The young man was Qing Huai, from the Fourth Branch of the Qing Family.
He stared at the forest a few meters away from them, then pointed at a bunch of strange-looking mushrooms as he asked the soldier in his thirties, "Brother Cao Wei, what is that?"
There was a corpse of an unidentified animal with brightly colored mushrooms growing all over its body.
Cao Wei explained to the young man, "That's the corpse of a capuchin monkey, Sir. What's growing on the corpse are the buds of Gu mushroom. A Gu mushroom will explode upon reaching maturity, and its spores will rely on this explosion to sink itself into the skin of an animal. The spores will then form a parasitic relation with the animal and absorb the nutrients from its body to eventually grow into a new mushroom."
Because its self-explosion was not very powerful, the animals implicated in the process would not die immediately.
They would continue to live carrying those spores inside their bodies until the day those things sucked them dry.
After finishing his explanation, Cao Wei said, "Let's get started, Sir Qing Huai."
Qing Huai then beckoned to the people behind him.
A group of expressionless soldiers led several wilderness people in tattered clothes to the front. Among the wilderness people, there was an elderly couple, a middle-aged couple, and a little girl.
One of the soldiers took out a dagger and put it against the girl's achilles tendon, addressing the rest of the wilderness people, "Let's start, do as we've agreed upon."
The girl's tears had dried up from crying for too long. With ashen faces, the group of wilderness people gazed into the hinterland of the Forbidden Land.
Her grandfather walked across the border, unbuttoned his pants, and urinated on the ground.
The next second, he began trembling from head to toe. Countless ants crawled out from the underground onto his body to eat him alive.
Qing Huai glanced at the old lady and the middle-aged man beside him, signalling them to continue.
The middle-aged man whispered, "Let's do it, Mom. For Nannan's sake."
With shaking hands, the old lady picked up a gun, walked into the hinterland, and fired at the ground.
In an instant, the ants that were still eating the little girl's grandfather rushed towards the old lady.
The middle-aged man held his wife's hand and walked over, fear and trepidation increasing with every step. The two of them looked at each other and hugged tightly before separating.
The woman uttered a swear word and became the next victim of the ants.
The man watched bitterly as his wife died wailing in pain, and then he spat on the ground.
He too, was soon swallowed up by the ants.
In just five or six minutes, a pile of bones was all that was left of them.
Qing Huai smiled and looked at the little girl, "I promised your family that I'll let you go if they did as I said. It's been done, so you can leave now."
After saying that, he told the soldier to release her.
The little girl bawled hysterically, but instead of running away, she threw herself on the pile of bones and shouted for her family.
Those ants had not yet dispersed, and after feeling the breath of a prey, they climbed onto the little girl's body.
The rows of soldiers lined up behind watched indifferently as everything unfolded. No trace of wavering could be found in their eyes.
Qing Huai told Cao Wei, "Brother Cao Wei, there's no problem with the information."
No use of firearms, no swearing, no spitting, and no excreting on the ground.
These federal soldiers arrested a family of wilderness people just to verify the accuracy of the rules they had obtained.
Cao Wei glanced into the hinterland and said, "Sir Qing Huai, if you must advance inside, I suggest taking a short break for now.
Qing Huai gave a couple of slow nods, "We'll rest here."
After a short pause, he added, "Brother Cao Wei, you've worked hard."
"This is what I should do, Sir," Cao Wei replied to him before walking to the back of the team.
Cao Wei from the Qing Corporation's army was a relatively well-known name who had reached level C at a young age.
Every time the army held a martial arts competition, Cao Wei would come out on top, and in addition to that, he was also among the best in doing combat manoeuvres with live ammunition.
He had survived 17 missions in the wilderness, and his front uniform was fully filled out by all the medals he had managed to obtain in action.
In a meteoric rise, he received constant promotions all the way to the rank of a major.
However, two years ago, a drunk Cao Wei suddenly created a ruckus during a drill and was immediately punished by military discipline. He was demoted and assigned to serve as an adjutant of a company.1Military unit smaller than a battalion.
At that time, many people were thinking, why would such an excellent Cao Wei make such a senseless mistake when his future was looking so bright?
Moreover, Cao Wei was someone directly fostered by the Fourth Branch of the Qing Family, the family with the most authority in the Second Army. Why did no one cover for him?
Two weeks later, Qing Huai graduated from the Pyro Military Academy and assumed the position of chief officer of the field operations company Cao Wei was assigned to.
