Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Two hours later, the desert beneath the off-road vehicle gradually turned into sandy land, where drought-resistant plants and wild grasses of yellow and green began to grow. The greenery continued to increase, and after driving a little further, a vast oasis came into view.

It was truly a lush, verdant expanse. Crystal-clear water flowed through the meadow, and further on, sparse trees dotted the landscape. Deeper within the trees lay a dense forest. Many rabbits and deer, still clinging to their primal instincts, curiously peeked out from the trees, cautiously observing the 'strange steel behemoths' and 'two-legged creatures' that had appeared on the oasis's edge.

The off-road vehicles stopped right there.

“If Egypt can properly develop this oasis, then they will surely be able to quickly recover from the disaster caused by the Cairo war and rebuild a new order that allows more people to survive.” The overlord jumped out of the car, reached into the stream flowing across the grass, and scooped up a handful of water to wash his face. The refreshing feeling invigorated him, and without hesitation, he scooped up another handful to moisten his throat.

“The water is very good,” he praised.

“Of course, this is the cleanest water in all of Egypt.” The others followed suit, coming to the water source to get the fresh water. Although their time in the desert was short, the dry and hot environment was not very comfortable—the Overlord looked up and saw O’Connor standing not far away, smiling at him. His gaze then shifted slightly, just in time to see Imhotep release the cloaked undead, letting them wither and turn to ash in the desert.

“This is the land of Anubis, and He wouldn’t want too many people to set foot here. Letting the dead, who don’t belong to Anubis, enter would be blasphemous. So we’ll have to wait a while while our scouts come and drive us. They seem to be held up by something,” O’Connor said with a chuckle. After awakening his powers from his past life, he also possessed some supernatural abilities. With a few simple gestures, a bucket-sized amount of water emerged from the river, transforming into a shimmering water snake that coiled around his strong physique and cleansed him of his grime.

“It’s cleaner this way,” O’Connor explained. “Anubis is a god who loves cleanliness, so it’s understandable for you foreigners. But for people like Imhotep and me, it’s best to keep ourselves as clean as possible.”

“But you’re British, aren’t you?” the Overlord blurted out instinctively, then immediately waved his hand dismissively, giving O’Connor an apologetic look. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

—A hint of surprise and confusion flickered in his eyes, as if he couldn't understand how a mercenary could say something so thoughtless during work. However, his confusion only lasted a moment, because immediately afterward, Zhang Jie's prompt rang in his mind.

[It's merely a natural affinity brought about by supernatural charm. O'Connor's power is growing stronger, perhaps because we've entered this oasis.]

Don't worry about it, just have a good talk with him.

Zhang Jie's voice faded in an instant, and Ba Wang had quickly returned to normal. He calmed himself down, and O'Connor, sitting opposite him, didn't seem to care much—neither Ba Wang's words nor his reaction. He simply waved his hand, making an indifferent gesture.

“I have British ancestry, and I’m an American veteran,” O’Connor corrected him. “But I am now, more importantly, a chosen warrior of Anubis. And compared to appearance and lineage, the soul and self-awareness are far more important.”

“Kampavsky… well, I’ll still call you Overlord like Zheng does.” O’Connor flexed his fingers, his gaze fixed on the distant forest. “I shouldn’t be saying this to you, after all, you’re one of Zheng’s men… but the situation is rather urgent right now, so I have no choice. Hmm… what’s that phrase Easterners often use again? ‘Stealing a cook’s job by walking across a bed of nails’?”

"Overstepping one's bounds."

“Ah, yes. That’s right, overstepping your bounds.” O’Connor chuckled, patting the Overlord on the shoulder. “You certainly know a lot about Eastern things. I’m not very good at this kind of thing—” he suddenly lowered his voice. “But you feel out of place with them because you’re white and they have yellow skin.”

The overlord looked at him quietly, without saying a word.

“Don’t be nervous, I’m not trying to sow discord, I’m just stating the facts,” O’Connor shrugged. He glanced at Zheng Zha, who was fast asleep in a car about thirty meters away. “At this distance, even if Zheng is asleep, he can hear me. Zhang probably can too. And since they haven’t come over and punched me in the face, it means they’ve tacitly approved of it.”

