Following the directions from Zhang Xuchu's squad, the two sisters trekked through the Shadowed Forest.
The lingering scent of strawberry and jasmine finally faded after Lin Qingyue summoned her Cleaning Water Ball for the fifth time to scrub herself down.
The price was that she now smelled like a bar of strawberry soap that had been left to soak in water.
"Sis, what do you think this 'Moonlight Moss' looks like? Does it really glow?" Lin Xiyue asked curiously, using her shield to push aside the thick, hanging vines in their path.
"The records say it shimmers with a pearlescent glow under moonlight. It's the main ingredient for high-grade Tranquility Potions," Lin Qingyue replied, recalling the Dungeon Resource Compendium she had crammed before the exam. "Let's just hope the monster guarding it isn't too outrageous."
To avoid potential swamp gas and lurking creatures, they chose to follow a babbling forest stream upstream.
The water was crystal clear, revealing a bed of smooth, rounded pebbles that brought a rare touch of freshness to the gloomy forest.
After walking for about half an hour, Lin Qingyue suddenly stopped, her gaze sharp as she stared at a patch of damp mud by the riverbank.
"Xiyue, look over there."
Lin Xiyue followed her sister's pointing finger and saw several unnatural marks in the mud.
They were definitely not animal tracks. They looked more like... prints left by crude boots, about the size of a human child's, but the toe section was spread unusually wide.
"Someone's here?" Lin Xiyue instantly became alert, instinctively raising her Kite Shield in front of her.
"Doesn't seem like it." Lin Qingyue crouched down to examine them closely.
"The footprints are chaotic and numerous, but the stride is very short, not like an adult's. And..."
She gestured with her fingertip toward several fruit pits that had been carelessly discarded in the mud, gnawed exceptionally clean, and some pieces of bark that had been crudely peeled off, bearing teeth marks. "Their eating habits are very primitive."
She stood up, her gaze following the direction of the footprints into the deeper, almost impassable jungle.
"Let's follow them and see," Lin Qingyue decided.
The unknown often meant danger, but it could also bring opportunity. In a Dungeon, information itself was a resource.
The two sisters suppressed their presence and followed the intermittent trail.
The deeper they went, the more obvious the signs of artificial activity became: crudely snapped branches, markers haphazardly tied with vines, and even a few precariously built traps made from stones and sticks.
Lin Xiyue muttered under her breath, "This trap... Is it trying to catch prey by being cute? The building blocks I played with at age three were more complex than this."
But Lin Qingyue's brow furrowed slightly. "The technique is crude, but the purpose is clear. The intelligence behind these things might be a little higher than we thought."
After another fifteen minutes, they pushed aside a particularly dense thicket of thorns, and the scene before them left both sisters stunned.
The dense forest suddenly opened up.
A crooked, winding path, clearly carved out by brute force, stretched into the distance.
And at the end of that path, a colossal structure stood proudly, twisted into a grotesque form.
The thing might have been called a "castle."
But it looked more like a giant nest, haphazardly piled together from rough logs, mud, vines, and all sorts of junk—including half a rusty iron sheet, several cracked wooden barrels, and even a tattered cloth of questionable color hanging on the wall.
It was utterly devoid of beauty, lopsided and crooked, with holes in its walls patched everywhere with giant leaves.
Atop the tallest "tower," a flag made of animal hide, scrawled on with unknown dyes, was planted. The design was so abstract it bordered on postmodernism.
This garbage-style "castle" clashed violently with the ancient, wild Shadowed Forest surrounding it, like a 3D art piece a mischievous child had improvised on a world-famous painting using glue and trash.
"What... what the hell is that?" Lin Xiyue's mouth formed a perfect "O." "Some homeless artist's graduation project?"
Just then, a chorus of shrill, ear-piercing chatter erupted from the castle's direction.
The sisters immediately ducked behind a giant tree, peeking out cautiously.
The crooked wooden gate was shoved open with a bang, and several figures hopped out.
They stood only waist-high to an average person, their skin a sickly yellow-green. They had pointed ears, large noses, and were draped in tattered cloth and scraps of leather armor. In their hands, they brandished wooden clubs, rusty swords, and even sharpened animal bones.
At that moment, they were gathered in a circle, pointing and squabbling over a pile of shiny trinkets on the ground.
"Gah! Mine! Shiny-shiny! Most!" a particularly skinny green-skinned creature shrieked, snatching a handful.
"Waaah! Stupid Gah! Count wrong! I have more!" another, chubbier green-skin shoved it aside and reached to grab the loot.
"Gribble-grabble! Share! Equal share!" A third, slightly older-looking goblin tried to draw lines on the ground with a small stick, but the lines were so crooked that it stared at them for a long moment, seemingly unable to figure out how to divide the pile.
They argued, shoved, and even pulled at each other's sparse hair, creating a scene that was both chaotic and comical.
Lin Qingyue's Exam Wristband vibrated slightly, displaying the scan results:
[Forest Goblin Lv. 15-18]
[Points: 25/each]
[Traits: Gregarious, cowardly but greedy. Possesses a rudimentary tribal civilization and extremely crude tool-making abilities. Mathematical skills typically do not exceed the number 5.]
[Note: Synonymous with chaos and noise. Sometimes, their noise is their most powerful weapon.]
"Goblins?" Lin Xiyue whispered, her voice laced with disbelief. "Forest Goblins? These creatures, who only appear as cautionary tales in low-level educational primers, actually exist? And they built a... castle?"
Lin Qingyue gazed at the goblins, who were beating each other bloody over a few shards of glass. Then she looked up at the rickety wooden castle swaying in the wind. A peculiar expression flickered in her eyes.
She recalled Zhang Xuchu's team mentioning "Moonlight Moss" and "Powerful Guards."
Then she looked back at the little green-skinned runts struggling even to count.
An absurd thought rose in her mind—Don't tell me... the ones guarding the rare Moonlight Moss are this bunch of clowns?
"Sis, what do we do now?" Lin Xiyue asked, eager for a fight. "Charge in and wipe them all out? They don't look very tough."
Lin Qingyue shook her head, her gaze fixed on the older goblin who was trying to "mediate" but was only succeeding in confusing himself.
The corners of her lips curled into a smile, a curve that held a hint of calculation and the amusement of someone enjoying a good show.
"Let's not rush. Have you noticed? Despite all the noise, they're staying close to that castle, as if guarding something."
"And they seem... particularly obsessed with shiny things."
As she spoke, she retrieved several intact stingers from her Equipment Space, collected after killing the Poison Bee Queen.
The stingers glimmered with a cold, metallic sheen in the dim light.
"Perhaps," Lin Qingyue said, weighing the stingers in her hand. A smile played on her lips, somewhere between "just as planned" and pure mischief.
"We can make a deal with them in a more... civilized manner."
Lin Xiyue glanced at the stingers in her sister's hand, then back at the goblins who were about to bash each other's brains out over a few shiny trinkets. She suddenly had a feeling that what was about to unfold would be incredibly... entertaining.
[Ding! Potential "trading" partners detected (mathematical abilities questionable). Cross-civilizational(?) commercial activity planned. Elation Value +50! Host, let the show begin! Aha eagerly awaits a grand farce of miscommunication!]