61: Chapter 61 Even a Martial Emperor Can Catch a Cold?

After Li Zhengyang walked away, the Seventh Squad rested in place.

The woman with the ponytail sheathed her short blade and huffed.

"Captain Zhao, are you really just letting a rookie go off on his own? Who is going to take responsibility if something goes wrong?"

The Buzz-cut Strongman squatted beside the corpse of the Dark Rock Beast, digging out the beast core without even looking up. "He is just a greenhorn; it is good to let him hit a wall."

"A Grade 6 Dark Rock Beast is not like those Grade 4 goods he killed inside the wall. Their skin is as thick as a city wall; I bet his crappy dragon tooth spear would feel like nothing more than a scratch."

"When we regroup tonight, I bet he will come running back, battered and begging to be taken in," another squad member added with a laugh.

"Don't give him any slack when that happens. Let him know that outside the wall is not a place for him to run wild."

The woman with the ponytail crossed her arms. "There are a thousand people in the Pojun Division; who among us didn't fight their way here with real blades and guns? For a wet-behind-the-ears kid to come in and try to fly solo—he really doesn't know the height of the sky or the depth of the earth."

The group kept adding comments, getting more and more worked up.

Zhao Yi leaned against a rock, having said nothing from start to finish.

He brought up his watch and glanced at Li Zhengyang's positioning light.

The light was moving north at an abnormal speed. That speed... was ridiculously fast.

"Are you guys done chatting?" Zhao Yi interrupted them. His voice was not loud, but everyone shut up.

"Two things." Zhao Yi stood up and brushed the dust off his pant legs. "First, his unit assignment was personally approved by Venerable Lei."

The smiles on the faces of the group froze.

"Second." Zhao Yi glanced at the woman with the ponytail. "His registered rank is Martial Emperor Rank, first tier."

The wind outside the training ground was still blowing, but the five of them were as if someone had pressed a pause button on them simultaneously.

The beast core in the Buzz-cut Strongman's hand dropped to the ground and rolled twice, but he did not go to pick it up.

The woman with the ponytail opened her mouth, but could not make a sound for a long time. "What... did you say?"

"A Martial Emperor." Zhao Yi turned off his watch. "He is a Martial Emperor."

The silence lasted for who knows how many seconds.

The Buzz-cut Strongman remained squatting where he was, rubbing his face vigorously. "Did I just say he was a greenhorn?"

"You also said his spear was like a scratch," someone nearby reminded him.

"Fuck." The Buzz-cut Strongman stood up and glanced in the direction where Li Zhengyang had disappeared.

"A Martial King mocking a Martial Emperor." Zhao Yi shouldered his blade, a look of indescribable wryness on his face. "The world has changed."

The woman with the ponytail was silent for a long time before choking out, "Is he really only twenty?"

No one answered her.

Thirty kilometers away, Li Zhengyang sneezed. Can a Martial Emperor catch a cold? He did not pay it any mind. The air outside the wall had many impurities, so nasal allergies were normal.

He gripped his dragon tooth spear tightly and continued to advance northward. His Martial Emperor Rank perception spread out, taking in every aura fluctuation within a radius of several kilometers.

Three kilometers away, a group of Dark Rock Beasts lay on a dried-up riverbed. Li Zhengyang did not slow down. He crashed straight in. Where the spear went, he followed.

The first strike descended from the sky, the Collapse Technique channeling through the spear tip, piercing the skull of the lead Dark Rock Beast. The spear tip burst out from its lower jaw, pinning it to the riverbed. He pulled out the spear and shifted his body sideways.

The second Dark Rock Beast had just been startled awake from its sleep; before its legs could even straighten, the spear shaft had already swept across, hugging the ground. Boom. Its abdominal rock armor shattered, and the entire beast was sent flying over a dozen meters. By the time it landed, its internal organs were already spilling out from the rupture.

The remaining ones pounced simultaneously. Li Zhengyang did not retreat. He stomped his left foot, causing the ground to collapse by half a meter, the shockwave disrupting the charge path of two Dark Rock Beasts. Taking advantage of their instability, he struck twice. One shot, one kill.

The remaining ones finally reacted and turned to flee by burrowing into the ground. Li Zhengyang was quick-eyed and nimble-handed; the spear shadow flashed three times. The riverbed grew quiet.

Li Zhengyang squatted down to dig out the beast cores, his movements flowing like clouds and water. He tapped his tactical watch, and the beast cores were stored. In no time, he had them all. He stood up, flexed his wrists, and continued heading north.

For the time that followed, Li Zhengyang swept through a large area on the outskirts of Zone C7. None of the Grade 6 beast groups he encountered lasted more than ten seconds. In the micro-space of his tactical watch, the number of beast cores climbed steadily.

Thirty-seven cores. Eighteen million five hundred thousand. Li Zhengyang glanced at the time on his watch. It was about time; he should head back.

He turned and dashed toward the south, not moving too fast, calculating as he walked. Eighteen million, plus the small change he had split with the team in the morning, today's earnings were close to twenty million.

The restoration cost for the dragon tooth spear was five million. After restoration, there would be fifteen million left; if he used it all for recharging, his blood-qi value could increase by one hundred and fifty thousand. Would that be enough to push from Martial Emperor Rank first tier to second tier?

Just as he was doing the math, his footsteps suddenly halted. Within his perception range, about one kilometer to the south, an aura source appeared. Something was wrong. This aura was very strange.

The main fluctuation was like that of a peak Grade 6 beast. But at the bottom of this beast aura, something else was mixed in. It was very faint. It felt like a human aura. It was the blood-qi fluctuation unique to martial artists.

Li Zhengyang's brow furrowed. Beasts could not possibly possess the blood-qi of a martial artist. Martial artists could not possibly emit the aura of a beast either.

He did not continue south, but instead silently circled to a high point on the east side. Lying behind a rock, his gaze crossed a slope of rubble and fell into a depression one kilometer away.

He saw it. It was a humanoid silhouette. But it was not entirely human. It was squatting in the center of the depression, with its back to Li Zhengyang.

Its figure resembled an adult male, but along its spine, a row of dark gray bone spurs protruded, extending from the back of its neck all the way to its tailbone.

Li Zhengyang did not move. His hand gripping the spear tightened slightly, and his eyes narrowed. The thing raised its head.

For a brief moment, as its side profile was revealed, Li Zhengyang saw it clearly. It was a face with complete facial features, but the pupils were vertical, and under the skin on both sides of its cheeks, scale-like patterns were faintly visible.

It seemed to have sensed something; its nostrils flared twice, and it tilted its head toward Li Zhengyang's direction. Two pairs of eyes, separated by a distance of one kilometer, collided amidst the gray mist of the wasteland outside the wall.

In an instant, Li Zhengyang's spear tip was already aimed in that direction. The thing tilted its head. It smiled inexplicably.