316: Chapter 316 Thunder Leopard

Early the next morning.

Day had just broken.

The horizon of the Yaowu World was still a grayish-blue; the sun had not yet risen, and a thin layer of orange light spread across the horizon.

On the open ground outside the north gate of the Forward Base, Chen Rong stood alone.

training uniform, tactical pack, and a skyfall steel short blade at his waist.

To avoid disturbing BL-001, Chen Rong did not pilot a mecha.

Su Mingyuan walked out of the Command Center and stood before him.

"The latest position of BL-001." Su Mingyuan handed him a printed map. "A heat source signal captured by a drone forty minutes ago. It's in a creek valley on the eastern side of the mountainous region. It's drinking water."

Chen Rong folded the map twice and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

"Once you arrive, find a high vantage point to observe first," Su Mingyuan said. "Don't rush to make contact. A Fourth-Order Monster Beast's perception range is at least two kilometers; it will know the moment you enter its alert perimeter."

Chen Rong gave a grunt of affirmation.

"If things don't look right, retreat," Su Mingyuan said. "Zhang Dabiao is following five kilometers behind."

"Understood."

Chen Rong turned and walked out toward the north.

The gravel on the open ground crunched under his feet.

He passed the sentry post at the north gate, a row of prefabricated houses by the road, and the supply yard of the Engineering Corps.

After walking past the base boundary, the scenery on both sides changed from prefab houses and barbed wire to low shrubs and dark red moss.

The morning breeze blew from the north—dry, cool, and carrying the scent of vegetation.

Spiritual energy seeped in from the air, flowing into his lungs with every breath, and then from his lungs into his Meridians.

There was no need to actively circulate his cultivation; just normal breathing allowed him to feel his spiritual power slowly increasing.

The Forward Base grew further and further away behind him.

The silhouettes of the mechas turned into a row of tiny gray squares before disappearing below the horizon.

Chen Rong quickened his pace.

The physical stamina of a Foundation Establishment Stage martial artist far exceeded that of ordinary people.

He ran at full speed, the force of his toes tapping on the rocks just enough to gain momentum without leaving any extra traces.

The hem of his training uniform was whipped up by the wind, slapping against his legs with a rhythmic popping sound.

Eighty kilometers.

At his current speed, it would take about an hour.

When Su Mingyuan returned to the Command Center, the drone footage on the screen was already transmitting in real-time.

Chen Rong's figure was a green dot on the topographical map, moving toward the northeast at a steady speed.

Five kilometers behind, ten blue dots followed—Zhang Dabiao's mecha formation, arranged in a loose arc.

Su Mingyuan sat down at the command console and poured a glass of water.

In the small window in the upper right corner of the screen, the drone was performing a new round of thermal scanning on the search area.

Dozens of red dots were scattered across the mountainous region with a twenty-kilometer radius; most were low-level First-Order and Second-Order monster beasts, not worth noting.

But near the eastern creek valley, there was a heat source significantly brighter than the surroundings.

It was moving.

It was very fast—appearing like a silvery-white marble in the drone footage, bouncing back and forth between the ridges and gullies with an entirely irregular trajectory.

BL-001.

Su Mingyuan took a sip of water; a thin layer of condensation had formed on the metal wall of the cup.

He set the cup down and looked at the two dots on the screen—one green, one white.

The green one was still sixty kilometers away, moving steadily.

The white one had already slowed down; the heat source signal stopped in the middle of the creek valley, no longer jumping.

"It stopped," Tao Zhe said.

Su Mingyuan didn't respond.

On the screen, the drone camera automatically zoomed in, and a narrow creek valley appeared in the frame.

There was the sound of water in the valley.

It wasn't loud, like a trickle seeping from a crack in the rocks, flowing down the gravel at the bottom of the valley to form a small stream less than half a meter wide.

The creek water was very clear, revealing the grayish-white pebbles at the bottom.

A beast crouched by the creek.

Its silver-gray fur was short and dense, clinging to its body like a metallic coating.

Its body was two sizes larger than a leopard from the Main World, with a shoulder height of nearly one meter and a length of about two meters from head to tail.

