A Sword's Instant Kill, Lin Yuan's Frenzied Rise

As the saying went, if you walked the night road often enough, sooner or later you would meet a ghost.

After fighting across Gray Rabbit Plains for an entire day, Lin Yuan finally encountered a different kind of ferocious beast as evening drew near.

"Woo—"

A low roar, threaded with short, guttural growls, rang out.

It carried the bloody savagery unique to predators.

Lin Yuan narrowed his eyes and watched the crimson figure slowly descend the hillside.

It was a fox.

Its entire body was covered in fiery-red fur, like flames.

It was over one and a half meters long. Its long crimson fox tail was especially eye-catching, swaying gently with an enchanting, illusory charm.

"Red-Tailed Fox..."

Lin Yuan recognized it at a glance. It was an ordinary predator-type ferocious beast, a Red-Tailed Fox.

Red-Tailed Foxes were also frequent visitors to Gray Rabbit Plains, because Ferocious Gray Rabbits were their favorite prey.

They often came to Gray Rabbit Plains to hunt.

As a mutated ferocious beast, however, a Red-Tailed Fox was nothing like an ordinary fox. Its massive body rivaled that of a wild boar, and it possessed sharp long claws and pointed teeth.

Its strength far surpassed that of a Ferocious Gray Rabbit, reaching over a thousand jin. Combined with its nimble movements and naturally cunning disposition, it was one of the predators novice Hunters least wanted to encounter.

Lin Yuan was also a novice Hunter.

But he had no fear of the Red-Tailed Fox at all.

What a joke. With seven Talent Traits in hand, if he were afraid of one little fox, that would be the biggest joke under heaven.

"Compared in strength, I probably have twelve hundred jin now, slightly stronger than it."

"Compared in methods, my swordsmanship has reached the Micro-Insight Realm. Whether attacking or defending, I can strike as I wish and halt with a single thought."

"Not to mention all my other Talent Traits..."

"The advantage is mine!"

Lin Yuan's eyes gleamed as he gripped the Blue Ice Battle Sword in his hand and stared directly at the Red-Tailed Fox walking down the slope, his fighting spirit blazing.

And the Red-Tailed Fox?

It did not hesitate in the slightest.

Its eyes reddened, and its body became like a ball of flame as it instantly charged at Lin Yuan.

"Ferocious beasts really are ferocious."

Lin Yuan frowned.

Though these wild beasts had also been baptized by the energy of the cosmic starry sky, their bodies mutating to become stronger, what little reason they possessed had also been tainted.

They had no minds capable of thought.

All they had was endless desire for destruction and slaughter.

Whoosh!

The Red-Tailed Fox was incredibly fast as it sprang into the air.

Its claws shot out in an instant, razor-sharp enough to tear through the hide of any Ferocious Gray Rabbit and grievously wound flesh and blood.

Unfortunately, it had encountered Lin Yuan.

A future sword immortal, the only player in this world, the owner of seven Talent Traits, the future strongest being in the universe...

Whoosh!

The same sound of wind being torn apart rang out.

Lin Yuan drew his sword. Its sharp radiance was like the river of stars in the heavens, reflecting boundless cold solitude.

Pfft...

The sword light was incredibly fast, vanishing in an instant.

Swordsmanship at the Micro-Insight Realm was something a tiny Red-Tailed Fox devoid of intelligence could never comprehend.

So it died.

It died peacefully...

It barely even felt pain, because Lin Yuan's precise and elegant strike had severed its throat directly.

A single sword strike, an instant kill.

The corpse remained intact. The strike had been so fast that not much blood had even had time to spurt out.

"You have killed a Red-Tailed Fox. Experience +2..."

Only when the game notification sounded in his mind did Lin Yuan snap out of his immersion in that handsome sword strike just now.

Two experience points!

"As expected... killing higher-level monsters grants more experience."

Lin Yuan had once again confirmed his earlier speculation.

The taut string in his heart finally loosened.

That damned game designer had at least left him a sliver of hope. Otherwise, if experience were fixed at one point, he really would have had to kill monsters until the end of time...

"This Red-Tailed Fox's fur has some value. It's worth collecting."

