The Unsolved Mystery

The exotic beast that Lin Li was about to kill suddenly fled, throwing him into a panic.

He had searched for more than half an hour without finding anything. At last, an exotic beast had practically delivered itself to him. After spending some Spiritual Energy and stamina, he was on the verge of killing it. If it slipped away now, he would be depressed for quite a while.

I absolutely can't let it escape... Lin Li shouted inwardly before chasing after the fleeing Black Snake Exotic Beast.

Lin Li had torn several wounds in the Black Snake Exotic Beast's body. Blood kept gushing from them, splattering bright red marks across everywhere it crawled as it fled.

Such conspicuous traces allowed Lin Li, who was pursuing the Black Snake Exotic Beast, to determine its direction of escape with pinpoint accuracy.

The sun hanging in the sky was blocked by dark clouds drifting in from the distance. For a moment, the earth scorched by the sun was given a brief respite.

"Chirp, chirp..."

A little sparrow that had eaten and drunk its fill beat its wings and flew up from the grass, heading toward its home.

"Hiss..."

A shrill hiss suddenly rang out across the quiet wilderness. The little sparrow, its belly round from eating and preparing to head home, was so startled that it nearly plunged headfirst from the sky.

"Chirp, chirp...?"

The startled little sparrow hurriedly flapped its wings and rapidly climbed higher. Then it circled several times in the sky, searching for the source of the shrill hiss that had frightened it so badly.

It quickly found the culprit that had made the sound.

In its eyes, a human was standing atop a massive Black Snake Exotic Beast, holding a weapon that radiated pale golden Spiritual Light.

At that moment, the weapon radiating pale golden Spiritual Light was already thrust deep into the Black Snake Exotic Beast's head.

"Chirp, chirp... Get out of here, quick. Humans are terrifying."

The little sparrow remembered its parents' teachings. Whenever it encountered humans, it had to stay far away—especially humans carrying out a hunt. Once it saw one, it had to flee as far as possible and never let curiosity lure it closer for a look.

Hearing a crisp burst of birdsong behind him, Lin Li instinctively turned his head toward the sound. He saw a chubby little sparrow flying away from him.

He withdrew his gaze and focused his attention on the Black Snake Exotic Beast beneath his feet.

Although it had fled for its life, blood continued pouring from its wounds, and its strength gradually drained away along with it.

In the end, the ferocious Black Snake Exotic Beast still could not escape death. Lin Li caught up with it and pierced its head with a single sword thrust.

Although the Black Snake Exotic Beast was already dead, its body continued writhing restlessly. This was probably what people called a conditioned reflex. It would take a while longer for its body to finally grow still.

After waiting for more than a minute, the Black Snake Exotic Beast's corpse finally settled down.

"Splurt."

Lin Li exerted force with his right hand and yanked the Spirit Artifact Longsword, which had pierced through the Black Snake Exotic Beast's head, backward.

Once the Spirit Artifact Longsword was pulled free, red-and-white matter instantly gushed from the hole it left behind, spilling disgusting filth all over the ground.

"After all that work, I finally managed to hunt an exotic beast." Lin Li muttered, then crouched down and placed a hand on the Black Snake Exotic Beast's body.

With a thought, the corpse of the Black Snake Exotic Beast, which possessed First-Order High Stage strength, vanished instantly.

On the Mysterious Small Island, the blood-soaked corpse of an exotic beast suddenly appeared before the Small Tree at the center of the island.

Unlike before, the Miracle Small Tree seemed ravenously hungry. The instant the Black Snake Exotic Beast's corpse appeared before it, white mist began drifting from the body.

In only a few breaths, the massive corpse of the Black Snake Exotic Beast vanished without a trace, leaving not even a scrap behind.

The white mist gathered in midair and condensed into a white, spherical cloud of mist.

Compared to the mist cloud formed from the Rabbit Exotic Beast's corpse, the white mist cloud formed from the Black Snake Exotic Beast's corpse was twice as large.

Then, just as before, the white mist cloud flew toward the Miracle Small Tree bearing the Azure Fruit and was instantly absorbed by it.

After absorbing the white mist cloud, the Azure Fruit growing on the Miracle Small Tree, which had been barely larger than a grain of rice, seemed to grow a little larger.

Today's goal was to hunt five exotic beasts.

It had taken Lin Li forty or fifty minutes to hunt a single exotic beast. To complete the goal he had set for the day, he immediately began searching for another one after storing the Black Snake Exotic Beast's corpse on the Mysterious Small Island.

To find an exotic beast as quickly as possible, Lin Li expanded his range of activity a little farther. His footsteps began carrying him deeper into the wilderness.

As it turned out, the deeper one went into the wilderness, the greater the odds of encountering an exotic beast.

Sure enough, after heading in the direction of the wilderness's depths for around ten minutes and walking roughly five hundred meters, Lin Li encountered his second prey of the day.

It was a Rooster Feather Exotic Beast with a large, bright-red comb and a height of about 1.2 meters.

Lin Li was not sure about other cities, but Rooster Feather Exotic Beasts like this were fairly common in the wilderness outside Rong City.

It was said that sixty or seventy years ago, something had gone wrong at a Rooster Feather chicken farm run by a breeder in the outskirts. Large numbers of Rooster Feather chickens escaped the farm and scattered into the wilderness.

As time passed, those Rooster Feather chickens that had escaped the farm gradually went wild. Later, many of their offspring awakened Spirituality and became exotic beasts.

Strangely enough, although the Rooster Feather chickens in the farm had been raised for so many years and had reproduced for several generations, not a single one had awakened Spirituality and become an exotic beast.

Yet after escaping into the wild and becoming feral, their offspring awakened Spirituality and became exotic beasts with astonishing ease.

Why Rooster Feather chickens transformed into exotic beasts so easily had become one of the unsolved mysteries of the present day.

"Cluck, cluck, cluck..."

The 1.2-meter-tall Rooster Feather Exotic Beast let out a crisp crow when it saw Lin Li.

Although the Rooster Feather Exotic Beast was not a carnivorous exotic beast, it was highly aggressive.

It was said that some cockfighting enthusiasts from overseas flew to Rong City every year on international flights.

They paid to hire local Beast Hunters to capture Rooster Feather Exotic Beasts alive in the wilderness, then took the captured Rooster Feather Exotic Beasts back to their countries to participate in cockfighting competitions.

As for how they performed in the competitions, apparently the results were quite good. The Rooster Feather Exotic Beasts of Rong City had won the championship in several cockfighting competitions.