By the time Chen Du passed through the depths of the dense forest, dusk was drawing near.
He reckoned his strength should put him among the very best at the third-tier Cocoon-Breaking Realm of the Evolution Factor Path.
After all, his body alone could crush those at the Martial Dao Mythic Realm in the Xuanye Realm. With his fusion of Spiritual Power and martial intent, as well as the extraordinary combat techniques of the Martial Canon, an ordinary Third-Tier Evolver would probably struggle to last more than a few breaths against him.
But the ceiling of the Evolution Factor Path was plain to see. The third tier was only the beginning, and the road ahead was still very long.
His purpose in coming here had never been just to absorb spiritual qi and Evolution Factors.
This mountain forest was riddled with mysteries. So many people had disappeared, and the concentration of spiritual qi far exceeded that outside. All the signs pointed in the same direction... there was a world entrance here.
The cooldown for his Myriad Worlds Traversal talent was five days, and enough time had passed since his return from the Xuanye Realm.
If he could find a brand-new world here, entering it would not only trigger the World's Spiritual Endowment and awaken another new talent, but also allow him to obtain new opportunities under the new world's rules!
As he pondered, the bushes ahead suddenly shook violently.
Chen Du stopped in his tracks, and his Spiritual Power spread out in an instant... it was a person.
A man covered in blood stumbled out of the bushes. His combat uniform had been torn to shreds, and the entire right sleeve had been ripped off, exposing a claw wound so deep the bone was visible.
He staggered a few steps, tripped over a tree root and fell, then scrambled desperately to his feet and kept running, his face full of fear.
Meng Mingyuan was a member of the Supernatural Investigation Bureau's Seventh Field Team, a First Tier evolver specializing in reconnaissance and tracking.
Today, he and his teammates had been ordered into this mountain forest on a routine monitoring mission to record data on evolved beast activity in the area and collect samples to measure the spiritual qi concentration.
According to their intelligence, the highest-level evolved beasts in this area were only at the First Tier Peak Stage. With a second-tier captain and four First Tier members, their team was more than equipped to handle a mission of this level.
But the intelligence was wrong. They had ventured less than fifteen kilometers into the forest when they encountered a pack of mutated wolves.
Every wolf in the pack was like a young calf, standing over two meters at the shoulder, with fangs long enough to pierce steel plate. Their numbers also far exceeded the intelligence estimate.
More frightening still, the wolves seemed to have evolved the intelligence to hunt in coordination.
Rather than charging in all at once, they surrounded their prey from every direction, spreading out, flanking, feinting, and launching surprise attacks. Their coordination was even better than that of his professionally trained field team.
In just a quarter of an hour, his teammates fell one after another. As the captain covered his escape, two wolves simultaneously sank their teeth into his shoulders.
He heard the screams behind him, but he didn't even have the courage to look back. All he could do was run for his life.
The howls behind him were drawing closer and closer. Meng Mingyuan's vision had already begun to blur, but he didn't dare stop.
Then he saw someone... a young man who looked like a college student was walking out of the dense forest ahead.
"Run!"
He used almost the last of his strength to shout the word. "Run! Don't come this way! There's a pack of wolves behind me!"
No sooner had he spoken than the first wolf burst from the bushes. It was so fast that, in the blink of an eye, it was less than ten meters behind him.
Meng Mingyuan closed his eyes in despair, knowing that those fangs would pierce the back of his neck in the next second.
However, when he snapped his eyes open and looked back, he saw the young man standing only a few feet behind him, his left hand still in his trouser pocket and his right held in a punching pose.
The wolf that had pounced first lay sprawled against a tree trunk several zhang away, its entire chest caved in. Its limbs twitched and mouthful after mouthful of bloody foam poured from its jaws. It clearly wasn't going to live.
The pack halted in unison for an instant. Their golden eyes fixed on Chen Du as low, threatening growls rumbled from their throats.
Chen Du withdrew his fist and glanced at the wolves' positions.
Seven wolves had spread out in a fan. The closest was less than five steps away from him, while the farthest stood on a rock more than ten steps away, scraping the stone with its claws, apparently looking for an angle from which to launch a surprise attack.
He flexed his wrist gently. He had used less than a tenth of his strength in that punch, purely to test the strength of his Cocoon-Breaking Realm body. The result was pretty good.
The wolves attacked together. Three pounced straight at his throat, two attacked his legs from the sides, one circled behind him to block his retreat, and another remained at a distance, seemingly directing the others.
Chen Du was a little surprised. The evolved beasts' ability to cooperate was almost on par with some of the well-trained martial formations in the Xuanye Realm.
But that was all it was: a little surprise.
He met them head-on. With one punch, he smashed the skull of the first wolf approaching from the front to pieces. Its massive body stopped short in midair and flew backward, knocking over the second wolf close behind it.
Then he turned sideways to avoid the fangs lunging at him from the left. His right hand shot out, his five fingers clamping around that wolf's foreleg. His arm muscles tensed slightly as he swung its massive body up and slammed it into the wolf that had circled behind him.
The two wolves collided, and bones cracked in a crisp, rapid succession.
The wolf on the right had just lunged to bite him. Without even turning his body, he struck its neck with a backhanded palm, and its head twisted to an impossible angle.
The last wolf, which had stayed back, turned to flee. Chen Du didn't give chase. He merely flicked a finger, sending a drop of blood flying from its tip to pierce precisely through the back of the wolf's head.
From the first punch to the end, only three or four breaths had passed.
Meng Mingyuan slumped on the ground, his mouth hanging open, unable to close it for a long while.
He looked at the wolf corpses scattered across the ground, then at the young man.
