Chapter 891: Choosing Action

The handsome giant wolf was about the size of a horse from before the Catastrophe.

Both giant wolves and evolved horses were animals with great endurance and a talent for running. On the flat plains, evolved horses were faster than giant wolves; in the rugged evolved forest, giant wolves were faster than evolved horses.

Riding the handsome giant wolf, Xia Qing quickly traveled from Mountain No. 49 in the northern part of the territory into Mountain No. 48 in the west, then turned from Mountain No. 46 into the town ruins, also known as West District Forest No. 9, where the pace finally slowed.

After the great continental plate movements of Blue Star's land in the first two years of the Catastrophe, the geography of Hua Nation was vastly different from before. To save trouble and quickly identify locations, every base simply labeled its mountains, lakes, and rivers with numbers.

Within the jurisdiction of Radiance Base No. 3, the mountain areas were marked with numbers from smallest to largest, radiating outward from the Safe Zone: Mountains 1–8 were south of the Safe Zone, Mountains 9–18 were east, Mountains 19–48 were west, and Mountains 49–139 were north.

The straight-line distance from the Safe Zone to West District Territory No. 9 was close to two hundred li, but the Waist-Snapping Wolf had carried Xia Qing along winding beast paths for who knew how many li.

When it slowed down and began moving cautiously, Xia Qing knew they were close to the target. She brought up resting again: "Handsome Wolf-bro, I'm tired. Let's drink some honey-egg nutrient solution and take a break?"

Once the handsome giant wolf stopped, Xia Qing immediately pulled out freshly squeezed spinach juice, added honey, cracked in two eggs, stirred it up, and held it to the wolf's mouth. The handsome giant wolf, panting with its tongue out to cool down, sniffed it and drank the whole thing in a few gulps.

Xia Qing then poured in half a basin of pollution-free spring water and let it drink that too, then asked softly, "Giant Wolf-bro, are those humans over there?"

West District Forest No. 9 — Xia Qing knew it all too well.

Three kilometers further to the southeast was West District Territory No. 7, where Xia Qing, with Yang Jin's help, had killed her father's murderer Tang Zhengsu by making him fall to his death. And this place was where Xia Qing had often followed mission squads out to gather and hunt before she started farming.

In the direction Xia Qing was pointing, three thousand meters ahead, lay the ruins of an abandoned village.

The handsome giant wolf's face was expressionless, ignoring Xia Qing.

It was playing aloof, but Xia Qing could still confirm with eighty to ninety percent certainty that the targets were in those ruins. Because the handsome giant wolf had slowed down upon reaching this area, it meant they weren't far from where the missing Liang Qing Squad was located, and the only place nearby that could hide a squad of people was that abandoned village.

There were no large beasts here. The Liang Qing Squad, which had come out to clear the aggressive mutated plants in West District Forest No. 3, might have been attacked by a swarm of evolved rats or spiders and trapped or killed in the abandoned village, or they might have been robbed by a mission squad that had bad relations with the Liang Qing Squad and dumped here.

Squad members' conduct within the Safe Zone was bound by law and the Squad Alliance rules, but once in the evolved forest, it was a completely different story. When carrying out missions in the evolved forest, encountering an unfamiliar mission squad carried the same danger level as encountering fierce beasts or highly dangerous aggressive mutated plants.

This was why, after discovering the mission squad was missing, the Liang Qing Squad immediately went to the Squad Alliance headquarters and posted a thirty-thousand bounty to find them.

If this squad had been robbed, as long as they still had a breath left in them, the robbers — for the sake of the thirty-thousand bounty — would turn right around and become a rescue squad, "saving" them and bringing them back to the Safe Zone to claim the reward.

Xia Qing took out the odor-removing agent and evolved-forest insect-repellent spray she had traded with her idol, first spraying the odor remover on herself and the handsome giant wolf, then thoroughly spraying the insect repellent twice. She discussed with the wolf: "Giant Wolf-bro, rest here for a bit. I'll go over and find them."