"...I don't think there's anything wrong with me right now."

“Oh, if Zheng said that, I’d take it seriously.” O’Connor scoffed. “I had a serious talk with him when he wasn’t so mature, and I told him he should put the right people in the right places, freeing him from the kind of thinking work he’s not good at.” — Zheng Zha shifted his sleeping position in the car, tucking one ear under his ear and naturally covering the other with his other hand — “I can tell he’s put that advice to good use—his muscles have been honed to a level that would put any warrior I know to shame. And his thinking ability… well…”

O'Connor hesitated for a moment, then finally said somewhat carelessly, "...It's alright."

“But he didn’t put you in the right position,” O’Connor continued. “I know Miss Margot Lloyd, and I know her as a seemingly humble but actually proud lady—priests are always proud. Besides, she’s a true master, and if she were here, I would have almost no doubt about passing the trial of Anubis. But she’s not here, so I suspect she and Zheng may have had some disagreements…”

He seemed completely oblivious to the possibility that Alice might leave the group, and the Overlord also seemed completely unaware of this.

“…So I guess she probably took the rest of your team to do something else. Like Qi and Zhao…and I think you should actually stay with them.” O’Connor continued casually, “At least she has white skin like you, and you might feel safer with her. After all, it’s always a little uncomfortable for a relatively weak white person to be with a group of strong Asians.”

This can almost be considered an explicit statement.

Under the guise of offering guidance, he actually shifted the focus to the issue of skin color. Considering O'Connor's status as a chosen warrior of Egypt who is also white, and the information he 'inadvertently' revealed, it's clear he wanted to tell the Middle-earth team something—something he couldn't avoid saying at Imhotep.

The King didn't know what O'Connor was trying to say, but he knew that someone else definitely did.

"How should I answer?"—So the Overlord asked himself.

Chu Xuan's voice rang out immediately—[You don't need to answer anything.]

The next moment, faint voices could be heard from afar—these were Imhotep's followers, who came running out of the woods in a disheveled state, shouting and yelling. They looked as if they had just survived a landslide.

“The cult has arrived, so it seems our conversation will have to end here.” O’Connor shook his head regretfully. He then concluded the conversation with a sentence that fit the current situation but didn’t connect with the preceding words at all. “Get ready, you’ll have a lot to do tonight.”

He then turned and left.

......................................................

When Zheng Zha woke up, the scenery before his eyes was already dusk—he hadn't planned to sleep, but after reconnecting to the telepathic communication, Chu Xuan told him through Zhang Jie that he should get some sleep. So, Zheng, who wasn't very confident in his own thinking abilities, did as he was told and went to get a good rest.

He felt like he sneezed several times in his dream.

[Strange, why am I sneezing even though I have a certain constitution? Is someone plotting against me? Is it Margot Lloyd? Norrie? Or Chu Xuan? Hmm...]

[Given Margot and the others' magical abilities, if she wanted to curse me, I definitely wouldn't feel a thing. So it must be Chu Xuan before his power-up… Wait! Shouldn't I be suspecting the enemy at this point? Why are all the suspects in my head my own teammates?!]

He rubbed his head vigorously. Just then, Zhang Jie's voice came from beside him.

"You're awake?" Zhang Jie said. He looked like he had rolled around in the mud; his clothes were tattered, and he had some scrapes on his hands and shoulders. Although he had received some basic treatment, he was still quite disheveled. He was squatting on the roof of an SUV, lighting a cigarette but not smoking it, just looking at it with a melancholy expression as it slowly burned out.

A bad feeling crept into Zheng Zha's heart.

"Uh... what happened? The enemy is attacking?" He subconsciously looked around, only to find that he and his group were now in a temporary camp on higher ground. Looking around, everyone seemed to have some bumps and bruises on them. Even Chu Xuan looked a bit disheveled, while Overlord, Imhotep, O'Connor and the others looked like they had been beaten up, with bruises and swelling on their faces.

"Were you wrestling just now?" Zheng Zha asked uncertainly. He could sense the obvious low morale in the camp, but it was just low, not tense. His gaze then shifted slightly upwards, and he saw the black pyramid standing in the far distance.

