After midnight

They continued walking forward, the atmosphere became awkward for no reason, and silence spread.

An Yan remained the same as usual, silent and unmovable. Yin Ze stood by and watched as if nothing had happened, only occasionally observing Su Ziling and An Yan without making a sound.

As for Su Ziling, he was in no mood to respond to anyone or anything. He wanted to apologize to An Yan again, but in this state, what was the point of his perfunctory apology?

Su Ziling's steps became heavier and heavier, and his mind became more and more confused.

When he was resting, he curled up alone under the roots of a tree, feeling the wind rushing into his body, which was very uncomfortable. At this moment, the surrounding scenery was blurry and invisible, and any slight movement came from far away.

Yin came over to find him, but when he patted Su Ziling's shoulder, he immediately withdrew his hand as if he had touched something and touched his forehead again.

"You have a fever! Su Zi Ling."

"Hmm?" Su Ziling's voice was barely audible. He had a fever, no wonder he felt weak all over.

Yin hurriedly rolled up his sleeves, and the gauze was already stained with circles of disgusting yellow. "The wound is infected. Wait, I'll get you some medicine."

Yin was gone for a short time, but Su Ziling felt it was very slow. When Yin came back and stuffed the medicine into Su Ziling's mouth, Su Ziling sipped his saliva and tried to swallow it. He swallowed the medicine and just wanted to continue curling up, but he was lifted up and carried on another person's back.

The person who carried him again was... An Yan. An Yan's back felt cool, which made Su Ziling more conscious. In fact, he was very conscious the whole time. He knew what they were doing and what was wrong with him, but he just couldn't muster up the energy. He could feel the cold lake breeze blowing on his body, which not only did not dispel the burning heat, but also made him feel even colder.

After An Yan put Su Ziling in the tent, he pressed all the coverings on him. Su Ziling felt uncomfortable but didn't want to move, so he gradually fell into a deep sleep.

Su Ziling battled the disease in the tent, leaving Yin and Anyan standing outside.

"An Yan." Yin called him.

"Ok?"

"Su Ziling is still a child who has no experience in the world after all."

"I know."

Originally, Yin just wanted to interject, but he didn't expect An Yan's attitude of protecting Su Ziling to instantly arouse his interest. He even asked An Yan maliciously: "Why are you so devoted to him? He is just a stranger."

"What about you? Don't you take good care of him too?" An Yan asked him back.

"I'm just afraid that he will hold me back." Yin said casually, seemingly unconcerned.

An Yan didn't want to argue with Yin, but instead continued to answer his previous question seriously.

"He is not a stranger." An Yan said word by word, "His life is tied to me."

Yin was speechless for a moment. An Yan's answer was straightforward and frank. He could not hear any complaint or helplessness in it.

"Why did you choose this path?" Yin didn't know what to say, so he had to change the topic and ask him.

"Is it important?" An Yan asked him again, in a light tone.

"Maybe it's not important, but I want to know." Yin stared at him.

An Yan thought for a long time without saying anything. Just when Yin was about to give up, An Yan spoke.

"Like you said, the island in the middle leads directly to Sand City. The enemy will know our purpose sooner or later, so we have to do the opposite. The island on the left, southeast, is too small and too long to hide. Besides, some traces will be discovered no matter how hard we try to clean them up, so we can't go to that island either."

"And... there may be something strange on this island." An Yan said finally.

"Weird? What's weird?" Yin simply ignored the word "maybe" and showed great interest.

An Yan stood up and faced one direction and said, "When I was exploring the water flow of this island, I found a very strange phenomenon. I'm not quite sure what it is... Maybe my ability is not strong enough."

This means that there is absolutely no way that there is something wrong with An Yan's ability. Yin also looked in that direction.

The lush forest seemed to know that something was hidden behind it, and the layers of leaves blocked the path leading there. Relying on some kind of intuition, Yin thought that maybe something strange really happened on this island.

When An Yan and Yin looked out, Su Ziling fell into the abyss of dream. He heard someone calling his name, Ziling, Ziling...

The voice sounded very familiar and intimate. Who was calling him? Su Ziling saw that when the voice sounded, his childhood self put down his toys and ran out obediently.

Su Ziling followed and wanted to know who was calling him, but he saw that after his childhood self opened the door, the scene outside suddenly changed from the room to the lawn under the dam.

"This is for you!" He raised his hand.

What was he holding in his hand? Su Ziling couldn't see clearly, who was the little boy opposite? He wanted to get closer, but the scene changed again. Fire, a big fire, who was he looking for? Su Ziling saw himself running in the bloody sunset, what was he chasing?

Su Ziling saw the kid, that is, he himself, being caught up and grabbed. No, Su Ziling's heart subconsciously tightened, let him go quickly, he was going to... what was he going to do?

Su Ziling woke up from his dream, breathing rapidly.

"Su Ziling, are you awake?"

"Yeah." Su Ziling tried his best to smile.

"Did you have a nightmare? You kept shouting "no, no" and so on. I was about to wake you up and you woke up." Yin looked at his pale face and felt a little worried.

