Insect Rain

Throughout the day, nearly every member of the Skyfire Club had contacted Lu Feng.

But everything around them seemed normal, and no one grew suspicious.

Even Gao Zhan and Fang Qing had come out to check on things.

By the third day,

the area around Lu Feng was packed with Drill Bulls driven there by the Night Owl Squad.

They lay curled up on the ground, their eyelids heavy, looking as if they were barely alive.

The energy inside them had been completely drained.

Over the past few days, Lu Feng had broken through every acupoint in his body one after another. His realm had shot up like a rocket, reaching the peak of the Meridian Condensing Realm.

"Just a few more. If I can get my hands on a few more Exotic Beasts, I'll be able to try condensing my Innate Qi Sea and breaking into the Fourth Realm Warrior stage."

Unable to hide his excitement, Lu Feng stood and looked around.

But there were no more Exotic Beasts nearby whose energy he could absorb.

"So close..."

Unwilling to give up, he ran off into the distance, searching the surrounding area with his heightened senses.

Unfortunately, even after running more than thirty kilometers, he still couldn't find a trace of any Exotic Beasts.

"I can't go any farther."

Any farther and he would leave the Energy Shield's coverage around the Temporary Starry Sky Station.

He hadn't yet reached the Innate Realm, so he couldn't move freely across the surface of Planet Caro 9 without wearing a Mecha.

"Forget it. I'll have to wait for another chance."

He sighed and turned back.

At that very moment, Lu Feng suddenly sensed the presence of Exotic Beasts.

More than a hundred of them were charging this way from ten kilometers away.

Their powerful auras were alarming.

"There's a Leader Level one."

Lu Feng's heart tightened. He immediately opened his Communicator and sent a warning over the team channel. "A large number of Exotic Beasts are heading toward the outpost!"

Just seconds after he sent the message, everyone at the Chasing Wind Squad's outpost rushed outside.

"Where?"

Gao Zhan and the others hadn't noticed anything unusual yet.

"To the south. There are over a hundred, including some Leader Level ones."

Everyone's hearts tightened.

"How many Leader Level ones?"

"I don't know yet."

Lu Feng could roughly sense the number of Exotic Beasts and detect the auras of Fourth Order ones among them, but he couldn't tell exactly how many were Leader Level.

"Follow me!"

Gao Zhan immediately led the whole team south at a brisk pace.

They had barely been moving for a few minutes when, five kilometers away, they spotted a vast herd of Drill Bulls lying on the ground. There were at least three or four hundred of them.

"Attack!"

At the sight, the members of the Chasing Wind Squad all froze for a moment. Then they quickly launched their attack, killing every Drill Bull in the blink of an eye. The whole thing took only two minutes.

"Captain, these Drill Bulls... they don't seem able to fight back at all?"

One of the team members looked at the corpses covering the ground and asked in disbelief.

Though there were many of them, the Drill Bulls were unusually weak. The team members cut them down one by one, and the beasts were slaughtered with almost no resistance.

Gao Zhan found it strange, too.

Drill Bulls were known to be fierce and violent. Why were they lying there, letting themselves be killed?

"Lu Feng! Where are you? We've taken care of all the Exotic Beasts. Come out!"

Thirty kilometers away, Lu Feng was stunned when he received the message.

Taken care of?

The herd he'd sensed hadn't even entered the Energy Shield's range!

He immediately realized that Gao Zhan and the others must have mistakenly killed the Drill Bulls whose energy he had drained.

"Captain Gao, you've got the wrong ones! They weren't the ones you killed!"

"The wrong ones?" Gao Zhan was even more confused. "Explain!"

"Thirty kilometers due south. There are still more than a hundred Exotic Beasts approaching. They're not Drill Bulls. They're Multi-headed Pythons!"

"Thirty kilometers? Why did you go so far?"

"There's no time to explain. Hurry over!"

At his words, Gao Zhan and the others immediately raced ahead at full speed.

Lu Feng had just sent the message when he suddenly spotted a mass of strange beetles scattered across the ground not far outside the Energy Shield.

The beetles were a motley assortment of species and varied greatly in size. The smallest were about the size of a fist, while the largest were nearly as long as a Mecha's forearm.

Their appearances were bizarre, too. Some had backs covered in spikes, like moving thickets of thorns;

some had asymmetrical compound eyes, one side larger than the other;

and some had oversized mandibles that kept snapping open and shut with a clicking sound!

"Not good!"

Lu Feng's heart sank.

The exploration mission from a few days ago had left him with a clear memory: the Multi-headed Pythons in the southern mountain forests fed on these strange beetles.

These insects should have lived only deep in the mountains. There was no way they should have appeared on the edge of the Sudali Plain.

Unless... someone had deliberately brought them here to lure the Multi-headed Pythons over!

"Zheng Yi?!"

The face of that despicable man immediately flashed through Lu Feng's mind.

At that moment, the ground not far outside the Energy Shield suddenly began to tremble.

Then he saw over a hundred slender Giant Pythons surging toward them like fish swimming through water.

At the very front of the python horde were seven Multi-headed Pythons, each more than twenty meters long and sporting four heads!

"So many?!"

Lu Feng's pupils contracted. Shocked, he turned and ran without hesitation.

He could control Exotic Beasts, but only those in the Same Realm as himself.

If they were beyond his realm, he could control them only for a very short time.

Faced with seven Leader Level Exotic Beasts at once, he would be doomed if he didn't run.

"Captain Gao! It's worse than we thought..."

As he sprinted back at full speed, he quickly sent what he had seen to the Chasing Wind Squad's communications channel.

At that moment, the Chasing Wind Squad was less than ten kilometers from Lu Feng.

When Gao Zhan saw Lu Feng's message, his heart sank.

Only he, Fang Qing, and Hong Kun had reached the Innate Realm in the entire Chasing Wind Squad.

They had no chance against seven Exotic Beasts in the Same Realm.

If they fought head-on, the Chasing Wind Squad would suffer heavy losses, and might even be wiped out.

But if they retreated, what would happen to Lu Feng?

What if the herd broke through their defenses and entered the Starry Sky Station?

Gao Zhan made his decision at once and contacted the station's Command Center to request support from the higher-ups.

But the Command Center's reply only made his heart sink further: none of the Legion Commanders in the Grandmaster Realm were at the station right now. They would need time to return. The Chasing Wind Squad had to hold the line and buy time, and under no circumstances could they let the herd approach the station's central area.

The Command Center said they had urgently contacted several Legion Commanders and alerted nearby outpost squads, ordering them to rush over and provide support.

"Damn it!"

Gao Zhan cursed silently, but could only lead the Chasing Wind Squad onward, bracing themselves for what lay ahead.

By then, Lu Feng had run some distance before stopping.

He noticed that the Multi-headed Pythons hadn't continued forward. Instead, they had stopped among the beetles and begun feeding.

"Looks like we're safe for now."

He thought that once the Giant Pythons had finished their "feast," they would return to the depths of the mountains.

Just as he began to breathe a sigh of relief, a fist-sized beetle suddenly dropped from the sky.

Then came a second, a third... More and more beetles rained down toward the outpost.

Lu Feng looked up and saw dozens of Mechas turning to retreat in midair.

"Bastards!"

He immediately understood. It had to be the Night Owl Squad, led by Zheng Yi, using this despicable trick to lure the python horde toward the Chasing Wind Squad's outpost.