Monster Paradise

"Oh my God, that’s insane! Do you want me to die that badly?!" Lin Huang shouted. He did not expect to get such a difficult mission. It was basically suicide after having enjoyed himself for the past few days.

"Xiao Hei, don’t you feel uneasy? What does your conscience say?!" he asked Goldfinger.

"No. I don’t have a conscience," it replied, unphased by his panic.

"..." Lin Huang did not know what to say. He then said loudly, "I decline this mission!"

"You cannot decline, you can only surrender. Giving up on a mission would mean the mission failed and you will be punished," Xiao Hei said.

"Are you sure you want to give up the mission?"

"I’m not giving up..." he muttered angrily under his breath.

Lin Huang held back from swearing out loud. Even if he did not have Charcoal, his Epic dragonkin card, he would not want to go into the Wangyou Forest. However, if he was to give up the mission, the price he had to pay would be too high as there was a 20% chance he would lose Charcoal. As long as he had cards like Bai and Tyrant he would be alright as they were Rare cards that could be easily cultivated and only needed one Advance Card to upgrade them. As for Charcoal, not only was it an Epic Card, it was a dragonkin. With his terrible luck in gambling, if he was to lose this card, he had no idea if he’d ever get such a card again.

"Xiao Hei, can I return the pending Mission Cards that I have? If returning them is not allowed, it should be okay for me to trade them with other cards right?" Lin Huang was now afraid of Mission Cards.

"No returns are allowed for all cards produced!" Xiao Hei replied.

"How about I throw them away? Maybe, you can crush them into card pieces for me?" Lin Huang asked.

"All cards are bonded to you. Once these cards are a certain distance away from you, they’ll be teleported back to you. Mission Card are to functional cards and cannot be crushed!"

"I can’t even get rid of it... This is ridiculous!" Lin Huang was speechless.

He had to accept the reality. He then looked at the Mission Card and was shocked to find out that he was only left with two Mission Cards. Based on Xiao Hei’s calculations earlier, there should be three of them. Now one was activated and another had yet to be activated.

"What happened to my Mission Card? I seem to remember having one that was activated and two that are inactive." Lin Huang mumbled.

"Whenever there are changes to the mission, it will consume one unactivated Mission Card. After the changes happen, you’ll receive double rewards if you complete the mission and the penalty would be doubled if you fail."

Xiao Hei explained immediately.

"Luckily I still have one Mission Card. After this mission has needed, I’ll activate the remaining Mission Card once I am back in the foothold." Lin Huang made his decision.

He then took out the active Mission Card and read the description.

There was a flirtatious blonde lady in a black maid attire on the golden Mission Card.

"Congratulations, there are changes to your Mission Card due to unforeseen circumstances!"

"Now, let me announce your new mission!"

"Details of the new mission as follows: Venture deep into the Wangyou Forest. Look for the missing Leng Yuexin and bring her back to Carefree City! Mission time limit: 20 days."

"Mission Completion Reward: Prop Card (relic) x1, Advance Card x1."

"If you fail to complete the mission within the given time frame, you’ll be penalized: Two existing Monster Cards will be taken away at random!"

"Mission announcement complete. Mission details such as the mission map can be found behind the card."

After completing the announcement, the blonde lady became motionless once more.

"There’s a Mission Map?" Lin Huang was just thinking how he would find Leng Yuexin in the vast Wangyou Forest until he heard the part of the mission announcement from the blonde lady.

He turned the card around and tapped on it and a three-dimensional map appeared before him.

There were two coordinates on the map. He was the white spot and the yellow spot had a description - Leng Yuexin’s last seen location before she went missing.

There were several coordinates with question marks that had the following description - Areas Leng Yuexin has been before’.

"Can you show me the location of Li Yanxing and the rest?" Lin Huang asked.

"Invalid. Not mission target, coordinate request denied."

Lin Huang frowned, "How about showing the time Leng Yuexin last appeared on the marked locations chronologically?"

The question marks then turned into the numbers ‘1’, ’2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’.

Looking at the last coordinates she was last seen at, Lin Huang confirmed that Leng Yuexin and the rest were looking for something.