Its limbs were slender, with the forelimbs slightly shorter than the hind limbs; its muscle lines were clean and sharp, without a single ounce of extra fat.

It was drinking water. The movement of its tongue licking the surface of the creek was very fast; with every lick, it would shake its head to either side to flick away the water droplets. Its ears were pricked up, constantly rotating like two small radars.

Occasionally, a small arc of electricity would flash across its fur—a spark of white light would jump from the silver-gray tips of its hair and vanish with a crackle. However, the frequency was high, occurring every few seconds, making the entire beast look as if it were enveloped in a faint layer of electric light.

Fourth-Order Monster Beast, Thunder Leopard.

In this mountainous region, it was the absolute apex predator.

No monster beast within a five-kilometer radius dared to approach its territory.

Having finished drinking, it raised its head and licked the corners of its mouth.

Its vertical pupils contracted slightly.

Its ears turned toward the south.

The sound of water remained in the valley, and the wind blew from the west, carrying the scent of moss and wet mud. But beneath these scents, a trace of something that did not belong to this valley had mixed in.

It was very faint. Metal and sweat.

Its nostrils flared twice, and its ears locked onto the south.

That scent was approaching.

The Thunder Leopard did not hesitate.

It turned silently, and with a kick of its four legs, its entire body shot like an arrow into a rocky crevice on the eastern side of the creek valley.

Within three seconds, it disappeared among the jagged rocks.

Silence returned to the creek valley.

Only the sound of water remained.

Simultaneously, Chen Rong came to a stop on a mountain ridge.

He had run for nearly an hour and a half, covering eighty kilometers of mountainous terrain, crossing six ridges, passing through two dense forests, and wading across three dried-up riverbeds. His training uniform was soaked with sweat and clung to his back, feeling tight and cold as the wind blew.

He crouched behind a rock on the ridge and looked down.

Below was a creek valley.

Creek water flowed at the bottom of the valley, flanked by rock walls dozens of meters high covered in grayish-green moss.

The mouth of the valley faced west, and the morning light shone in at an angle, making the creek water sparkle.

The map Su Mingyuan had given him marked the last known location of BL-001 right in this creek valley.

But as he looked down from the ridge, there was nothing in the valley.

It was empty.

Chen Rong was not in a hurry.

He closed his eyes and released his divine sense.

The coverage range of a Foundation Establishment Stage martial artist's divine sense was approximately three kilometers.

Within this range, no creature with spiritual power fluctuations could escape his perception.

There were three small First-Order monster beasts in the bushes eight hundred meters to the east, appearing to be some kind of rodents.

A kilometer to the south, there was a Second-Order Black-backed Leopard sleeping on a tree.

To the northwest...

Chen Rong's divine sense encountered something in that direction.

It wasn't the weak spiritual power fluctuation of a First or Second-Order; it was a dense, high-concentration spiritual power signal.

Fourth-Order.

About a kilometer away.

In the rock pile on the eastern side of the creek valley.

Motionless.

Crouching there.

It was watching him.

Chen Rong could feel a very thin thread of divine sense extending from that mass of spiritual power signal, like an invisible line, latching onto his direction.

Fourth-Order Monster Beasts possessed rudimentary intelligence.

It had sensed his presence and was evaluating whether he was a threat.

Chen Rong withdrew his divine sense.

He took his canteen out of his tactical pack, took two sips, stuffed it back in, and then took out a piece of compressed biscuit and chewed on a few bites.

Dry, hard biscuit crumbs fell onto the rock.

He thought as he chewed.

It was clearly stated in the Beast Taming Art—the prerequisite for a soul link is that both parties "accept" each other's existence to some extent. If the monster beast is in a state of high alert or fear, the link simply cannot be established.

The first step he needed to take now was not to tame it, but to make it lower its guard.

Or rather, to make it believe he was not a threat.

But this Thunder Leopard was a Fourth-Order Monster Beast that had dominated this mountainous region for an unknown number of years.

Its sense of territory was extremely strong; any high-order creature entering its territory would be seen as a threat.

Chen Rong thought for a moment and made a decision.

He would stop hiding.