The Phantom Fox didn’t react and continued to play dead.
Seeing this, a surge of anger rose within Huang Qi.
He swung both hands and unleashed a barrage of slaps!
“Pa! Pa! Pa!”
More than a dozen slaps landed in a row, yet the Phantom Fox didn’t make a single sound.
If it weren’t for Bai Qiu’s Fivefold Arcane Crystalized Eyes allowing him to see its vital signs, they might’ve thought it really was on the verge of death.
No one stopped Huang Qi — after all, he was the one who suffered the most, still covered in mud.
Even with the downpour lasting so long, it still hadn’t washed him clean.
“Damn…” Bai Qiu took a deep breath.
This Phantom Fox sure can endure…?
It won’t even cry out after all that? Not even a ninja could tolerate this much.
“Brother Bai, is this thing dying? How come it’s still not reacting?” Huang Qi pointed at the Phantom Fox — whose swollen face now resembled a Tibetan fox meme — and complained.
It had been slapped into a pig’s head yet still didn’t utter a sound.
Bai Qiu shook his head confidently.
“It hasn’t suffered any fatal injuries. I fed it a healing potion from Zone 2233 — it’s basically fully recovered. Those slaps of yours won’t kill it.”
“Damn! Still pretending?!” Huang Qi cursed and turned back to the playing-dead Phantom Fox.
While slapping it again, he roared angrily:
“Call out, damn you!! Weren’t you screaming just fine earlier?!!”
“Pa!”
“Are you gonna yell or not?!”
“Pa!”
“Hurry up and yell!”
“Pa!”
“You little—!!”
Huang Qi went at it for several minutes, yet the Phantom Fox remained silent.
This kind of stone-cold resistance made all his slaps feel like they were landing on cotton, leaving him with nowhere to vent his fury.
Bai Qiu pressed down on Huang Qi’s arm, stopping him from continuing.
“That’s enough. If you keep going, it will actually die.”
“It’s probably scared of us now, so it doesn’t dare use its skill again,” Bai Qiu added.
He stepped forward, signaling Huang Qi to move aside.
The Phantom Fox had a certain level of intelligence — they needed a way to make it understand what they wanted.
It was just… what way?
At that moment, Zhao Daqiang stepped forward.
“Brother Bai, how about trying to let it go, then chase after it? Give it the illusion that it can escape. That way, it should use its skill.”
Hearing this, Bai Qiu’s eyes lit up, and he nodded approvingly.
“Worth a try.”
And so, the interrogation ended — and for the Phantom Fox, a new round of a deadly escape game began…
Ten minutes later…
Bai Qiu grabbed the Phantom Fox by its tail and addressed the group:
“Looks like these Dreamy Blossoms really can weaken or even nullify its control skill.”
Everyone nodded.
After a series of tests, they confirmed that the entire Dreamy Blossom could effectively resist the Phantom Fox’s control ability — and the stamens provided the strongest effect, capable of completely ignoring all of the fox’s control-based skills.
The group each collected a few fresh Dreamy Blossoms to keep as backups.
Bai Qiu looked at the Phantom Fox, which had once again given up struggling and continued playing dead, and said calmly:
“Since that’s the case… you’re useless now.”
He grabbed the Phantom Fox’s head with his left hand and began applying pressure.
“Wuu… wuu…”
“Crack… crack!”
Accompanied by the fox’s final whimper of terror, its skull began to crack under the pressure of Bai Qiu’s tightening fingers.
In front of the shocked group, the sound of its breaking bones grew louder…
Blood and brain matter oozed from its seven orifices.
The Phantom Fox’s life reached its absolute end.
And the moment its vitality was completely extinguished, the system intervened — decomposing its body into materials and loot, which were absorbed into Bai Qiu’s storage card.
The blood and brain matter that had spilled out were also cleaned up by the system.
Bai Qiu’s hand remained unstained — yet the scene they just witnessed etched itself deeply into everyone’s minds, impossible to forget.
“B–Brother Bai! Don’t scare me like that… Killing it in such a brutal way isn’t really your style…” Huang Qi spoke first.
For a moment, he genuinely felt that Bai Qiu might not be as friendly as he had seemed before.
Bai Qiu scratched his head in confusion.
“How is that brutal? I killed it using the fastest method. If I used my staff, I’d have to spend time chanting—and I’d have to toss it away to finish it off.”
“But now that I think about it, you can still gain experience and materials even when killing monsters with bare hands!”
Everyone: “…”
It sounded strange… but he wasn’t wrong.
Zhang Shiyao took the Dreamy Blossom out of her mouth and said to Bai Qiu:
“Big brother, you should go kill the Thorned Willow trees! With the Dreamy Blossoms, we can handle the Phantom Foxes ourselves!”
Everyone nodded.
His method of hunting earlier was simply too advanced for them to digest.
They unanimously agreed that Bai Qiu was better suited to dealing with large monsters.
Huang Qi felt that compared to Bai Qiu, his earlier “aggressive behavior” was actually way too conservative.
And so, Bai Qiu and Zhang Shiyao resumed their search and extermination of the Thorned Willow trees, with Ning Xingxue and the others following closely behind.
With the Dreamy Blossoms held in their mouths, they continued encountering Phantom Foxes as they advanced.
As expected, these cowardly foxes, who bullied the weak and feared the strong, didn’t dare attack Bai Qiu or Zhang Shiyao.
Instead, they tried to circle around and ambush Ning Xingxue’s group.
After noticing this, Bai Qiu and Zhang Shiyao didn’t bother interfering.
They simply typed “incoming” in the team chat and continued searching for more Thorned Willow trees.
Without their mind-control skills, the Phantom Foxes were practically declawed and defanged—Ning Xingxue’s group dispatched them with ease.
Without their control ability, they weren’t even comparable to same-level Dragonfang Soldiers!
It was worth mentioning that as they began to move deeper into the secret realm, they encountered a situation similar to what Bai Qiu saw earlier in the Red Feather Secret Realm.
Dreamy Blossoms became increasingly abundant.
As the only special plant discovered so far in this secret realm—and especially one related to mental power—their value was self-evident.
Bai Qiu and Zhang Shiyao became more cautious from that point onward, doing their best to kill Thorned Willow trees instantly without causing damage to the surroundings.
Their pace became more steady and controlled.
Whenever they encountered an elite-grade Thorned Willow Tree, Bai Qiu and Zhang Shiyao would attack simultaneously from outside its attack range.
Bai Qiu continued using the “in-and-out” method to draw aggro while dealing solid damage, and finally Zhang Shiyao would fire a mithril arrow, slipping past its brambles and blasting its trunk apart!
With her mithril shortbow saturated with magic, combined with mithril arrows, the power was greatly enhanced.
Without the branches blocking or protecting it, just a single shot would blow the trunk of a century-old Thorned Willow Tree cleanly in half.
It died instantly, dissolving into white light.
Bai Qiu deliberately left the finishing blow to Zhang Shiyao.
In nonspecific situations, letting her land the kill was clearly more profitable—after all, her Luck stat was a full two and a half levels higher than his.
Better luck meant better drops!
Although some Dreamy Blossoms were damaged in the process of defeating the Thorned Willow trees, they minimized the losses as much as possible.
Just as the group continued advancing, behind one of the Thorned Willow trees, a Phantom Fox—standing upright on two legs and over a meter tall—watched them intently, its eyes glowing with an eerie blue light…
— The end of the Chapter–
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