"He did fine work and had a solid record, but he disappeared for years," Old Zhou chuckled. "He's probably short on coin now, so he came back to mercenary work."
In this line of work, wasn't people coming and going the most normal thing in the world?
Hearing this, He Lingchuan felt a bit more at ease.
Earlier, when Hu Bin had suddenly appeared alone, He Lingchuan had been somewhat on guard. Hu Bin claimed to be a hunter for the Ke family, but the Ke family's squad had been wiped out, leaving no one to vouch for him.
In that case, couldn't an identity be fabricated however one pleased?
He Lingchuan knew he had made plenty of enemies in Lingxu City. While they might find it inconvenient to strike within the city, this savage wilderness was another matter entirely.
Why was the Grass Sea Hunt such a beloved, grand event?
Because it was fraught with uncertainty; even the most seasoned veterans could suffer an unexpected upset.
Though it had been held for centuries, every iteration saw casualties. It was nowhere near as leisurely as a spring outing.
After all, this was the demon kingdom. The people of the demon kingdom had a wild temperament and despised predictability.
Only with variables and dark horses was it fun, and only then was it worth placing bets.
Speaking of those who went missing after entering the Fu Realm, who knew how many there had been over the years?
Lingxu City's strict ban on anyone holding the rank of Mobile Cavalry General or higher from entering the Eye of the Storm stemmed partly from such considerations.
Now that Old Zhou had corroborated Hu Bin's identity, He Lingchuan felt somewhat relieved—
Unless the two had colluded beforehand.
Well, that seemed unlikely.
As he was turning the matter over in his mind, Hu Bin, not far away, stared down at the sand. "Something's coming."
The grains of sand bounced slightly.
He Lingchuan felt a faint tremor through the ground as well.
Hu Bin dropped flat against the ground, pressing his ear close to listen. "Heading this way. Huge numbers... It's a herd!"
"Which direction?"
Hu Bin listened for another dozen or so breaths before pointing toward the northeast. "Coming from over there!"
A shrill whistle immediately rang out across the camp, piercing and frantic.
Upon hearing it, everyone knew it was time to pull out.
Most of the people here had survived beast tides before, and none were stubborn fools; with heads ducked, they struck tents and broke camp in rapid motion.
Since the herd was moving from the northeast toward the southwest, they needed to dodge southeast.
Just after the group relocated more than two hundred zhang away, billows of dust indeed surged from the northeast, followed by a thunderous stampede like thousands of galloping steeds!
Whether in the mortal realm or the Fu Realm, He Lingchuan had rarely witnessed a beast migration of such magnitude. Numbering over five hundred, regardless of appearance or size, every single Donao beast was sprinting with all its might.
They ran with sheer flair and overwhelming momentum.
Like the wind, they swept across the former campsite, their heavy hooves trampling the ground before surging onward toward the southwest, leaving behind only a sprawling haze of gray dust.
Watching from atop a hillock, the crowd felt a lingering wave of dread. Thank goodness they had withdrawn in time, or they would already be ghosts crushed under those hooves.
"Are these Donao beasts out of their minds?" someone muttered in disbelief. "Usually you can't find a single beast no matter how hard you look, so why are they swarming together like this?"
The Eye of the Storm had been open for ten days. Most of the Donao beasts around the passageway between the two realms had already been wiped out; over the next twenty days, how much floatstone one could harvest depended entirely on luck. In any case, victory or defeat was decided within the first five days, while the remaining time was spent gathering as many spoils as possible.
The Fu Realm was barren, and Donao beasts were typically scattered far apart.
"Something gathered them together, and its intimidation over the Donao beasts far exceeds ours." Hu Bin suddenly pointed back toward the campsite. "Look—it might just be those two things!"
In the haze of kicked-up dust following the herd, two silhouettes loomed faintly, unclear whether they were bringing up the rear or trailing behind.
The creatures were about a zhang long and bizarre in appearance. To He Lingchuan, they actually bore a slight resemblance to dinosaurs—short forelimbs, long hind legs, and a lengthy tail.
Yet their bodies were lean and elongated, capable of contorting their spines like snakes, with exceptionally flexible shoulder joints that allowed their forelimbs an arc of motion exceeding two hundred degrees.
Viewed directly from above, their upper torsos even faintly resembled a human's, especially with their broad shoulders.
Normally walking on all fours, these two monsters could also stand upright on their hind legs.
Most peculiar of all, they had two tufts of short hair on their foreheads.
One had to know that creatures native to the Fu Realm possessed no hair.
The surrounding hunters asked one another what these were, but no one knew. Even veteran hunters of over a decade like Captain Zhou and Hu Bin shook their heads, admitting their ignorance.
Someone even muttered, "Could these things be demons?"
He Lingchuan was even reminded of Dong Rui's demon puppets, which looked just as unnervingly grotesque.
The two monsters seemed to notice the humans and demons up on the hill, but showed little interest. Just then, a Donao beast popped up from somewhere, blindly charging toward the campsite.
The haze was thick, and its eyesight was probably poor; only upon running close did it spot the two monsters. Screeching in terror, it braked abruptly.
Its head struck the ground in a face-first skid, but heedless of the tumble, it scrambled back up and spun around to flee, slipping twice on the gravel.
Evidently, those creatures were nightmares incarnate to it.
He Lingchuan immediately recalled the turbellarians that had dared not draw near earlier. They hadn't dared even to touch the ground where the monsters had trodden.
