"Bo?"
Yin Yi was a little dazed.
It didn't quite understand the meaning behind the Guardian's cries and gaze.
"This..."
Seeing this, the others were all quite moved.
At that moment, Liu Yueming took a step forward and crouched beside the Guardian. He placed a hand on its abdomen, feeling it carefully for a moment before speaking slowly.
"It's dead. It must have exhausted its Life Force to lay its eggs."
Han Ning recalled the Guardian's actions right before its death and said, "I think this Guardian wanted Yin Yi to help look after its descendants... Teacher Liu, you've studied how to raise Guardians. Why don't you take these eggs for now and incubate them properly when we get back?"
He had never raised a Guardian himself, but he remembered scrolling through short videos online from a blogger who did. He vaguely recalled that Guardians were very delicate creatures. An inexperienced person could easily kill one, let alone an unhatched egg.
The creatures here were much stronger than those on Blue Star, so perhaps these Guardians were hardier. Still, just to be safe, it was definitely the right choice to entrust them to someone with experience.
Teacher Liu nodded. He carefully picked up the white eggs from the Guardian's embrace one by one, padded them with a soft cloth, and placed them in his backpack. "I can take them back," he said, "but once these six eggs hatch, how should we divide the Little Guardians?"
"Han Ning, Yin Yi was the one who saved it. You should be the one to decide how to divide them," Teacher Zhou suggested.
Han Ning thought for a moment, then said, "Everyone who was here gets a share. Each of the five of us who came out here will take one, and the last one can be given to a teacher or student who performs exceptionally well in the future. Of course, that's assuming they all hatch successfully. How does that sound?"
He had never even considered taking all six Gecko Eggs for himself.
Just raising them would probably consume a huge amount of food every day.
This dead Guardian must have been a Soul Beast as well. Otherwise, there was no way it could have escaped the Gray Snake's pursuit, especially while pregnant.
The scene of the Gray Snake's pupils shooting out a bright yellow petrifying light that had turned Yin Yi to stone was still fresh in Han Ning's mind.
Since it was a Soul Beast, it was likely stronger than a Silver Lotus Wood. Furthermore, judging from their brief encounter, this type of Guardian had a temperament similar to the Silver Lotus Wood—not particularly aggressive and relatively gentle.
Adopting a Guardian that could help in battle was a good option.
"Let's stick with that plan for now. We'll let Teacher Liu take care of them first, and we'll discuss it again once the Little Guardians have hatched," Teacher Zhou agreed.
"I have no objections." The other three nodded as well.
"If any of you want to raise one personally, I can provide you with some knowledge on raising Guardians when we get back," Teacher Liu added.
He then picked up the yellow Guardian's corpse and placed it in a burlap sack he was carrying.
"Yin Yi, what do you think?" Finally, Han Ning smiled and patted Yin Yi's body, asking for its opinion.
"Bo!" Yin Yi didn't understand the specifics of their discussion, but it would follow Han Ning's words unconditionally.
"Then it's settled."
Before leaving, Han Ning didn't forget the snake corpse that had been cut in two.
He walked over, touched the snake's corpse, then tossed it into a burlap sack and hung it on one of the branches at Yin Yi's side.
[Energy +0.6]
'Its strength wasn't very high, about the same as that giant spider I ran into before.'
...
After this little interlude, the five of them packed up and continued onward.
The overturned train was only about 300 meters from the South Gate.
The five of them trudged onward, one foot sinking deeper than the other. After some distance, the green train, over a hundred meters long, grew larger in their field of view.
And around the swamp, numerous human corpses appeared.
They lay scattered haphazardly in the muddy swamp, their bodies horribly decayed. Black leeches, in twos and threes, crawled in and out of the corpses' surfaces, their slick, slowly writhing bodies reflecting a nauseating gleam under the faint light.
"Fuck, that's disgusting! Teachers, make sure your pant legs are tied up tight! Don't let these nasty things crawl on you! Last time, I..."
Seeing the writhing leeches in the distance, Luo Chen shuddered and quickly looked down to check his own tightly bound pant legs.
To prevent leeches from burrowing into their bodies, they had wrapped their legs from the thighs down in layers of coarse cloth and coated them with a thick layer of salt before setting out.
Leeches are supposedly afraid of salt.
"You've got five layers of coarse cloth wrapped around you. It's not like the leeches can burrow through instantly..." Han Ning glanced at the pale-faced Luo Chen behind him and couldn't help but retort.
The words had barely left his mouth.
Suddenly, a sharp whistling sound came from beside them.
Almost simultaneously, Yin Yi spun around, its body overflowing with a cyan light.
SWOOSH~
In an instant, an arm-length, cyan-colored spike shot out, precisely striking the object hurtling toward them.
Han Ning quickly cut himself off and turned to look. The thing the Silver Thorn had struck was a long, thin tongue covered in barbs.
At the other end of the tongue, in a pool of water, stood an ugly creature the size of a millstone.
It had pockmarked, brownish-green skin, looked like a giant bullfrog, and had exceptionally large eyes with pupils that rippled with concentric rings.
"Holy shit! It's a huge Demon Eye Frog."
Seeing the giant frog's appearance up close, Han Ning's heart tightened. He quickly pulled the others behind Yin Yi for cover.
"Don't look at its eyes!" Teacher Zhou grunted, suddenly reaching out to cover Teacher Liu's eyes.
Just from a brief glance, Teacher Zhou already felt his head swim, and his vision began to spin along with the ripples in the Demon Eye Frog's pupils.
Unlike the Demon Eye Frogs they had seen back at the school, the ripples in this big one's pupils were especially prominent.
CROAK~
The Demon Eye Frog's attack had failed. Instead, Yin Yi's Silver Thorn had blasted it, sending it tumbling several times and blowing off half its tongue.
It lay on its back in the pool, trembling as if having a seizure, while its big, round eyes stared intently at Yin Yi.
Bo bo?
Yin Yi tilted the flower on its head. Without dodging or flinching, it returned the stare with a "fierce" glare of its own.
(｀⌒´メ)
Yin Yi didn't have eyes, but Han Ning could somehow sense its "expression."
The two wing-like green leaves beneath it trembled slightly, and Yin Yi floated lightly into mid-air.
When the Demon Eye Frog saw the Silver Lotus Wood opposite it suddenly disappear, a trace of confusion flickered in its rippling purple eyes.
Then, it felt a strong gust of wind pressure from the front.
BO!!
An inexplicable airflow propelled Yin Yi forward, allowing it to close in on the Demon Eye Frog at extreme speed and deliver a heavy, powerful horizontal sweep with a Vine Whip.
CROAK!
The Demon Eye Frog only had time to spit out its half-remaining, barb-covered tongue.
The next moment, that newly extended tongue, along with its round, rolling body, suffered a heavy blow, caving in violently.
With a THUD.
The Demon Eye Frog was slammed heavily into the puddle beneath it, like a batted ball.
...A few seconds later, Yin Yi returned directly to Han Ning's side, carrying the Demon Eye Frog, whose half-a-tongue was lolling out.
"Well done."
Han Ning rubbed his hand against Yin Yi's flower in encouragement, then bent down to deal with the completely dead Demon Eye Frog.
He first used the panel to absorb the 0.6 residual Energy from its body.
The Demon Eye Frog's body immediately deflated like a balloon that had lost its air.