Chapter 242 - 241: Marked

Chapter 242: Chapter 241: Marked

"Aren’t desires and wishes different?" Huangfu Miaomiao asked.

Feng Ling glanced at her and said with a smile, "To the person making the wish, it’s a wish. But to an Immortal, that’s not necessarily the case."

Hearing this, Ye Zheng fell silent for a moment before saying in a low voice, "A thing made of so much flesh... no matter how you look at it, you can’t possibly see it as a normal wish."

"Let’s go back and ask the Daoist. He loves studying this kind of stuff." Feng Ling looked at the road ahead. "Come on, the safe house is just one more street away."

The three of them returned to the safe house.

Perhaps due to the Wandering God’s activity, they didn’t encounter a single rat on the way.

After they returned, Feng Ling was about to tell Li Qing and Xu Yiming what had just happened when Li Qing shot to his feet. With a shocked expression, he rushed over to her and looked her up and down, as if staring at something terrifying.

Feng Ling was baffled by his scrutiny and asked suspiciously, "What’s wrong?"

Huangfu Miaomiao also asked Li Qing, "Yeah, why are you looking at Feng Ling like that?"

Li Qing took a deep breath and said to Feng Ling, "You’ve been marked! There’s a skull symbol above your head. Who did this?!"

"Ah..." Feng Ling’s eyes widened in surprise.

Ye Zheng immediately blew up. "I told you to leave, but you just wouldn’t listen! You were so close—the Maze Master must have been the one who marked you!"

Li Qing then turned to look at Ye Zheng and said gravely, "You’ve been marked, too."

Ye Zheng was stunned, her scarlet eyes staring at Li Qing in disbelief.

Only Xu Yiming was still out of the loop. He looked anxiously from one person to another. "What happens when you get marked? Will the Maze Master be able to find you? But didn’t they go to blow up the mountain? How did they run into the Maze Master? Could it be just like we guessed before, that the Maze Master was hiding in the mountain?"

He looked at Feng Ling again and asked, "But the Daoist and I definitely heard the explosion. With a blast that powerful, there’s no way the Maze Master could have survived if it was in the mountain! Did you fail to blow it up?"

"If they had failed, they wouldn’t have been marked," Li Qing said grimly.

Huangfu Miaomiao hurried over to Li Qing and asked, "What about me? Am I marked?"

Li Qing glanced at her, frowning slightly. "You’re not. You were probably farther away from the Maze Master. Marking abilities usually have a range requirement."

"I don’t think it’s because she was far away," Ye Zheng shot Huangfu Miaomiao a sidelong glance. "It’s because she didn’t take part in blowing up the mountain."

Whether it was throwing grenades or planting explosives, Feng Ling and Ye Zheng had done all the work. Huangfu Miaomiao had stayed far away.

Feng Ling had a good attitude about it. She said to Li Qing, "Well, we’re already marked, so let’s not worry about how it happened. Just tell us what effect this mark will have on us."

Li Qing frowned, studying it carefully. "...A marking ability’s most direct function is to find a target. But this mark... it seems to carry resentment with it. It might have a negative emotional effect on you."

As soon as Feng Ling heard that, she immediately looked at Ye Zheng. "Are you feeling any negative emotions?"

Ye Zheng said with a cold expression, "In my current state, it would be difficult to feel any positive emotions to begin with."

Feng Ling chuckled. "And here I thought you couldn’t take a joke. See? That was pretty humorous."

Ye Zheng: "......"

’She’d always been used to serious teams and respectable teammates. Working with someone like Feng Ling was genuinely agonizing for her!’

"Feng Ling, what exactly happened when you blew up the mountain?" Li Qing asked, his expression serious.

Feng Ling walked over to her snack bag, pulled out a stick of beef jerky, and started unwrapping it as she spoke. "At first, it was just a standard demolition procedure. After we made the mountain collapse, I wanted to see what was going on. I didn’t expect to hear a cacophony of voices when I got closer."

"What kind of voices?" Li Qing pressed.

"The sound of people making wishes!" Huangfu Miaomiao cut in. "The voices of lots and lots of people making wishes, coming from inside the flesh!"

"That’s right." Feng Ling took a bite of her beef jerky and said calmly, "Some wanted to get rich, some wanted to get stronger, some wanted to live... I listened for a bit. The wishes for survival were the most numerous and the most intense."

Hearing this, Xu Yiming couldn’t help but sigh. "Once you’re in the Maze, of course everyone wants to live..."

Feng Ling nodded. "Mm, wanting to live is normal. What’s not normal is why those voices are coming from inside the flesh. You all saw it—that mountain was basically made of the corpses of all sorts of creatures. So my current theory is that all those creatures once made a wish, and they later became part of the mountain. The consciousness from when they made their wishes was preserved in the flesh."

"But why would the Maze Master collect these wishes?" Xu Yiming was baffled. "What does the Maze Master look like? You saw it, right?"

Feng Ling shook her head, chewed her beef jerky, and swallowed. "I only saw a little bit. It was pure black and had scales. The rest of it was buried in the flesh, so I couldn’t see."

She turned her head and asked Li Qing, "Daoist, are there any Immortals in the local folklore that match that description?"

Li Qing thought for a moment before replying, "If it has scales, it could only be a dragon. The Guangshan District is near the sea, so they believe in the Dragon Mother. But you said it was black... The Dragon Mother can’t be black."

Huangfu Miaomiao whispered, "Could it be that we charred it black with the explosion..."

Feng Ling couldn’t help but laugh. "No way. I saw it clearly. The scales were a glossy black, not a charred black."

Li Qing paced back and forth in the room a few times, muttering, "You made the mountain collapse, heard the sounds of wishing, then discovered the Maze Master, and then you were marked by it without even realizing..."

"Yep, that’s the gist of it." Feng Ling nodded. "When we found the Maze Master, the surrounding fog turned redder, and a ton of live rats crawled out of the flesh, forming a Divine Travel Team. At first, the rats chased us, but they didn’t follow for long before heading off in another direction. I couldn’t figure out what was up with them."

"What about the Maze Master?" Xu Yiming couldn’t help but ask. "Didn’t the Maze Master chase you?"

Feng Ling shot him a strange look. "The Maze Master is *in* the flesh..."

As she said this, she froze, her eyes widening slightly. "...Ah, I get it now! The Maze Master isn’t hiding in there on purpose—it’s trapped! That’s why it marked me and Zhengzheng!"

Li Qing frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Didn’t you just say the mark carried resentment?" Feng Ling grew excited, eagerly discussing it with Li Qing. "We blew up the mountain and hurt it, so it’s normal for it to resent us. But it can’t get out of the mountain, so all it could do was mark us first and get its revenge later once it’s free! When you think about it like that, it makes perfect sense, right?"

Feng Ling was very pleased with herself and said with a smile, "If it could get out of the mountain, it would’ve taken its revenge on the spot. There would be no need to mark us! The fact that it marked us actually proves that we’re perfectly safe, because it can’t get out at all!"

Ye Zheng disagreed. "Don’t be so sure. It might not have been able to get out at first, but we already blew the mountain to bits..."