At the very bottom of the valley, beside a massive boulder, grew five ice-blue exotic flowers. They swayed gently in the breeze, exuding an elegant fragrance. None of the five blossoms had fully opened yet, meaning they were not mature; it looked as though they would need another two or three days.
"Phoo... cough, cough!"
Having shot and killed the dozen or so ordinary mutant wolves, Guan Lang and the others ran over with all their might, every one of them gasping for breath.
There was no helping it. Huang Tian had sprinted along at an astonishing pace. Although he had swept through and eliminated the mutant fierce beasts in a broad fan rather than charging in a straight line, it was still far beyond what the patrol officers could keep up with. Of the five hundred men who had entered the mountains, only twenty or thirty—including Guan Lang, Liu Yang, and Lao Gao—had managed to reach this valley. Those with weaker stamina or less perseverance had all fallen behind.
Of course, saying they fell behind was not entirely accurate; some had been ordered by Guan Lang to remain along the path to guard the beast carcasses and tend to exhausted comrades.
"Haaah... haaah..." Guan Lang propped his hands on his knees, panting heavily. Looking at the exotic flowers by the stream, he could not identify what they were for the moment, but he instinctively knew they were spirit plants. They were simply too wondrously beautiful. Filled with abundant spiritual energy, they radiated a faint luminescence that appeared magnificent in the daylight.
"Five immature spirit plants... No wonder two Beast Generals were guarding them," Liu Yang said in realization. "Do we pick them now? If harvested prematurely, their efficacy will definitely plummet."
Guan Lang shook his head. "Even mutant fierce beasts know to wait until they are ripe before eating. How can we harvest them beforehand?"
"Then we'll need to leave people behind to guard them, and quite a few, just to be safe." Liu Yang furrowed his brow slightly. They only had twenty or thirty people left in total; where could they spare any more?
Huang Tian glanced back at them. Seeing that every one of them was drenched in sweat and pale-faced, he offered, "How about all of you stay here, and I'll continue deeper alone."
Guan Lang and the others exchanged looks, looks of shame appearing on their faces. Yet they also knew that even if they kept following, it would not be long before they were thoroughly drained of strength and dropped out. It was far better to stay together beside these five spirit plants, guard them well, and harvest them once they ripened to take back.
"All right. We'll rest here and protect the spirit plants," Guan Lang urged solemnly. "Venturing deep into the mountains all by yourself, you must be extremely careful."
"Don't worry." Huang Tian gave a slight nod. Without lingering, he leaped into the air and swiftly vanished into the distance.
As for the drone that had been following along to livestream, Yang Qiu had packed it away long ago. Signal reception deep in the mountains was simply too abysmal to maintain a livestream. Only the locators each person carried were marginally useful, and even those required being clear of dense forests, gorges, and other heavily obstructed environments, or tracking them proved just as difficult.
Whoosh—
Mountain winds buffeted his face. Huang Tian sped forward with his war saber in hand, moving as swift as a shadow, clearing a hundred meters in the blink of an eye.
Deep in the mountains, among the dense woods, silver-white saber light bloomed across the landscape like frost and snow!
Blade followed blade in an unbroken tapestry of light. The agonized howls of mutant fierce beasts rose and fell, only to be severed by the blade winds.
He moved so swiftly that the beasts had no time to feel terror. They fell in vast swathes, their blood pooling into rivulets that cascaded down the mountain slopes!
He bounded, dashed, and tore through in a relentless charge!
From daylight into the dark of night, until a clear, bright moon hung high over the sprawling mountains, Huang Tian finally sheathed his blade.
With a single leap, he landed atop a massive boulder on a peak and sat cross-legged. Within his field of vision, not a single beast was in sight. Even if any were around, none dared approach—the stench of blood on him was simply too overwhelming, as if he had walked straight out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
Inhale... exhale...
Bathed in the hazy moonlight, he focused on drawing in and expelling the spiritual energy of the void. His breathing was deep and slow, his chest rising and falling.
Meanwhile, with nothing obstructing the peak, his locator finally began functioning properly. Various parties on the outside monitoring the situation in the Mangyuan Mountains were able to pinpoint his approximate position. They let out collective sighs of relief, followed immediately by astonishment.
"In just one day, he penetrated nearly sixty-four kilometers into the Mangyuan Mountains!"
"At full burst, his speed is roughly one hundred and twenty meters per second. Even accounting for complex mountain terrain and cutting that in half, he can still cover sixty meters a second, which is two hundred and sixteen kilometers per hour. At that rate, traveling sixty-four kilometers in a day is nothing to him."
"I know that, of course, but he was clearing out mutant fierce beasts, not just sprinting blindly in a straight line!"
"At this pace, three days! In merely three days, he could completely sweep through the Mangyuan Mountains!"
