Yama Reborn

The native guide was not tall and had a slender body with dark skin. Stripped to the waist, he was lean, but his muscles were well-defined.

At this moment, running wildly through the rainforest, he moved with the agility of a wild animal!

Chen Nuo, following him, could hardly keep up on his own physical strength alone! It was only after releasing his spiritual power that he captured the guide's movements firmly and kept up.

They had dashed out of the camp towards the southwest. The guide in front would sometimes leap onto a tree, somersault into a patch of grass, or stop to examine some clue.

After running through the forest non-stop for about ten minutes, by Chen Nuo's estimation, as they got further and further away from the camp...

Suddenly, the native guide stopped!

He stood in front of a pitch-black expanse of rock, bent down, and then lay flat on the ground.

Chen Nuo and Bonfrey ran up beside him and were also stunned.

There was a pit before them.

The pit's opening on the ground was irregular in shape, its widest part no more than about two to three meters across, with rocks scattered within.

The guide lay prone at the edge of the pit and looked down, but it was too dark inside to see anything clearly.

Chen Nuo glanced at Bonfrey, who quickly took out a pack—this was a supply pack every person received at the start, filled with equipment for wilderness survival.

Bonfrey pulled out a glow stick from it, snapped it, and it lit up immediately before being tossed into the pit.

The glow from the stick allowed those above to estimate the pit to be about five or six meters deep.

The space below was larger than the mouth of the pit, resembling the shape of a wine bottle.

However, due to a heavy rain, the bottom of the pit had accumulated water, and many areas were submerged. The glow stick landed on a rock protruding above the water.

The native guide turned around, looked at Chen Nuo, then at Bonfrey, and pointed at Bonfrey's pack.

Understanding, Bonfrey quickly fumbled in the pack and pulled out a bundle of emergency rope.

The walls of the pit were slippery after being washed by rain. Bonfrey, positioned above, managed the rope which was tied to a tree.

Chen Nuo and the native guide held the rope and slowly descended into the pit.

Upon landing, Chen Nuo stepped on a rock and then tested the depth of the water.

SPLASH! The native guide, unable to wait, jumped into the water first and waded toward the edge of the pit.

Chen Nuo saw it—on the rocks at the edge of the pit, a figure lay prone.

As it grew dark, Chen Nuo, Bonfrey, and the native guide returned.

They brought back a person.

One of the guides from the Vanguard, and so far the only member of the Vanguard they had found.

The three of them looked very disheveled when they came back, especially Chen Nuo and the native guide, whose clothes were thoroughly drenched from wading and swimming in the water of the pit.

After returning to the camp and handing over the completely unconscious Vanguard guide to Vanel's medical staff, Chen Nuo crawled into his own tent.

In the jungles of the Amazon basin, fresh water was never in short supply.

Chen Nuo quickly took a bath... mainly because the water in the pit was too dirty. After getting his hair and body wet, he was covered in a foul, earthy smell.

Once he finished bathing and changed into clean clothes, Chen Nuo simply asked Vanel for a set of Mercenary Corps training uniforms and put them on. He even slipped on a tactical vest on his upper body and, with a gun holstered, swaggered out of the tent.

Taking a bath took longer than expected... because he needed some time to repair his disguise.

Chen Nuo entered the largest tent, where the unconscious guide was being carefully attended to by the medical team.

"The situation doesn't look too good," Vanel sighed.

A member of the medical team glanced at Vanel. After Vanel nodded, the medic hurriedly said, "We've tried some methods, but we can't wake him up."

"There are no obvious fatal injuries on his body. The several injuries are soft tissue damage, obviously caused by falling from a height, and they are not fatal."

"There are slight signs of impact on the head, which should also be caused by the fall, but it's not serious."

"When he was brought back, his heart rate was a bit problematic, but it has stabilized after treatment. Several external wounds on his body were infected, but they too have been treated, and antibiotics have been administered."

"In other words... unless we transport him back to a large hospital with sufficient equipment for a thorough examination, I can't determine why he's in this coma right now."

After listening to the doctor's explanation, Chen Nuo walked up to a camp bed inside the tent.

The Vanguard survivor, the guide lying on the bed, bore a faint resemblance to the native guide in his own team.

However... the man's unconscious state was a bit strange.

In other words, Chen Nuo felt, this guy didn't seem to be in a coma.

Because his complexion was calm, there was no agony or other facial contortions. His breathing was steady, and his heartbeat was stable too.

Besides, this guy looked more like... a person in a vegetative state. A living dead man.

His brother, the guide from Chen Nuo's own team, sat beside the camp bed with a solemn expression, looking at his brother lying on the bed.

After a while, this guide lifted his head, looked at Chen Nuo, and slowly said something.

