30: Chapter 30 First Kill of the Alien Beast

The hundred-meter-tall steel gate behind him slammed shut with the sound of heavy mechanical gears colliding.

It completely cut off the clamor and safety of the base city behind him.

Su Chen walked on the cracked asphalt road.

The wind blowing against his face no longer carried the smell of industrial exhaust from the city, but rather the breath of the wilderness, filled with a thick scent of soil and a faint stench of blood.

This was a D-class abandoned city, the wilderness area on the outskirts of Jiangnan City.

Before the Great Fragmentation Era three hundred years ago, this place used to be a bustling human metropolis.

Now, everywhere he looked was ruins, taken over by nature and mutated ecology.

The dozens-of-stories-high skyscrapers were left with only gray concrete frames, with thick, python-like black towering vines tightly wrapped around the exterior walls of the buildings.

The streets were littered with the rusted wrecks of old cars, some of which had already been trampled into iron pancakes by some sort of gigantic creature.

Dead silence, desolation.

Su Chen stood in the middle of the street and slowly closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, his originally pitch-black eyes had turned into a cold crimson.

Two perfectly symmetrical black tomoe swirled slowly at the edges of his blood-colored pupils.

"Two-Tomoe Sharingan," activate.

In Su Chen's eyes, the world underwent an earth-shattering change in an instant.

The gray mist no longer obstructed his vision.

Not only could he clearly see a mutated insect crawling on an abandoned billboard several kilometers away, but more importantly, he saw the "essence" of the air.

To the perception of an ordinary Martial Artist, the air in the wilderness only made one feel chest tightness and discomfort; staying there for too long could even cause one's Qi and blood to fluctuate.

However, through the perspective of his Sharingan, Su Chen could clearly see dark red energy permeating the air.

"This is the abyss source energy."

Su Chen looked at those dark red air currents without a hint of fear in his eyes.

For the Martial Artists of this world, abyss energy is a poison that erodes the body and the root cause of why exotic beasts go mad.

This place is a Hell for Mortals.

But in the eyes of Su Chen and his System, this dark red covering the sky and the earth was nothing but origin points waiting to be extracted; it was an inexhaustible golden treasure vault.

"Let's get to work."

Su Chen put on his Shura mask, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked forward along the abandoned street.

...

He ventured about two kilometers deep into the ruins.

The surrounding buildings became increasingly dense, and the sunlight was blocked by tall buildings and massive vines, causing the light to grow dim.

"Help! Get away! Don't come over here!"

Suddenly, an extremely shrill and desperate scream rang out from an alley a few hundred meters away.

Accompanying the scream was the faint sound of explosions caused by spiritual energy colliding.

Su Chen paused.

He exerted force with his feet, his body leaping lightly into the air, and he jumped directly onto the roof of an abandoned heavy truck parked on the side of the road.

Taking advantage of the height, Su Chen looked in the direction of the sound.

In a collapsed plaza a few hundred meters away, the most real and cruel scene in the wilderness was unfolding.

A low-level Martial Apprentice wearing a mercenary uniform sat paralyzed on the ground, his legs kicking desperately backward.

In front of him was a giant rat the size of a calf.

This was one of the most common low-level pack exotic beasts in the wilderness, known as a "Bloodthirsty Rat."

Its entire body was covered in gray, stiff fur like steel needles, its eyes were crimson, its limbs were extremely thick, and dark brown bits of flesh remained on its sharp claws.

"Wind Blade! Die, damn you!"

The Martial Apprentice was clearly a novice who had become separated from his team; terrified, with tears and snot streaming down his face, he waved his hands frantically, hurling weak, pale-green Wind Blades at the Bloodthirsty Rat.

"Clang! Clang!"

The Wind Blades struck the Bloodthirsty Rat's stiff fur, but apart from sparking a few faint glimmers, they didn't even cut a single hair.

It was like scratching an itch.

Purely ineffective.

The Bloodthirsty Rat was enraged by this harmless attack; after letting out a piercing screech, it suddenly exerted its full strength.

"Bang!" A shallow pit was stamped into the ground as the Bloodthirsty Rat's massive body turned into a gray afterimage, lunging directly at the Martial Apprentice.

"No! Spiritual Energy Shield!"

At this life-or-death moment, the Martial Apprentice frantically drew Qi and blood from his Dantian, forming a pale-blue, translucent light shield in front of him.

It was the only life-saving method a low-level Martial Apprentice could master.

However.

"Crack!"

There was no stalemate at all.

The Bloodthirsty Rat's claws, stained with abyss energy, slammed heavily against the shield.

The light shield, in which the Martial Apprentice had placed his high hopes, shattered instantly into countless specks of light, like fragile glass.

Immediately after, its foul-smelling, bloody maw bit down fiercely.

"Snap."

A bone-chilling sound of bones shattering rang out.

The Martial Apprentice's scream came to an abrupt halt.

His throat was bitten through by the Bloodthirsty Rat, his main artery ruptured, and hot blood sprayed onto the ground like a fountain, dyeing the surrounding broken walls and ruins bright red.

