After resting up, Ye Lei headed straight into the depths of the forest.
Ten minutes into his journey, Ye Lei noticed something was wrong.
He had traveled so far without seeing a single soul beast. There were barely even any ten-year soul beasts, and the trees along the way were either broken or stained with large amounts of blood.
Sensing something amiss, Ye Lei immediately activated the Mental Hunting Ground. Under its detection, he discovered that the countless soul beasts once inhabiting this area had all vanished. The only things left behind were severed limbs and remains of soul beasts.
Ye Lei glanced around, picked a direction, and ran toward it.
When he arrived, a pitch-black crater lay before him, with the corpse of a massive soul beast still inside.
This was where Ye Lei had killed the Human-Faced Spider Emperor, except several more craters had appeared nearby.
Ye Lei stopped before one of the pits. Inside lay a corpse—an adult male's corpse. There was a bloody hole in his abdomen, clearly the cause of death.
Ye Lei pulled aside the corpse's collar and saw a mark imprinted on its neck: a black dragon coiled around a skull.
Ye Lei recognized it as the exclusive insignia of the Poison Dragon Legion, which belonged to the Elder Hall's Seventh Residence Hall. They answered only to the Seventh Elder's orders. Their methods were brutal and vicious; the ones who had abducted Ye Lei that day were members of the Poison Dragon Legion.
Judging by the scene, the Seventh Elder had likely sent them to Riverside Forest to hunt soul beasts. Their losses had been severe, but they had succeeded as well. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for there to be no soul beasts left in such a vast forest.
They had