265: Chapter 265 The Great Victory at Black Wind Ridge

The subsequent battles turned into an assembly-line slaughter.

Sonic luring, drawing out, encircling, killing, recovering Yao Beast cores, advancing, and broadcasting sonic waves again.

Pushing forward area by area.

In Area Two, four Fourth-Order Yao Beasts.

Chen Rong and Lin Wan each fought one, while Zhang Dabiao's mecha formation surrounded and hunted the other two.

Cleared in twenty minutes.

In Area Three, five Fourth-Order Yao Beasts.

Among this batch was a Silver-maned Beast—the kind that made Zhao Hu gasp the moment he saw it.

Inside the cockpit, Chen Rong filled the mecha's legs with Spiritual Qi, chased after it, and slashed down onto its back. Lightning poured in from the blade wound, and the Silver-maned Beast collapsed while convulsing in the current.

From catching up to killing it, twenty-three seconds.

The remaining four were handled by the mecha formation, with the longest battle taking eight minutes.

A problem arose in Area Four.

The seven Fourth-Order Yao Beasts were not lured out by the sonic waves.

They didn't fall for the trick.

Zhao Hu was right—Fourth-Order Yao Beasts are not stupid.

With fifteen of their kind cleared consecutively across the first three areas, they sensed the dissipation of Spiritual Qi from a large number of their peers and shrank back into the forest, refusing to come out.

Su Mingyuan thought for a few seconds.

"Chen Rong, Lin Wan, go in and find them."

This was the first time the two of them fought side by side in the dense forest.

The situation in the dense forest was much more complicated than outside.

The trees were dense, with the thickest trunks exceeding five meters in diameter. The canopy blocked out the sky, and the light was so dim that the mecha's optical System automatically switched to enhancement mode.

The mechas could not move fast in the forest; every step had to avoid thick trunks, and some places were so narrow that the mechas had to turn sideways to get through.

Chen Rong's mecha walked on the east side, while Lin Wan was on the west, with the two about three kilometers apart.

Chen Rong turned the mecha's sonic detection System to maximum while expanding his own Third-Order Martial Artist's Spiritual Qi perception outward.

The range of Spiritual Qi perception was heavily restricted in the dense forest—the trees themselves contained Spiritual Qi, interfering with the detection signals like searching for a specific bubble in a pot of boiling water.

However, the Spiritual Qi concentration of Fourth-Order Yao Beasts far exceeded that of the surrounding trees; once they entered the perception range, they were as conspicuous as torches in the dark night.

After walking for about ten minutes, he sensed it.

Front-left, about eight hundred meters away. More than one cluster—two dense Spiritual Qi signals were squeezed together, like two pieces of red-hot iron leaning against each other.

Chen Rong said in a low voice over the channel: "Found two. Front-left, eight hundred meters, right next to each other, probably a pair."

Su Mingyuan's voice came over: "Careful. If you can fight both at the same time, do it; if not, lure one away first."

"Unnecessary."

Chen Rong's mecha accelerated.

Blue-white electric arcs surged from the entire mecha, looking like a moving little sun in the gloom of the dense forest. The moss on the tree trunks was sucked up by the electrostatic field and fluttered in the air.

The two Yao Beasts discovered him at the same time.

They were two giant pythons, their bodies whipping over simultaneously from two directions like whips.

Chen Rong slashed open the attack of the one on the left with a heavenly meteor warblade, lightning pouring into the python's body from the blade wound, carbonizing the muscle tissue under high temperature. The tail of the one on the right swept in from the side; he didn't dodge, condensing ball lightning in the palm of his left hand and shooting it straight into the open snake's mouth.

The lightning burst open inside the enclosed mouth and throat, and the flash leaked through the gaps in the giant python's scales, making the entire snake look like an electrified fluorescent tube.

The two giant pythons fell one after another within a minute.

Meanwhile, three kilometers away on the west side, Lin Wan used a freezing spell to freeze a giant ancient tree along with a flying Yao Beast hidden in the canopy into an icicle, finishing it off with a single heavenly meteor warblade strike.

Of the seven Fourth-Order Yao Beasts in Area Four, Chen Rong and Lin Wan entered the forest and fought three, while the remaining four were startled by the sonic waves and the commotion of the battle in the forest, fleeing out of the dense forest only to be intercepted and killed by the mecha formation waiting outside.

The battles in Areas Five, Six, and Seven were handed over to en own's second echelon and the interspersed support of Chen Rong and Lin Wan.

By two o'clock in the afternoon, all thirty-one Fourth-Order Yao Beasts in the southern section were killed.

Transport convoys drove up endlessly from the rear, loading the Yao Beast corpses and recovering the Yao Beast cores.

Thirty-one Fourth-Order Yao Beast cores, not a single one missing.

Su Mingyuan did not let the troops rest for too long.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, they continued to push north into the middle section.

The middle section was the area with the highest density of Yao Beasts in Black Wind Ridge. Twenty-three Fourth-Order Yao Beasts were clustered together in that basin in Area A, with over thirty more scattered around.

The effectiveness of sonic luring noticeably worsened in the middle section.

Having fought the southern section for a whole day, the Killing Intent and smell of blood drifted dozens of kilometers north with the wind. The Yao Beasts in the middle section were much more alert, and many Fourth-Order ones wouldn't even leave their nests.

