Chapter 20: The Black Short Blade (Part 2)
The black-clad man, only four or five meters away from Linley, had never taken the black shadow mouse seriously. But at this moment, his originally indifferent heart suddenly filled with terror: “What kind of speed is this?” The black-clad man swung his black short blade with extreme speed.
Clearly, this black-clad man was stronger than the first assassin who had tried to kill Linley. At least he was fast enough to swing his short blade in the face of the black shadow mouse.
“Whoosh!” Bebe’s sharp claws swung out fiercely.
“Clang!”
Bebe’s claws clashed violently with the black short blade. The black short blade suddenly shattered, and then Bebe’s claws followed up, fiercely grabbing the black-clad man’s head. With a single grab, the man’s skull was crushed, and he died on the spot.
“The gap between the sixth rank and the seventh rank is just too great.” Linley sighed inwardly as he watched this scene.
But Bebe was a terrifying shadow mouse that could even send a seventh-rank magical beast, the ‘Swift Raptor’, fleeing in panic. With his sharp teeth and claws, killing a sixth-rank warrior was as easy as eating a meal for him.
“Sssss~~” Linley quickly ran over, tore open the black-clad man’s back clothes, and grabbed the black bundle directly. Without a second thought, he turned around and fled northward again. Linley moved as if wind were beneath his feet, his entire body agile and graceful, leaving almost no trace of his escape through the mountain forest.
After a while, a group of black-clad men finally arrived. Looking at the wound on the head of corpse Number Two, the black-clad leader furrowed his brow.
“A magical beast?” A host of magical beasts flashed through the black-clad man’s mind. “Was it a sixth-rank green shadow mouse? Or a seventh-rank purple shadow mouse? Or a seventh-rank golden stone-devouring mouse?” Such small claw marks could only belong to a rodent-type magical beast.
In the Magical Beast Mountain Range, some said the most terrifying thing was encountering eighth-rank or ninth-rank magical beasts, while others said it was encountering a terrifying wolf pack. But in the black-clad man’s heart, encountering a swarm of stone-devouring mice or a swarm of shadow mice was the true terror.
Stone-devouring mice had strong defenses and sharp teeth and claws.
Shadow mice were fast and had sharp teeth and claws.
If tens of thousands of shadow mice or stone-devouring mice charged out, it wouldn’t just be a problem for their dozen or so assassins—even an entire army could be devoured clean.
“We’re going back!” Without hesitation, the black-clad leader gave the order.
*******
Towering mountains and jagged rocks surrounded them. Linley had already run into a mountain peak, covering a hundred miles in one breath. He believed that even if the enemy chased him, they wouldn’t be able to catch up.
“Boss, hurry up and see what’s in the bundle!” Bebe urged at this moment.
Linley’s heart was also filled with anticipation. Generally, the more powerful the assassin, the more magical beast cores would be in their bundle. The first assassin had left him nearly fifteen thousand gold coins’ worth of magical beast cores and magicite. He wondered how much this one, called Number Two, had left him.
He opened the bundle.
“Two more sets of clean clothes,” Linley said, glancing at the clothes inside. Then, from a hidden compartment, he pulled out a bulging pouch. This Number Two had spent over a month longer in the Magical Beast Mountain Range than the first assassin and was also stronger, so—
Linley looked at the magical beast cores in the pouch and couldn’t help but gasp.
“So many, and most of them are fifth-rank magical beast cores, with quite a few sixth-rank ones as well.” Having obtained magical beast cores frequently, Linley could now roughly determine their rank by their luster. He then began to count them carefully.
“Nine sixth-rank magical beast cores, fifty-six fifth-rank magical beast cores, twelve fourth-rank magical beast cores, and seven magicite stones. Roughly calculated, the value is over twenty thousand gold coins. Adding the previous fifty thousand gold coins, that’s a full seventy thousand gold coins.” Linley calculated his gains and couldn’t help but gasp again.
Seventy thousand gold coins!
If this fortune were placed before his father, he would probably be stunned.
