Chapter 148 The Wishing Well
Qin Fei had already thought of this possibility.
If he could not eliminate the spider monkeys behind him as quickly as possible and ignite a campfire right where they stood...
Once night fell completely, he and Xie Nainai would instantly plunge into pitch darkness and perish at the hands of those shadow monsters.
He could no longer afford to drag this out!
However, given the sheer number of spider monkeys trailing them, Qin Fei knew he had no chance of winning a direct confrontation. He needed to find a clever, devious way around this...
Just as Qin Fei was deep in thought, Big Nose suddenly came to a halt.
As it turned out, Qin Fei and his companions had arrived near the forest teeming with killer vines. Having suffered heavy losses here before, Big Nose naturally dared not charge blindly into it again.
A plan formed in his mind!
Upon seeing these vines, an idea instantly sparked within Qin Fei.
He vaulted down directly from Big Nose's back, patted the creature's rump, and signaled for Xie Nainai to take the Caesar pig and Big Nose and skirt around the edge of the forest first.
As for Qin Fei himself, he stood calmly before the vine-choked woods.
Mere seconds later, the pack of spider monkeys closed the distance and caught up.
Seeing that Qin Fei had stopped running, the spider monkeys let out a chorus of excited roars and charged directly toward his position...
Qin Fei turned on his heel and bolted straight into the forest of killer vines.
Naturally, the pack of spider monkeys followed closely on his heels, plunging without hesitation into the thicket.
The arrival of Qin Fei and the spider monkeys immediately disturbed the vines lurking within the woods.
Discovering that prey had willingly walked into their trap, the vines began dropping down from the trees in droves, whipping through the air to wrap tightly around the bodies of Qin Fei and the spider monkeys.
Though these spider monkeys possessed massive frames and terrifying strength, their prowess was rendered nearly useless in the face of these vines.
A single monkey might manage to snap one vine, but in the next instant, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands more would surge forward, combining their strength to bind the creature securely.
No matter how formidable an individual spider monkey's combat prowess might be, the sheer numerical advantage of the vines allowed them to hoist all dozens of monkeys in the forest high into the air, trussing them up completely.
Seeing that the spider monkeys had been utterly decimated, Qin Fei melted into a wisp of dark shadow, slipped past the grasping vines, and drifted smoothly out of the forest.
High above, the aerial vines began to tighten continuously.
Simultaneously, the trapped spider monkeys let out miserable shrieks from mid-air.
Yet no matter how frantically the spider monkeys struggled, they could not break free from the lethal bonds of the vines.
Soon, fresh blood began to ooze from within the entanglement of vines, dripping down onto the soil below.
As the vines constricted further, the physical forms of the spider monkeys began to warp and twist grotesquely... Finally, crushed into unrecognizable, pulpy masses by the vines, they plummeted to the ground.
Suppressing his nausea, Qin Fei watched the entire spectacle unfold from a short distance away.
A trace of doubt stirred in his heart.
These killer vines had actually just discarded the corpses of the strangled spider monkeys directly onto the ground... Did they not require sustenance?
Before long, however, Qin Fei witnessed an even more bizarre and unsettling scene within the forest.
The ground across the entire woodland began to undulate and writhe slowly, secreting a peculiar red mucus.
Under the influence of this secretion, the carcasses of the spider monkeys rapidly decayed.
Not only that, but the rotting flesh melted seamlessly into the earth within moments, leaving not even a single drop of blood behind.
This horrifying spectacle made Qin Fei's heart skip a beat.
This entire forest was alive!
The very ground beneath these trees functioned essentially as the digestive organs of the vines!
If anyone were to carelessly wander into this place right now, it would be utterly impossible for them to tell what kind of lavish feast had just taken place here moments ago...
At this thought, Qin Fei felt a surge of secret relief.
Fortunately, he had acquired the Shadow Form skill early on; otherwise, his own fate might not have ended any differently than those spider monkeys...
The next day.
Since the spider monkeys near the temple had been completely wiped out by the vines, Qin Fei and his companions passed through the spider monkey lair with absolute ease.
Furthermore, to prevent the trees and spider cocoons here from spawning any more monsters of that sort, Qin Fei casually destroyed every single spider cocoon in the vicinity.
From these cocoons, Qin Fei harvested a massive quantity of 'spider glands' and 'spider silk.'
To his greatest surprise, while clearing out the cocoons, he also obtained a complete, oversized spider egg.
[Spider Monkey Egg: Obtained by destroying a large spider monkey nest. When planted on the ground, it will rapidly generate a small spider monkey nest.]
A spider egg, huh...
Based on Qin Fei's gaming experience with Don't Starve, even if a spider egg was planted by your own hand, the spiders or spider monkeys hatched from these eggs would still launch attacks against you just the same.
Therefore, planting a spider egg could never make the spawned monsters obey the grower's commands.
Even so, spider eggs could still serve some miraculous purposes under specific circumstances.
Whether it was spider silk, spider glands, or the spider egg, none of these items carried excessive weight or took up much inventory space.
Thus, Qin Fei casually tossed all these materials into his storage space.
At the entrance of the temple stood a pigman statue, with a flight of steps leading down near the base of the statue.
Descending the steps beside the pigman statue, Qin Fei and Xie Nainai entered a rectangular chamber.
Inside this room, Qin Fei did not encounter any of the monsters he had anticipated.
Instead, right in the dead center of the chamber, he spotted a bizarre-looking well.
Is this a wishing well?
Drawing upon his rich gaming experience, Qin Fei immediately guessed the nature of the well.
Back on Earth, countless tourist attractions featured similar 'wishing wells.'
Tourists who wished to make a wish were required to toss coins into them... and the 'wishing well' inside this temple was no exception.
It was simply far more miraculous than the wells found in tourist spots.
In the game, as long as a player tossed coins into the well, the wishing well had a certain probability of working miracles.
However, once the wishing well manifested its miracle in the game, it possessed only the functions of healing injuries and dispelling venom.
It could not genuinely grant players all sorts of whimsical wishes.
He just wondered how this particular well was coded...
After listening to Qin Fei's explanation of the well, Xie Nainai eagerly demanded a silver coin from the Caesar pig.
She tossed the silver coin straight into the wishing well.
Having subsisted on roasted frog meat for two or three days, Xie Nainai's very first wish directed at the wishing well was for a serving of 'egg-fried rice.'
Qin Fei's face darkened.
This girl... Egg-fried rice was a food item that completely failed to exist in the world of Don't Starve; did she expect the wishing well to steal it from another dimension for her?
Making a bizarre wish like that would have been more productive than simply demanding an aircraft carrier outright!
To Qin Fei's utter astonishment, however, a flash of dark light flickered across the depths of the well.
Had it actually responded to Xie Nainai's request...
After about ten seconds, a bowl of egg-fried rice served on a stone dish materialized right on the stone brim of the wishing well.
Catching the fragrant aroma drifting from the egg-fried rice, Qin Fei's eyes nearly popped out of his head...
There was such a mechanic as this?