"Mark the distance between us and map a path to the coordinates."

Soon, a red arrow appeared on the map.

"Oh my god. It’s 300 kilometers away..." Lin Huang frowned again.

He looked at the three-dimensional map that appeared from the Mission Card for a while before noticing the roasted meat slices on his plate that was getting cold.

He then kept the Mission Card and heated the sliced meat once again. He proceeded with his dinner. While he thought about the mission he just received, he ate his dinner slowly. When he was done with dinner, it was already eight o’clock at night and was completely dark outside. After cleaning up, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and Specter to stand watch for the night while he went into his tent. Lying in the tent, he did not sleep but instead, studied the map on the Heart Network, comparing it with the one he saw on the Mission Card. At the same time, he browsed news articles that were related to Wangyou Forest to see if there was anything more he could learn about it.

He then sent Yi Yeyu a message at 11 o’clock at night, "Are you asleep?"

"What’s up?" Yi Yeyu replied almost immediately.

"Nothing much, I just have something to ask you," Lin Huang replied her message.

"Haha, you must’ve failed to level up to iron-level, am I right?! I told you not to go after the Six-Armed Demon for you Life Seed, but you wouldn’t listen!" Yi Yeyu sent back a wall of text with a mocking emoji at the end.

"You’re wrong, I have successfully leveled-up. I need to ask you something else," Lin Huang replied. After he obtained the Life Seed - Sly Hands, he realized that his typing speed had improved.

"Yeah right. Go on, continue with your made-up story," Yi Yeyu left an uninterested emoji after her reply.

"I want to know if anything happened in Wangyou Forest recently?" Lin Huang finally got the chance to ask his question, side-stepping her ego provoking replies. "I can’t find anything on the Heart Network and Hunter Network. You’re a Gold Hunter, you must have more access in terms of information so I thought I’d ask you," he continued.

"Let me take a look," she replied. After Yi Yeyu sent that message, she requested for a video call shortly after.

Lin Huang hesitated and accepted the video call. In the video, Yi Yeyu was seen sitting on a luxurious couch with a red drink in her hand. Seeing the environment Lin Huang was in, she was stunned. "Are you in the wild?" she asked.

"I’m still in Wangyou Forest," Lin Huang nodded and smiled.

"You’re in a tent inside the level-4 Wangyou Forest? Are you crazy?!" Yi Yeyu did not expect Lin Huang to have the audacity to do something so foolish.

"I’m only at the border, I’ll be fine," Lin Huang said with a smile.

"I think you should get out of the Wangyou Forest as soon as possible. It’s not safe now. I’ve checked about the thing you asked me earlier, but I didn’t get much information. I didn’t think I had much access anyway so I got my brother to check it out as well. There was an unconfirmed report.." Yi Yeyu trailed off, and her tone of voice became serious.

"What is that?" Lin Huang frowned, he could sense that the news must be bad.

"The monitoring bureau recently discovered that there was an unusual shockwave coming from the center of Wangyou Forest. It could be a monster that is in the midst of leveling up into a transcendent. From the intensity of the wave, the monster is at least a mutated monster or could even a monster that had gone through a double mutation! No matter how accurate the information is, you best leave Wangyou Forest now. Don’t stay there even if you fail to level up to iron-level." Yi Yeyu told Lin Huang the news that Yi Zheng had discovered.

"Okay, I understand," Lin Huang nodded. "Thank you, beautiful. I need to wake up early tomorrow, I’m hanging up now."

He waved to Yi Yeyu who was in the video and hung up the phone straight away.

"How dare he hang up my call?!" Yi Yeyu scream when she realized Lin Huang hung up her phone as the screen turned black.

Lin Huang did not think much about the matter. The reason he did not look for Yi Zheng was that he always thought Yi Zheng would ignore calls 90% of the time if the caller ID showed a male caller or rather... That’s what Lin Huang would do. That was why he decided to call Yi Yeyu instead. Yi Yeyu was pissed because she did not expect Lin Huang to hang up right after he got what he wanted. After the call, Lin Huang looked into the incidents that involved unusual shockwaves on the Heart network but he found nothing. Since it was quite late, he decided to sleep...