Chapter 33: Taking Care of Little Snail

Fortunately, the little snail didn’t really bite down and refuse to let go.
It was just curious about the hand waving in front of it and wanted to take a bite to taste it.

The damage from this bite, plus a billion small accidents that happened while farming, Hua Yibing’s current health had already dropped below 10.
He thought for a moment, then directly pulled out the golden machete hanging at Old Li’s waist and cleanly slit his own throat.

Leaving Tom to suck in a cold breath on the spot—”Hiss!”
He looked at the pink-haired fish that had turned into specks of light with suspicion, then looked at Old Li, who had no reaction.

“Wow!” said the little snail, its eyes wide with novelty.
It curiously extended its antennae, trying to crawl towards where Hua Yibing had just been, but was pressed to the ground by Tom.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Tom. He’ll be back soon,” Old Li saw Tom’s confusion and explained helplessly.
“This is… very common for us? As long as we pay a little price.”

Sure enough, after only a minute, a brand-new pink-haired merman appeared in front of the two snails.

“I’m here, I’m here! When can the mission begin!” Hua Yibing was full of life.

“What a peculiar racial ability. As expected of Sykes’s domain citizens,” Tom praised exaggeratedly.
“Then I’m even more relieved to entrust this mission to you. Maybe there will be more opportunities for cooperation in the future!”

“Wow!” This was still the amazed little snail.

Huahua’s eyes lit up when he heard this.
He seemed to have forgotten the experience of being bitten by the little snail just now and quickly agreed, “Please rest assured. Just give us any mission!”

In the end, the big snail Tom still left, heading towards the area outside the domain.

Yan Shuangwen swam out of the house and looked at Huahua, who was sitting on the ground teasing the snail with a blade of grass, and discussed with the only reliable teammate, “What should we do with this mission next?”

Old Li shook his head.
“I don’t have any clues either, but since it said to take good care of this little thing, we’ll just keep a close eye on it.”

Then he also turned his head to look at the milky-white little snail being teased into a tizzy by Hua Yibing, his eyes softening to the extreme.
“Such a cute snail must be very obedient too.”

Yan Shuangwen: “?”

Excuse me, one of my teammates is a fool and the other is a cute-things-con. How can I complete the mission perfectly? Online, waiting, urgent.

He had originally thought this snail-teasing game could hold it for at least half an hour, but after only five minutes, the little snail grew tired of this game.

He saw its neck suddenly stretch out extremely long, and with an ‘ah-woo’, it bit off a large half of the grass, chewed it in its mouth, and then turned its head to other places.

A bad feeling rose in Yan Shuangwen’s heart.

Sure enough, the next second, the snail stuck to the wall with a ‘swoosh’, rolled vertically down the 90-degree wall with a ‘guruguru’, and then ended up in the neighbor’s vegetable patch…

“Ah-woo!”

“Ahhhhhhh, what is this!!! A bug? Wait, a snail?” A girl’s terrified scream came from next door.
Then she seemed to see something, and her voice became even more excited.
“Don’t move, that vine costs 1000 reputation, ahhhhhh, why aren’t you biting me!!”

Yan, Hua, and Li looked at each other, their faces changing suddenly.
They directly flipped over the wall to check.
They saw a brown-haired girl with a look of despair on her face, desperately hugging the little snail’s shell, trying to pull it off the precious gem vine.
But the snail’s mouth seemed to be stuck to the vine.
Its neck was stretched out from being pulled, but it still refused to let go.

The three of them quickly joined the tug-of-war army, but in the end, it ended with the vine breaking in half.
Old Li guiltily held the snail in his arms, while Hua Yibing silently buried the remaining half of the vine in the soil.
The three big men were scolded by the angry female neighbor until they didn’t even dare to lift their heads, meekly agreeing.

In the end, the three of them, along with one snail, were all swept out.
“Go, go, go! Don’t let me see that beast-faced, beast-hearted snail again!”

Yan Shuangwen silently glanced at the doorplate and transferred one thousand five hundred reputation points to the female neighbor who had suffered an undeserved disaster.