"Have the various counties and cities near the Mangyuan Mountains been adequately warned? Director Huang's slaughter in the mountains is bound to terrify many beasts. They might flee beyond the mountains and form a dozen or several dozen small beast tides. Every area must take thorough precautions."
"They were all notified in advance. The patrol bureaus of the counties and cities near Mangyuan Mountains have squeezed out manpower to set up defenses while relocating residents living near the range as much as possible.
"Well, actually, there aren't many people left to relocate. Most residents living too close to the mountains were killed by mutant fierce beasts on the very first day of the Great Change. Those fortunate enough to survive quickly left with their families for the county seats and cities, though those places aren't particularly safe either..."
While discussions churned on the outside, the night slipped quietly away.
When morning dew dripped from the leaves, Huang Tian was already on his feet. Drawing his war saber, he locked onto a direction and surged forward at breakneck speed!
Saber light! Saber light burst forth once more!
Like a torrential downpour, arcs of blade light flooded the forest. Everywhere the eye could see was a dazzling frost-white glow. The pained roars of mutant fierce beasts echoed without pause, and blossoms of blood bloomed under the dawn light, appearing delicate yet vividly red.
By the end of the second day, Huang Tian had advanced another sixty-nine kilometers. The unranked mutant fierce beasts he had slain were far too numerous to count. There were over a hundred Beast Soldiers, three Beast Generals, and he had harvested six ripe exotic fruits.
These six exotic fruits were the hoard of one of the three Beast Generals, a crimson-tailed fox. The fox had originally hidden nine exotic fruits, three of which it had swallowed and absorbed. It was just preparing to eat the fourth when Huang Tian caught up to it. With a single slash, its life was brought to an end.
That night, Huang Tian consumed two of the exotic fruits. They possessed the effect of augmenting spiritual energy. After cultivating through the night, he opened his eyes the next morning looking radiant, his gaze sharp and spirited.
Without delay, he leaped forward once more, war saber in hand, heading deeper into the mountains.
At dusk that day, a fully armed patrol team of nearly three hundred men stood guard at a relatively flat area on the southern side of the Mangyuan Mountains. Several younger patrol officers stood beside an armored vehicle, gazing at the distant mountains while chatting in hushed tones.
"Director Zhang mentioned that Director Huang's latest position is only twenty kilometers from here?"
"Yeah, and that was a mid-afternoon fix. By now, he might already be on his way out."
"What a monster of a man. Slicing through the entire Mangyuan Mountain range all on his own... Quite a few mutant fierce beasts have fled down the mountain over the past two days, probably terrified out of their wits by him. Fortunately, they scattered as they ran rather than forming packs, so they weren't hard to deal with."
"Say, Director Huang should be at the War General rank, right? Why can he slay Beast Generals of the same tier so easily? I heard from the Shangyuan City Patrol Bureau that not long after entering the mountains, he took on two at once and dispatched them without breaking a sweat."
"That's where you don't get it. He's a born combat prodigy, capable of pinpointing an enemy's flaws instantly to deliver a single lethal strike."
"Is that so? Have you actually seen him?"
"Ahem... Of course not, but isn't that how novels always put it? A supreme prodigy rises, discerns every flaw in his foes, remains invincible in battle, sweeps across all directions, and crushes every enemy under heaven!"
Thump, thump! Thump, thump!
Right then, a tremendous, chaotic clamor drifted from the distance, and the ground began to tremble faintly.
"What's going on?" The patrol officers looked on in shock and bewilderment, staring toward the source of the noise.
"It's the Mangyuan Mountains!" someone shouted abruptly. "A herd of beasts is charging out!"
Rumble!
The ground shook with increasing violence. From the depths of the distant forest surged a black torrent of hundreds, even thousands, of mutant fierce beasts stampeding together: one-horned boars, black-backed wolves, silver-horned oxen, blood-striped vipers...
Roars shook the heavens, and dust billowed upward. It seemed overwhelmingly fierce, but a closer look revealed that they were crammed together, trampling their own kind and knocking down trees, focused solely on fleeing forward as if an incomparably terrifying foe were chasing them from behind.
"Fire! Fire!" a tall, burly middle-aged man in the patrol team roared. The next second, a storm of bullets erupted, hurtling toward the herd!
Swish, swish, swish—
Blood sprayed, and the front rank of charging beasts collapsed beneath the gunfire. Their falls instantly tripped the beasts behind them, causing even more to tumble, though many others simply trampled over the fallen bodies and continued their frantic flight.
Boom!
Suddenly, a blast of white vapor surged out from within the forest. A figure brandishing a frost-white war saber leaped from among the trees into midair, then plummeted down like a missile, slamming straight into the beast tide!
Slash!
Brilliant saber light detonated. Within the beast herd, severed limbs flew, and blood flowed like a river!
"Cease fire! Stop shooting!" Seeing that the man was about to carve his way from the rear of the beast tide all the way to the front, the middle-aged man hastily ordered a ceasefire.
