Humanoids

Xia Chujian's face turned pale.

The mission deadline set by the Association ran from November this year to March next year.

A full five months.

Such a lengthy deadline was relatively rare among missions issued by the Dark Night Hunter Association.

If there were any, they would be Class A, or at least Class B missions.

For a Geng-level Mission to last this long was truly unprecedented.

Xia Chujian pressed her lips together and said unwillingly, "I'll try searching with the radar. Is that okay, Captain?"

Ye Shijie thought for a moment and said, "That works. But I have to remind you that the chances of finding it with radar aren't high, since radar is generally ineffective at searching for stationary objects."

"How about this? Chujian stays at the station. Today, Li Fu and I will form one team, while Song Mingqian and Ping Qiong form another. We'll switch areas and search again. If we still can't find it, we'll need to change locations."

"Where to?"

"The Exotic Beast Forest is so vast. Naturally, we'll search the entire southern edge of the Land of the Far North." Ye Shijie said this calmly, slung his Frostfall 100 Assault Rifle over his shoulder, and walked into the wind and snow.

After Ye Shijie and the others left, Xia Chujian entered the flying vehicle alone.

She first activated the Solid-State Optical Radar System and expanded its scan radius to the maximum.

Then she activated the flying vehicle's supercomputer, fed it a picture of the Blood Kirin, and linked it to the Solid-State Optical Radar's imaging system.

That way, once the area scanned by the radar was visually rendered on the virtual screen, the supercomputer could assist in identifying the images.

The Solid-State Optical Radar had a detection range of one hundred kilometers.

With the coordinates provided by the Association no longer valid, they could only rely on radar.

Of course, this sort of radar search still could not compare to hands-on human operation.

After all, compared to their previous search for only moving creatures, they were now searching for every existing thing within a hundred-kilometer radius. The amount of data to process had increased almost geometrically, requiring the supercomputer's maximum computing power for an extended period.

Ordinary flying vehicles could not support such intense maximum computing power, because it consumed far too much energy.

Once the energy ran out, this Small Combat Aircraft would become nothing more than a cumbersome hunk of metal in the wilderness.

But Xia Chujian had no such concern.

That was because the Dark Night Hunter Association had equipped them with a flying vehicle powered by Small-Scale Controlled Nuclear Fusion for this mission.

With Small-Scale Controlled Nuclear Fusion as its power source, the supercomputer's maximum computing power could be used without restraint.

Xia Chujian quickly adjusted the connection between the supercomputer and the radar data processing system, then began an intelligent scan.

On the virtual screen before her, Xia Chujian soon saw Ye Shijie and the others.

In teams of two, they were clearly captured by the Radar System.

After thinking it over, Xia Chujian decided to exclude the areas being searched manually. That would avoid redundant work and reduce some of the pressure on the Radar System.

After adjusting the search range again, Xia Chujian hugged her Sniper Rifle and began staring blankly into space inside the flying vehicle.

Her eyes seemed unfocused, but they never stopped watching the four virtual screens before her.

The entire morning passed without finding anything, not even any similar-looking plants.

If the Blood Kirin was already so difficult to find, Kongsang would certainly be even harder.

Xia Chujian's earlier high spirits gradually faded.

Sure enough, a probability close to zero was not so easily overcome.

But no matter what, she would have to remain here until March next year.

At noon, Xia Chujian did not feel like eating lunch. She remained alone in the flying vehicle, staring at the virtual feeds.

Just as her eyes were practically going vacant from watching, the Solid-State Optical Radar suddenly emitted a string of urgent beeps!

This was not the alert she had set for finding the Blood Kirin. It was the alert for a potential enemy!

Xia Chujian's heart tightened.

Enemies?! Could the Alien Beasts in the Exotic Beast Forest be attacking her teammates outside?! Xia Chujian hurriedly projected the warning image onto the flying vehicle's built-in display screen.

She then saw clearly that it was not in the distant area where the radar was scanning for the Blood Kirin. Rather, a moving object had appeared nearby, in the area where her four teammates were conducting their grid search! The image was not very clear.

Xia Chujian immediately increased the image resolution by an order of magnitude for this moving object.

A tall, long-haired man soon appeared on the virtual screen.

No, only his upper body was human. His lower body was that of a horse.

This was not a human, but a humanoid!

Xia Chujian narrowed her eyes.

She was not afraid of humanoids.

In fact, no one on this squad understood humanoids better than she did.

Before her aunt found work when Xia Chujian was little, she and her aunt had lived in Mulan City's South District.

It was the only area in Mulan City where humanoid lowly people were permitted to enter the city and settle down.

In the places where humanoid lowly people gathered, she had watched these humanoids shift between human form and Beast Form ever since she was young. She had long grown used to it.

So Xia Chujian was not frightened by this humanoid's appearance. Instead, she observed carefully.

The horse-bodied humanoid held a bow and arrow, aiming at Captain Ye Shijie, who stood ten meters away completely unaware, and slowly drew the bowstring.

Xia Chujian's heart clenched. She immediately opened the direct communication system on the squad's Communication Channel and said, "Captain Ye, get down!"

Their squad had worked together for three years and had excellent coordination.

