31: Chapter 31 Harvesting Origin Points

A thick scent of blood spread across the wilderness with the faint ground wind, permeating the abandoned road.

Su Chen stood on the roof of the heavy truck, casually flicking his thick-backed iron saber.

The few drops of viscous, grayish-brown blood on the unsharpened blade were flung off, splattering against the rusted metal of the truck.

"Rustle, rustle..."

Almost at the same moment the blood hit the ground, a dense sound of friction came from deep within the ruins.

It was like countless steel brushes scraping against a rough surface simultaneously, making one's scalp tingle.

Su Chen lowered his head, looking around from his high vantage point.

From the gaps in the sewer manhole covers by the road, the entrance of a half-collapsed underground shopping mall, and the undercarriages of several abandoned cars nearby.

One pair, two pairs, three pairs...

A full eight pairs of green eyes, filled with greed and savagery, lit up one after another in the darkness.

The corpse of the Bloodthirsty Rat, split in two, acted as perfect bait, flushing out all its kin lurking in this neighborhood.

Eight Bloodthirsty Rats, each the size of a calf, slowly crawled out from their hiding spots and surrounded the heavy truck.

Their sharp claws gouged white marks into the asphalt, and they let out low growls, staring fixedly at the fresh human on the truck roof.

Facing a swarm formation capable of wiping out any novice mercenary squad, Su Chen did not retreat; instead, he stuck out his tongue and licked his dry lips.

"Eight."

Su Chen silently recited the number in his heart.

There was no fear in his eyes, only the excitement of seeing prey deliver itself to his doorstep.

"Since you've already come, it saves me the trouble of hunting you down one by one."

Su Chen lightly kicked off with his toes, leaping gracefully from the truck and landing in the middle of the street with a 'thud'.

As soon as he landed, the eight Bloodthirsty Rats seemed to receive a unified command; all four limbs pushed off simultaneously, transforming into eight gray figures lunging at Su Chen from all directions and various corners!

Su Chen did not use [Navy Six Styles: Soru] to create distance.

He stood his ground, gripping the heavy, thick-backed iron saber tightly with both hands.

"When I bought you, the blacksmith said you couldn't even cut through the skin of a beast," Su Chen said, looking at the pockmarked, cheap iron weapon in his hand that lacked even a blade edge. A smirk curled his lips. "Let's see if you can cut through it or not."

Su Chen closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

A violent, tenacious, and indestructible spiritual will was frantically extracted from the depths of his Soul.

"Armament Haki: Hardening!"

Su Chen said in a low voice.

The intangible will flowed through his hands, pouring unreservedly into the thick-backed iron saber.

An astonishing change happened in an instant.

The once dull, rusty, and pockmarked cheap iron saber seemed to be imbued with life the moment Armament Haki was injected!

A deep, dark, mysterious black, shimmering with a cold metallic luster, began from the hilt and spread rapidly like spilled mercury, completely enveloping the entire fifty-pound iron saber in the blink of an eye!

Under the influence of this materialized will, the originally pitted blade was forcibly filled and reshaped, becoming smooth as a mirror.

The black blade was formed!

At the very same moment the black blade formed, the eight Bloodthirsty Rats had already lunged in front of Su Chen.

The leading Bloodthirsty Rat opened its gaping maw, sharp fangs aiming straight for Su Chen's throat; one on the left extended its claws, swiping at his waist and abdomen; those on the right and rear simultaneously sealed off all his escape routes.

"Too slow."

Beneath his mask, Su Chen's Two-Tomoe Sharingan spun rapidly.

The trajectories of the eight Bloodthirsty Rats' lunges, their muscle exertion points, and the mid-air vulnerabilities created by their inability to leverage themselves were clearly dissected within his crimson vision.

Su Chen moved.

He didn't use the Qi and blood in his Dantian, relying entirely on the physical explosive power of his legs to take a step forward.

His wrist flipped.

The black iron saber carved a deep, crescent-shaped arc in the air.

"Clang! Splat!"

The first Bloodthirsty Rat that lunged at him, possessing a skull hard enough to shatter an Elementary spiritual energy shield, slammed fiercely into the unsharpened back of the black blade.

There were no sparks, nor was there a stalemate of equal strength.

It was like a piece of tofu slamming straight into a ten-thousand-ton hydraulic press!

