Chapter 120: The Shadow Monster

While Qin Fei was drifting off to sleep, he suddenly felt the large nose beside him persistently nudging his head with its snout.

Something’s wrong.

Qin Fei jolted upright from the ground.

Normally, the big-nosed creature wouldn’t disturb him during deep sleep… unless there was danger nearby.

Awakened by the nose, Qin Fei quickly scanned his surroundings.

There was no one around.

Just as he was puzzled, the campfire beside him suddenly flickered.

With that tremor, the flames were extinguished.

This is bad!

Only then did Qin Fei remember: in the world of famine, whenever survivors rest at night, a shadowy arm would emerge from the darkness.

That arm would creep up from the ground and snuff out the campfire.

This basic survival knowledge in the famine world should have been in Qin Fei’s mind all along.

But when playing the famine game, people usually use a top-down god’s-eye view, making it easy to spot shadowy figures rising from the ground.

Qin Fei, however, had been transported into the famine world himself.

Thus, he saw everything from a first-person, three-dimensional perspective.

Moreover, unlike the game where eerie piano music plays to signal the shadow arm’s approach, this world gave no such warning…

So he had carelessly overlooked the presence of the shadowy arm.

After the campfire was extinguished by the shadow, darkness instantly enveloped the area.

At the same time, Qin Fei immediately felt an arm clamp tightly around his neck!

Instinctively, he tried to pry the arm off with both hands.

But those hands possessed an inexplicable, unnatural strength; even with his enhanced power multiplied several times, he couldn’t budge them an inch.

His breathing grew increasingly labored.

The only way to escape this predicament was to rekindle the fire and drive away the darkness.

He needed to light a fire—now.

However, the matches Qin Fei had collected during the long night had all been used up.

Striking a flint required kindling and fuel—but he had already thrown all the wood he gathered into the campfire.

With his neck gripped tightly, Qin Fei’s body was paralyzed, unable to move even slightly.

Thus, even if he tried to use his tentacles, he couldn’t reach the wood on the ground.

His consciousness began to fade.

On the brink of death, Qin Fei suddenly recalled a prize he once obtained in the Ark world—a simple signal flare gun.

The flare gun from Ark was made of gunpowder, ignition powder, and charcoal, without any metal parts, so it could be used in the famine world.

Summoning his last breath, Qin Fei swiftly pulled the flare gun from his backpack and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

Instantly, the flare’s blaze illuminated Qin Fei’s surroundings.

The sudden light dispelled the darkness, and at the same time, the arm choking his neck vanished.

He had finally escaped danger.

Taking advantage of the flare’s lingering light, Qin Fei immediately crouched down and used his flint to relight the wood in the campfire.

After being ambushed by the shadow creature once, Qin Fei was now utterly wary of sleeping.

He valued his life far more than rest.

Fearing death, he kept his eyes wide open, guarding the fire until dawn.

After a sleepless night, his eyes were bloodshot.

Around him, he noticed faint shadows of some creatures.

Strange whispers drifted to his ears.

Qin Fei couldn’t physically touch these shadows.

Their outlines were vague and faint; without focused attention, they were nearly imperceptible.

Upon noticing these shadowy creatures, Qin Fei recalled a setting from the famine world.

All intelligent beings in that world possessed a ‘san’ value—san being their sanity.

As sanity gradually declined, low-san creatures would see shadowy figures during the day.

At first, these shadows were intangible and harmless.

But as sanity dropped further, these shadow monsters would transition from illusions into reality and actively attack those who could see them.

To restore sanity, one needed sufficient sleep.

At night, survivors resting in the wilderness of the famine world would be attacked by monsters lurking in the dark if they didn’t constantly watch their campfires.

However, if they lived inside a house, no fire was needed, and they could sleep soundly.

With plans to build shelter, Qin Fei began consciously gathering stones along the way, storing them in his backpack.

Riding the big-nosed creature, he headed toward the fishing village he had visited the day before.

He intended to return to see if he could uncover any useful clues.

Upon entering the village, Qin Fei was not attacked by the fishermen guards, unlike the previous day.

As he had suspected, in just one night, these clumsy fishermen had completely forgotten the crime of him stealing the golden trident.

Following the previous route, Qin Fei once again entered the largest house in the fishing village.

The Fisher King lay lazily napping in the center of the room, just as before.

A golden crown still adorned his head.

But since Qin Fei had taken the golden trident yesterday, the king now only held a wooden fork as a substitute.

Ignoring the Fisher King’s presence, Qin Fei began rummaging through the house.

He had already discerned the pattern.

In the fishing village, as long as you didn’t attack the fishermen or steal their belongings, everything was fine.

Whether taking fish they left on the ground or wandering freely inside the king’s house, no one would attack.

Although this was the Fisher King’s dwelling, apart from being slightly larger than other fishermen’s huts, it bore no semblance of a royal residence.

The interior was a mess—wooden furniture and sundries scattered haphazardly on the floor.

After searching for a while, Qin Fei found beneath the clutter an old, dusty diary.

It appeared to have been there for a very long time.