The Black Hand Appears

Zhang Tie raced alone through the ridges of the Gray Hills like the wind, agile and efficient, seemingly tireless. After eating nine Demon Rat Seven-Power Fruits, he found that both his explosive power and endurance had greatly increased. Accordingly, he could now maintain a "cruising speed" of nearly thirty kilometers per hour for an entire day and still retain formidable combat strength.

At that speed, just two hours after leaving Krel, Zhang Tie had already covered more than sixty kilometers through the rolling hills.

High in the sky, the black giant eagle had long since flown beyond sight. That giant eagle could reach astonishing heights, like an eye Krel had placed in the heavens. Krel had said that anything the eagle could see, he could perceive through his spiritual power. Zhang Tie found that deeply enviable.

Thanks to that giant eagle, Zhang Tie and Krel's efficiency in the Gray Hills had improved greatly. The two had agreed on several coded signals for contacting each other, all conveyed through the eagle. Many times, Zhang Tie only needed to look up and see the eagle repeating a particular flight pattern in the sky to know what Krel wanted to tell him.

The wind sweeping over the Gray Hills carried some strange sounds from nearby. Those sounds made Zhang Tie shift his direction slightly. After running less than two kilometers, he encountered the first large pack of Iron-Fanged Hyenas he had seen that day.

At a glance, there were around sixty or seventy Iron-Fanged Hyenas. A small group of people was trapped by them on a slope. More than a dozen Iron-Fanged Hyena corpses lay scattered across the ground, from far to near. Several people in that group had already been wounded, their bodies covered in blood, while some were so badly injured