147: Chapter 147 Taking Office

Three days later. North.

A dark green jeep traveled through the towering mountains. A long trail of dust billowed behind the car like a dirt-yellow tail dragging along the winding mountain road.

The roar of the engine echoed through the valley, occasionally startling a few rock pigeons hiding in the crevices, which flapped their wings and flew toward the gray, hazy sky.

Qin Ce sat in the passenger seat wearing a brand-new military uniform.

The uniform had been collected from the logistics department the day before departure; it was deep blue, crisp, and embroidered with fine silver patterns on the collar and cuffs.

At this moment, he sat bolt upright, the insignia on his epaulets reflecting slightly in the sunlight streaming through the car window. This was not the commander badge of a division-level officer, but the most ordinary captain-level badge.

Three thin bars, bronze-colored, so plain they were almost unnoticeable.

His luggage was very simple.

A marching pack stuffed with two changes of military uniforms, an unfinished atlas of the northern terrain, and a few packs of compressed biscuits.

A canteen, and that black commander badge on his wrist, which was lying quiet and still at the moment.

This commander badge would likely not show any activity until he was promoted to company commander.

The person driving was a staff officer sent by the military department, surnamed Sun, in his early forties. His skin was rough and red from the northern winds, with traces of sunburn peeling on his cheekbones.

He did not say much; his voice was low and hoarse, but every sentence hit the nail on the head.

Piled on the back seat were several stacks of documents that Qin Ce had buried himself in reading at home for the past three days, which Jiang Ruowei had delivered.

They contained information regarding the organization of the Wuji Army, military regulations, past mission records, and terrain maps of this vast northern region.

The edges of the documents were curled from his flipping, and a few pages had scraps of paper torn off and inserted, covered in dense annotations.

Qin Ce rested his chin on his hand, looking out the window.

The mountain road was bumpy, and the jeep was like a small boat tossing on the crest of a wave.

The sound of tires crushing gravel, the chassis knocking against dirt ridges, and the strained roar of the engine blended together to form a gritty march.

Yet his thoughts were turning even faster than the wheels.

On that afternoon three days ago, when he moved into the Heaven-class Villa Number Nine, he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window on the fifth floor, watching his mother hanging laundry in the garden.

Little sister Qin Jian was chasing Tianlu across the lawn. Tianlu would run a few steps and look back, waiting for her to catch up before continuing to run, like two carefree children.

At that moment, he told himself that he had to rely on himself to protect these things.

He had done a few things in the past three days.

The first was to explore the intelligence system within the commander badge.

That black token looked unremarkable, but after injecting spiritual power, the amount of information inside was astonishing.

He spent an entire day focusing on the distribution of fierce beasts and terrain intelligence in the northern region, marking every mountain range, every water source, and every known beast den on the map he had drawn himself.

The second was to dig out the privilege plan given by the Wang family and read it word by word.

The plan was very thick, nearly two hundred pages, with the address, scale, current status, and personnel allocation of every industry clearly written out.

The third was to figure out one problem.

He could not manage those industries right now.

The Federation would withdraw all personnel with Federation status from there, a process that would take at least a month, or two to three months at most.

And he had no manpower to take over. The twelve retainer spots were still empty, and besides his mother and little sister, he only had Qingluan and Tianlu by his side.

Therefore, he could only temporarily promote some people through the roster of non-Federation personnel to maintain the operation of the industries.

Of course, this would not last long.

But it was the only expedient measure he could take.

The industries were there and could not run away.

Once he gained a foothold here, once he obtained what he needed from the ruins, and once his strength was truly worthy of those things.

By then, it would not be too late to turn back and clean up these industries.

Right now, the most pressing matters were two things.

His position and the ruins.

The jeep jolted, pulling him back from his thoughts.

Staff Officer Sun pointed ahead, his voice as flat as ever: "Captain Qin, ahead is the mountain pass of Beimang Mountain. Once we cross this mountain, it will be the great northern plains."

Qin Ce sat up straight and cast his gaze into the distance.

Beimang Mountain was a natural barrier to the North of Fengling City. The terrain was steep with towering peaks, like a huge city wall, separating the safety inside the mountains from the danger outside.

The mountain body was grayish-black, covered with a thin layer of moss and lichen, looking from afar like it was draped in a mottled old robe. The higher they went, the sparser the vegetation became, until finally, there were only bare rocks and gravel left.

The wind poured in from the mountain pass, carrying an indescribable smell.

