19: Chapter 19 Mountains of Corpses and Seas of Blood, Die, Master!

[Item: Highly Concentrated Beast-Attracting Powder (Black Market Contraband)]

[Quality: Inferior (Mixed with a large amount of industrial attractants)]

[Effect: Volatilizes upon contact with wind, scent can spread up to five kilometers in radius. Has a lethal attraction to beasts below E-Rank, causing them to fall into a berserk, bloodthirsty state. Duration: One hour.]

[System Evaluation: Junk quality bait. But in the hands of specific hunters, it is the key to opening a feast.]

Lin Fan looked at the powder in his hand, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Beast-Attracting Powder.

This kind of thing is expensive on the black market and is strictly regulated.

The Black Snake Squad carrying this thing with them was clearly not for fun.

"So that's how it is."

Lin Fan instantly understood Wang Teng's vicious scheme.

If the Black Snake Squad couldn't win head-on, or wanted to destroy the evidence, they would scatter this packet of powder.

A riot of beasts within a five-kilometer radius would be enough to form a small beast tide.

By then, he and the fatty would be trampled into meat paste by countless crazed beasts, not even leaving bone fragments behind. Even if someone investigated afterward, it could only be classified as an "accidental encounter with a beast tide."

Quite the calculation.

"Young Master Wang, you really gave me a big surprise."

Lin Fan revealed a brilliant smile. But in that smile, there was a chill that made one's bone marrow freeze.

"Bro... Brother Fan, what is that?"

The fatty finished vomiting and came over with a pale face.

"Beast-Attracting Powder."

Lin Fan shook the bag in his hand, "Funeral fireworks prepared for us by Wang Teng. As long as it's scattered, the beasts within a few kilometers will all run over to see us off."

"Holy crap?!"

The fatty was so scared he sat on the ground, "Then what are you waiting for? Throw it away quickly! This thing is too hot to handle!"

"Throw it away?"

Lin Fan raised his eyebrows, "Why throw it away? Young Master Wang paid a high price for this; it would be a shame to waste it."

"Then... what do you want to do?" The fatty looked at Lin Fan's familiar smile, and a sense of foreboding suddenly rose in his heart.

"Fatty, do you remember what we came here to do?"

Lin Fan put the Beast-Attracting Powder into his pocket and turned to look into the deeper wilderness.

There was a narrow gorge there, a slit in the sky. The cliffs on both sides rose into the clouds, with a passage less than ten meters wide in the middle.

The terrain was treacherous, easy to defend but hard to attack.

"Rest... restocking," the fatty answered subconsciously.

"Right, restocking."

Lin Fan pointed to the gorge, "Since someone sent us bait, if we don't throw a party, wouldn't we be letting down Young Master Wang's good intentions?"

"You mean..." The fatty widened his eyes, as if looking at a madman.

"Since he wants to create a beast tide, I will return him a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood."

Lin Fan bent over, grabbed Captain Black Snake's ankle, and dragged him into the deep pit nearby like a dead dog.

"Don't just stand there, throw those two corpses in too. Bury them."

Destroying the evidence.

Ten minutes later.

The rock forest, originally filled with the smell of blood, had been cleaned up. Except for a few dark red marks remaining on the ground, there was no sign that a life-and-death struggle had just taken place here.

Lin Fan carried a bulging loot bag on his back—inside were three sets of E-Rank equipment and the fragments of Captain Black Snake's dual blades.

Although damaged, the system recycling could still be worth a few thousand.

Even a mosquito's leg is meat.

The two walked one after another towards that narrow gorge.

The wind grew stronger.

The wailing wind passed through the gorge, like countless aggrieved souls crying out.

Lin Fan stood at the narrowest part of the gorge.

In front was an open area shaped like a gourd mouth, exactly downwind.

"Fatty, block the back."

Lin Fan pointed to the narrow passage behind him, "Later, no matter how many beasts charge in, if even one gets past you, I'll deduct ten thousand from your share."

"Brother Fan, are you playing for real?"

The fatty's hands gripping the mace were full of sweat, but looking at Lin Fan's firm back, he gritted his teeth, "Fine! As long as the money is right, I'll give you my life!"

He set up the shield (scavenged from the Black Snake Squad) at the narrowest part of the passage, transforming himself into a steel defensive line.

"They're coming!"

The earth was trembling.

Deep in the gorge, dust billowed, and hundreds of scarlet eyes lit up in the dim light, like a flowing sea of ghost fire. The stench of rot mixed with the rank odor of beasts, carried by the wind, slammed fiercely into their faces.

"Fatty, hold them off!"

Lin Fan stood on a protruding rock, his combat blade pointing diagonally at the ground.

"Ahhh! Let's fight!"

