Setting Out! Undercurrents in the Pollution Secret Realm

After a powerful bout of dizziness...

Su Bai, Lin Que, and Shen Yueli landed steadily on a stretch of gray, dreary earth.

The moment they landed, cold air carrying the stench of rotting leaves and pungent sulfur rushed into their faces.

"Cough, cough... The smell here is really hard to describe." Lin Que pinched his nose and surveyed their surroundings warily.

They were on the outskirts of Mist Canyon.

A thick, dark gray fog filled the sky, impenetrable even to sunlight, casting the whole world in a bleak, oppressive gray. Towering black mutant trees surrounded them, their trunks covered in dark red lumps of flesh that looked like tumors and occasionally dripped thick sap.

There was no birdsong or chirping of insects here, only the occasional hair-raising roar of a beast in the distance.

"The dark matter concentration here is around twenty percent. Everyone, stay within range of my moonlight."

Shen Yueli raised the silver staff in her hand, her expression grave. The moonstone set into its tip gave off a soft silver glow, forming a translucent barrier with a radius of about three meters that kept the polluted fog outside.

"You're amazing, class rep!" Lin Que hurriedly huddled up beside Shen Yueli and took a deep breath, feeling the stinging in his lungs ease considerably.

Su Bai, on the other hand, took an interested deep breath of the miasma outside and even smacked his lips.

The concentration's too low. This pollution is as dull as plain boiled water, Su Bai grumbled inwardly.

He was a man who slept every day in a Wasteland Divine Kingdom with 99.5 percent purity. To him, twenty percent pollution didn't even qualify as a lung rinse.

Still, to avoid appearing too shocking, he obediently walked into Shen Yueli's barrier.

"Su Bai, you were too impulsive to provoke Wang Meng outside just now." Shen Yueli spoke without looking back as she cautiously led the way. "Wang Meng is an early-stage second-tier berserker, and there's something very wrong with the auras of the people around him. They don't seem like ordinary high school students. They have a bloody air about them instead."

"I could tell." Su Bai clasped his hands behind his head, looking as relaxed as if he were strolling through a park.

"They're a pack of hungry wolves wearing school uniforms as disguises. To kill me, the Gu Family even bribed mercenaries from outside the school and smuggled them in. They've really gone to a lot of trouble."

At the word "mercenaries," Lin Que turned pale with fright. His legs went weak, and he nearly fell to his knees.

"What?! Mer... mercenaries?! Brother Bai, those are desperadoes who kill without blinking! Is there still time for us to run back to the teleportation point?"

"Look at you." Su Bai slapped the back of the fatty's head. "Since we're already here, we might as well give them a chance to show what they can do. Besides, we're here for an exam. How are we going to earn points without killing a few monsters?"

Su Bai glanced at the points counter on his wrist. It currently showed a pitiful "0."

"Class rep, what's our battle plan?" Su Bai asked.

Shen Yueli pondered for a moment. "Most of the mutant beasts on the outskirts are first-tier Polluted Horned Boars and mutant venomous snakes. They're worth too few points. We'll head straight for the middle of the canyon. If we run into a lone second-tier mutant beast, I'll use moonlight to control it. Lin Que, you use your Ironclad Lizardman to hold the front. Su Bai, you..."

Shen Yueli paused, seemingly considering what role to assign Su Bai. After all, the method he had used to instantly wipe out an army of ten thousand in the simulated battle was too bizarre. Even now, she still hadn't figured it out.

"I'll cheer you on and clean up the battlefield while I'm at it," Su Bai said with a smile, picking up where she left off.

Shen Yueli rolled her eyes at him, speechless.

The three-person squad began advancing through the fog at a steady pace.

Along the way, they encountered several groups of first-tier polluted mutant beasts. Shen Yueli demonstrated the formidable power of an A-rank talent. The three first-tier Moonshadow Elves she summoned, empowered by Moonlight Shield, were like nimble assassins. Their arrows never missed, and they easily brought the fights to an end.

Lin Que's Ironclad Lizardman was clumsy, but its defenses were astonishing, making it a perfect meat shield.

As for Su Bai, he really did act like a pampered young master, following behind with his hands in his pockets the whole time. After every fight, he would volunteer to run over and hack the mutant beasts' corpses to pieces with a rusty machete.

As Lin Que and Shen Yueli saw it, Su Bai was "collecting valuable mutant beast materials."

In reality, Su Bai was secretly tossing all the flesh and blood containing pollution, along with the beasts' broken souls, through the tiny Divine Kingdom rift in his sleeve and into the flesh-and-blood production line at the [Forbidden Hospital].

"Even a mosquito's leg has meat on it. This hospital is a bottomless pit. No amount of materials is enough to fill it." Su Bai happily chopped away.

As time passed, the three gradually made their way deeper into the middle of the canyon.

The fog around them grew thicker, reducing visibility to less than ten meters. A strong smell of blood also began to fill the air.

"Stop."