It was not the fishy smell of soil, nor the fresh scent of vegetation, but a more primitive, more savage smell, like the aura emitted from wild beasts.

The jeep spiraled up along the mountain road.

The road became narrower and worse, with gravel splashing everywhere under the tires.

Staff Officer Sun slowed down, gripping the steering wheel tightly, his gaze focused.

Qin Ce gripped the handle on the car door, his body swaying with the vehicle.

The altitude was rising, the air was cooling, and the wind was getting louder. He glanced out the window; below the slope was a dried-up riverbed, with huge rocks scattered on it like the skeletons of ancient giant beasts.

Then, the jeep drove out of the mountain pass.

Qin Ce's pupils contracted sharply.

The great northern plains spread out beneath his feet, stretching as far as the eye could see.

It was a land so vast it was heart-wrenching, with gray-yellow wilderness extending to the end of the sky, dotted with sparse shrubs like an old, patched garment.

Occasionally, one could see a wide river winding through the wilderness like a giant python.

The wind blew from the plains, without obstruction, without buffer, pouring directly into the mountain pass, carrying small sand grains that hit his face, stinging painfully.

But what truly shocked Qin Ce was not the vastness of the plains.

It was the skyline to the northwest.

There, there was a rift.

A huge rift spanning the horizon.

It looked like an invisible giant hand had torn a hole in the middle of the sky.

The edges of the rift were not neat but jagged, like the edges of torn fabric, curling and burning.

Inside the rift was a chaotic darkness, but there was light flowing within that darkness.

It was not sunlight, but a colder, darker, metallic silver-gray light, like liquid metal flowing slowly.

Those rays of light poured out from the rift, flowing downward, spreading a gray, hazy curtain across the horizon, dyeing half the sky lead-gray.

Around the rift, the air was distorted.

Those distorted patterns spread outward from the rift as the center, circle by circle, layer by layer, like ripples stirred up by a stone thrown into water.

But ripples were flat, while these distortions were three-dimensional, from top to bottom, left to right, near to far; the entire sky was trembling slightly, like a giant drum being struck.

Space-Time Rift.

Qin Ce stared at that rift, his mind blank.

He had read descriptions of Space-Time Rifts in textbooks.

"A discontinuity in the spatial structure, a channel connecting two different dimensions."

He had heard teachers explain in the Battle Academy that "the size and stability of the rift determine the scale and level of the fierce beasts."

He had seen with his own eyes the fierce beasts pouring out of the rift during a beast tide, a black mass like a locust plague.

But those words, those languages, those images, were not even one ten-thousandth of what he was seeing with his own eyes at this moment.

That was a scar. A scar on the world.

It was not ferocious, not violent, and even had an eerie tranquility.

But it was right there, silently, eternally, and irreversibly tearing the sky apart.

Looking at it, a strange feeling welled up in Qin Ce's heart—insignificance.

It was not the insignificance of standing at the foot of a high mountain, nor the insignificance of facing the sea, but the insignificance of standing before an existence he could not understand at all, one that transcended the scope of human cognition.

"Seeing it for the first time?" Staff Officer Sun's voice came from the side, carrying the calmness of someone who had been there before.

He turned off the engine, rested his hands on the steering wheel, and also cast his gaze toward the rift.

Qin Ce nodded, his gaze not shifting. His throat felt a bit dry, and he wanted to say something, but could not say anything.

"You will get used to it." Staff Officer Sun said, his tone as if chatting about today's weather, "When I saw it for the first time, my reaction was even bigger than yours. I threw up the whole way in the car. The old driver said my face was green, the same color as the grass in the North."

Qin Ce barely twitched the corners of his mouth, counting as a smile.

He shifted his gaze from the rift to the vast land below it.

Centered on the Space-Time Rift, the distribution of fierce beasts showed clear layers.

In the area closest to the rift, about twenty or thirty kilometers in radius, the gray mist was so thick it could not be dissolved.

Huge figures could be vaguely seen moving in the mist—those figures were too big, too heavy, and with every step they took, one could feel the trembling of the ground.

One figure was like a moving hill, trudging slowly and heavily through the mist.

One figure was slender and towering, like a pillar inserted into the sky.

And one figure was curled up directly beneath the rift, motionless, but the pressure of its aura could be felt even from tens of kilometers away, like a giant rock pressing on his chest.

One layer further out, the mist became a bit thinner, turning into a translucent gauze curtain.