Nightmare? Su Ziling thought about it carefully and found that his mind was blank. He could only vaguely remember what happened before he went to sleep.

"I think so. I don't remember."

"I see." Yin said, reaching out and touching his forehead, "The fever is gone."

"Well, I feel better and we can keep going."

"Why are you leaving? It's getting dark." Yin said with a smile, "Why don't you get up and move around for a while? An Yan is cooking."

Su Ziling stood up and breathed the fresh air unique to the forest. He carefully checked himself and found that the wound had been rebandaged. He touched the gauze wrapped around his arm and smiled slightly, then walked to An Yan.

"An Yan."

An Yan smiled at him slowly.

The search area was too large. In this unknown area with numerous islands, there were many options for escape routes. Along the edge of Jiunan Park, from east to west, there were more than a dozen islands of different sizes separated by water. That was to say, even if we knew that the ultimate goal of the Son of God was the Sand City, it would be very difficult to find his trace if we were not sure of the exact direction.

Having ruled out the two extreme directions of east and west, Song Yu and Zhang Dong were meeting up with Zhao Yunqi and Shangguan Can. Zhao Yunqi spread out the map and confirmed that An Yan had been wandering around in the central region.

Two days later, they reached the edge of the land. After confirming that the search route was almost correct, everyone's tense nerves relaxed a lot. Everyone rested on the spot, but after a while, Shangguan Can was nowhere to be found.

"Yunqi, I found an important clue." When he came out again, he whispered mysteriously in Zhao Yunqi's ear.

Zhao Yunqi asked Shangguan Can to take him there.

"Look, it's very obvious that someone has been around here." Shangguan Can pointed to Zhao Yunqi while chattering.

"Well, let me take a closer look." Zhao Yunqi said, and jumped down directly.

"Hey...are you okay?" Shangguan Can asked him loudly while lying at the entrance of the cave.

"Don't worry." Zhao Yunqi put his hands over his mouth and said to him, "Don't disturb me, just stay up there quietly."

As expected, there was no more sound coming from the cave entrance. Zhao Yunqi began to look carefully. The wooden sticks were inserted into the soil in an orderly manner and tilted downward. It was obvious that someone had climbed up by stepping on them.

Suppose someone fell into this hole and climbed up by stepping on the branches of the tree, where did he get these things? An Yan's ability is water, not wood, so there must be a second person helping him, which means An Yan has an accomplice!

Zhao Yunqi was startled, he pulled out the branch and examined it more carefully. The cut on the branch looked like it was split instead of chopped with a knife, so this must be the ability of another person, what kind of ability was it?

Zhao Yunqi walked back and forth at the bottom of the cave, and suddenly he stepped on something, so he moved his feet and squatted down. He picked up the fruit that had shriveled beyond recognition, and then looked up at the cave entrance. It was a phantom fruit on the tree.

Why did the phantom fruit fall here?

Wait... Zhao Yunqi reorganized his thoughts.

This cave is not very deep. If someone falls in here, it is not a problem for him to climb up with his ability. But if he eats the magic fruit by mistake, then he will definitely not be able to get out by himself, so it is not wrong to have an accomplice. So what exactly caused this result?

Zhao Yunqi was puzzled and could only assume that the person who was poisoned and unconscious was An Yan.

An Yan fell into a coma, and someone came down to save him - no, that's impossible, An Yan would not fall into a coma due to poisoning, it must be his accomplice, and there must be a third person at the scene.

Zhao Yunqi's eyes widened in surprise, and he quickly fixed his gaze on the cave wall. Sure enough, his guess was correct.

What on earth was going on? Besides An Yan, who were the other two people? In this case, wouldn't it be dangerous for them to catch up with An Yan rashly?

He had to report to Song Hongtian so that he could redeploy the personnel. Just when Zhao Yunqi made up his mind, he suddenly realized that something was wrong. An Yan was not someone who would make such a low-level mistake. He would not leave so many obvious clues for them to discover.

Is this a trap, deliberately designed to confuse them? But why did An Yan go to so much trouble?

Zhao Yunqi pondered for a while and decided to go up and discuss it with Song Yu first.

Zhao Yunqi believed that if the choice they made was the right one, then the day of meeting the 'Son of God' would not be far away.

The next day, Su Ziling was no longer sick and the wound had scabbed over.

Last night, An Yan's smile stunned him for a moment, and the words he was about to apologize were blocked in his mouth. After that, he never found a suitable opportunity to talk about this issue, and the matter just ended like that.

Forget it. If you don't apologize in time, and wait until the past is over, it would seem too hypocritical to bring it up and apologize again.

Su Ziling followed An Yan and continued walking. Since landing on the second island, the humidity in the forest has become noticeably heavier. The branches and leaves of the big trees grew in disorder, blocking the sunlight sporadically, and the weeds on the ground occasionally swept across the trouser legs.

Su Ziling was still walking in the middle of the team, but the further he walked, the more strange he felt.

Because An Yan was almost walking straight ahead, as if he didn't mind exposing his whereabouts at all. Strange, didn't An Yan always choose to take a detour for the sake of caution? What was his purpose in doing this?