The corpse twitched a few times before becoming completely still.

Standing on the roof of the truck, Su Chen watched this scene quietly, without showing any emotion.

"No matter how well you practice in school, once you encounter a real life-or-death battle, if your psychological defenses collapse, you won't even be able to display half of your usual strength."

Su Chen made an objective assessment.

The Martial Apprentice's death was not because his Qi and blood were insufficient, but because fear had caused him to panic, making his Spiritual Energy Shield as weak as paper.

This was also the reason why the front desk staff had strongly tried to dissuade Su Chen from leaving the city.

A Mortal body is indeed too fragile in the face of these mutated beasts.

In the plaza.

The Bloodthirsty Rat lowered its head, taking large bites of the Martial Apprentice's flesh.

Suddenly, its chewing motion stopped.

It raised its hideous, blood-stained head and sniffed the air hard, again and again.

Besides the smell of blood on the ground, it also smelled a very fresh scent of blood, which was even richer than the aura emanating from the corpse on the ground.

The Bloodthirsty Rat whipped its head around, its small, crimson eyes staring fixedly at Su Chen, who stood on top of the heavy truck two hundred meters away.

Hiss—

The Bloodthirsty Rat let out an excited screech.

It abandoned the half-eaten corpse, used all four limbs, stepped on the rocks of the ruins, and charged madly toward Su Chen like a small road roller!

It was extremely fast; to an ordinary Martial Apprentice, they would only be able to see a gray shadow bounding back and forth through the ruins.

But Su Chen stood on the truck roof, not even retreating half a step.

Beneath his mask, his Two-Tomoe Sharingan stared intently at the gray afterimage.

The world slowed down once again.

"Heartbeat accelerating."

"Hind limb muscle contraction rate reaching its peak."

"Landing point, the abandoned hood three meters to the front left. Next step, leverage for an aerial lunge."

Under the extreme dynamic capture of the Two-Tomoe Sharingan, the Bloodthirsty Rat's proud sprinting speed looked like slow motion played frame by frame in a movie to Su Chen.

Every exertion of its muscles, and even its trajectory while leaping in mid-air, was clearly analyzed by Su Chen's brain.

"Bang!"

The Bloodthirsty Rat stepped heavily onto the abandoned hood, and using the reaction force, its body soared into the air.

It opened its bloody maw filled with fangs, its sharp claws gleaming coldly in the sunlight as it headed straight for Su Chen's face.

In mid-air, it could not exert force and could not change its trajectory.

This was the most fatal blind spot for all beasts when they lunged!

Just when the Bloodthirsty Rat was less than two meters away from Su Chen.

Clang.

A very dull and resounding sound of metal friction rang out.

Su Chen reached behind his back, grabbed the hilt of the weapon wrapped in cloth strips, and pulled hard.

The gray cloth instantly shattered into countless butterfly-shaped fragments that drifted into the air.

A solid steel, thick-backed iron blade, unsharpened, nearly two fingers thick, and weighing fifty jin, appeared in Su Chen's hand.

He did not channel a single shred of Qi and blood from his Dantian.

He did not attach any flashy spiritual energy light effects.

He didn't even use Armament Haki.

He concentrated all the physical strength that the System had enhanced during this period into his arms.

Facing the bloody maw lunging at him, Su Chen gripped the hilt with both hands, leaned his body slightly backward, and exerted force from his waist.

Following the inescapable mid-air blind spot that his Sharingan had seen through.

He brought his blade down in an extremely violent, unadorned strike!

"Puchi—!!"

A dull sound of tearing leather exploded in mid-air.

The unsharpened, thick-backed iron blade, under the reinforcement of Su Chen's terrifying physical explosive power, unleashed a might even more fearsome than a legendary weapon.

The edge of the blade landed with pinpoint accuracy on the gap in the skull between the Bloodthirsty Rat's eyes.

The hard skull instantly caved in and shattered.

The fifty-jin solid iron block, carrying a destructive force, went all the way down!

"Chi la!"

Gray blood exploded in mid-air like a curtain of rain.

The Bloodthirsty Rat, which had been extremely ferocious and had easily killed the low-level Martial Apprentice just a second ago, didn't even have time to let out a scream.

It was directly split into two halves by this simple, unadorned strike, from head to tail, without any resistance!

The two broken halves of the corpse rolled past Su Chen's sides and slammed heavily onto the truck roof, with internal organs and intestines spilled all over the ground, emitting a pungent, fishy stench.

Su Chen sheathed his blade.

On the heavy iron blade, grayish-brown blood flowed slowly down along the unsharpened edge.

His breathing didn't even hitch.

This was just a simple physical basic attack.

A long-lost mechanical prompt rang out crisply in the depths of his mind:

"Ding! Killed exotic beast carrying abyss energy [Bloodthirsty Rat], obtained [origin points +15]."

After hearing the pleasant prompt, Su Chen looked at the boundless ruins below the truck, and the corners of his mouth slowly curled up beneath his mask.

First kill complete.

The hunt, officially begins.