The man with the grass between his teeth was still grinning.
"Kid, it's good that you know the Zhao Family. Makes this easy. Eight hundred thousand, not a cent less. If you're Li Ming's friend, pay his debt for him, and we'll leave right away."
The other man stood up too, dusted off his backside, and held out a hand to Lin Feng.
"Right. Transfer or cash, either works. Interest's calculated by the day. That's another three thousand two hundred today."
Lin Feng took Mountain Splitter off his shoulder and held it in his hand.
Mountain Splitter left its sheath.
Without the slightest warning.
The man with the grass between his teeth hadn't even finished speaking.
He looked down at his chest. A long blade had pierced right through him, jutting out of his back.
The other man, a Martial Artist at the third stage, shrank his pupils and reached for his waist.
Too late.
As Lin Feng drew his blade, he swept it across in one fluid motion.
A blast of Gale Wind with penetrating force swept through, cutting straight through the second man from his left shoulder to his right ribs.
Two corpses fell at the foot of the Base Camp wall, less than a second apart.
Blood splashed across the wall and trickled down between the bricks.
[Target killed ×2]
[Steel of the Blade: 272/500]
Lin Feng flicked the blood off his blade and looked around.
The Seventh Defense Line's gate was deserted. Most people were eating at this hour, and no one passed by.
He crouched and searched the two men's pockets.
A collection notice from the Zhao Clan Bank, stamped with the Zhao Family seal.
A wad of cash, around two or three thousand yuan.
Two daggers, both junk.
Lin Feng didn't turn up his nose at them. He pocketed everything, then dragged the corpses to a wasteland behind the Base Camp.
The Wilderness of the Northern Territory lacked plenty of things, but it certainly didn't lack Exotic Beast claw marks.
He placed the bodies in an area marked by signs of Exotic Beast activity, then used Mountain Splitter to carve a few more simulated claw wounds into them.
He'd become quite practiced at this sort of thing.
Once he was done, he dusted off his hands and headed back into the Base Camp.
He ran into Wang Tie and Chen Lie.
Chen Lie held his one arm across his chest. He glanced at Lin Feng, then looked toward the outside of the Base Camp.
"What happened to those two debt collectors at the gate?"
"They left."
Chen Lie studied him for another couple of seconds.
"They left?"
"Yeah. I talked things over with them. They came to their senses, decided the Northern Territory was too dangerous, and went back to Qing Prefecture."
Chen Lie's lips moved, but he didn't press him.
Anyone who'd spent long enough in the Northern Territory understood one thing.
Some things were better left unasked.
"Wang Tie told me about Li Ming," Chen Lie said, getting down to business. "E17 Rift. He hasn't come out in three days."
"Is the Exotic Beast density too high inside?"
Chen Lie shook his head.
"It's not a matter of density." His voice turned grave. "Both search-and-rescue teams came back saying the same thing. There's an abnormal fluctuation on the fifth level of the Rift, far stronger than what you'd find in a normal E-Rank Rift."
Lin Feng frowned.
An abnormal fluctuation?
He'd encountered something similar in an F-Class Rift before.
Back then, a Red Flame Earth Lizard had nested deep inside the Rift, forcing it to expand from within.
Could it be the same situation this time?
"I'm going in." Lin Feng didn't hesitate.
"Alone?" Chen Lie asked.
"Alone is enough."
Wang Tie grew anxious beside them. "I'm going too!"
Lin Feng glanced at him.
"You're a first-stage Martial Artist. You can handle an E-Rank Rift, but if there really is a D-Rank or even higher anomaly inside, you won't be able to help."
Wang Tie opened his mouth. The retort on the tip of his tongue died before he could say it.
He knew his own strength.
As a first-stage Martial Artist, he could barely protect himself in an E-Rank Rift. Anything stronger, and he'd just be serving himself up as a meal.
"Stay here and wait for me." Lin Feng patted his shoulder. "I'll bring Li Ming back."
Wang Tie clenched his teeth and nodded.
Chen Lie fished two pills out of his pocket and handed them over.
"Energy Recovery Pills. Chen Nian's recipe. They work a little better than the regular kind."
Lin Feng took them, tucked them into his pocket, and turned toward the exit.
The E17 Rift lay twelve kilometers northwest of the Seventh Defense Line.
With his current speed as a fifth-stage Martial Master, it wouldn't take him twenty minutes to run there at full speed.
A few lone F-Class Exotic Beasts wandered in the distance. As soon as they sensed Lin Feng, they skirted far around him.
