First Blood in the Secret Realm, Who Is the Prey?

"You're at death's door, and you still dare to talk big!"

Su Bai's disdainful gaze had thoroughly enraged Wang Meng. He was a dignified beginner-stage second-tier berserker, accompanied by four battle-hardened mercenaries. Their lineup was enough to let them strut through the secret realm unchallenged, yet a piece of trash with an F-rank Wasteland Divine Kingdom dared to look down on them!

"Brothers, no need to leave him alive! Chop him to pieces!"

Wang Meng roared, and divine power erupted from his body. The illusory figure of a berserker wielding a giant axe appeared behind him. His eyes blood-red, he charged like a maddened bull, swinging his fist straight at Su Bai's head with a shriek that tore through the air!

The other four mercenaries didn't stand idle either. They swiftly summoned their respective followers. Among them were an assassin concealed in the shadows and a mutant venomous snake that spat poison. They sealed off all of Su Bai's escape routes from four directions.

A killing blow in a single strike! This was how mercenaries operated: they never gave their prey a chance to catch its breath.

"Brother Bai, watch out!" Lin Que closed his eyes in despair.

Shen Yueli bit the tip of her finger, preparing to use a forbidden technique to forcibly summon a second-tier Moonshadow Guard.

And yet.

Su Bai, standing at the center of the murderous intent, didn't so much as blink.

He stood quietly where he was, watching Wang Meng draw closer and closer. A cruel sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.

"You really don't know the first thing about rules."

Su Bai didn't shout. He merely murmured a name in his heart.

Hongdou, come out for a snack.

Hummm!!!

Just as Wang Meng's fist came within ten centimeters of Su Bai's nose!

A pitch-black abyss split open in the void behind Su Bai without warning. A suffocating aura of wasteland contamination, its purity as high as 99.5%, swept across the entire clearing like an erupting volcano!

Wang Meng bore the brunt of it, the black mist spraying directly into his face. He felt the berserker protective aura he was so proud of corrode full of holes in an instant, as though it were made of paper. A sharp pain spread through all his internal organs.

But what frightened him even more was the glaring red figure that drifted out of the black mist.

Hongdou!

She wore a scarlet bridal gown that looked as though it had been dyed in blood, and her waist-length black hair stirred without wind. Her ghastly pale hands, utterly devoid of color, moved at an incredible speed and seized Wang Meng's fist, stopping a blow that carried the force of ten thousand jin!

Bang!

A dull thud rang out. Hongdou caught Wang Meng's punch, powerful enough to shatter stone monuments, in her hand with effortless ease.

Wang Meng felt as though his fist had struck a block of ten-thousand-year-old profound ice. A bone-deep chill raced up his arm and spread through his entire body, freezing his blood and divine power.

"You... what kind of follower is this?!" Wang Meng's eyes widened in terror. He desperately tried to pull his hand back, but Hongdou's strength was astonishing, and he couldn't budge it at all.

"It hurts so much..."

The ethereal, mournful murmur exploded beside Wang Meng's ear.

Hongdou tilted her ghastly pale, featureless face slightly and "looked" straight at Wang Meng.

[Core rule one: Death Gaze, judgment triggered!]

Crack!

A crisp, teeth-grating crack of breaking bone echoed through the deathly silent clearing.

Wang Meng's burly body stiffened abruptly. As Hongdou's invisible rule strangled him, his neck twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees!

His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly in the direction of his own back, filled with endless terror and disbelief.

Thud!

Wang Meng's massive body crashed to the ground, splashing black mud and water everywhere.

Wang Meng, beginner-stage second-tier berserker and Gu Family sleeper agent, had fallen.

From his first move to his death, the entire process had taken less than two seconds!

Deathly silence fell over the clearing.

The four mercenaries who had been about to attack stopped dead in their tracks. They stared as though looking at monsters: at the young man standing in the black mist with his hands in his pockets, and at the red-clad female ghost beside him, who radiated an aura of death in the extreme.

"Wh-what the hell kind of sorcery is this? He killed a second-tier in an instant?!" one mercenary said, his voice trembling.

Lin Que and Shen Yueli were stunned too. Although they knew Su Bai had displayed his might in the simulated battle, this was the first time they had seen him truly make a move with their own eyes. The way his rule-based killing swept everything aside like dead leaves was an immense visual shock to them.

