A faint, unspoken understanding hung between the two as their figures—one massive, one small—trekked through the hushed forest.
They navigated through the gaps in the trees until they reached a treehouse.
Ed-Bear stopped abruptly. The little girl behind him wasn’t prepared; she walked straight into his waist with a dull thud.
“I’m sorry…” Helen stammered, apologizing in a panic.
Her forehead throbbed. Ed-Bear’s body felt as hard as a tree trunk, lacking the soft yield of human flesh.
Ed-Bear paid it no mind. Like a massive, gentle hound, he showed a great deal of tolerance toward this clumsy little creature.
He tilted his head slightly to observe the structure, bent his knees, and leapt.
When he was four or five meters off the ground, he spread his fingers and drove them into the moss-covered bark. With a blur of movement that bordered on the supernatural, he scrambled up a thick, overhanging branch and reached the small hut nestled in the fork of the tree.
He pulled the door open, finding the cultist’s residence unexpectedly clean and tidy.
If he didn’t have a mission to attend to, he would have liked to stay here for a day or two to thoroughly investigate the Flat-Eyed Gecko Cult from the inside out.
At the back of the treehouse was a rattan bed covered with a straw mat. A wooden pillow made from dried fungi sat at the head, emitting a faint, bitter fragrance.
To the left was a window, and in front of it stood a folding table covered with stationery and paper.
It seemed the cultist who lived here was a man of letters.
Ed-Bear picked up the papers to read.
Judging by the handwriting, some passages were wild and frantic, covered in repeated scribbles and corrections. Other sections were smooth and neat, with almost no edits at all. It was a perfect reflection of the writer’s mental state at the time.
The notes weren’t written in some ancient, alien script, but in the common tongue of the continent.
Ed-Bear tucked them into his bag, planning to study them properly when he had the time.
Under the folding table sat a wicker box.
He reached out and gripped the box’s spring lock, giving it a gentle twist. The massive torque caused the shackle to distort and snap, rendering it completely useless.
He flipped the lid open, revealing a jumbled collection of items—coca leaves, hemp, smooth bones, old wooden trinkets, and ancient coins.
None of these were what he was looking for.
Searching to the bottom of the box, he finally found the materials for making a ‘Candle’ inside a tin-plated iron box.
He had suspected such things would be here; to protect their fragile sanity, humans had to rely on Candles to operate within the Evernight Realm.
Ed-Bear jumped directly from the treehouse to the ground. His heavy frame landed with a boom, sinking his feet into two deep pits, before he moved on to search the next hut.
The sudden gust of wind from his landing made Helen jump, her eyes wide with startle.
Considering the weight he had to carry, Ed-Bear didn’t even bother taking precious metals. He only gathered the candle-making materials, wrapped them carefully, and placed them in his satchel.
Gems, however, didn’t take up much space. He collected a small pouch of garnets, diamonds, emeralds, and black onyx… He assumed the cultists wouldn’t have any objections.
He lit an ordinary candle and took a milky-yellow, resin-like block, held it over the flame until it slightly softened, and then rolled it into a hollow cylinder while it was still hot.
Once it cooled, he poured in a molten mixture of various ointments and inserted a wick as thin as a hair.
“Hope this works,” he muttered.
After it finished cooling, he fitted the completed Candle onto a tin candlestick with a handle and struck a Match to light it.
As Helen breathed in the pleasant scent of gunpowder and smoke, her pupils dilated. She watched in amazement as the candlelight slowly but powerfully pushed back the darkness, illuminating a radius of seven or eight meters. The light was crystal clear, shining like pure quartz.
Light and shadow became sharply defined at the boundary.
Ed-Bear raised the candlestick and began walking deeper into the dense forest.
Helen followed closely behind.
The burning Candle released a medicinal herbal fragrance that refreshed the mind. It soothed the little girl’s nerves, and the bright, pure light reflecting in her eyes dispelled the fear in her heart.
She gradually sensed the extraordinary nature of this Candle; it was entirely different from the white wax candles used at home.