Although it was nighttime now, Xia Qing knew this area extremely well, and she decided to seize this rare opportunity to improve her real combat ability.

In the years of the Catastrophe, the higher one's combat ability, the greater the chance of survival. An ally's combat power belonged to the alliance; a wolf's combat power belonged to the wolf pack; only one's own combat power would always be hers.

After sending her location to Luo Pei, Xia Qing gripped her sniper rifle, activated her vision, hearing, and magnetic-sense abilities to the fullest, and entered the dense forest.

At a distance of fifteen hundred meters from the abandoned village, Xia Qing, wearing night-vision goggles, spotted a bright spot much larger than the usual bugs and rodents. Judging by the outline and movement of the bright spot, it was most likely a human head.

Even though it was a pitch-black night, and even though she was wearing a special protective suit that shielded against infrared and radar detection, Xia Qing still very cautiously searched for a more concealed route forward.

At eight hundred meters from two bright spots, Xia Qing had already confirmed they were two humans. Based on their positions and movements, she could tell these two were sentries posted by people inside the abandoned village.

Because she couldn't determine the other party's identity, Xia Qing chose to keep advancing.

At a distance of one hundred ninety meters from one of the sentries, Xia Qing used her Level Seven evolved hearing ability to capture human conversation from the wind and insect chirping, and identified who they were:

Jiang Xiong and Qi San of the Dongyang Squad.

These two, who should have been at Radiance Base No. 5, appearing here meant the reason for the Liang Qing Squad's disappearance was definitely connected to one person: the former third-in-command of the Liang Qing Squad, later captain of the Dongyang Squad, and now small-squad leader of the Spring Breeze Squad at Radiance Base No. 5 — Chen Dongyang.

In January this year, after Xue Jinchang and Sun Jun of the Dongyang Squad were exposed for participating in the brutal killing of western wolf pack cubs, the Dongyang Squad was investigated from top to bottom by the authorities, and every main member of the squad was questioned one by one.

This incident not only wiped out the Dongyang Squad's base contribution points and reserve funds, but also made Chen Dongyang, who was released after the investigation, a target of public anger.

Because the western wolf pack, which had lost thirteen cubs, launched a beast tide, causing fifty lords in the western territory to lose the homes they had spent a year building, and also causing dozens of casualties among the squads and investigation teams that intercepted the beast tide to protect the eastern territory.

The lords who couldn't take revenge on the wolf pack, and the squads and civilians who had lost teammates and family, all poured their fury onto the Dongyang Squad.

The ones making the biggest fuss were Zheng Jiang, captain of the Wild Beast Squad, whose younger brother had his neck bitten off by an evolved-forest beast, and Chen Deng, captain of the Liang Qing Squad, who firmly believed Chen Dongyang had caused the deaths of the former captain and vice-captain.

Zheng Jiang's relentless attitude and the rise of the younger generation of evolvers in the Liang Qing Squad made Chen Dongyang feel the situation was very unfavorable. He decisively sold off the squad's supplies, took more than twenty members, left Radiance Base No. 3, and joined the Spring Breeze Squad, ranked third at Radiance Base No. 5.

Xia Qing had heard from Xu Juan that the reason Chen Dongyang was able to join the Spring Breeze Squad was that he had used his not-bad-looking face to climb into the bed of Deng Fang, the Spring Breeze Squad's second-strongest fighter, a dual-system evolver with endurance and elasticity abilities.

Chen Dongyang — once the third-in-command of the Liang Qing Squad, ranked third at Radiance Base No. 3, then the captain of the Dongyang Squad, ranked eleventh, and quite popular among people at Radiance Base No. 3 — had now only managed to join a squad at Radiance Base No. 5 by climbing into someone's bed. After half a year in the squad, he was still just a small-squad leader.

Chen Dongyang's situation in the Spring Breeze Squad was, needless to say, not good.

The purpose of his return this time was, needless to say, also obvious.