Chen Nuo didn't understand the sentence as it was in the local dialect.

However, the guide soon switched to Portuguese to repeat it. After all, as someone capable of being a guide, although he was a native, he still understood some of the official language.

And his words made Chen Nuo's eyebrows furrow tightly.

The other people in the room also had odd expressions upon hearing this sentence.

What the native guide said was,

"His soul has been taken away by the devil."

Selena's search party had not returned, but they maintained communication.

The news that came back wasn't very good.

It seemed that Selena's team had found some traces of passage in the direction they were searching, but a heavy rain had obliterated them, leaving them beyond recognition.

The female mercenary captain led her team in a large circle through the jungle but found nothing. As nightfall approached, they had no choice but to return to the camp and were currently on their way back.

At night, everyone camped at the Vanguard's campsite.

Even though the Vanguard had vanished, all of the campsite's equipment and supplies were intact.

The mercenaries set up new tents, greatly expanding the campsite.

They also set up a defensive perimeter around it.

The nighttime arrangement was as follows:

The team had set out with a total of eighty mercenaries. Selena had taken fifteen with her on the search.

By the riverside two kilometers away, a team of fifteen mercenaries remained to guard the boats.

At this moment, the former Vanguard campsite housed fifty mercenaries, Chen Nuo and six others, Vanel, and two doctors—a total of sixty people.

At night, Chen Nuo ate some rations—dehydrated vegetables and jerky—and then entered his tent to rest.

Ordinary mercenaries shared a tent among five, but Ability Users like Chen Nuo had slightly better conditions, with two per tent.

Naturally, Chen Nuo bunked with Sato Ryoko.

He had no interest in speaking with the timid Japanese woman today and lay down on his cot to rest early.

He was originally just closing his eyes to rest... but unconsciously, Chen Nuo actually fell asleep...

In his dream, Chen Nuo seemed to hear faint, low sobbing. He tried to discern the source of the sound, but the dream was shrouded in darkness. He felt his body drifting, but he could never determine the direction of the crying...

At this point, Chen Nuo realized he was asleep and dreaming!

Once he came to this realization, Chen Nuo abruptly awoke!

Sitting up from his cot in the darkness, Chen Nuo's expression was very odd.

Dreaming?

For powerful Ability Users...

The stronger their abilities, especially for powerful individuals of the Mentality Series who followed the spiritual power evolution path, the more they tended to gradually lose one of the joys of ordinary human life as they grew in power: dreaming.

The more powerful the Mentality Series expert, the less likely they were to dream!

What is dreaming, after all?

Scientifically, it is a state after a person falls asleep and the cerebral cortex loses control, resulting in a disordered, irregular self-discharge of neurons. This, in turn, stimulates the memory centers of the brain, introducing strange memories into consciousness.

Note the key: disorder!

And for experts of the Mentality Series, as their spiritual power became stronger, their mastery and control over it reached a pinnacle.

It was highly unlikely for their brain neurons to engage in this kind of disorderly activity or discharge.

Therefore, Mentality Series experts rarely dreamed; the most elite among them did not dream at all!

Upon waking from the dream, Chen Nuo immediately realized this issue.

Chen Nuo's sudden awakening startled Sato Ryoko, who was lying on the cot next to him.

The Japanese woman also sat up quickly, her small eyes wide in the darkness.

"You weren't asleep?" Chen Nuo asked.

"No, I wasn't," Sato Ryoko shook her head. "The things that happened today were too strange; I didn't dare sleep."

Alright. Chen Nuo said nothing more.

He suddenly felt a bit restless and was about to pull out a cigarette when...

Suddenly, his powerful senses allowed him to hear a sharp, piercing whistle from very far away, as if something was hurtling through the air...

This sound...

Chen Nuo's expression suddenly changed. He leaped from the cot, looked at Sato Ryoko still sitting there stupefied, then grabbed the woman from her cot, pulling her to the ground and pushing her head down.

"Get down!!!"

WHIZZ...

BOOM!!!!!

A huge explosion rocked the area, as if the earth itself was shaking!!

A massive blast tore through the very center of the camp!

A tent occupied by mercenaries was blown to smithereens. Amidst the blood and fire, severed limbs flew through the air!

Amidst the thunderous explosion, someone let out a shrill scream.

"Mortar attack!!!!!!"

After the scream...

Then...

BOOM!

Another explosion. Another shell landed in the camp!

This time, the shell landed closer to Chen Nuo's tent. The blast wave ripped his tent apart!

Chen Nuo scrambled up from the ground, forcefully patting the dust off his head. He saw that the camp was already ablaze everywhere!!

RAT-TAT-TAT, RAT-TAT-TAT...

In the darkness, intense and dense gunfire seemed to erupt simultaneously from all directions!