mir had to wear everywhere. This could only mean that these guys were Transcenders. Only Transcenders dared to bask under direct sunlight.

How many transcenders had been sent to hunt them down?

Mir felt a wave of horror inside his numb heart.

"Stop there or I will shoot!" one of them yelled as he swam to an angle where he could see Mir's half-submerged body.

"If you shoot, the treasure you're looking for will shoot towards the bottom of this stream. Wanna try draining this channel to look for it, boys? Come fight me like a man if you can!" Mir shouted back.

The guy looked conflicted. But much to Mir's relief, he didn't shoot. But he kept swimming towards him.

The other guy seemed intent on chasing Mir along the bank. He called out to the man trying to swim behind Mir.

"Zimu, you idiot! He's trying to bait you! Don't you remember what that girl said about his weird spiritual attack method? Didn't you see what state she was in when we reached her? She could barely talk! Don't go closer to him! We can track him just fine from the bank. All he can do now is escape to the other side of the stream."

The young gunman named Zimu cursed Mir's forefathers and rushed back to the bank beside his teammate.

The two of them watched Mir relax on the raft and paddle lazily along with the current, heading towards the deeper layers of the sacred ground.

"Lon, you shouldn't have shouted the last part. What if the kid really goes to the other side of the channel? We can't cross the-"

Lon slapped Zimu on the back of his head harshly.

"Damned idiot, I shouted that last part HOPING he would try to escape to the other bank. The main team is on that side, just too far away right now. Can't they send someone to trail him secretly on that side? No matter which bank the kid decides to land on, he's dead meat."