Zhang Hao, the fatty, let out a distorted roar. He jammed himself tightly into the gap at the narrowest part of the gorge, his feet wedged into the mud like nails.

His C-Rank Talent [Hardened Skin] was activated to the limit, and his entire body's skin took on a grayish-black, rock-like luster.

Boom!

The first wave of the beast tide crashed into them.

It was a group of Iron-hide Pigs known for their impact force.

The dull sound of impact was teeth-grinding. The fatty felt like he had been hit head-on by a fully loaded truck, his internal organs shifting. But his feet did not move a single inch.

"Get... lost!"

The fatty gritted his teeth, and using the force of the recoil, he swung his mace horizontally.

At the same time, Lin Fan moved.

Like a calm hunting falcon, he dove down from the rock.

The blade light was like a waterfall.

Taking advantage of the momentary stiffness of the leader beast blocked by the fatty, Lin Fan's blade precisely cut into the soft flesh of its neck.

Puchi.

Blood sprayed out, reaching three feet high.

[Successfully killed E-Rank Iron-hide Pig, obtained 1 complete corpse.]

Lin Fan didn't even look at the fallen corpse, waving one hand, and it instantly disappeared. In the eyes of outsiders, it was stuffed into that huge marching bag, but in reality, it had already laid inside the system space.

"Next."

Lin Fan's voice was as cold as a machine.

This was the "slit in the sky" he had chosen.

No matter the scale of the beast tide, at this pass that only allowed one beast to pass through at a time, it had become the simplest "queue up for execution" game.

The fatty was responsible for holding the position, acting as a meat shield.

Lin Fan was responsible for reaping, acting as a turret.

This was not a battle, but clearly a blood-soaked assembly line.

The slaughter continued.

Ten minutes.

Twenty minutes.

The fatty's roars, initially out of fear, slowly turned into some kind of beast-like howling.

"Come on! Who else!"

"Is that all the strength you have? You're just scratching an itch for me!"

At this moment, the fatty was covered in blood. It was unclear if it was the beasts' blood or his own. His [Hardened Skin], under countless impacts and bites, not only did not collapse, but its color became deeper and deeper.

The originally grayish-black rock texture actually faintly revealed a hint of cold, hard metallic luster.

That was a sign of the talent's proficiency rapidly increasing under life-and-death pressure.

"Drink the potion."

Lin Fan tossed over a bottle of primary recovery potion in his spare time.

The fatty didn't even use his hands to catch it, directly opening his mouth to bite off the bottle mouth, swallowing it along with the glass shards.

"Refreshing!"

The fatty wiped the blood off his face, his eyes bloodshot; he was clearly high on the slaughter.

This pleasure of fists hitting flesh, where every swing could take a life, completely awakened the dormant ferocity within him. The timid little fatty was gone, replaced by an awakening berserker.

Lin Fan did not speak.

He was busier than the fatty.

The alloy combat blade in his hand had already rolled its edge; this E-Rank weapon simply could not withstand such high-intensity continuous slashing.

Crack.

Finally, after cutting down a mutated Rot Wolf, the combat blade snapped.

Lin Fan expressionlessly threw away the broken blade and backhanded out Captain Black Snake's dual blades from his backpack.

Continue slashing.

The actions were boring and monotonous.

Swing blade, enter flesh, pull blade, collect corpse.

The system notification sound frantically flooded the screen, like a pleasant symphony.

[Obtained Mutated Rat Corpse x 1, Completeness 95%]

[Obtained Rot Wolf Essence Blood x 1, Quality E-Rank]

[Obtained Iron-hide Pig Tusk x 2, Quality Good]

Lin Fan's brain was running at high speed; every time a corpse fell, the calculator in his mind would jump once.

Ten thousand.

Twenty thousand.

Fifty thousand.

These weren't corpses, they were clearly overwhelming banknotes raining down on him.

This pleasure of watching the balance numbers jump frantically was enough to overcome all fatigue.

One hour later.

The corpses in front of the gorge could no longer be piled up. Lin Fan had to retreat while fighting to make room for new "raw materials."

"Brother Fan, the Beast-Attracting Powder seems to be losing its effect!"

The fatty panted heavily, the mace in his hand having turned completely red.

The originally dense beast tide began to thin out, and the remaining beasts seemed to have regained their sanity, looking at the piles of their kind's corpses and starting to hesitate.

Lin Fan looked up into the distance.

A more oppressive aura was approaching. That was a big guy attracted by the smell of blood, possibly D-Rank or even higher.

"Retreat."

Lin Fan decisively ordered.

Greed is a merchant's virtue, but not knowing when to advance or retreat is a dead man's epitaph.

Today's earnings have already exceeded the target.

"Let's go!"

The two did not drag their feet at all, using the cover of the terrain to quickly disengage from the battlefield.