The black blade did not pause in the slightest, cutting through the Bloodthirsty Rat's skull, severing its spine, and instantly splitting the entire body, bones and all, in two with an unreasonable, physical crushing force!

Su Chen didn't even look at the rain of blood exploding across the sky.

He stepped with strange footwork, strolling leisurely amidst the swarm's siege.

"Swish!"

Su Chen sidestepped to avoid the claws on the left. The black blade followed through with an upward slash.

"Splat!" The second Bloodthirsty Rat was also split open directly from the jaw, spilling its internal organs all over the ground.

Turn, spin, sweep.

Su Chen's movements didn't have a single shred of excess.

Every swing of the blade cut along the enemy's weakest blind spot; every step perfectly avoided all lethal lunges.

"Splat!"

"Splat!"

Hand rises, blade falls; severed limbs splatter.

This was not a battle, but a slaughter.

The unsharpened blunt weapon that was once discarded as scrap in the corner of the blacksmith's shop, after the enhancement of Armament Haki, was now sharper and more indestructible than an A-grade divine weapon embedded with top-tier crystal cores!

Ten seconds.

From the moment the eight Bloodthirsty Rats lunged simultaneously to the last headless corpse slamming onto the asphalt road.

The entire process took only ten seconds.

The battle ended.

Su Chen stopped his steps.

He stood in the center of the street, surrounded by the brutally dismembered corpses of beasts lying helter-skelter.

The thick scent of blood rose to the sky, even pooling into a small puddle of blood on the ground.

Su Chen lowered his head and took a look at the black blade in his hand.

With a thought, the Armament Haki covering the blade receded like a receding tide, and the iron saber returned to its original dullness.

He ran his fingers lightly over the blade that had just severed countless bones.

No cracks.

Not even the tiniest nick or chip.

Pure physical mass combined with the iron hardened by Armament Haki could turn scrap metal into a divine weapon.

Su Chen shook the blood off the blade, wrapped it with a cloth strip, and strapped it to his back.

Just then, the voice in his mind that he had been anticipating finally began to spam frantically, like a beautiful symphony.

"Ding! Killed beast carrying Abyss aura, obtained [origin points + 15]!"

"Ding! Killed beast carrying Abyss aura, obtained [origin points + 18]!"

"Ding! Obtained [origin points + 16]!"

"Ding! Obtained [origin points + 14]!"

...

A series of crisp notification sounds suddenly appeared in his mind.

Su Chen immediately summoned the System panel.

On his retina, the balance was rising at a speed visible to the naked eye.

[Current origin points balance: 2106]

Looking at the numbers on the panel, beneath Su Chen's mask, his breathing gradually became heavy.

A mere ten seconds of battle, just killing eight of the lowest-tier ruin beasts, netted him over a hundred origin points!

Su Chen recalled the Underground Black Market in Jiangnan City a few days ago.

To get a few hundred origin points, he had to rack his brains to disguise himself, haggle and scheme with the old-timers at the stalls, and risk being discovered while pushing to the limit with the manager of Jubao Pavilion.

How time-consuming and exhausting that was.

And here?

In this vast, boundless wilderness of ruins that all humanity viewed as a forbidden zone and Hell.

Everywhere were wandering beasts, everywhere were prey tainted with the Abyss aura!

"No need to follow rules, and no need to scheme against human hearts."

Su Chen slowly raised his head, his crimson Single Tomoe Sharingan looking past the layers of dilapidated high-rises toward the deeper, darker core area of the D-grade ruins.

As long as your blade is fast enough.

As long as your fist is hard enough.

This place is an inexhaustible, money-spewing ATM!

For an ordinary warrior, the wilderness is a burial ground; every time they leave the city, they are trading their lives for tomorrow.

But for Su Chen, who possesses the Sharingan to perceive everything and Armament Haki to ignore defenses.

This is his infinite hunting ground!

This is just the beginning.

A cold smirk appeared on the corner of Su Chen's mouth.

He no longer paid attention to the beast corpses on the ground.

The fur and crystal cores of low-tier Bloodthirsty Rats were worth next to nothing on the market; dissecting corpses for a few hundred star coins was simply a waste of time.

What he pursued were more origin points.

Su Chen pulled his black tactical suit tight and strode past the corpses, facing the cold, bloody wind blowing from the depths of the wilderness.

There was no need to hide his tracks, nor any need to deliberately avoid danger.

He just carried that cheap iron saber and charged straight into the depths of the abandoned city.