Su Mingyuan changed his tactics.

No longer waiting for them to come out.

"Chen Rong, Lin Wan, go into the forest and force the Fourth-Order ones out. The mecha formation will cast a net outside the forest; kill every single one that comes out."

Two dark-black mechas burrowed into the dense forest from both flanks.

The next six hours were a prolonged cat-and-mouse game.

In the forest, Chen Rong was like a walking thunderball. His Spiritual Qi perception locked onto targets, and the blue-white electric arcs illuminated half the valley as he forced the Fourth-Order Yao Beasts out of their hiding places one by one.

Some chose to go toe-to-toe with him head-on—their end was being burned into charcoal by lightning within forty seconds to two minutes.

Some chose to flee—running toward the outside of the forest, only to crash head-on into the heavenly meteor warblades and plasma cannons of the mecha formation.

Some chose to burrow underground—Lin Wan's freezing spell poured down from the ground, freezing the underground holes into ice caves, and the Yao Beasts inside were dragged out half-dead to receive a finishing blow.

Those twenty-three in the Area A basin were the hardest to fight.

They didn't run, nor did they scatter. The twenty-three gathered together, standing back-to-back like a well-trained army.

Su Mingyuan made a decision.

"Chen Rong and Lin Wan will break in from both sides simultaneously. Zhang Dabiao will lead all three hundred mechas to form a battle array at the basin's exit. Surround the entire basin without leaving a single gap."

"And then?" Zhang Dabiao asked.

"Then Chen Rong and Lin Wan will disrupt their formation. Once they are scattered, kill them one by one."

In the early hours of the morning, the battle of the basin commenced.

Chen Rong charged in from the east side, covered in lightning. The heavenly meteor warblade wrapped in blue-white light split open the two outermost Yao Beasts of the formation, and the lightning exploded inside their bodies as both Yao Beasts fell simultaneously.

Lin Wan cut in from the west side, her freezing spell spreading from the ground to freeze the ground in the center of the basin into an ice rink. The Yao Beasts standing on the ice slipped, and their formation began to loosen.

The joint defense of the twenty-three Yao Beasts collapsed.

Without a formation, they were merely twenty-three beasts fighting on their own.

Chen Rong charged left and right through the formation, with lightning clearing the way and the heavenly meteor warblade harvesting. Every strike carried a high-temperature electric arc of six thousand degrees, turning whatever it slashed into charcoal.

Lin Wan's freezing spell continued to expand, compressing the active range of the Yao Beasts smaller and smaller. Some Yao Beasts had all four legs frozen in the ice, able only to roar and wait for death.

A few could not withstand the pressure and rushed outward, only to be greeted head-on by three hundred mechas the moment they exited the basin opening.

The heavenly meteor warblades formed a wall, plasma cannons concentrated fire, and swarm missiles fired in unison. The Yao Beasts that rushed out couldn't even walk three steps before being beaten into sieves.

The battle of the basin lasted for forty minutes.

Twenty-three Fourth-Order Yao Beasts, completely annihilated.

Chen Rong's mecha armor gained a few deep claw marks and a shallow pit corroded by venom, but the main structure remained intact.

Lin Wan's mecha was almost unscathed; the freezing spell made it impossible for most Yao Beasts to even get close to her.

By noon of the second day, the middle section was cleared.

Fifty-seven Fourth-Order Yao Beasts, including the twenty-three in Area A, were all killed.

Fifty-seven Fourth-Order Yao Beast cores were recovered.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, the troops rested briefly and continued pushing north.

The northern section was the final segment of Black Wind Ridge, as well as the one with the highest altitude and most complex terrain.

However, there were only twenty-nine Fourth-Order Yao Beasts in the northern section, with no large-scale concentrations.

Through the actual combat integration of the southern and middle sections, Chen Rong and Lin Wan's cooperation had already become quite tacit.

Chen Rong acted as the spear and Lin Wan as the shield, with one responsible for charging the formation and killing, and the other responsible for crowd control and restriction.

The mecha formation was no longer as flustered and unfamiliar as it was initially; the fifteen S-class team leaders each led their own squads, having established a routine for interspersing and outflanking.

The northern section was fought for a day and a half, faster than expected.

Twenty-nine Fourth-Order ones were completely wiped out.

On the evening of the third day, Su Mingyuan stood at the foot of Black Wind Ridge's main peak, watching the last transport truck loaded with Yao Beast corpses drive south.

The sun had already tilted westward, and golden light shone on the ridges of Black Wind Ridge, turning the dense forest into a painting intertwined with deep green and golden yellow.

Three days.

The entire Black Wind Ridge, one hundred kilometers from south to north, was thoroughly cleaned out.

Tao Zhe transmitted the final battle statistics to Su Mingyuan's tablet.

"Along the entire Black Wind Ridge line, one hundred and seventeen Fourth-Order Yao Beasts were annihilated, along with one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one Third-Order Yao Beasts, and over eighty thousand low-order Yao Beasts. One hundred and seventeen Fourth-Order Yao Beast cores and sixty-two Third-Order Yao Beast cores were obtained. Our side suffered zero deaths; seven mechas were heavily damaged, and eighty-three mechas were lightly damaged, all of which are repairable."