Chapter 265: What! We’ve been discovered!

5:30 a.m.  

The sun rose, casting warm, golden rays over everyone. At the entrance of the jungle, over a hundred program inspectors were fully geared up. They were dressed head to toe in protective suits, with ropes slung over their shoulders. In each hand, they carried climbing tools and medical supplies.

Wu Mingyu and the other program captains stood at the front, their expressions serious. 

After covering some safety precautions, the whole group began flooding into the dense forest.

Meanwhile, our main character, Wang Yun, was still fast asleep.

The jungle was vast, and even if the inspectors managed to find some trace of them, it would take at least two to three hours to reach their location on foot.

At this hour, Wang Yun’s live stream should have been relatively quiet. After all, most people were still asleep. But strangely enough, it was bustling with activity. Everyone was talking about the terrifying incident that had occurred the previous night.

“Damn! I shouldn’t have watched the stream last night. It’s been hours, and my scalp is still tingling!”

“My heart is racing. This isn’t a show anymore, it’s real survival in the wild!”

“Honestly, guys, I’m too scared to even put my feet on the ground. I keep imagining a snake crawling out from under my bed!”

“Same here! I threw out everything purple in my house. Even my kid’s coloring book got tossed!”

“Wang Yun is something else, man. Seriously! After all that, he’s still sleeping soundly!”

“How long do they plan to stay there? I’m so freaked out I don’t even want to watch anymore!”

The chat buzzed with people’s reactions. What had happened in the middle of the night left everyone in shock. It was something very few had ever witnessed. Not even famous survival experts like Bear Grylls had encountered such a dangerous situation on their shows.

And Wang Yun had only just entered the jungle when he stumbled upon this bizarre event. 

It was hard to tell whether his luck was incredibly good or disastrously bad.

Meanwhile, online, several natural scientists had jumped into the conversation, explaining the properties of various plants. Zoologists, too, chimed in overnight, sharing their thoughts on the phenomenon.

They claimed that the snake group Wang Yun had encountered was one of nature’s rarest wonders. Typically, snakes only gather for breeding once a year, and it’s almost never witnessed by humans. The location is usually very secretive, and some species only gather once every five or six years.

Wang Yun had led them straight to a rare sight that only happens once in several years, leaving naturalists both envious and terrified. 

They couldn’t help but wonder what they would have done if they had encountered something like that themselves.

At that moment, Wang Yun was still sound asleep. Beside him, Brother Hu’s snoring was so loud it was deafening, but it didn’t bother anyone’s rest. They were all utterly exhausted.

However, out of nowhere, Wang Yun suddenly opened his eyes.

“Only six o’clock…” he muttered, yawning as he turned over.

Normally, Wang Yun was a deep sleeper and rarely woke up abruptly like this. Maybe the scare from the early morning was still lingering. 

He didn’t think too much of it, though. He wanted to go back to sleep, but once he was awake, there was no chance of falling back asleep. 

So, he got up, washed up a bit, and looked around. The group of guys didn’t usually eat breakfast and stuck to two meals a day. Since the others were still asleep, and he had nothing to do, Wang Yun decided to pick some wild greens and whip up something light to eat.

“Hm?”

After only walking for about ten minutes, Wang Yun noticed a flock of birds suddenly taking off into the sky in the distance, as if startled by something.

“Could it be wild boars or something?” he mumbled.

Wild boars were tough, but he wasn’t worried in the slightest. In fact, the thought of their tender meat made him lick his lips in anticipation. Without hesitation, he rubbed his hands together and sped off toward the source, eager for a potential meal.

Maybe it was the thought of fresh meat driving him, but he was moving fast. After about ten minutes of running, what he saw ahead made him immediately tense up.

“No way, they’re moving this fast?”

It wasn’t wild boars up ahead. It was the program inspectors.

They were wearing white protective suits and carefully watching their steps as they walked, waving sticks in the air. The commotion had scared the birds into flight.

“Damn…!”

Wang Yun didn’t waste a second and turned to run back. Luckily, he was still far enough away that they hadn’t spotted him. But at the speed they were moving, they would reach his camp in about an hour.

Ten minutes later, Wang Yun, drenched in sweat, reached the camp and yanked up the tent in one swift motion. 

“Wake up! They’ve caught up!” he whispered in a low but urgent voice, trying not to make too much noise in case anyone nearby overheard.

“What? Who’s caught up? Is it the snakes?”

Brother Hu and Wang Zi shot upright in panic. Brother Hu, thinking it was snakes, nearly screamed.

“The inspectors. They’re on their way. You have three minutes to pack up your things.” 

Wang Yun’s face was serious as he spoke, quickly starting to fold up the tent and erase any traces of the campfire or cooking.

“We can’t let them find out we were here.”

“Already?!” 

“They must be snakes! Chasing after that snake flower, right?” Xiao Gang couldn’t help but complain, baffled by the speed at which the inspectors were closing in.

It was too fast, fast enough to catch them off guard. The inspectors had just arrived on the island the night before, yet somehow they had already pinpointed their location by morning.

The four of them moved quickly, and in three minutes, they had everything packed up. Wang Yun looked at the group, all still groggy with sleep.

“Stay sharp. We’re heading to the spot we scouted yesterday,” he said firmly. “Things are getting serious. We have no choice but to enter the Enclosed Mountain today.”

He pulled out three bottles of medicine. “This is to protect you from the miasma in there. Take one with you and drink a mouthful before we go in. It should last about three hours.”

He paused, making sure they were listening. “Once we’re inside, no one moves on their own. Don’t panic, and follow my lead.”

The medicine was something Wang Yun had concocted before entering the forest. Using the god-level medical skills he had learned and the descriptions of the miasma from the father and son, he had come up with this formula. But he had never tested it, so they would be taking a gamble.

If things went wrong, they would retreat immediately.

After giving his instructions, the four of them headed off along the route from the previous night. No one spoke as they walked. Their expressions were tense and grave, feeling an unprecedented sense of pressure.

In the past, they had always left some trace to be discovered, leading the inspectors to find them. But this time, they hadn’t done anything and were still unprepared, yet they were already being pursued.

It took them an hour and a half to reach the flowing stream they had seen yesterday. They looked around nervously, afraid that the snakes from last night might still be nearby.

“Xiao Gang, do you think the snake situation is over by now? It’s been five or six hours, right?” Lao Hu whispered.

Xiao Gang gave a wry smile. 

“Brother Hu, I have no idea. As long as we don’t run into any more snake flowers, we should be fine… right?”

He glanced at Wang Yun for reassurance. But just as Xiao Gang looked over, he saw Wang Yun reach out toward a blooming snake flower nearby and snap it off with a crisp crack.