At the edges of the light, the “dark water” of the night surged from all directions, swirling and frothing as it pressed inward with all its might. Yet, this pressure only served to make the bubble of light more dense and stable.
Ed-Bear’s two compound eyes looked in different directions, giving him an incredibly wide field of vision.
As they ventured deeper into the jungle, he felt the presence of malice lurking all around them.
The darkness was like a living thing. Within the pervasive dark mist, it congealed into writhing, crawling tentacles that constantly tested the boundaries of the light.
Helen watched them in terror. Even with her limited understanding, she knew that if the light went out, those dark tentacles would crawl over and entangle her, and something terrible would happen.
In the Evernight Realm, the true currency wasn’t precious metals or gems—it was the fuel used to create Candles and Lamps.
When darkness was tainted by malice, it would wriggle and crawl like a ghost, turning into living shadows known as ‘Shadow Monsters’ or ‘Shadow Creatures.’
Shadow Monsters couldn’t be dispersed by ordinary fire. Only the special flames produced by fuel infused with transcendent power could deal with them.
Ed-Bear had learned much from the explorers in the Quicksand Lowlands. He knew that to protect their fragile minds, humans had to rely on various tools, such as special fuels or relics.
He determined that the source of the malice was at the ten o’clock position. The intensity of the Mental Pollution was high—the two were always proportional.
If he weren’t looking after the little girl, Ed-Bear would have rushed over and obliterated it. However, he was hesitant to act too boldly, unable to leave her side.
But if it came down to a contest of malice, he was no less formidable than his opponent.
As he focused his thoughts, a portion of the deep, dark curtain above Ed-Bear’s head suddenly tore away with a sharp shredding sound, deforming into the silhouette of a monster with jagged teeth!
The silhouette opened its hideous maw and let out a silent screech, shooting toward the source of malice that had dared to provoke it!
Thirty meters away, behind a tree at ten o’clock, a black-furred monster with a narrow head and human-like hands suddenly let out a wretched scream. Its body was bucked off the ground and flung into the air, twisting like a piece of hemp rope. Blood sprayed from its bursting flesh, drenching the area and contaminating a small patch of berry bushes with its toxic gore.
Ed-Bear licked his lips and continued forward.
Traversing the jungle was arduous. Not only was the ground soft and muddy, but tangled vines and shrubs blocked their path. Their progress was slow.
Ed-Bear increased his breathing frequency, inhaling and exhaling in different directions to sense the changes in air humidity. He was searching for a river.
This method didn’t work every time. This time, his luck was mediocre; he found a swamp.
Ed-Bear squatted down and pressed his palm into the water’s surface. He began to vibrate his hand, sending sonar pulses to the bottom to map the terrain.
The swamp wasn’t deep; they could wade through.
He handed the candlestick to Helen. “Hold this.”
Helen gripped the candlestick with both hands, trying her best to keep it steady. Then, she was picked up. As they moved through the swamp, the gurgling sound of air bubbles rising from the soft mud filled her ears.
She liked the feeling of being held. Feeling the protection of his thick arms and broad, solid chest, her heart felt more peaceful than ever.
She leaned into Ed-Bear’s embrace, enjoying the small joy of moving without effort.
Ed-Bear didn’t notice the subtle changes in the expression of the little thing in his arms, nor did he have any interest in reading the complex and delicate emotions of a young girl.
His attention was focused on several strange snakes beneath the water.
He had detected them when he released his sonar earlier. Sure enough, sensing the change in the current, the snakes swam over and bit his legs fiercely. They were immediately poisoned to death, left hanging from his skin.
Upon reaching the shore, he calmly plucked the dead snakes off. Thorns extended from his fingertips, piercing the snake skin to inject digestive fluids. After a short while, they would turn into a delicious meat slurry, which he would suck down into his stomach.
It was a bit like the story of the farmer waiting for the rabbit to hit the tree.
Helen painstakingly lifted the candlestick and handed it back to him.
The two continued their journey.
Ed-Bear locked onto another area with high moisture.
He walked in that direction for a while before stopping abruptly again. In a commanding tone, he said to Helen:
“Close your eyes.”
