DSMC Chapter 82.1

Yan Jiyun glanced at the remaining time for the task; quite a lot had been wasted by Jiang Meiying. He really hadn’t expected that her reason for targeting him could be so unreasonable. No matter what harm Jiang Meiying had suffered, that wasn’t something he should have to bear. Venting anger on others was the worst kind of emotion.

[“Rescue the Injured Wolf Cub” mission countdown: 35m 34s]

The task wasn’t just to rescue the injured wolf pup; he also had to take it to Dr. Peng for treatment.

Strangely enough, the monkey zone was close to the wolf zone, yet the wolf pack hadn’t heard the cub’s cries for help at all.

Could it be deliberately designed this way by the game?

However, although the game set up storylines, most of the time it still followed logic.

It was possible that the alpha wolf simply didn’t know its cub had run out, so it hadn’t come to look for it, and thus this became the player’s task.

Yan Jiyun followed the wolf pup’s miserable howling as he searched through the monkey zone. The rain was loud and also affected him somewhat.

The heavy rain not only affected his hearing but also his vision.

The wolf pup should have fallen into a cave beneath the rocky hill. 

The layout of the monkey zone was high in the middle and low around the edges. The artificial rocks were suitable for monkeys to climb but not for a human like him. Jiang Meiying slipping and falling was the best proof.

Yan Jiyun knew that the wolf pup’s cries and the monkeys’ chattering did not come from the side where he and Jiang Meiying had been chasing each other.

He ran around to the other side; the sounds were closer now, and he could directly tell where they were coming from.

The rain severely interfered with judgment. Yan Jiyun had to overcome the harsh environment. He knew the difficulty of the mission was increasing. Whether it was the previous instance or the earlier missions in this dungeon, there had been no environmental factors, but this time was different. The difficulty had risen. One careless move and the player would die directly.

Completely trusting Jiang Meiying could get him bitten to death by venomous snakes.

Ignoring the weather could make him fall off the hill and die.

Yan Jiyun found a spot where he could climb down to the cave below.

Monkeys weren’t stupid; when it rained, they also knew to hide.

Most of the monkeys in the zoo would be driven back indoors by keepers so they wouldn’t get soaked in the rain. Getting sick would be troublesome too.

But in the game there was a task, so the monkeys hadn’t been driven back. Instead, they were surrounding an injured wolf pup, chattering.

When Yan Jiyun climbed down along the slippery rocks, what he saw was two curious monkeys tugging at the wolf pup’s hind legs, and one even pulling its front leg, causing the pup to cry out in pain nonstop. This was really no different from being torn apart by five horses! Monkeys were truly ruthless!

Yan Jiyun didn’t know how the pup had run here. He couldn’t see whether there were bloodstains on its body; it might have injured its leg or some other part.

Even he found it difficult to climb down, and the height wasn’t low either. If the wolf pup really had fallen from above, its leg might already be fractured. And now two monkeys were still pulling on its front and back legs. It must be in terrible pain.

This rocky hill was the monkeys’ territory. When Yan Jiyun came over wearing a raincoat, several monkeys noticed him and gathered in front of him, chattering, and one even tried to tug at his raincoat. The monkeys screeched noisily; who knew what they were trying to express.

A stone flew out from a corner. If Yan Jiyun hadn’t dodged quickly, it would have smashed into his head.

Yan Jiyun shouted at them, “Stop, stop! Hand the wolf pup over to me!”

He now understood that monkeys were highly hostile toward zookeepers.

Animals in other exhibition areas were more or less hostile or fearful toward zookeepers, but only monkeys here showed it most clearly.

The black panthers in the leopard zone would run when they saw zookeepers; the tigers in the tiger zone couldn’t be bothered with zookeepers. If Uncle Man didn’t use white powder and tools to control them, they wouldn’t obey zookeepers at all.

At the monkey zone, the entire troop was hostile toward zookeepers. Before Yan Jiyun even got close to the cave, he saw several monkeys start picking up stones and throwing them at him.

The monkeys screeched fiercely at Yan Jiyun and continued throwing stones at him!

“Eeek!”

“Eeek!”

“Eeek!!”

Yan Jiyun immediately hid behind one of the artificial rocks.

At this moment he was glad it was raining heavily. The monkeys also didn’t like getting soaked and didn’t chase after him, so at least his face was spared from being smashed.

What should he do now? The monkeys looked extremely violent. Approaching them meant being attacked, yet his task was to take the injured wolf pup away from them.

He had to think of a way to lure this group of hot-tempered, brutal monkeys away.

There were no teammates in this instance. Every NPC he met was stranger than the last, with countless reasons to kill. No one could help him. He still had to rely on himself.

With no separate mission space, he couldn’t transform into a cat, so that route was impossible. Monkeys could bully with numbers; he was just an ordinary small cat, not a tiger. He couldn’t beat them at all and might even be torn apart by their sharp claws, let alone take the pup away. Moreover, rain would soak a cat’s fur, making his body feel weighed down and miserable. Turning into a cat was absolutely not an option.

By estimation, the cub hadn’t been weaned yet. It was probably less than two months old.

Yan Jiyun turned and left the current part of hill. He climbed back up and returned to the spot where Jiang Meiying had fallen.