To low-level Exotic Beasts, the pressure of a Martial Master was like a natural enemy.
Fifteen minutes later, the entrance to the E17 Rift came into view.
The Rift's opening wasn't large, about ten meters wide. Large patches of dried blood remained on the rocks along its edge.
Some human, some Exotic Beast.
There were no guards at the entrance.
This Rift was under direct military jurisdiction, but because it was far from the Base Camp, it was usually checked only by patrols at regular intervals.
Lin Feng drew Mountain Splitter and stepped inside.
Exotic Beast corpses carpeted the first level of the Rift.
Lin Feng realized something was wrong as soon as he entered.
The rock walls on both sides of the passage were covered in signs of battle.
Blade cuts, claw marks, old and new layered over one another, dense as a spiderweb.
But most of the Exotic Beast corpses were fresh.
Some were still bleeding.
"Someone cleared the way ahead." Lin Feng crouched and examined the corpse of a Steel-Tooth Rat.
The wounds had been made by a dagger. The angles were crooked, the force uneven.
The work of a Martial Disciple.
Li Ming.
Lin Feng stood up and quickened his pace deeper into the Rift.
There were even more Exotic Beast corpses on the second level.
But the battle marks had grown chaotic. In some places, it was obvious that one person had fought several opponents at once, and the bloodstains on the ground stretched a long way.
Someone had been injured and was retreating deeper while fighting.
This kid didn't run outside. He went farther in instead? Lin Feng wondered, never slowing his steps.
He pushed through the third and fourth levels.
He dealt with the E-Rank Exotic Beasts that appeared along the way with casual ease.
Against E-Rank Exotic Beasts, Lin Feng was on an entirely different level. One clean slash, one kill.
[Exotic Beast killed: Iron-Armored Centipede ×4, Martial Path Points obtained ×200]
[Exotic Beast killed: Poison Claw Lizard ×3, Martial Path Points obtained ×150]
[Exotic Beast killed: Rock-Shell Beetle ×6, Martial Path Points obtained ×300]
[Steel of the Blade: 281/500]
The system notifications rang without pause. His Martial Path Points were accumulating, and his talent's layers were increasing too.
But Lin Feng's attention remained fixed on the traces underfoot.
The bloodstains grew denser.
In some places, there were drag marks. In others, there were clear signs of someone falling and struggling.
Li Ming was badly hurt.
The fifth level.
Lin Feng stopped.
The air had changed.
Not the temperature, but the pressure.
An energy fluctuation far beyond what an E-Rank Rift should contain surged from the end of the passage.
Heavy and oppressive, it pulsed at a frequency that made the heart skip a beat.
Chen Lie had been right.
There really was an anomaly above D-Rank here.
Lin Feng slowed down, held Mountain Splitter across his chest, and crept forward one step at a time.
He rounded the final bend.
And saw it.
The fifth level should have ended in a solid wall.
But now, a fissure had split it open.
The opening wasn't large, about three meters wide and a little over two meters tall. The rock along its edges had turned a bizarre dark purple.
A dense Exotic Beast presence seeped from within.
It wasn't E-Rank.
It wasn't D-Rank.
It was C-Rank.
Inside the Rift, there was another Rift.
"A nesting doll?" Lin Feng stared at the opening, turning the idea over in his mind.
Deep inside an E-Rank Rift, a C-Rank Rift had torn open.
He'd read about this in his textbooks. It was called "Rift Nesting," an extremely rare phenomenon that usually occurred in areas where energy was excessively concentrated at the bottom of a Rift.
Exotic Beasts in a nested Rift were often one or two major ranks higher than those in the outer Rift.
Exotic Beasts inside a C-Rank Rift started at the Martial Ancestor level.
Lin Feng stood in front of the opening for three seconds.
There were footprints on the ground.
Faint and messy, but unmistakably human.
More than one set.
Besides Li Ming, there had to be someone else.
Lin Feng took a deep breath, tightened his grip on Mountain Splitter, and stepped through.
The moment he passed through the dark purple opening, goosebumps prickled across his skin, and the energy density in the air surged several levels higher.
The space inside was far larger than the area outside.
Lin Feng hadn't gone fifty meters when he heard something.
Not an Exotic Beast's roar.
People shouting.
"Hold the line! Don't let it through!"
"Old Zhang can't hold on! Get him over here!"
"Anyone got any pills left? The bleeding won't stop!"
The voices came from deeper inside, chaotic and desperate.
Lin Feng quickened his pace.
Before you continue