That was the Pyramid of Anubis, surrounded by a flat woodland with a radius of about ten kilometers. They were currently on a high point about twelve kilometers in. When Zheng Zha's gaze fell upon it, he suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

There was something watching me, but it was just watching.

He instinctively clenched his fist and scrambled out of the SUV.

"Is it over there?" He tilted his head to look at Zhang Jie, then shifted his gaze to the main characters of the story.

“I’m sorry,” said Imhotep. The poor, handsome bald man still had traces of carbonization on his head. “The trials of Anubis…are a little more difficult than we anticipated.”

"A little more difficult?"

“Yes, a little,” Imhotep emphasized, pointing to the woodland in the distance. “There are many natives in there… I initially thought they were just natives, so I sent my men and yours to clear them out. But I didn’t expect… they would actually get stronger as the number of deaths increased.”

"At first, they were just carrying ordinary bone weapons and moving very slowly. But after killing about ten, they started equipping themselves with steel weapons. When they had about a hundred, they began to deploy early firearms, such as smoothbore muskets. By the time we realized something was wrong and were about to call you out, they had already become a modern army."

A troubled look appeared on his face, and there was a hint of embarrassment in that trouble.

Zheng Zha immediately realized that things were definitely not as simple as he had said.

“And then?” Zheng Zha asked warily, the feeling of being manipulated growing stronger in his mind. “Why didn’t you just wake me up… and couldn’t you just rush over there? Killing them will make you stronger, so there shouldn’t be a problem if you don’t kill them. And a mere modern army—” He noticed that the word ’modern’ was said by Imhotep—“those things shouldn’t be able to hurt you.”

Imhotep's face immediately became even more embarrassed; if it was just a little red at first, it was now a deep red tinged with black.

“Because someone overreacted.” O’Connor glared at Imhotep, clearly annoyed. The European man, dressed as an ancient Egyptian warrior, now had an eyepatch over one eye and a cast on one hand, looking quite pathetic. “And we didn’t expect this forest to be so soundproof. There was a huge commotion inside, but not a sound outside. When we were trapped inside and called for your help, you didn’t respond, so we thought you were being attacked outside too. So, someone overreacted, and—”

"Just—?" Zheng Zha asked in confusion.

“I cast a spell that burned two-thirds of the forest.” Imhotep turned his head away sadly, looking as if he couldn’t bear to look.

Zheng Zha glanced at the grove of trees, which appeared completely undamaged from the outside. He turned back, looked at Imhotep, then at Zhang Jie and Chu Xuan. Then he let out a soft sigh.

[Zhang Jie, ask Chu Xuan if he has any solutions.] — He asked in his mind, trying to appear calm.

"Chu Xuan said the best way is to break through this forest and reach Anubis's pyramid. This place has been blessed by the god Anubis, and it's the highest level of blessing. Unless you want to go to war with Anubis directly, you'd better obediently fight your way there," Zhang Jie replied.

"Only me?!" He glared angrily at Zhang Jie.

[Only you are here, because I must stay outside to deal with any emergencies. Chu Xuan and Ba Wang are still too physically weak.]

Zheng Zha felt like he was about to suffocate—although he didn't know what was in the woods, his instincts told him he should suffocate there—if he passed out, he wouldn't have to face the problems that lay ahead. However, he managed to pull through, because he was the captain, and the captain had to take responsibility.

"When should I leave?" he asked Zhang Jie calmly.

"Now," Zhang Jie replied just as calmly.

—[Tell Chu Xuan that I hate him.]

—【He said he understood.】

..........................................

The city lord's alternate version has been drawn! Yay!

Great! I now have nine of the twelve rainbow cards for Doll Avenger, and I still have 7,000 Earth left. If I'm lucky, I can become the complete form next week!

—Should I think of a way to move the vote to the latest chapter?

Chapter 26. Even Command Spells are banned, okay?

[Chu Xuan must have done it on purpose. He deliberately made the difficulty of this trial forest so high, and my nap was also intentionally arranged by him. Yes, that's right, absolutely!]