A pack of mutated wolves that had wiped out an entire well-trained field team had been like a litter of puppies just learning to walk before him!
Meng Mingyuan pulled a palm-sized waterproof notebook from his backpack. His fingers were still trembling, but his pen was already moving swiftly across the pages.
This was standard procedure for Supernatural Investigation Bureau field personnel... when encountering a target of unknown level, they had to record firsthand observations at once,
even if the person making the record was in shock or injured, even if there might never be a chance for a second person to see it.
[Time of record: day 39 of the spiritual qi revival. Location: the hinterland of anomaly area 087. Recorded by: Meng Mingyuan, scout of the Seventh Field Team.]
[Target description: male, estimated age twenty to twenty-five, approximately 1.78 meters tall, medium-to-lean build, unarmed, no armor, no teammates. Preliminary assessment: lone evolver.]
[Combat record: killed eight second-tier mutated wolves single-handedly and barehanded. Combat method: purely physical strikes, no energy projected outward, no fluctuations of special abilities.
Movements concise, no unnecessary techniques, every strike aimed directly at a vital point.
Used a flicked blood drop to kill the last wolf, precisely piercing its skull.
Extremely short duration from initial engagement to end of combat.]
[Assessment: this person's strength far exceeds the second tier. Highly likely to be a Third-Tier Evolver, and among the best at the third tier.
Combat style calm and decisive, no probing, no hesitation, indicating extremely extensive combat experience. Definitely not an ordinary awakened.
Any conflict with him is not recommended. Recommendations: report immediately, do not make contact for now, maintain observation from a distance.]
After writing the last word, Meng Mingyuan tore out the page and stuffed it into the sealed pouch at his waist, then checked again to make sure its waterproof clasp was fastened.
He knew he most likely wouldn't survive. He had lost too much blood and exhausted his strength. Even if no evolved beasts caught up to him, it would be hard to walk out of this mountain forest on his own two legs.
But he had to leave a record before he died. Those were the rules.
If a later search-and-rescue team found the record, it could at least tell the people at the bureau that, besides the evolved beasts they already knew about, a lone evolver of unknown level was also present in this mountain forest.
He leaned against a tree trunk and watched the young man wave a hand casually at him, then turn and continue deeper into the forest.
Meng Mingyuan opened his mouth, wanting to say something.
The other man's retreating figure soon vanished among the overlapping shadows of the trees, and even his footsteps could no longer be heard.
Chen Du continued deeper.
The farther he went toward the heart of the mountain forest, the higher the concentration of spiritual qi became. The essence of plants in the air had grown so dense that it had almost condensed into liquid, but accompanying it was an increasingly intense sense of pressure.
Rather, it was something deeper, something that made even his Spiritual Power tremble slightly.
His very spirit seemed to be shaking violently, even more intensely than it had before the crooked-necked tree. This meant the world entrance wasn't far away.
At last, in a forest of dead trees struck by lightning, he found it.
A rift had appeared here, suspended in midair about two meters above the ground and no wider than an arm, like a mirror someone had slashed with a knife.
An indescribable light shone from within the rift. One glance at it made him feel that something deep in his consciousness was resonating with it.
Fine dust floated in the air around the rift, but the particles weren't drifting about at random. They were revolving around it at an extremely slow speed, as if drawn by some force.
This was the entrance to this world. Unlike the crooked-necked tree last time, this entrance was "newer" and more unstable. The edges of the rift were still writhing slightly, as though it had only recently been torn open.
Yet just as Chen Du reached out and was about to touch the rift, an unprecedented sense of danger exploded from the base of his spine, making every hair on his body stand on end.
A tall, slender figure stepped out of the shadows of the dead forest.
The figure was extremely tall and thin, almost like a shadow stretched several times its length. Its entire body was wrapped in a black material that might have been leather or rubber.
Its clothing was covered in fine lines, like the traces on a circuit board, or the veins on the surface of some living creature.
It wore a fully enclosed helmet with a visor made from a single piece of dark glass, concealing its features and expression.
The instant Chen Du's Spiritual Power touched the other party, it was like hitting a wall with no end.
The slender figure stopped three zhang in front of him and tilted its head slightly, as though sizing up a small animal it had encountered by chance.
Then he spoke, his voice coming through the helmet with a low electronic reverberation, utterly devoid of warmth. "Interesting. To think a human as strong as you would appear in the Breeding Grounds at this stage."
Chen Du's pupils contracted sharply. Breeding Grounds?
That term and tone made it sound as if the fellow before him were visiting a chicken farm and had stumbled upon a chicken in the flock that had unexpectedly learned to open a door!
The slender figure merely stretched out a hand, but Chen Du instantly felt himself locked in place by a force he couldn't begin to comprehend.
His Spiritual Power was forced back, and even breathing became difficult. He was utterly suppressed.
Chen Du didn't hesitate at all, nor could he possibly hesitate.
Just as the slender figure's hand was about to close completely, he used all his strength to thrust his Spiritual Power toward the rift suspended in midair beside him.
[Myriad Worlds Traversal], activate!
The rift abruptly widened, and a gate of light burst open in the dead forest.
The current of air swept up by the gate enveloped Chen Du's body and sucked him inside like a fallen leaf.
The slender figure's hand closed on empty air. The gate of light swiftly shut, and silence returned to the dead forest.
The slender figure stood where he was in silence for quite a while, then slowly withdrew his hand. A trace of amusement entered his voice. "Something marked by this world actually ran off on its own."
He stood in the dead forest for a long time, until the mountain wind dispersed the spiritual qi fluctuations left by the gate of light. Only then did he turn and disappear into the shadows.