The Operation Planned for Eight Years

There was still one year until graduation from Tianlan High School.

The Bo City disaster was drawing closer and closer.

People still went to work and school as usual every day, none of them aware of what would happen a year later.

The closest people around them, their best friends, would all be devoured by demons.

The city would be left in ruins.

To prevent all of this, Jiang Yuan, Mo Fan, and Zhang Xiaohou stood at the entrance of the Hunter Alliance.

"So what are we here for today?" Mo Fan asked, puzzled.

"Yeah, Yuan-ge, why did you call us here? The captain hasn't notified us of any missions either," Zhang Xiaohou added, equally confused.

As for why he called him "captain," it was because Jiang Yuan had recently recruited him into the city hunting team.

Originally, the city hunting team's slots were full, but Jiang Yuan and Mo Fan's mission results were too eye-catching.

To outsiders, it seemed like Xu Dahuang's squad had cleared out most of the demon incidents in Bo City.

In reality, only the squad members themselves knew that over ninety percent of the credit went to Jiang Yuan and Mo Fan.

The two of them tirelessly took on missions, their strength far beyond the norm, and they had never failed so far.

So Xu Dahuang, who had no selfish motives, considered letting Jiang Yuan form his own hunting team and didn't say much about Zhang Xiaohou joining.

He just treated him as a future member of Jiang Yuan's team.

"I need you two to help me with something," Jiang Yuan said.

"What is it? Just spit it out. We're bros," Mo Fan said, thumping his chest.

Jiang Yuan organized his thoughts: "I want to conduct a sweep within Bo City."

"A sweep? You don't mean sweeping out demons, do you?" Mo Fan exclaimed in surprise.

Sweeping out the demons hiding in the city was definitely a tough, massive project.

"Not entirely. Let me finish first," Jiang Yuan shook his head and continued explaining: "You should know that the demons in the city all emerge from underground. Their exits are either sewers or holes they dig themselves, very hard to spot."

"Mo Fan, you've seen those holes too. Last time we went to Xinxia's school cafeteria, the hole that giant-eyed rat crawled out of was one of them."

"Mm-hmm." Mo Fan nodded, while Zhang Xiaohou looked completely lost.

They still had no idea what Jiang Yuan was planning to sweep.

Jiang Yuan didn't drag it out: "What I mean by a sweep is to find as many holes as possible in the city where demons appear and record them all."

"That way, once we're strong enough later, we can find a chance to destroy all these holes, and Bo City won't have demons anymore."

The reasoning was solid, but Mo Fan still had one point of confusion.

"Then why don't we just destroy them now?"

"Simple. With our current strength, we can't completely eradicate them. Even if we seal them up, the demons will just dig new holes, and then they'll be even harder to find."

"For now, it's better to find the holes and monitor them all. That way, casualties will be greatly reduced."

With Jiang Yuan's explanation, Mo Fan and Zhang Xiaohou understood.

"I didn't expect you to have such high awareness, Jiang Yuan, thinking about how to prevent future disasters for our Bo City," Mo Fan said with a laugh.

If you knew what would happen to Bo City in the future, you'd definitely have that same high awareness too.

Jiang Yuan kept that thought to himself.

The Bo City disaster had always been a regret for those like Mo Fan and Zhang Xiaohou who survived it.

Jiang Yuan had come up with this plan eight years ago.

Eight years ago, he made the plan to spare Mo Fan and the others from the pain of the disaster.

Now, he himself had lived in Bo City for eight full years and had long grown attached to the place.

So this plan was also about protecting the city he had called home for eight years.

Mo Fan suddenly remembered something and asked, "I recall you started recording hole coordinates a while back, right?"

Jiang Yuan nodded: "I did record some, but it's only about a third of all Bo City. Doing this alone is too slow. That's why I came to you for help."

"Oh~ no problem, but you'll have to pay me," Mo Fan said with a grin.

"Fan-ge, why are you asking for payment?" Zhang Xiaohou said to Jiang Yuan: "Yuan-ge, I don't want payment. Just teach me some magic tips."

"Get out of here, scram." Mo Fan shoved Zhang Xiaohou aside: "I was joking, why take it seriously? Bros don't need payment. Jiang Yuan, don't just teach Xiao Hou and leave me out."

Mo Fan really wanted Jiang Yuan to teach him how to connect star trails.

For so long, Jiang Yuan's star trail connection speed had always been many times faster than his. Recently, he could even do it with a single thought.

A single thought star trail!

He had specifically gone to the library to look it up, and a single thought star trail was a casting speed that only high-level mages might comprehend.

Jiang Yuan had learned it at the elementary level—it was insane!

I'm so jealous!

"No problem. I've been getting some real insights into magic lately. Once all the coordinates are recorded, I'll pass everything I've learned to you guys." Jiang Yuan gave his assurance—he really had no intention of holding back.

A big part of his strength came from his Innate Talent; only a small portion was the result of his own solid grasp of magical theory and the experience he'd summed up from it.

The three of them planned out where to start looking for the cave mouths, and from then on, they began a thorough, inch-by-inch search.

Day after day passed.

As it turned out, Jiang Yuan had been a bit too optimistic.

The entire Bocheng had far too many cave mouths, and they were far too well hidden.

They'd originally started searching outside the area Jiang Yuan had recorded, only to find that the density of cave mouths within the same area was about one-sixth higher than expected.

Going back to recheck, they discovered that some extremely concealed cave mouths in the original zone had been missed.

No wonder the Bocheng Disaster had seen so many demons pouring into the city, emerging from every direction.

It was simply because there were too many cave mouths.

While searching for cave mouths, they also ran into Giant-eyed Stinky Rats, One-eyed Magic Wolves, and other demons that weren't quite Servant level lurking inside.

The three of them dealt with them on the spot.

If they hadn't proactively discovered them, plenty of people might have gone missing in secret.

And so, the three of them spent far more time than they'd anticipated.

They started in the first quarter of their senior year and only finished at the tail end of the second quarter.

"Ah!"

"It's finally over!"

At Jiang Yuan's place, Mo Fan let out a long howl toward the ceiling, as if shouting out all the exhaustion from this period.

"Yeah, Brother Fan!!!" Zhang Xiaohou yelled too.

It was just too tiring.

Aside from meditation time, every other moment was spent either searching for cave mouths or on the way to search for them.

Seeing this, Jiang Yuan smiled and comforted them, "Tired as it is, our magic cultivation has been improving pretty fast too. It counts as a kind of training."

"You're not wrong." Mo Fan lay comfortably on the bed, closing his eyes as if sensing his own magic stardust.

There were many ways to speed up cultivation.

Using battle to drive progress was one of them.

Mo Fan's Fire element stardust had already reached the third level over three months ago, and its size had expanded to the limit, ready to break through to the intermediate tier at any moment.

To think—originally, he wouldn't have reached the third level until just before his duel with Yu Ang. Now, he was a full three months ahead!

His Lightning element stardust had also reached the third level.

Zhang Xiaohou's Wind element stardust had hit the third level just a few days ago.