The instant she gave the warning, Ye Shijie threw himself to the ground.

While warning him over voice comms, Xia Chujian aimed her sniper rifle at the horse-bodied humanoid holding the bow and preparing to shoot.

Their squad had worked together for three years and had excellent coordination.

At that moment, the horse-bodied humanoid finally released the arrow.

Whoosh! The sound of the long arrow tearing through the air rang out above Ye Shijie's head.

But before that, Xia Chujian had already pulled the trigger.

The arrow had not yet arrived, but the bullet had arrived first.

"Ah!" The humanoid let out a miserable cry and collapsed.

Watching this through the radar's visual feed, Xia Chujian could not help secretly lamenting that bows and arrows, in humanoid hands, still could not compare to Thermal Weapons like sniper rifles.

But as she was musing over it, an image flashed through her mind: a golden long arrow slicing through the night sky and shooting into the rectangular moon gate.

If it were an arrow like that, even Thermal Weapons probably would not stand a chance...

But what about her own Judgement Sniper Rifle?

Xia Chujian felt it still had a fighting chance.

While her thoughts wandered, she carefully searched through the radar images.

She did not see any other dangerous presences for the moment, but she was still deeply worried. She notified the entire squad, "It's dangerous outside. Get back here quickly."

Ye Shijie was uneasy. He signaled for the whole squad to lie prone, then waited several minutes before slowly raising his head to look around.

Xia Chujian watched anxiously.

If she had been there, she would have raised her gun and sprayed every direction first to clear the field before running.

That way, even if the enemy still had an ambush prepared, they would not escape the squad's follow-up barrage.

But Ye Shijie was used to being frugal and calculating. He could not bear to waste bullets firing into empty air.

He used the long-range goggles on his helmet to scan the area, then waved a hand. "Let's see what's going on."

The four of them crawled forward and arrived together beside the horse-bodied humanoid Xia Chujian had shot.

"...A humanoid?" Ping Qiong raised her brows and rose to one knee, about to stand.

At that moment, a ticking countdown suddenly sounded from the humanoid's body.

Song Mingqian's face turned cold as he shouted, "Retreat! Retreat! Get out of here!"

Seeing that there was no time, he leaped up and dragged Ping Qiong behind a large boulder at the edge of the forest.

Ye Shijie and Li Fu also realized something was wrong, each covering his head as they rolled onto the ground and lay flat.

Boom! Black Smoke mixed with flames erupted with a Loud Noise from the dead horse-bodied humanoid! It was a remote-controlled bomb! Someone had actually strapped a remote-controlled bomb to that horse-bodied humanoid!

Xia Chujian's face turned green as she watched from the flying vehicle. She immediately grabbed her Judgement Sniper Rifle and kicked the button beneath her seat.

The flying vehicle's translucent canopy slowly rose.

A blast of icy air rushed in from outside the cabin.

Xia Chujian was so furious at that moment that she did not even feel the cold.

She set up her Sniper Rifle atop the flying vehicle's canopy and calmly told her teammates, "Retreat. I'll cover you."

The moment she said that, her teammates knew she had her heavy sniper rifle in position.

Based on their previous mission experience, Xia Chujian had always handled long-range fire support. Whether she was taking potshots or covering a retreat, it was always a One Shot Kill.

"Fall back!" Ye Shijie also felt that enemies were still lurking in the shadows. They were sinister, cunning, and full of tricks. They needed to return and discuss things properly.

The four continued in crouched positions, slowly retreating backward toward the forest.

With her heavy sniper rifle set up, Xia Chujian watched the squad's situation under the surveillance of the Solid-State Optical Radar.

Just as Ye Shijie and the other four had retreated into the forest, the Radar System began beeping another warning.

Following the coordinates sent by the radar, Xia Chujian adjusted her sniper rifle's scope.

Soon, Xia Chujian saw a second humanoid through the scope's objective lens.

It was a Pig-head Humanoid. Its head resembled a pig's, but it was not as frightening as a Wild Rhinoceros Pig, nor did it have long fangs.

Perhaps because it retained human expressions, it even looked somewhat endearingly foolish. But below the neck, it had a human body.

What astonished Xia Chujian was that this Pig-head Humanoid was dressed in extremely shabby, ragged clothing, far worse than what the horse-bodied humanoid had worn.

The temperature outside was as low as minus eighty degrees, yet it wore only something like a torn burlap sack, tied around the waist with a strand of grass rope.

The hem only reached its knees, leaving even its calves uncovered.

Its calves were bare, and it wore no shoes.

Although its calves were covered in coarse hair and its feet were hardened with calluses, it was still obvious that it was cold—so cold that its toes remained curled, making it unsteady even when walking.

Watching this Pig-head Humanoid, Xia Chujian gradually tightened her grip on the trigger, yet did not fire.

The horse-bodied humanoid that had tried to attack Ye Shijie and had been killed by Xia Chujian had not reverted to a complete human form, even in death.

Xia Chujian had seen some humanoids like that before.

They were humanoids that could only maintain a full Beast Form or a partial Beast Form and could not shift back into a complete human form.

It's the New Book Period—thank you all for your support!