This layer was the area with the densest concentration of fierce beasts, with black dots spread across the wilderness like a colony of ants.

Qin Ce squinted to look closely; those black dots were not stationary, they were moving, moving in groups.

Some teams were like a winding river, slowly flowing in a certain direction.

Some teams were like exploding fireworks, spreading in all directions.

And a few teams were colliding, entangling, and biting each other—that was the slaughter between fierce beasts, for territory, for food, or simply because of instinct.

Further out, the mist thinned into wisps of light smoke, drifting in the wind.

The density of fierce beasts was significantly reduced, no longer solid patches of black dots, but sporadic and scattered.

Occasionally, one could see a small group moving, three or five, at most ten or so. Their body sizes were also much smaller than those in the inner layer, their movements faster, and their postures more alert, as if they were guarding against something at any time.

In the outermost layer, near the foot of Beimang Mountain, the mist had completely dissipated. The fierce beasts here were of the lowest level and the smallest number, wandering sporadically on the edge of the wilderness. Qin Ce could even see the outlines of some of them, some like deer, some like wolves, some like wild oxen, but all were a size larger than normal, and their movements were rougher. They were foraging, drinking water, and fighting in the wilderness, no different from the fierce beasts around Yuntai Town.

Layer by layer, piece by piece, from strong to weak, from dense to sparse. Like ripples, but ripples were planar, while this was three-dimensional.

"This place," Qin Ce's voice was a bit dry, "is the true world of fierce beasts."

"Correct." Staff Officer Sun restarted the engine, and the jeep slowly drove down the hillside, "The area within Fengling City has been cleared. Patrol squads sweep through every few days, and the escaped fierce beasts are low-level and few in number, posing no threat. But here..."

He pointed to the gray, hazy wilderness outside the window: "This side has not been cleared. The fierce beasts are the masters of this sky, and we have become the guests instead." His gaze was cast toward the direction of the rift, dark and unclear.

The jeep continued North along the road at the foot of the mountain.

The road surface was slightly smoother, but still bumpy.

Staff Officer Sun drove while telling Qin Ce about the situation in the North.

He spoke very slowly, very casually, as if chatting about daily life, but every sentence hit the point.

"That Lava Bear you saw in the beast tide earlier, Bright Moon Level, can only be considered average here. Near the rift, there are plenty of fierce beasts stronger than it. That bear was originally from the rift, ran to the west, occupied a mountain, and slowly developed. To put it bluntly, it was just a wealthy local squire, only fierce in the village, but nothing when it reached the city."

"The truly powerful fierce beasts are all holed up by the rift. It is not that they like it there, but they have no choice. The spiritual energy concentration by the rift is more than ten times higher than here, enough for them to survive, evolve, and multiply. Leaving that range, the spiritual energy is insufficient, and they do not live comfortably."

He paused, his voice lowering a bit: "Actually, the world on the other side of the rift is much richer than ours. The spiritual energy is fuller, resources are more abundant, and rare treasures are everywhere. So, the truly powerful fierce beasts disdain coming to our side. Just like city people do not want to live in the countryside. Sometimes, those truly powerful fierce beasts appearing on Earth might just be passing through. Entering from the Space-Time Rift on this side and exiting from the other side saves them from flying tens of thousands of miles."

Qin Ce's brows furrowed slightly: "Then these fierce beasts on our side..."

"Actually, many are naturally bred. Otherwise, they are the ones squeezed out." Staff Officer Sun said, "The rift has been open for over a hundred years. The fierce beasts are born here, grow here, and are passed down from generation to generation. They have adapted to the environment here, so their levels cannot go up. Just like country folks entering the city, after living there for a long time, they still cannot become city people. The truly pure-blooded, high-level batch all stay on the rift side."

Qin Ce was silent for a long time.

He recalled the knowledge learned in the Battle Academy's classroom, the classification of fierce beasts, habits, weaknesses, and coping strategies.

That knowledge was compiled into textbooks, printed in lead type, teachers lectured on it, and students took notes below. It was tested in exams, tested in graduation, and tested in promotions.

He had always thought that was everything. But at this moment, in front of this vast wilderness, in front of that rift tearing the horizon in the northwest, that knowledge seemed so thin, so pale.

What was written in the textbooks was a "cleared world." And the world before his eyes was the real world.

The jeep turned around a mountain bend.

Qin Ce withdrew his gaze from the wilderness and looked ahead. Then, his eyes widened again.

This is the Wuji Army?

...