“I say you, why did you eat someone else’s things?”
Huahua snatched the snail from Old Li’s arms, held it in front of his eyes, and fumed.

The little snail chewed the half a vine in its mouth again, smacked its lips, swallowed it, and then let out a milky coo, “Yi? Sweet.”

“You’re saying this is sweet, so you like it?” Old Li asked.

The little snail’s black-bean-like eyes looked at him, seemingly not understanding what he was saying.

Old Li rephrased his question, “Sweet, like?”

The little snail’s eyes lit up, and it nodded vigorously.
Its two little antennae swayed on its head, looking extremely cute.

“Then it should be easy. Let’s find some sweet fruit to coax it?” Yan Shuangwen suggested, receiving unanimous approval.

The three of them set off for the sea realm’s Shennong—[Contemporary Foodie]’s house, planning to ask her which fruit was sweet.
The other party would definitely know the answer.

After arriving at their destination, Hua Yi’s… the soil was turned over just right, and several vines were arranged in a staggered manner by the wall, among which was the familiar big… not at all like the fancy fighting in his own land.

Comparing people to people, it makes you angry enough to die, QAQ.

When Hua Yibing’s gaze swept over a certain spot, he suddenly poked his roommate.
“Look at the few pieces of wood placed over there. Aren’t they the ones you chopped up to use as small railings? It doesn’t look like you’re supposed to use them like that.”

Before Yan Shuangwen could answer, another voice answered first.

“That’s the cultivation wood for red mushrooms. It should be placed under a cool shade where red mushrooms grow.”
The foodie girl squinted, arriving in front of their group.
“What, did you not read the the tool description?”

Hua ‘careless’ Yibing guiltily lowered his head.
The straight-faced Yan Shuangwen unnaturally averted his gaze.

“Hahahahaha,” the foodie saw their discomfort at a glance.
After laughing a few times, she didn’t dwell on this topic.
“What can I do for you?”

“It’s this little guy,” Old Li took out the little snail in his arms and placed it in front of the foodie.
“It wants to eat something sweet. Do you know which fruits are sweet?”

When the foodie saw such a jade-carved, clean, and cute snail, her eyes lit up.
She reached out, wanting to rub the little snail’s head.

Hua Yibing, forgetting his guilt, loudly reminded, “Be careful! It bites!”

The foodie looked back in confusion, her hand already having caressed the snail’s head a couple of times.
And the little snail also happily rubbed against her hand, looking like a good, well-behaved baby.

Huahua: “…”
Why! Even a snail has such double standards!!

In the end, the three of them successfully got a big-mouthed vine’s fruit from the foodie.
Old Li tasted a bite, and the taste was so sweet it could give you cavities.
It was a level of sweetness he would never drink a second time in his life.
But the little snail liked it very much, holding it in its mouth and refusing to let go.

Hua Yibing slapped his head, tied the fruit with a piece of seaweed, and as long as he held the seaweed, he could ensure that the other wouldn’t run out of his range.

Just like that, the snail walked slowly in front with the fruit in its mouth, and the three merfolk also followed slowly behind, as if they had entered their retirement life early.

The little snail took a path close to the edge.
Along the way, there were many players moving bricks and chopping wood back and forth.
Some players rushed past them in a hurry, then disappeared, looking like they were in a rush.
But there were also players who shot past with a ‘swoosh’, then retreated with a ‘swoosh’.

“Big shots, is this your pet? Where did you get it? Has Sea Realm released a pet system?”
Diamond looked at the little snail with envy and recognized the three people behind it.

After the first clear of the dungeon, most players in Sea Realm remembered the appearance of the 123 team.

“Not a pet, this is a quest NPC,” the three of them stopped.
They had dealt with Diamond before.
“Why are you moving bricks again? Haven’t you already finished climbing the tower?”

Diamond shook his head, then pointed to the merman tower not far away.
“I’ve finished climbing the tower, but I found that the lord seems to have updated the defenses! The mechanisms now are different from before! The difficulty seems to have increased again!”

He clenched his fist and said with high fighting spirit, “This must be the second playthrough of the tower-climbing game!”