Such oppressive presence was not something an ordinary Donao beast could possess.
Even though the two monsters' size did not look astonishing.
Now, this Donao beast was hurtling straight toward He Lingchuan's group.
"Damn it all!" everyone cursed.
However, the two dinosaur-like monsters gave it no chance. One of them abruptly opened its jaws and spat out a beam of white light, striking the Donao beast squarely in the hind leg.
The Donao beast's body sank. It stumbled forward a few more paces, but its speed rapidly bled away.
He Lingchuan watched as a thin layer of white frost crystallized on its leg and then spread across half its body...
In barely two breaths, the beast's entire rear half was frozen solid, leaving only its front limbs clawing frantically at the dirt while its head twisted about in non-stop cries.
The two monsters sauntered over at an unhurried pace and began their feast.
Eating it alive.
Standing atop the hill, the hunters fell silent as endless wails and tearing flesh echoed below.
Only Hu Bin patted He Lingchuan's back and reminded him, "Frost breath, subduing the target in two breaths. The footprints you found earlier might well have been left by them."
He Lingchuan watched without blinking.
He did not know just how capable a frost silver beast was, but he could tell that these two monsters possessed extraordinarily powerful frost abilities.
Even on the plains of the Fu Realm, temperatures hovered at more than ten degrees below zero. For Donao beasts to move freely here without insulating fur meant their cold resistance already far surpassed that of mortal realm creatures.
Yet the monsters' frost breath froze more than half of the target within two breaths of impact—and leaving the front half unfrozen was likely only for ease of feeding; freezing it entirely would have been just as easy.
Judging from the Donao beast's reaction upon seeing them, they were unmistakably its natural predators.
Did that mean that aside from the frost silver beast, the Fu Realm now harbored another kind of monster adept at frost breath?
The two monsters were exceedingly wasteful: they devoured only the Donao beast's brain, floatstone, and heart, then abandoned the carcass and swaggered off.
Indeed, with a vast herd of running food ahead, why bother gnawing on coarse meat here?
From the hill, the hunters watched, rubbing their wrists and sighing heavily. "Why do these things compete with us for floatstone too?"
Strangely enough, though they were all seasoned hunters, none harbored the slightest thought of attacking those two monsters.
It was as if their sixth sense was warning them to keep away—these creatures were not to be trifled with.
"Perhaps floatstone aids their agility," Hu Bin said somberly. "By the way, that cry—fourteen years ago, I heard it beneath the mountain where the frost silver beast lived."
As the two monsters loped along, they emitted a hollow clacking sound like bamboo rattles.
So the strange noise the camp's hunters had heard earlier was made by them?
He Lingchuan felt a stir in his chest.
Fourteen years ago, the frost silver beast had abruptly left its mountain redoubt and descended to the plains, and these monsters had just happened to be nearby as well.
Was that a coincidence?
"What now?"
Voices chimed in from all around, but after the squad leaders huddled together to discuss, they all concluded that they should trail the beast tide.
The reason was simple enough:
All the Donao beasts in the vicinity had been driven southwest by those two monsters. Striking out in any other direction would yield no floatstone, so their only choice was to follow southwest and see if they could share in the spoils or scavenge the leftovers.
Hu Bin chimed in, "Further southwest... isn't that the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth's territory?"
Right after exiting the Eye of the Storm, the west was the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth's domain. And since the beast tide was migrating from the northeast to the southwest, they were, in plain terms, heading straight toward the behemoth's domain.
"Indeed."
"If the beast tide really is being driven by them, then these two possess remarkable intelligence," Hu Bin mused. "What are they trying to do?"
Lingxu City had hunted in the Fu Realm for centuries, and it was safe to say that most monsters here had lamentably low intellects, getting by on raw physical might and innate abilities.
Knowing how to herd a stampede to achieve one's own ends was already sophisticated scheming.
He Lingchuan added a question: "How will the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth react? Can this beast tide pose a threat to it?"
"I hear the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth sleeps most of the time; no one has seen it in many years," Old Zhou answered. "Two hundred years ago, a team wandered into its domain and somehow provoked it. Supposedly, those forty or fifty people were blasted to ashes on the spot, disintegrated by a few bolts of lightning. But faced with such a massive beast tide... I can't say whether it can hold them off."
Someone else remarked, "The Donao beasts in the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth's domain all obey its command. Things are about to get lively."
This was precisely why the hunters wanted to tail the herd—to see if they could reap the spoils as fishermen profiting from the clam and snipe's struggle.
Wealth was sought amid danger, and those daring enough to hunt in the Fu Realm were never short on reckless desperadoes.
Having concluded their deliberations, the group set off toward the southwest, tailing the beast tide.
Along the way, several more squads joined in, until the hunters participating in the joint operation numbered over fifty.
One had to remember that the Grass Sea Hunt began with only sixty teams, six hundred participants in all.
Captain Zhou asked everyone to take off their masks.
This was an unwritten rule: to carry out a joint operation in the Fu Realm, one had to remove their mask to keep anyone from playing dirty in secret.
Behind a mask, malevolent thoughts bred all too easily.
He Lingchuan followed the rest toward the southwest as well. His Mount Xu operation required a frost pellet, but that item grew only on the frost silver beast. Earlier, when he arrived at this camp, he had assumed that the creature attacking the Donao beasts would be a mutated frost silver beast.
Yet it was not.
Chapter 647