Only then did everyone understand that everything had been prepared for Qing Huai.
Without exception, all the soldiers in that field operations company were direct underlings of the Fourth Branch of the Qing Family. The Fourth Branch transferred them into the team by using various means and pulling all kinds of strings.
Cao Wei and the other soldiers had no complaints regarding this. They were very clear about one thing: the Fourth Branch was one of the most powerful factions in the Qing Family, and Qing Huai was their most promising descendant.
As long as they survived the Fight for the Shadow, they knew that a great career advancement would be waiting around the corner.
Should the day come when Qing Huai becomes the head of the Qing Family, this short-term loss wouldn't matter at all in the long run.
As of present, more than a hundred soldiers silently stood in place.
After receiving Cao Wei's order, everyone took out a sealed pouch from their bag and solved their physical necessities on the spot.
With a serious attitude, they used their strong and steady arms to hold the sealed pouch and urinate inside of it, ensuring no drop could splatter out of the pouch.
A few minutes later, everyone carefully zipped up the double-layered seal on the pouch. Each platoon then collected the pouches and buried them inside the forest.
During the process, no one spoke, and no one communicated.
These people did not carry firearms, and instead, they especially brought sealed pouches.
It was evident that they knew about certain rules before entering this Forbidden Land.
However, some time after they buried the pouches, a rustling sound suddenly erupted from the depths of the hinterland, as if a predator was slowly approaching.
Everyone looked at the direction where the noise came from, but found nothing of clue.
"Get into battle formation," Cao Wei coldly commanded.
As soon as he finished speaking, he saw a soldier turning blue in the face. The soldier struggled to ask for help, "Save me."
The other soldiers stared at him, not knowing what was going on.
The soldier then fell to the ground, his eyeballs as red as if they had just been soaked in blood.
No one made a move to approach him aside from Cao Wei, who slowly walked to his body and gently pried open his mouth with a dagger. His oral cavity and tongue were festering.
Cao Wei cut open the legs of his trousers.
The soldier's legs had turned black, pus covered wounds turning his flesh into a watery meat paste, as if his limbs had been doused by sulfuric acid.
Cao Wei cautiously observed, "This is…"
Before he could finish speaking, another soldier with the same symptoms fell to the ground not far away from them. One after another followed in succession, and in just a few seconds, more than ten soldiers had been infected!
The other soldiers wanted to save them, but their comrades died too quickly for them to be able to do anything.
A soldier checked the screen he was holding, which was displaying the thermal detection scan collected from the mechanical hounds. But the strange thing was that there was no sign of abnormality.
Finally, the rapid deaths briefly stopped.
"Count the number of people!" Cao Wei furiously shouted.
"Report, Sir! The death toll is 24… Sir, all the soldiers from platoon six are dead!"
A team consisted of eight people, and a platoon was made up of three teams, totaling to 24 soldiers in number.
"This isn't good," Cao Wei immediately looked at Qing Huai.
Qing Huai speculated in a cold voice, "Someone is using the rules to assassinate us, another person has come into Forbidden Land No. 002!"
Without warning, he ran towards the direction they had left from, moving extremely quickly.
Cao Wei gritted his teeth and ordered the rest of the soldiers, "Follow according to tactical formation and prepare for battle."
They had already realized what was going on. If the attacker was the beasts and plants from the forest, it was impossible for everyone from the same platoon to die successively.
But which rule was this person using?!
Under the leadership of Qing Huai, the field operations company marched back along their previous path at full speed.
Along the way, soldiers kept dying one after another, as if an uncontrollable force had enveloped them. As if the god of death had descended upon them.
After running for a few kilometers, Qing Huai suddenly stopped. He silently looked at the pits that had been dug out in front of him.
Inside those pits were sealed pouches that had been punctured one by one. These were the same pits they had dug two hours ago after they finished urinating.
Someone forced them to break the rule!
Who could've thought that someone would use such a sinister trick?
Before this, no one expected the Forbidden Land to actually still count the crime on the source of the urine even when it had been another person who cut these buried sealed pouches!
Not only did this person know about the rule, he even understood it better than they did.
But this was simply too foul!
"That person hasn't gotten far, he only left after seeing us coming," Qing Huai was able to analyze this because there was a pit that had only been dug halfway.
Right at this moment.
"Who?!" Cao Wei suddenly looked into the depths of the forest.
Among the dense trees, he saw a figure quietly watching them.
That figure gestured a slitting motion across his throat, then quickly disappeared into the darkness.