48: Chapter 36 Wooden Tower 48: Chapter 36 Wooden Tower Just tonight, the amount of information Xia Nan obtained from the Half Elf and Wood was more than the previous days combined.

Being in the wilderness, neither time nor space allowed him to truly begin training and learning new Battle Skills.

But now, at least he had a goal to strive for—

Learn two more Battle Skills and obtain a Professional Level.

Even if he doesn’t continue in the adventurer trade in the future, the identity of a “professional” will be like a “technical certificate” from his past life, allowing him to live comfortably in this world.

And the Half Elf Hai’an had already agreed with Xia Nan that after the mission ends and they return to Neum, he would try to help him find a suitable mentor to assist in learning Battle Skills.

From a cold, calculative point of view, a favor in exchange for the channels and huge funds needed to hire a professional, which Xia Nan, just newly arrived in this world, didn’t possess.

Although he did not consider it from this perspective, undoubtedly, this exchange was not a loss for him at the moment.

With the idea of absorbing as much related knowledge as possible, sitting by the campfire, Xia Nan asked the two more about “profession,” “Battle Skills,” and “adventurer,” topics involving supernatural powers of this world.

It wasn’t until the moonlight was deep and the mist thickened that he reluctantly ended the conversation.

It wasn’t a warm and safe tavern; they were still in the danger-filled Mist Forest, and tomorrow there was still a considerable journey to be made.

So someone stood guard overnight while the others rested early.

…

Getting close to the location where the wooden sign was found.

At the break of dawn the next day, the group packed their luggage and continued deeper into the forest, shrouded in mist.

Surprisingly, they had already gradually moved into the outskirts of the Mist Forest, where the frequency of dangerous situations should have been increasing.

Yet, after walking all morning, they didn’t even encounter a single Demon.

The only thing remotely exciting was a passing black panther the size of a calf with golden eyes.

Completely jet-black, its fur shiny, its paws quietly stepped on the meadow without a sound.

No battle ensued; it merely glanced at the group from a distance, determining they weren’t prey it could hunt, and slowly retreated into the shadows of the dense forest.

If it weren’t for Wood’s reminder, Xia Nan and the others might not have even noticed this little road incident.

Later, Wood explained that it was probably because of those four Rusted Monsters yesterday that the weaker demons in the area had instinctively stayed away, allowing them to travel so smoothly.

“Hiss!”

A long snake with pale yellow round spots on its scales was driven out of the bushes by a shabby one-handed hammer, its long body slithering and soon disappearing back into the depths of the shrubbery.

“Another one!

Are we in some kind of snake pit?”

Larry wiped the sweat from his forehead, muttering.

The one-handed hammer in his hand, tainted by the Rusted Monster’s venom, was no longer functional for battle, so he used it as a probe to drive away snakes and insects.

However, the weight brought by the metal hammer seemed to have exhausted Larry as he frequently swung the hammer.

By now, he was already panting heavily.

Yet he did not suggest taking a break.

Because, compared to just now, the entire team’s pace had completely slowed down.

Just like the closer you get to an oasis, the more moist and fertile the sandy soil becomes; as you approach a lake, the air becomes increasingly saturated with moisture.

As they gradually approached their destination, strange occurrences, like the previous carriage, appeared more and more frequently.

Just what Xia Nan saw included half a thatched hut, a collapsed adobe house, and even a five-story wooden building.

Despite all becoming ruins, details remaining in the debris still clearly indicated their same origin with the sign and carriage, with a strong oriental style.

They even carefully explored the ruins under Wood’s guidance.

Although they found many traces of intelligent life left behind, they couldn’t find a single corpse.

Similarly, these severely damaged structures seemed like lost ruins, but the building materials themselves looked new, with almost no traces of age erosion.

“Crack.”

The branches and leaves snapped.

Walking in the mist amidst the dense forest.

Xia Nan stared straight ahead, his mind focused, alert to the surrounding dense bushes and long grass.

His naturally hanging left palm side gripped a smooth and cool hard object.

It was a shard of some kind of ceramic he just found in the ruins.

It’s hard to imagine that he, having now traversed into this fantastical world, could still see such lightweight, warmly glazed traditional objects.

At that moment, he was clearly surprised and instinctively picked it up from the broken bricks and debris.

Feeling the gentle touch of his thumb, he couldn’t help recalling Wood’s judgment when facing the towering wooden building, which had collapsed mostly to the ground:

“Judging by the extent these wooden materials have been affected by the mist in the forest, this building in the Mist Forest should have been constructed only about a month or two ago.”

“However, considering the resources and manpower required, and the surrounding dangerous environment, I don’t think anyone would actually choose to settle here.”

These words immediately faced rebuttals from Hai’an and others.

After all, the building stood right there; if no one resided there, what would be the purpose of its construction?

Xia Nan had his own view on this.

Unlike others in the team, who were all native to this world.

The soul in Xia Nan’s body came from the Otherworld.

With the knowledge and memories of modern society from his past life, many vaguely familiar details in the ruins allowed him, at a glance, to recognize the function of that towering wooden structure—

It was a tavern!

He felt increasingly baffled.

A tavern in the depths of a forest teeming with dangerous demons, who would visit such a place?

Moreover, judging by the density of the buildings along the way, even if every one of those thatched huts and adobe houses, now in ruins, were filled with people, the population wouldn’t support a lodging place of such scale.

Moreover, as far as Xia Nan was concerned, anyone with a slight concept of urban planning wouldn’t layout buildings as indiscriminately as he had seen.

One moment, there’s a tattered thatched shed in a slum; two steps later, it’s a refined tile house for the affluent.

One after another, arranged without rhyme or reason.

His impression, rather than people building these structures to specifically settle in the forest, was more like the existence of an unseen hand, transcending space and time barriers, picking up a few buildings from a town in a different aesthetic world than this fantastical one and casually tossing them into the Mist Forest.