"Run! Something's wrong with this kid! He's too tough for us, retreat!"

The lead mercenary lived up to his reputation as an old hand. The moment he saw Wang Meng killed in an instant, he made the most correct judgment.

The four turned without hesitation. Without even having time to retrieve their followers, they split up and plunged into the thick fog, trying to use the terrain to escape.

"Trying to run?"

Su Bai sneered and snapped his fingers.

"I hate it most when people are late. Since you're here, stay and be fertilizer."

"School bus! Clear them out!"

Rumble!!!

At Su Bai's command, the Divine Kingdom rift behind him instantly widened to seven or eight meters.

A battered bus flickering with ghostly green flames and covered in bloodstains burst out of the black mist with a deafening roar of its engine, slamming hard into the clearing!

Screeeech!!!

The Midnight School Bus let out a piercing screech of brakes that could tear apart souls!

The screech not only pierced the fog, but also struck directly into the depths of the four fleeing mercenaries' minds.

All four were desperadoes who killed and robbed. The greed and fear in their hearts had long since exceeded the judgment threshold.

[Midnight School Bus core rule: Forced Boarding, judgment successful!]

Hum! Hum! Hum! Hum!

Four overwhelmingly powerful spatial forces tugged at the mercenaries like invisible giant nets, instantly locking onto the four men who had already fled dozens of meters away.

"No! I can't control my body!"

"What the hell kind of bus is this?!"

Amid their desperate screams, their bodies flew backward against their will, hurtling like four thrown baseballs straight toward the school bus's open door.

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

The four were forcibly stuffed into the bus, piled on top of one another.

Then the door slammed shut with a bang.

Inside the bus, the fourteen evil spirits, who had long been ravenous, let out excited shrieks.

"Tear them apart..."

"So hungry..."

Miserable screams rose and fell inside the bus, and blood instantly stained the windows red. Trapped in the enclosed bus and mobbed by fourteen high-tier evil spirits, the four battle-hardened second-tier mercenaries didn't even get a chance to self-destruct their Divine Kingdoms before they were devoured entirely.

[Ding! The Midnight School Bus has successfully forced four second-tier False Gods aboard and devoured them!]

[Baleful energy inside the bus has increased greatly! The Divine Kingdom core has absorbed a high-purity source of divine power!]

[Current number of stops: 2/3. Host, please continue searching for passengers and complete the final-stop mission!]

Listening to the system notifications in his mind, Su Bai clapped his hands in satisfaction.

He walked over to Wang Meng's corpse and bent down to remove the point counter from his wrist; its total had already passed one thousand. Then he deftly pulled the spatial ring off Wang Meng's finger as well.

"What a pauper. This is all he had." Su Bai curled his lip in disdain and stuffed the ring into his pocket.

Then he kicked Wang Meng's corpse toward the Divine Kingdom rift.

"Forbidden Hospital, incoming delivery. Put him through the assembly line and wash his brain. From now on, he can be a brainless security guard in the emergency room."

Wang Meng's corpse was instantly swallowed by the black mist and sent to the [Forbidden Hospital] deep within the Divine Kingdom to undergo "Flesh Reorganization."

After doing all that, Su Bai turned around and gave the still-stupefied Lin Que and Shen Yueli a radiant smile.

"All right, the trash has been cleared away."

Su Bai casually tossed the captured point counter in his hand to Shen Yueli.

"Class monitor, since they were so eager to offer up their heads, we'll gladly accept these points. Next, shouldn't we head deeper in and find some real big fish?"

Shen Yueli caught the point counter and looked at Su Bai's utterly unruffled expression. Stormy waves surged in her heart.

Five second-tier experts had been wiped out in less than two minutes, without even a corpse left behind.

Just what kind of terrifying abyssal power did this young man control?

"What... exactly did you awaken?" Shen Yueli couldn't help asking, a trace of awe entering her voice for the first time.

Su Bai rested his hands behind his head and looked into the depths of the fog, his gaze profound.

"What I awakened was a Wasteland Divine Kingdom. It's just that I like to grow things in the wasteland that other people wouldn't dare plant."

Su Bai grinned.

"Let's go. There are plenty more good things in this secret realm. Since the Gu Family has reached its hand in here, how could I possibly do justice to the ten-million bounty they gave me if I don't tear out every trump card they've arranged in this secret realm, roots and all?"

"The hunt has only just begun."