Xu Xin turned around to leave.

"Hey hey, wait a sec. You came looking for me because you needed something, right? Why are you leaving just like that?" Xu Ying stood up and called out to Xu Xin.

"Nothing special, I just wanted to drag you back for a meeting. But in your current state, you’d better skip it." Xu Xin waved his hand.

"Oh, I see." Xu Ying turned back and sat down again, picking up the game controller. "Then I won’t get involved, but..."

She looked back at Xu Xin, her face basically spelling out "don’t care" in big letters. "I actually think you guys don’t need to worry at all. I’ve already said it: a mature World Tree can’t be destroyed by any external force."

Then she turned her head back and kept mashing the controller, while saying, "I don’t know if those alien invaders have come up with a way to kill a World Tree over the past thousand years, but at least sending a bunch of giant beasts to besiege it is not gonna work, no matter how much stronger they get after petrifying."

She was pretty confident.

"We’re not that worried either, but if someone launches an attack, we still have to react somehow." Xu Xin shook his head. "Alright, you just get some rest."

"I’m not going either." Li Wenxi sat down next to Xu Ying, turned her head and said to Xu Xin, "Be careful out there."

As she spoke, she shot Xu Xin a meaningful look.

Xu Xin understood what she meant: she was saying she’d try to pry some information out of Xu Ying.

Xu Xin gave her a slight nod, then turned and left.

Leaving with him was Keke, who had wriggled its way out of Xu Ying’s arms and climbed onto his shoulder.

"You want to come with me?" Xu Xin scratched Keke under the chin.

"Ying~" Keke let out a comfortable little cry.

Xu Xin didn’t go back to the treehouse, but headed into the jungle at the edge of the construction area instead.

The jungle here was lush and dense, practically a single continuous mass of greenery. And whether it was thanks to the soil blessed by the World Tree or not, every tree here was nearly twenty meters tall, towering overhead.

This jungle had an advantage you didn’t get in the outside zones—no annoying flying mosquitoes, and it was wonderfully quiet.

A perfect spot for a romantic rendezvous.

Who knew if certain people were currently doing something in these woods.

However...

"Huihui!"

Xu Xin shouted into the jungle.

His voice carried through the area in front of the forest.

"Yaa—"

A pterosaur’s cry sounded immediately from within the trees, and then a huge pterosaur burst out from the thick canopy. The wind from its flapping wings set the whole forest canopy shaking, leaves falling in sheets.

The gigantic pterosaur beat its wings, each spanning more than ten meters, circling once over the jungle. With its razor‑sharp eyesight, it instantly spotted Xu Xin, who was much smaller than it.

"Yaa—"

Huihui was very fast; in less than a few seconds it landed beside Xu Xin.

Its big head lowered and nudged against Xu Xin’s body, the tremendous push almost knocking him over.

"Ying!" Keke took the opportunity to scramble onto Huihui’s head, moving like it had done this a thousand times.

"Huihui, I’ve got something I need your help with."

Looking at the giant baby in front of him—barely two months old and already this huge—Xu Xin spoke.

...

On the other side, Shi Wanyun and the other two had already arrived at Shi Wanyun’s World Tree in Zone 1.

The moment she saw Shi Wanyun’s treehouse, Lou Fei’Er shrank her neck slightly. "Um, we’re not gonna get teleported somewhere else again, are we? Like that desert from before..."

"No way. The person who teleported us last time was caught by Xu Xin, remember."

Shi Wanyun waved her hand, and the treehouse’s roots hung down, pulling all three of them up into the treehouse.

"True, but where did he take the guy who teleported us, do you know?" Lou Fei’Er asked curiously. "Feels like we never asked him about it again afterward."

"He probably killed him." Jin Yue walked to the window and looked out. "No point keeping him around."

"No way, right?" Lou Fei’Er shook her head. "Why would he kill him? I asked him, and he said that guy was still useful, so he should’ve kept him alive."

"Who knows." Shi Wanyun shook her head. "That guy was ridiculous too. Clearly on our side, yet he teleported us to some desolate place. Now that he’s been taken by Xu Xin, we wouldn’t be able to save him even if we wanted to."

"Save him for what? We just need to complete our own mission." Jin Yue said mercilessly.

Lou Fei’Er plopped down onto the sofa, leaning back with a lazy look. "I heard he’s the regional manager for Zone 1. Back then that mysterious voice... ah, no, the mysterious voice for Zone 1 is that masked man."

"Mm. The masked man is the overall person in charge of Zones 1–5, and also the mysterious voice for Zones 1–5. As for that Zone 1 manager who was captured by Xu Xin, he should’ve been in charge of other things, like... those so‑called ’events’." Jin Yue said.

The three of them chatted casually, talking about these things in a half‑serious, half‑idle way.

This was their plan.

Right now, the three of them had no way to get in touch with the other side. Even that mask shop that sent Shi Wanyun a World Tree last time hadn’t left any contact info.

So they could only use other methods to draw the other side out.

And this conversation they were having was exactly the method they’d come up with.

Use the man Xu Xin had imprisoned as bait to lure the people behind the scenes out!

During this period, they had seen that man a few times. After all, Xu Xin couldn’t keep him trapped inside the mimic chest monster’s body forever; it’d be bad if he starved to death.