“Good luck! I wish you success!”
Hua Yibing greatly admired the other’s persistence.
If it were him, his mentality might have collapsed after the first few failures and he would have gone to do something else, let alone play a second playthrough.

“Then let’s go too. Little snail… where’s the little snail??”
He looked at the empty rope in his hand and exclaimed in disbelief.

The other two also looked down and only then discovered that the fruit had been eaten empty at some point, leaving only an empty shell hanging on the rope, while the snail that had been holding it was already gone.

“Ah…” Diamond, who had already walked far away, turned back with a complicated expression.
He looked at the three’s panicked faces and hesitated, “Are you guys looking for that snail just now?”

Huahua answered impatiently, “Yes, have you seen it?”

Diamond pointed to the merman tower again.
“See there?”

Huahua: “I see it. I know you’re climbing the second playthrough, but we need to find that snail now. It’s very important…”

“No,” Diamond’s expression became more complicated.
“I’m saying, that snail is on the tower.”

????

The three of them turned their heads sharply to look over there and just happened to see the milky-white little snail attached to the edge of the tower, happily crawling upwards, as if it had found some fun toy.

Directly above it, a huge rolling stone was rolling down the tower wall!

“Be careful!!” Old Li swore, this was the fastest he had ever been in his life.
Like an arrow leaving a bow, he swam from his original spot to the side of the tower, climbed up in a few moves, grabbed the little snail, and pulled down fiercely—

It didn’t move.

“Be careful! Old Li!” Huahua and Yan Shuangwen were a step behind, looking worriedly at Old Li and the snail’s position.
At this time, the falling stone was already close at hand.

“Come down!” Old Li distributed his defense to his fingernails, fiercely gripping the outer layer of the tower wall to use it as leverage to pull the snail down.
But the other was like it had grown on the wall, not moving at all, and even curiously looked back at Old Li, as if it didn’t understand why this merman wanted to pull it away from this fun place.

Huahua gritted his teeth and cast a buff on Old Li.
A golden light flashed—[《Mind Domain · Strong Luck》]!

[《Mind Domain · Strong Luck》: A powerful magic weapon for an African to turn their luck around. Increases the designated target’s luck value for 1s (duration extends with level). Note: It is uncertain what will happen during this period, but please believe that the development of events is already the best choice. Skill cooldown time: 48h.]

This was the initial skill Hua Yibing had been holding onto.
Because he wanted to create an image of breaking away from being an African and becoming a European, he refused to say it even when Old Li asked again and again.

This special mission absolutely could not fail.
Didn’t you see the system’s prompt earlier?
If the little snail died in this place, it would be a huge joke.
Would the traveling merchant Tom’s favorability directly turn into hatred?

In the one second that the Strong Luck buff was effective, a falling stone hit a hidden small protrusion on the wall, directly passing over Old Li and the snail’s position, and landed heavily on the ground.
But that one second was too short.
There was an even bigger stone directly above, smashing straight towards the two of them.

Old Li climbed up with force, wanting to shield the little snail with his body, but the other didn’t cooperate.

“Ya!” The little snail suddenly cried out in a milky voice, then climbed up another two steps, heading towards the big stone.

Yan Shuangwen sighed, as if seeing the result of the mission’s failure.
Huahua directly closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the snail being crushed.

But twenty seconds passed, and the sound of the system prompt for mission failure was still slow in coming.

“Hmm?” Hua Yibing tentatively opened one eye, and then the other also widened—

He saw the little snail extend a fragile and tender tentacle and press it against the giant stone rolling down from above.
This scene was like a praying mantis trying to stop a chariot, or an ant trying to shake a tree.
In short, it was very absurd.
But the fact was before them—this weak little snail, with just one tentacle, had stopped the ferocious falling stone!

Then, in the sight of everyone, the little snail first played with the stone for a while like a ball, and after getting tired of it, directly threw the stone onto an empty space far away from the crowd.
It turned around and burrowed into Old Li’s chest, quietly curling into a ball.

“Ya, sleepy,” it said, opening its mouth and letting out a small yawn.

Hua, Yan, Li: “…”