I woke up to find myself transmigrated into a disabled child.

Chapter 163 The Beginning of the Shadow Disease

Lezhi didn't take that moment of ambiguity to heart, and even in retrospect, she attributed it all to a delusion.

Upon realizing Lezhi's thoughts, Lei Xiu knew that now was not the time to confess his feelings to her. The time was not right, and he still had a long way to go.

However, as a good hunter, Lei Xiu had plenty of patience and was in no hurry.

"Alright, you get some rest. Do you want to go to the bonfire party tonight? If you don't want to, I'll talk to Chief Lechu."

After helping Lezhi pull up the fur covering her body, Lei Xiu raised his hand to touch Lezhi's forehead to check her temperature, and then asked softly.

"Can I not go?" Lezhi knew how important the tree spirits were to the campfire gathering, not to mention that this was not just a gathering within their own tribe, but a rare gathering of three tribes. Would it be impolite for him to be absent?

"It's alright. You're sick for a reason, and no one else will care." In fact, even if others did care, Lei Xiu wouldn't go against Le Zhi's wishes because of this. He was just saying this so that Le Zhi could rest in peace.

Having already come to understand Lei Xiu's boundless tolerance, Le Zhi wouldn't be so easily fooled. After squinting and thinking for a moment, Le Zhi said, "It's still a while before it gets dark. I'll take a nap first and see what happens tonight."

"Okay, then I'll stay here with you."

Hearing the deliberation in Lezhi's words, Lei Xiu had no complaints and accepted them entirely.

Following Lei Xiu's gaze, she watched him get up, pull up a chair, and sit down. The two of them were so close that their knees were touching, and their breaths mingled together. Le Zhi didn't speak, her eyes glazed over as she began to stare blankly.

The fur ball, which had been silent since Lei Xiu returned, felt a little uncomfortable being surrounded by the two of them. It chirped and was comforted by Le Zhi's petting.

The air was quiet for a while. When Lei Xiu saw that Le Zhi's eyes were still open, he thought for a moment and said, "If you can't sleep, let's talk."

Her unfocused eyes brightened, and Lezhi turned to look at Lei Xiu, "What did you say?"

"Perhaps you're curious about the details of my mission this time..."

"Can I tell you? You were so secretive before, I thought you were going to keep it a secret." Lezhi said jokingly, but only he knew how much dissatisfaction was behind his words.

"We did keep it a secret then, but now that the results of the hunting tournament are settled, there's no need to keep it a secret anymore," Lei Xiu explained. For some reason, Lei Xiu instinctively felt that he had to take this topic seriously.

So, Lei Xiu didn't hide anything and started from when Le Chu first mentioned the suggestion, explaining the whole story clearly, except for the conversation with Qing Lin and the others, which Lei Xiu glossed over.

"...So to put it bluntly, you guys were just there to act as safety officers for the hunting tournament." After summarizing the whole plan, Lezhi was a little helpless. What was the point of hiding it? Why make it so mysterious?

"Safety officer? More or less..." Although it was a new term, it was easy to understand from the literal meaning, so Lei Xiu immediately understood what Le Zhi wanted to express. He nodded, noticing Le Zhi's dissatisfaction with their previous secrecy. Lei Xiu touched his nose, feeling a little guilty.

He didn't dare say that Le Chu hadn't actually asked him to hide it from Le Zhi. It was just that he himself didn't dare to talk to Le Zhi face to face. He had already decided to leave Le Zhi for a while, and the attempts of the previous two days had made him feel extremely difficult. So later he simply asked Qing Ze to say goodbye to Le Zhi.

If Lei Xiu were to tell Le Zhi in person, he might find himself unable to spread his wings again upon seeing her, wanting only to stay by her side and not go anywhere else.

"Did you encounter any dangers during this mission? By the way, do you know about Captain Qingjin's situation?" Thinking of Qingjin's miserable state at the time, Lezhi's heart skipped a beat, and she looked at Lei Xiu with concern.

"Don't worry, we're all fine." Lei Xiu held Le Zhi's hand to comfort her. "We know about Captain Qing Jin's situation. We even helped her on her way back."

"Did you check the place where she had the accident afterward?" The shadow on Qingjin's body was very active and had plenty of energy, so there might still be residual shadows at the place where the accident happened, which could be a lingering hidden danger.

"Yes, the Windwalker Clan sent people to investigate, and we went to check it out too, but we didn't go in." After all, it's Windwalker Clan territory, and although they are from an allied clan helping out, they still can't go too far.

"The main purpose of this hunting tournament is to find the anomaly. If we can find that place, we can consider the mission successfully completed. After confirming that the person in charge has returned safely, I haven't paid much attention to the rest. The clan leaders will take care of the arrangements."

"The anomaly, do you mean the last time we were suddenly attacked by insects?"

"Hmm." Seeing that Lezhi was unusually interested, Lei Xiu simply said a bit more, "When the insects attacked, Leshan and I noticed something was wrong. After reporting it, Chief Qinglin decided to change the content of this hunting competition to investigate the source of the insect anomaly. This time, a small team followed the insects' tracks and found that place."

"Captain Qingjin is also a safety officer; she's there to protect those talented people..."

"Yes, but fortunately Chief Qingjin reacted quickly. Otherwise, if we hadn't been able to hold them off, it might have triggered a swarm of insects, and things would have been much harder to handle. Now we just need to deal with the aftermath."

The truth is certainly not something that Lei Xiu can summarize in just a few words, but Lei Xiu doesn't want to bother Le Zhi with things that haven't happened yet.

"So, the sudden riot of those insects was also because of the shadowy figure?" Lezhi frowned, somewhat puzzled.

"There are speculations, but no confirmation."

"I don't understand, do insects also fear shadows?"

"To be precise, shadows can invade all living things, so insects are no exception."

Upon discovering that Lezhi, despite being the nemesis of the shadows, didn't know any more about shadows than they did, Lei Xiu decided to give Lezhi a lesson.

"We first discovered the shadows fifty years ago. At that time, we only saw strange shadows on the corpses of some plants and insects that died mysteriously, but no one knew what they were."

The tree spirits had no shortage of food, so when they saw something so strange, they naturally chose to destroy it on the spot. In the early stages, the threat of the shadow did not bother the tree spirits, until later on.

"...That was the most severe insect swarm outbreak in nearly a century. Almost all the active guards went to the battlefield. As a key member, I followed the clues and found the insect hive. Unexpectedly, the shadow suddenly appeared, and I was infected with the Shadow Disease from then on..."

When talking about that experience, Lei Xiu's tone was completely flat, as if he wasn't talking about his own personal experience.

“Since then, news has come from various tribes that their people have been attacked by the shadows. In the early stages, the sap of the mother tree was quite useful. Although it could not completely eliminate the shadows, it could suppress them. However, I later discovered that as soon as I used my talent, the suppressed shadows would spread a little more.”

“So you have no choice but to step down.” Lezhi grasped Lei Xiu’s hand in return, as if she could empathize with Lei Xiu’s helplessness at that time.

"Yes, although I was confident that I could fight the insects without using my talent, the situation was getting worse and worse, and the clan wouldn't allow me to act recklessly, so I simply retired completely..."

Lei Xiu's reputation was legendary decades ago, but as time has passed, almost no one in the new generation of clansmen talks about him anymore. Only those who lived through Lei Xiu's time know how incredibly talented he once was.