Soon, the gunfire stopped. The clearing quickly fell into dead silence. Corpses piled high, and trickling streams of blood merged into a pool that soaked the earth.
Amid the carpet of carcasses, a solitary figure carrying a saber walked out slowly, his clothes stained bright crimson.
"Director Huang!" The middle-aged man recognized him immediately. He strode forward, saluted with immense excitement, his eyes brimming with admiration and awe. "I... I am Zhang Xiong, director of the Wuping City Patrol Bureau."
"Hello," Huang Tian nodded slightly.
Zhang Xiong lowered his hand. Seeing Huang Tian covered in blood, he asked with urgent concern, "Are you injured?"
"It's all beast blood."
"That's good, that's good!" Zhang Xiong breathed a sigh of relief, then slapped his forehead. "I'll have someone drive you to the city right away. You can wash up there, change into fresh clothes, and have a hot meal."
"Thank you for the trouble."
"It is our honor!" Zhang Xiong snapped to attention, then waved toward a subordinate. "Xiao Wu! Drive Director Huang to the city immediately!"
A lean young man named Xiao Wu answered crisply, "Yes, sir!"
Huang Tian then got into the car with Xiao Wu and swiftly departed.
Watching the car drive off, and then looking at the field of beast carcasses, the patrol officers suddenly erupted in thunderous cheers.
"Incredible! Divine Huang is unbelievable!"
"Damn, damn, damn! That was so cool, so badass!"
"One man matching a whole army!"
"Before this, I only watched Director Huang slay mutant fierce beasts on livestreams. He felt powerful, but there was always a screen in between. Seeing it up close today... the impact is just insane!"
"I feel like the blood throughout my whole body is on fire!"
While the patrol officers were beside themselves with excitement, Huang Tian sat in the car taking stock of what he had gained from swiftly sweeping the Mangyuan Mountains.
On the first day, he had obtained five spirit plants, which were now being guarded by Guan Lang and the others. On the second day, six exotic fruits. On the third day, six spirit plants—a total of seventeen items.
Setting aside the four exotic fruits he had consumed in the mountains, and excluding the five with Guan Lang, he currently had eight spirit plants on him, all simply wrapped in a bag.
'With these eight spirit plants, I might just barely reach the peak of the first rank. If I include the five that are about to mature, it will definitely be enough for my breakthrough!'
Just as Huang Tian carved his way through the Mangyuan Mountains, over at the bay of Manila City, capital of Feilü Country, the setting sun melted into gold. The ocean's surface undulated gently like an endless expanse of orange-red silk.
Along the shore, palm trees swayed in silhouette, and windowpanes reflected the gentle light of the sunset. The entire city was immersed in its most tranquil hour of the day.
Suddenly—
Rumble!
A dull, heavy roar rose from the ocean depths.
The once-placid sea abruptly bulged upward, as if a mountain were rising from beneath.
"What is that?" citizens cried in terror.
"It must be a sea beast! Another sea beast is invading!" someone shouted at the top of their lungs. "Run! Run!"
Along the coastal boulevard, tens of thousands of people fled in screaming panic.
Out on the water, towering waves detonated, and an enormous grey figure surged into the sky!
It was a monstrous grey creature resembling a giant dragon, with a pair of wings sprouting from its back. It measured over three hundred meters in length, larger than any known mutant fierce beast in the world. Unfurling fleshy wings that blotted out the sun, it threw its head back and unleashed a roar!
"Roaaar!"
With that roar, the ocean surged violently. Massive waves piled thousands of layers high, carrying tens of millions, hundreds of millions of tons of force, and slammed viciously onto the coastal boulevard!
Coconut palms along the shore were uprooted in an instant. Buildings by the sea were flattened by the surge. Torrents of seawater poured into the streets, sweeping away cars, streetlights, and billboards alike. Thousands of pedestrians managed only a few terrified screams before being swallowed by the ocean, their fates unknown.
Hovering in midair, the grey dragon opened its colossal maw and inhaled sharply. A mighty vortex of air swept upward. Hundreds of people on the ground struggled frantically, yet they were drawn into the sky and swallowed whole into the gaping maw.
Then, with a beat of its wings, it traversed the sky in a flash, arriving over an area not yet submerged by the sea. Inhaling once more, it devoured nearly a thousand more people.
"Aaaah!" Witnessing this, countless people were driven mad with terror.
Cars crashed recklessly through the streets, ramming through anyone in their way. Husbands and wives fled for their lives clutching their children, elderly citizens clung desperately to large trees in fear of being sucked into the sky and swallowed, while a handful of police officers fired their guns in fury toward the dragon overhead...
The air was thick with the stench of seawater, and every ear was filled with screams and wails. Manila City had been transformed into a living purgatory on earth.
Chapter 263