Zheng Zha rubbed his aching forehead, muttering curses under his breath as he walked towards the woods. He knew he'd been tricked, but he had to grit his teeth and go through with it—because he knew he'd inevitably gain something from the situation. So when the others cast pitying or gloating glances at him from behind, he pretended not to notice anything.

What could Chu Xuan's purpose be? He attempted to simulate this using third-order substitution thinking, but his head began to throb with pain as soon as he started. Left with no other option, he resorted to Alice's thinking mode, resulting in the solution of manually constructing a manufacturing base and swarming it with mechanical soldiers—damn! If he could do that, why would he need to spend time thinking?

So he had no choice but to resort to his old trick of substitution and adopt Xiao Honglu's thinking pattern once again. And then, before he even entered the woods, he finally deduced something.

Assuming Imhotep's 'out-of-control' fire spell was orchestrated by Chu Xuan, then Zhang Jie must be an insider. Since he knew the inside story and was willing to cooperate, even at the cost of his own humiliation… this suggests there was an interest he couldn't refuse, and one he believed I couldn't refuse either. And this so-called interest is most likely…

[Reward Points.]

Zheng Zha took a light breath and stopped less than a meter away from the edge of the woods.

[That's right, killing those monkeys to gain reward points is the only way to get Zhang Jie to cooperate. So, Imhotep's spell causing the destruction of two-thirds of the forest must be due to his behind-the-scenes manipulation... Imhotep is, after all, a proper high priest; it's impossible that he couldn't control his power even knowing beforehand that he shouldn't kill too many.]

[Understood. Imhotep only unleashed the fire magic, but it was Zhang Jie's ability that caused it to spiral out of control and spread. After all, for Chu Xuan's sake, he hadn't revealed his other mental abilities to Imhotep and the others, except for ordinary mental conversations. And for him to risk exposure to use such power... it seems there might be a side quest reward.]

[Damn it, this means I can't even back down! Damn it, Chu Xuan!]

He reached out and touched the trees in front of him. His thoughts then switched back to their own mode.

He slowly exhaled the breath he had inhaled.

Clearly, if no one causes trouble, passing through this trial forest is quite simple. It might even be so simple that someone could pass the trial without knowing that the monkeys can be enhanced.

Because all you really need to do is follow the original storyline, ignore the monkeys, and simply walk through the forest while enduring their attacks—as long as they aren't injured, their power won't increase. And before they gained their power, they were at best just a group of Stone Age natives.

—The Stone Age natives couldn't break through the iron armor, and might not even be able to keep up with the off-road vehicle.

However, now...

He shook his head, took a step forward, and the next moment, he found himself in the forest.

....................................

There's a strange feeling...

The moment Zheng Zha stepped into the forest, the scenery before him changed abruptly. What appeared to be a vast expanse of lush, verdant forest from the outside vanished the instant he entered, like mist under the rising sun. All that greeted him was a wave of scorching heat and thick, murky smoke—he was cautious, taking only one step into the woods, with half his body still outside. Even so, he could still clearly feel his own hands and feet.

Imhotep's spell burned down two-thirds of the forest, and what appeared before him was indeed a barren land ravaged by wildfire—there were still some sparse trees in the distance, and beyond the trees were black pyramids—he became alert, glanced back, and was surprised to find that behind him was a vast wasteland!

[Another world? A distorted space?]

His hands and feet were intact, and the half of his body that hadn't entered the woods was still visible in his line of sight. But the half-foot was positioned outside the scorched wood, and perhaps because he hadn't fully entered the forest, he hadn't been attacked in any way.

He could sense a dangerous aura emanating from the broken, dense forest, and malevolent eyes fixed on him. Those eyes were like knives, lightly touching his exposed skin, and a vague sense of realization rose within him, making him understand a fact—if he took another half step forward, disaster would befall him.

[Half a step...]

Zheng Zha's heart skipped a beat. He casually slashed backward, and a pale white blade of energy flew out of his hand, carving a small crater in the ground three meters behind him. Without further hesitation, he stepped back, and the scenery before him instantly changed, with the intact forest reappearing in front of him.