Shen Yueli suddenly stopped and raised her staff. The three Moonshadow Elves immediately moved in front of her, drawing their bows to the fullest and aiming into the fog ahead.

"What is it, class rep?" Lin Que tightened his grip on the iron shield in his hand, nervous.

"There are very strong spiritual power fluctuations ahead, and... there's the smell of blood." Shen Yueli's delicate brows knitted slightly.

A chilly wind blew past, dispersing a few wisps of fog ahead.

The sight before them made Lin Que gasp.

In a clearing a dozen or so meters away, five students in Linhai No. 3 Middle School uniforms lay dead, their bodies strewn about!

Their deaths had been gruesome. Some had been torn in two, while others had been directly decapitated by some kind of sharp weapon. Blood had stained a large expanse of the surrounding black earth red.

"It's... it's Class Three's team..." Lin Que recognized the number on one person's uniform, his voice trembling. "This was a full team, and their captain was even at peak first tier. How could they have died so horribly?"

Shen Yueli walked forward, crouched down, and examined the wounds on one of the bodies.

Her face instantly turned ashen.

"These wounds weren't inflicted by mutant beasts." Shen Yueli stood and tightened her grip on her staff. "The cuts are smooth and bear strong traces of spiritual power burns. A person did this! Someone is hunting students in this area!"

"A person? Could those criminal forces have infiltrated the place?" Lin Que stepped back twice in fright.

Su Bai walked over to a headless corpse and glanced at the footprints on the ground. The corners of his mouth curled into a cold sneer.

"It wasn't criminal forces who infiltrated the place. It was wolves in sheep's clothing."

Su Bai straightened up, his gaze piercing the fog ahead like a hawk's.

"Come out. You've followed us all this way and even went out of your way to kill a few people as a warning. Do the Gu Family's dogs all like to play these low-level psychological games now?"

Clap, clap, clap.

Crisp applause came from deep within the fog.

Wang Meng slowly emerged from the thick fog with the tall, vicious-looking "students."

Their uniforms were covered in blood. Clearly, the corpses on the ground were their handiwork.

"Su Bai, you really are clever. Not only did you see through our identities, you're even calm enough to wait for death."

Wang Meng stopped ten meters away from Su Bai, the scar on his face twisting with his sinister grin.

"But being clever is useless. In a world where strength reigns supreme, without a background or power, you're just meat on the chopping block."

Wang Meng waved a hand, and the four mercenaries behind him instantly spread out, vaguely forming a circle around Su Bai and his companions.

"Those five unlucky fools were just trash we took care of while we were at it. But I reluctantly accepted their points." Wang Meng raised his wrist, displaying a points counter that had already passed the thousand-point mark.

Shen Yueli glared at Wang Meng in fury. "Wang Meng! Have you gone mad?! If the City Appearance Bureau and the school find out you slaughtered students from your own school, you'll be sentenced to death!"

"Find out? Hahaha!" Wang Meng burst out laughing as though he had heard the funniest joke in the world. "School belle Shen, you're too naive. This is Mist Canyon. There are high-tier mutant beasts everywhere. Once you die here without even your bones left behind, who will know we killed you?"

"Everyone will just think you were unlucky enough to run into a peak second-tier beast tide. That's the perfect ending Grand Elder Gu arranged for you."

Wang Meng looked at Su Bai, a cruel light flickering in his eyes.

"Su Bai, Grand Elder Gu gave his word. As long as I bring back your head, the bounty is ten million! Plus the treatment of a core Gu Family heir!"

"Be good and get on your knees. Open your Divine Kingdom passage and let me cripple your core. I might still give you a quick death. Otherwise, I don't mind giving the beautiful school belle Shen here a proper welcome right in front of you first."

The mercenaries let out lewd laughter, their gazes full of lust as they looked at Shen Yueli.

Though Lin Que's legs were trembling with fear, he still held his shield firmly in front of Su Bai and Shen Yueli. "B-Brother Bai, take the class rep and retreat first. I'll use my Ironclad Lizardman to hold them off!"

Shen Yueli didn't back down. She summoned her Moonshadow Elves, and the moonstone at the tip of her staff erupted with a dazzling light.

"Su Bai, find a chance to run. With my status as a member of the Shen Family, they wouldn't dare actually kill me," Shen Yueli said quietly.

Looking at the two people standing in front of him, one fat and one slender, Su Bai sighed helplessly.

He reached out, pushed Lin Que's shield aside, and walked straight to the front.

"All right, stop putting on a tragic melodrama. They're just a few second-tier small fry. Is there any need for you to risk your lives?"

With his hands in his pockets, Su Bai looked at Wang Meng and the four men opposite him as though he were looking at five walking ATMs.

"Wang Meng, you just said you killed those students so you could pin it on a beast tide?"

A strange smile curled across Su Bai's lips.

"Actually, there's no need to go to all that trouble."

"Because today, the way you die will be ten thousand times more spectacular than any beast tide."