Savage Earth Qi
At that moment, the Avatar noticed that the white-haired boar and its guards had slowly drawn closer at some point.
It looked as though they were searching for a chance to charge in and break their formation.
His eyes lit up at the sight. Without another word, he raised his bow and fired three arrows in rapid succession.
At a distance of thirty to forty meters, the Avatar's 120-pound compound bow had enough power to send the arrows straight through whatever they struck.
Several cries of pain rang out.
The Avatar immediately sprang down from the tree and leaped to the edge of the Chen Martial Arts School's formation. Drawing the machete he carried, he swung it twice. The blades cut through the boars' necks to the bone, and blood gushed out in great streams, splattering the ground.
Ignoring them, the Avatar burst into motion and ran toward the white-haired boar and its guards.
An arrow had pierced the mouth of the white-haired boar at their head, leaving it dripping with blood.
Seeing the Avatar charge toward them so fast that he left afterimages, they immediately showed fear.
The white-haired boar promptly sent the two boars beside it charging at the Avatar, while it fled at full speed.
The Avatar gathered his strength and leaped up, stepping on the backs of the boars blocking his path to cross over them.
Then he swung his blade twice in quick succession, sending the two charging boars flying, and went after the white-haired boar.
During the chase, he also tried shooting it with his bow, but both of them were constantly moving, and his accuracy was simply too poor.
What was more, the boar had learned how to dodge arrows flying in a straight line, constantly changing direction to evade several shots.
As the Avatar chased it, he marveled, "This boar has really become a spirit, and it's surprisingly fast. It's got two-thirds of my speed."
The people from the Chen Martial Arts School saw only an afterimage break out past them and chase a boar into the distance.
They had no mind to pay attention to what the Avatar was doing.
Instead, they seized the chance presented by the herd, which was growing increasingly chaotic after losing its leader.
They kept hacking away until the boars no longer dared approach. More and more of the boars could not withstand such slaughter and began to flee.
The Chen Martial Arts School's people stopped attacking as well. Instead, they faced off against the boars that still wanted to attack but did not dare approach.
The two sides remained in a standoff like that, slowly moving farther and farther apart.
After a minute or two of pursuit, the Avatar caught up with the white-haired boar.
Once he was close to its body, he swung his blade horizontally with all his strength, chopping off one front leg and one hind leg.
Grievously wounded, the boar immediately toppled to the ground, blood pouring from its wounds!
The Avatar approached with his blade in hand.
Seeing the Avatar walk toward it, his machete dripping blood and flashing coldly, the boar actually prostrated itself on the ground. It gave him a pleading look uncannily like a human's and let out little grunts, as though begging for mercy.
Seeing it like this made him feel all the more that the boar was no ordinary beast. Without further ado, he raised his blade and brought it down, chopping off its head.
"This guy is finally dead."
He breathed a soft sigh of relief. Killing this overly clever mutated boar had taken quite a bit of effort.
He glanced toward the Chen Martial Arts School. Seeing that they had seized the chance created by his pursuit of the boar leader, he thought they should have broken through by now.
Knowing they would not die, he paid them no further attention and hurried toward the boars' lair.
After Zhou Mingyu, the captain of Chunhe Aluminum's exploration team, saw the fighting break out on that side,
he immediately led his team around to the right. But they had not expected to find more than a dozen boars there as well.
As a result, they too were trapped in the trees. At this moment, they were in five or six trees at the foot of the mountain on the right.
The Chunhe Aluminum group relied on their six archers to fight back against the boars.
For the time being, they were not in much danger, since there were fewer boars in this group and they had no unified command.
It would take them quite a while to uproot a large tree.
Under Ye Xingchen's lead, the six of them shot at an unhurried pace, averaging two or three arrows a minute.
"Everyone, try to slow your shooting, improve your accuracy, and conserve your strength."
Ye Xingchen led the group in keeping their attacks at a steady pace.
But Zhou Mingyu immediately objected when he heard that. He did not know whether the other two teams could deal with those boars.
He did not want to gamble, so he could only get ahead of them as quickly as possible.
He immediately urged everyone on.
"Everyone, hurry up and shoot! Kill them all! If those two exploration teams finish killing that herd of boars, what will be left for us to gain?"
But the archers did not react to his words, looking at Ye Xingchen instead.
Seeing them so openly disobey his orders, Zhou Mingyu was furious.
But having been around for many years, he kept his feelings off his face and looked at Ye Xingchen.
Put that way, Ye Xingchen also thought he had a point. If they were held up here for too long, their later gains would be greatly reduced. He was still counting on getting a Class Change Stone this time.
So he could only have everyone pick up the pace a little, though they still had to maintain a certain interval between shots to ease the soreness in their arms and keep them from exhausting themselves.
Seeing them do this, Zhou Mingyu was still somewhat dissatisfied with their speed, but he said nothing.
At this rate, they should be able to kill or drive off the boars in another ten-odd minutes.
While both groups were being besieged by large numbers of boars,
Chen Yanshan, Liu Tingquan, and Mo Yuemei had a very peaceful journey, aside from encountering one or two lone boars here and there, which they dealt with from the trees.
Seeing that there were hardly any boars in the area, they knew the captain had essentially lured them all away.
They therefore decided to press forward as quickly as possible! They had to finish collecting the meteorites ahead of the other exploration teams.
When the Avatar arrived at the herd's lair, he first observed it from outside.
He confirmed that the Heaven and Earth Qi did not seem to be gathering there from all directions, as he had seen last time.
But after entering the lair and killing a few boars left on guard, he keenly noticed that, in his field of vision, a kind of bright yellow Heaven and Earth Qi was circulating within the lair.
After making sure there were no other boars nearby, he immediately gathered and refined the Heaven and Earth Qi into his body. The information he received identified it as Savage Earth Qi.
It was an earth-attribute Heaven and Earth Qi with a primitive, wild quality.
In the Avatar's dantian, the wisp of bright yellow Savage Earth Qi rose and sank on the surface of the lake of essence qi, like a patch of ocher earth.
Perhaps that was why the herd of boars, led by the white-haired boar, had charged in without fear of death.
After gathering and refining the Heaven and Earth Qi, the Avatar noticed that Earth Vein Qi was constantly gathering here from underground, though it had not combined to form any new Heaven and Earth Qi.
After recording the terrain, topography, and size of the whole area, as well as the path along which the Heaven and Earth Qi circulated,
the Avatar searched all around the boars' lair. In the end, he found two meteorites that had been used and three Class Change Stones, a fairly good haul.
After making sure he had missed nothing, the Avatar followed the direction the exploration team had agreed on beforehand and went after them.