The following day at dusk.
The RV rolled over the muddy dirt road, plunging headfirst into an endless, vast bamboo forest. Sunlight leaked through the gaps in the bamboo leaves, casting mottled shadows on the windshield as Daisy and Peter snuggled together on the bed.
As for who was driving? The answer to that question was, of course, the Wheel of Fortune.
Peter was playing various classic mini-games developed by Parker Tech according to his specifications—things like Temple Run and Fruit Ninja—while enjoying the fruit Daisy fed him. Life was simply too comfortable.
But as the vehicle drove on, Daisy couldn't help but furrow her brows. She looked up, glancing through the window at the still-dense bamboo outside.
"Peter, are you sure there isn't an issue with your autonomous driving system? The GPS signal has been dead for over ten minutes, yet it doesn't look like we're anywhere near driving out of this bamboo forest."
"Don't worry, it's right here."
"But why..." Daisy's ears twitched slightly, and she turned her gaze toward the world outside the car window. "I feel like something is wrong. The jungle behind us seems like... Has it been constantly moving? This sensation feels exactly like a ghost wall maze !"
Speaking to this point, Daisy's face couldn't help but pale slightly. Even though she was now a superpowered individual, she was, after all, just a young girl who had not long ago reached adulthood. She still harbored a bit of reverence and dread toward supernatural and ghostly matters.
Hearing this, Peter's hand playing the mini-game paused. He tilted his head, pondering for a moment before recalling a minor piece of lore concerning Ta Lo village from the depths of his memory.
"Oh... I suddenly remembered something."
"What is it?"
"The entrance to Ta Lo village seems like it only opens actively on the day of the Qingming Festival... Normally, if outsiders stumble into this bamboo forest, they could wander here until they die and it would still be impossible to find the entrance to the village."
"The Qingming Festival?!" Daisy couldn't help but widen her eyes, asking somewhat helplessly, "Then what do we do now?
It's only June, and it's still more than half a year away from next year's Qingming Festival. Don't tell me we have to stay in this bamboo forest until next year?"
"If it were ordinary people, they would indeed have no choice but to wait it out." Peter suddenly grew quite interested. He first signaled the Wheel of Fortune to shut off the engine, then spoke with an air of mystery, "But quite obviously, I am not an ordinary person."
Hearing this, Daisy's eyes lit up. "Are you planning to just level this entire bamboo forest and violently force a path open?"
"That would be too inelegant. It doesn't suit my style of doing things~" Peter replied with a deeply smug expression.
Recalling Peter's previous performance in New York, where he flattened all of Hell's Kitchen with a single punch and literally parted the Hudson River, Daisy's lips couldn't help but twitch. Elegant? Are you sure that word has anything to do with you?
Just as she was thinking this, a light flashed from the storage ring on Peter's hand.
A glittering golden necklace materialized out of thin air in his palm. The necklace was crafted primarily from gold, and its border was embedded with radiant, color-shifting gemstones. The exact instant it was brought out, it caused the dim interior of the vehicle to brighten by several degrees.
It was precisely the Eye of Aurora!
"So beautiful..." Daisy's attention was instantly snatched away. As everyone knows, girls are just like dragons—they possess absolutely zero resistance against shiny things. "But what does this have to do with how we escape?"
"This is no ordinary necklace." Peter held up the Eye of Aurora, swaying it before Daisy's eyes as he explained, "It can transport us to any location we want to go to."
"Anywhere?" Daisy was stunned for a moment, then couldn't resist counter-questioning, "Then why didn't we use this when we set out from New York earlier?"
"Because I only obtained this thing yesterday..."
Daisy was clearly curious about Peter's explanation, but she understood very well what questions to ask and what questions to leave alone. Thus, she merely let Peter take her hand.
After grasping Daisy's hand, Peter spoke to the Eye of Aurora:
"Go to Ta Lo village."
The moment the words fell, the air in front of the two was ripped open out of thin air, forming a jagged slit. Golden light erupted from within the rift, shaping into a diamond-shaped portal that promptly swallowed Peter and Daisy.
Daisy only felt the scenery before her eyes warp in a bout of dizziness for about half a second. By the time she snapped out of it, the bamboo forest had vanished, replaced instead by a pastoral landscape that left her completely dumbfounded.
Water murmured in a flowing stream, and footpaths crisscrossed between fields. All around stood a gathering of bizarre creatures that she had never even heard of before.
There were chubby, eyeless fur-balls slowly rolling around. There was a little fox with fluffy, silver-white fur and nine tails swaying behind it, lazily licking its coat.
There was even a massive beast that looked like a deer but was mismatched with traits from different creatures altogether, staring at them with a vigilant face beside the stream.
"This is... Ta Lo village?" Daisy murmured under her breath, completely stunned by the beautiful scenery before her.
But right at this moment...
Swish~
An arrow pierced through the air, hurtling toward them!
Peter didn't even lift his head. He merely raised two fingers and nipped them together, precisely intercepting the arrow less than three inches away from his brow.
He glanced at the arrow clamped between his fingers—the arrowhead was actually ground from some kind of scale, glinting with a holy, cold light under the setting sun.
With a flick of Peter's hand, half of his arm was instantly covered by a Vibranium gauntlet. Peter raised the arrowhead and stabbed it against the Vibranium armor. After the two collided and erupted in a blinding shower of sparks, neither side sustained even a single shred of damage.
"Are these dragon scales?" Peter couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. "This defensive performance... it really is good stuff~"
Just as he was thinking this, dozens of villagers clad in scaled armor and wielding dragon-scale weapons poured out from all directions. A burly man with a full beard walked at the very front, holding a large dragon-scale blade, the tip of the blade pointing straight at Peter's throat:
"Who are you, people? How did you get in?"
Daisy subconsciously took half a step back, ripples of shockwaves already surfacing on her arms. Peter, however, flashed a slight smile at these villagers, subsequently opening his mouth to say:
"Don't be anxious. We harbor no ill intent. On the contrary, we are here to help you solve a problem!"
"A problem?" The bearded man's expression shifted slightly, but he very quickly spoke with an unyielding attitude, "No such thing as a problem exists in our Ta Lo village. I don't care how you entered; leave immediately!"
Beholding the other party's unyielding stance, the look in Peter's eyes instantly underwent a change.
Immediately following, an invisible, crushing weight abruptly released from within his body—
Haoshoku Haki!
Without any warning whatsoever, the villagers' knees grew soft one after another, and a whole crowd of them went plop, plop as they knelt onto the ground.
Even the bearded man only gritted his teeth and endured for a mere three seconds before he too fell to the ground with a heavy plop.
"I said, we harbor no ill intent." Peter withdrew the Haki, his tone remaining incomparably calm. "But if you insist on initiating a fight, then I also don't mind letting you all cool your heads for a bit."
Speaking to this point, Peter smiled once more as he looked at the bearded man and asked:
"Now, have you cooled down?"
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