Lin Yuan took out the essential gathering tools from his backpack and carefully cut away the freely delivered Red-Tailed Fox pelt bit by bit.

Ordinary mutated ferocious beasts were not particularly valuable. Take the weakest Ferocious Gray Rabbit, for example—there were barely any valuable materials on its body. Only its head and meat had some market value as food, though not much.

Rabbit heads were sold by the piece, twenty yuan each.

Rabbit meat was sold by weight, five yuan per jin.

Although Ferocious Gray Rabbits were ferocious beasts and larger in size, after removing inedible organs, bones, and the like, only the thigh meat could be gathered intact.

An adult Ferocious Gray Rabbit could yield around thirty jin of rabbit meat, worth only one hundred and fifty yuan.

Adding the twenty yuan for the rabbit head, one Ferocious Gray Rabbit was worth only around one hundred and seventy or eighty yuan in total, no more than two hundred.

For most Hunters, that was not worth the effort. They could not be bothered to hunt them.

Lin Yuan had killed over a hundred Ferocious Gray Rabbits before, only for experience and Talent Traits. He had not had the time to gather them one by one.

But this Red-Tailed Fox was different.

Red-Tailed Fox meat was terrible, practically nobody liked eating it, and its meat yield was extremely low. But its fiery-red fox pelt was exceptionally valuable.

A nearly undamaged, complete fox pelt like the one in Lin Yuan's hands was worth at least several thousand yuan. If he encountered someone who needed it, even ten thousand was not impossible.

One fox pelt was worth as much as a hundred Ferocious Gray Rabbits. Naturally, Lin Yuan could not let it go.

After all, he was still carrying several hundred thousand yuan in Hunter Loans...

"Compared with Red-Tailed Foxes, Ferocious Gray Rabbits really are easier to hunt. They don't take much effort."

Lin Yuan's thoughts raced.

Red-Tailed Foxes did give more experience, but honestly, they were also harder to hunt. Though he had killed this one with a single strike just now, making it seem effortless.

In reality, how could he have dared to be careless?

Naturally, he had used his full strength. It was nothing like the ease with which he hunted gray rabbits.

Moreover, two experience points were not much different from one, and Red-Tailed Foxes were rare and difficult to encounter.

So Lin Yuan decisively set his sights on Ferocious Gray Rabbits again.

Who could blame the little bunnies for being easy to kill and plentiful too?

"Dear little bunnies, I'm back..."

After putting away the Red-Tailed Fox pelt, Lin Yuan rubbed his hands together once more, raised his sword, and charged toward the rabbits.

One day...

Two days...

Three days...

For a Hunter, spending the night in the Wilderness Zone was perfectly normal.

After all, hunting suitable ferocious beasts required not only strength, but luck as well.

Though Lin Yuan was a novice, he adapted quickly.

The night was dangerous, and his strength was still lacking, so naturally he did not dare let down his guard. He found a safe spot and concealed himself there.

After dawn, he first practiced a set of the Starry Sky Body Tempering Art to raise his Body Tempering progress. This concerned the most important path of the Stellar Martial Path, and there could be no slacking whatsoever.

After that came the ever-delightful journey of hunting little rabbits. This concerned the Game Panel's level-ups and the drawing of Talent Traits, so it could not be neglected either.

In three days, he had traveled across more than half of Gray Rabbit Plains.

Only then did Lin Yuan finally gather one hundred and twenty-eight rabbits and successfully reach Level 8.

"These rabbits have gotten smart too. They're all hiding in their burrows and refusing to come out."

Lin Yuan shook his head, deeply regretful.

Gray Rabbit Plains truly had a huge number of Ferocious Gray Rabbits, but it could not withstand how quickly he hunted them.

One sword strike per rabbit, from morning until night, without stopping for even a moment.

There was not much to say about the hunting process. Each rabbit died in one strike. Finding the little rabbits actually took more time.

Otherwise, his leveling speed could have been even faster!

"Let's see what my eighth Talent Trait will be."

Lin Yuan simply stopped worrying about them and eagerly began drawing a new Talent Trait.

"You have obtained a golden legend..."