When Jiang Meiying fell, she had crushed her own snake to death. Both the woman and snake were motionless. There was no blood on her body either. Yan Jiyun checked her breathing. She wasn’t dead, just unconscious. It should be like Uncle Man: NPCs didn’t die after being defeated by players; they could choose various ways to go offline.

Yan Jiyun used his stick to fling the dead venomous snake far away. He was really afraid of that thing. Just looking at it made goosebumps rise all over his body.

He rummaged through Jiang Meiying’s pocket for her phone. The screen showed it still had battery. He hid under the rocks in a spot sheltered from the rain and opened the search bar on the phone.

Jiang Meiying’s fall had shattered half the phone screen, but it was still usable. He opened the search engine app and typed in: [what monkeys are most afraid of.]

‘Alright, got it.’

Conveniently, the phone automatically shut down. Probably broken from the fall.

Yan Jiyun guessed that he might have connected to the internet and been detected by the system, which directly shut the phone down.

But he already knew the answer, so shutting it down didn’t matter!

Yan Jiyun weighed the stick in his hand. So this thing was actually the most useful.

He had forgotten to bring it down earlier when he climbed down; now he finally knew what it was for.

Yan Jiyun knew climbing up and down was exhausting, but now he could see the light of completing the task. There was nothing to fear. This was still better than dodging tigers and NPCs trying to kill him.

No matter how many monkeys were inside, he would just charge in.

Yan Jiyun carried his long stick and climbed back to the other side of Monkey Mountain. The wolf pup was still crying, but its voice was getting weaker and weaker.

This group of monkeys was really unfriendly.

Yan Jiyun found the red-white-blue bag he had carried in earlier and put on all the protective gear he had. When the monkeys’ stones came flying, he could block them for a while. He had to bring this bag too!

He returned to rocky hill carrying his big bag of tools.

The monkeys’ only method of attack was throwing stones. If they had any new move, it would be jumping onto people and scratching them all over. But Yan Jiyun had a stick, so they shouldn’t be able to jump onto him.

There was a strict hierarchy among the monkeys: the monkey king, the second-in-command, and the lower-ranking monkeys¹T/L: fun fact, in monkey groups, leadership is not a static position, but rather a dynamic role that can change over time. The leader is typically the individual who possesses the highest social status within the group. They are responsible for making important decisions, such as where to forage for food or where to seek shelter. The leader also acts as a mediator in conflicts and ensures the overall well-being of the group. While bigger and more physically strong monkeys do often become the leader, sometimes smaller but smarter monkeys can also be the leader. The position is also not static and can be challenged..

The one squatting in the very center should be the monkey king. It was also the largest among them, which showed its combat power should be the strongest of all the monkeys.

A low-ranking monkey stationed at the cave entrance saw Yan Jiyun come back again and screeched to inform the monkey king inside.

Yan Jiyun returned with his “golden cudgel,” deliberately standing at the entrance and locking eyes with the few monkeys there. He used the stick to poke aside the monkeys blocking the way. He didn’t use heavy force, just gently pushed them aside. If the monkeys resisted fiercely and became more aggressive toward him, then he would beat them one by one.

Perhaps the stick really did have some deterrent effect. The monkeys didn’t dare come any closer, though they kept throwing stones. Yan Jiyun blocked a few with the bite-proof sleeves he’d brought along, and then the stone attacks stopped. Probably because the monkeys had run out of ammunition.

At that moment, Yan Jiyun pointed his stick at the monkey king squatting on a raised rock in the middle of the cave and said, “Give me the wolf pup.”

The monkey king’s sharp nails were clamped around the cub’s neck. The little wolf was no longer crying loudly, only letting out weak, whimpering sounds, as if it were about to die.

And the monkey king was deliberately provoking Yan Jiyun. It pressed even harder on the pup’s neck.

It actually knew to use the wolf pup to threaten him. Its intelligence was truly high.

Seizing the moment, Yan Jiyun struck its long arm with the stick. The monkey king yelped in pain and withdrew its arm. Yan Jiyun immediately shoved it off the rock and scooped the nearly tortured-to-death cub into his arms.

The space inside the cave wasn’t large. Once he got in, a whole group of monkeys surrounded him from behind. With the cub in one arm and the stick in the other, Yan Jiyun swung left and right, wielding his “golden cudgel” with great force, sweeping the monkeys following him aside.

The monkeys that had been throwing stones earlier were a little stunned, probably wondering whether their monkey king being knocked off a rock by a human counted as having its authority challenged. Was it still their king?

The second-in-command immediately began attacking the fallen monkey king. It wanted to be king; it wanted to challenge for the throne.

Yan Jiyun hadn’t expected that single move to trigger an internal struggle among the monkeys. But that no longer had anything to do with him. He needed to get out quickly. The rain was getting heavier, and the pup’s fur was soaked through. He stuffed the pup into the red-white-blue bag, slung it on his back, and climbed back up the slippery rocks.

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  T/L: fun fact, in monkey groups, leadership is not a static position, but rather a dynamic role that can change over time. The leader is typically the individual who possesses the highest social status within the group. They are responsible for making important decisions, such as where to forage for food or where to seek shelter. The leader also acts as a mediator in conflicts and ensures the overall well-being of the group. While bigger and more physically strong monkeys do often become the leader, sometimes smaller but smarter monkeys can also be the leader. The position is also not static and can be challenged.