In the fifty-one days since entering the Magical Beast Mountain Range, two assassins from the same organization alone had gifted him thirty-five thousand gold coins. Adding the other assassins over the past month, that totaled another thirty thousand gold coins. And in over a month of hunting magical beasts, he had earned five thousand gold coins.
Delin Cowart also emerged from the Coiling Dragon Ring at this moment, smiling as he watched Linley’s expression.
“I finally understand why so many people in the Magical Beast Mountain Range like to assassinate others. You work hard for a month and earn a few thousand gold coins, but by killing someone else, you can take all the gains from their one or two months of effort.” Linley placed the two pouches of magical beast cores into his own bundle, casually tossing the original bundle into the weeds.
“Of these seventy thousand gold coins, only five thousand came from my own hunting of magical beasts. The rest came from the assassins.” Linley shook his head and sighed.
Delin Cowart stroked his white beard and laughed. “It seems your age has actually been a great help to you. If you were any more mature, you probably wouldn’t have had so many assassins targeting you.”
“Heh heh.” Linley couldn’t help but laugh.
“Grandpa Delin, from what those assassin squad members said, it sounds like entering the Magical Beast Mountain Range was some kind of test for them?” Linley asked, puzzled.
Delin Cowart smiled calmly. “Linley, any power on the Yulan Continent that has stood for a long time has its own military force. And that force is trained. Sending their people into the Magical Beast Mountain Range for training is something large organizations often do.”
Linley nodded.
“Linley, there are many forces on this continent that you don’t know about. In fact… I don’t know either. After five thousand years, the powers from the era of the Puan Empire have probably long since fallen.” Delin Cowart laughed self-deprecatingly.
Linley didn’t ask any more questions. But at this moment, he felt a sense of pressure. The Yulan Continent was far more complex than he had imagined.
After organizing his bundle, Linley put on a set of back armor, shouldered his pack, and continued forward. He moved nimbly through the mountain forest, sometimes leaping over rocks, sometimes climbing trees, advancing all the way. But when he climbed over a large mountain—
This mountain stretched for hundreds of miles, covered in dense trees. Linley was now standing at the edge of a cliff. To reach the opposite cliff, he would need to leap across a distance of several hundred meters.
“What a strange canyon.”
Linley noticed that the cliffs on both sides of the canyon grew closer together toward the edges. He ran along the cliff toward the edge. The farther he went, the closer the opposite cliff became. After running four or five miles, the two cliffs were only a meter apart—a single step could cross them.
“If it’s like this on this side, is it the same on the other side?”
Linley placed one foot on this cliff and the other on the opposite cliff, looking toward the other end of the canyon. It seemed that the two cliffs converged again in the distance.
“Strange, strange.”
Linley had been in the Magical Beast Mountain Range for a while, but he had never seen such a peculiar pair of cliffs. He looked down into the canyon, which was filled with hazy white mist, blurry and unclear.
“Unfathomably deep.” Linley was extremely curious, but he also felt a hint of caution toward the mist-filled canyon.
Walking along the edge of the canyon cliff, he kept looking down, as if trying to use his eyes to discover what lay at the bottom of this misty canyon. Besides the two cliffs connecting at both ends, there was another strange thing about the Misty Canyon.
The deeper you went, the farther apart the two cliffs became.
For example, at the top, the two cliffs were only a few hundred meters apart, but at the bottom, they might be thousands of meters apart, or even tens of miles.
“Ah? That is…”
Linley felt as if he had been struck by lightning. He stared intently at a small plant on the opposite cliff, faintly visible through the mist below. The plant, growing on the cliff face, was entirely emerald green, but it faintly shimmered with a blue glow.
“Blue, Blueheart Grass, it’s Blueheart Grass!” Recalling the images and descriptions of plants from the Ernst Institute library, Linley’s eyes grew brighter and brighter. That small plant growing on the cliff was none other than the extremely rare and precious medicinal herb that could counteract the harm of ‘Living Dragon’s Blood’ to the body—Blueheart Grass.