57: the whole story

"Out of control? What happened?!" Su Ze asked in great surprise.

Guo Linshan had been perfectly fine when he saw him a few days ago. How could he have suddenly lost control of his spirit beast?

Sun Hao replied, "I'm not sure either. According to the other team members, the Captain said he was going into seclusion for a few days after he got back last time. But then, on the third day, an accident happened and he lost control."

"The Captain bore the brunt of it and was seriously injured. Our other members also suffered heavy losses while trying to stop the rampaging spirit beast..." Sun Hao's voice carried a hint of grief.

He then pulled himself together and said, "Captain Guo's spirit beast is incredibly powerful, and we can't restrain it at all. Now that Principal Xiao Xu and President Yu Shenghuo are away, I thought about it for a long time and realized only your Diamond-rank Spirit Beast could stop it. That's why I rushed back to find you."

Su Ze nodded without hesitation; he had intended to go help anyway.

The gilded wings were pushed to their maximum speed. Soon, Su Ze saw the massive, rampaging monster beast ahead.

It was a massive Armored Rock Rhino, looking like a giant rhinoceros clad in heavy rock armor.

It used its single horn to continuously flip up boulders it controlled from the rock strata, hurling them away with great force.

The remaining Great Xia Spirit Guards gritted their teeth and used their bodies to knock the rocks back, protecting the civilians who were still evacuating behind them.

However, their camp had already been reduced to ruins. Many Great Xia Spirit Guards lay among the debris, their fates unknown.

At the very front of the rampaging Armored Rock Rhino was Guo Linshan, covered in blood and wearing a set of somewhat crude, bronze-colored beast taming armor.

Though he had lost the assistance of his strongest spirit beast, he still held the front line.

The armor on his body was his first spirit beast, a bronze grade monster beast.

His talent wasn't particularly good; back then, he had barely passed the Beast Taming College Entrance Examination and took five years to reach level twenty and graduate from Beast Taming University.

After that, he joined the Daxia Spirit Guard. Only after performing many meritorious deeds was he rewarded with a Gold-rank spirit beast—the Armored Rock Rhino he had now.

As for the bronze grade monster beast, it had been retired in Guo Linshan's beast taming space after reaching its bloodline limit of level thirty, but now it had to fight once more.

Because its level was too low, Guo Linshan chose the method of Beast Spirit Armorization, using his own Spiritual Power to augment the spirit beast's strength.

However, the difference in level was simply too vast. After withstanding a massive rock flying toward the crowd, Guo Linshan spat out a mouthful of blood, his aura becoming withered and weak.

Seeing this, Su Ze did not immediately charge into battle. Instead, he landed with Sun Hao first and rescued Guo Linshan.

After all, this was Guo Linshan's spirit beast; he would definitely be very clear about its abilities and weaknesses.

To know one's enemy and oneself is the only way to win a hundred battles.

"Captain Guo, what exactly happened?" Su Ze asked after placing Guo Linshan in a safe spot.

Guo Linshan didn't answer immediately. Instead, he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at Su Ze in surprise. "Why are you here? It's dangerous, leave quickly!"

But Su Ze shook his head firmly. "Captain Guo, don't forget that I am also a member of the Great Xia Spirit Guards now. I took an oath to Be the first to die for the cause, so I cannot leave."

"Besides, who else but me can stop it from wreaking havoc? By the time the Great Xia Spirit Guards from other cities arrive, it will be far too late!"

Guo Linshan was stunned for a moment, then could only shake his head with a sense of relief, saying indignantly, "You've only just joined the Spirit Guard and yet you have such resolve. That boy Jiang Tianlong is already a Detachment Commander, yet for his own selfish desires, he completely ignores the lives of the people!"

Seeing this, Su Ze instantly guessed that this matter was related to the Jiang Family again, but he was still puzzled. "Captain Guo, how did Jiang Tianlong make your spirit beast lose control?"

Guo Linshan sighed and explained how he had planned to use the monster beast crystal core he obtained from the Jiang Family to help his spirit beast break through.

"Everything was going smoothly at first, but then something went wrong. There was actually a very subtle trace of malevolence hidden within the monster beast crystal core he gave me!"

"Over the course of two days, the Armored Rock Rhino continuously absorbed the power within the crystal core, and its mind was steadily eroded by that malevolence."

"In the end, this trace of malevolence completely corrupted the Armored Rock Rhino's sanity, turning it into a feral beast that broke free from the Beast Taming Contract, causing this Monster Calamity..."

As he finished, he looked at the still-destructive Armored Rock Rhino with great heartache.

Over several decades, it had long since ceased to be just a monster beast in Guo Linshan's heart; it was his partner and his best friend.

But now, his best friend had fallen into madness and had even nearly killed him.

The culprit behind all of this was the Jiang Family!

Su Ze was also startled. The quenching thought beads he had been refining these past few days were also from the Jiang Family.

Although he had checked them very carefully before refining them and confirmed they were very pure quenching thought beads...

...hearing about Guo Linshan's encounter now, he couldn't help but worry if some hidden danger had also been planted in the quenching thought beads.

Seeing Su Ze's slightly panicked expression, Guo Linshan knew what he was worried about and comforted him. "Crystal cores are large and their energy is more chaotic, so I wasn't able to discover that trace of malevolence hidden deep inside."

"But quenching thought beads are different. Not only are they small, but their power is also much purer, making it very difficult to tamper with them."

Guo Linshan said with considerable resentment, "This time, they were coming for me!"

However, Su Ze did not entirely agree with Guo Linshan's view. Because Xiao Xu and Yu Shenghuo had both been lured away at this specific juncture, he felt more and more that this couldn't be a coincidence.

The Jiang Family seemed to be targeting Guo Linshan, but they were also forcing Su Ze to take action now.

In fact, the reason the Jiang Family hadn't tampered with the quenching thought beads wasn't that they couldn't.

Rather, they felt it was unnecessary. They assumed that Guo Linshan would keep these military-grade quenching thought beads to distribute to the Spirit Guard members.

They had no idea he had given them all to Su Ze, otherwise they wouldn't have had to take such a circuitous route.

Su Ze scanned his surroundings. Although he didn't find anything unusual, his intuition told him that people from the Jiang Family must be waiting nearby for an opportunity.

But Su Ze had no choice but to step up, because the Great Xia Spirit Guards were about to buckle under the Armored Rock Rhino's assault, and the civilians behind them were far from being fully evacuated.

"Heh, trying to plot against me? I'll see who ends up suffering in the end! You'll regret not tampering with those quenching thought beads!"