Several days later.
That murmur Lin Mu had uttered high in the air finally became reality; that formless panic had already evolved into a vast calamity.
Great numbers of beast herds, originally unrelated to one another or even natural enemies, were forced to migrate madly toward the outer regions.
Driven by the instinct for survival, the different herds fought, devoured, and crushed against one another among the mountain forests, and then, like a snowball rolling, swept up ever more wild beasts as they came surging toward Black Wind Ridge.
Facing a natural calamity of this magnitude, Black Blood Stockade swiftly adjusted the deployment of its defensive lines.
Those resource points that lay too deep, that were easy to attack and hard to hold, and that were of lesser value, were abandoned outright with exceeding decisiveness, all personnel withdrawn; while the core ore veins, herb gardens, and strategic mountain passes had heavy troops stationed to hold them to the death.
Vast numbers of Rank 1 and Rank 2 Gu Masters were reshuffled and organized into standard five-man combat squads, scattered across the outer buffer zones, hunting down the scattered beast herds like a meat grinder.
Should they encounter a powerful Beast King that a low-rank squad could not handle, they were to immediately fire a signal for reinforcements.
The clan's Rank 3 clan elders, meanwhile, shouldered the duty of mobile support.
Wherever a crisis of defensive collapse emerged, that was where a clan elder had to rush at once to suppress it.
Amid this grand reshuffling, Lin Feng's squad, owing to changes in personnel and status, naturally withdrew from the stage of history.
Lin Mu had leapt to the lofty position of clan elder, Lin Wan'er remained comatose, and Lin Feng and Lin Wuxie had each accepted new dispatches and arrangements from the clan.
The outer regions of Black Blood Stockade, an herb garden.
Here, a suffocating slaughter of flesh and blood was unfolding.
Two elite squads with Rank 2 Gu Masters at their core were at this moment standing back to back, mired in an exceedingly brutal struggle.
At the beginning it had been no more than a few dozen startled wild boars and rock lizards bursting out of the thicket; relying on the terrain and their coordination, these two squads had still been able to cope with composure.
But as time passed, the situation utterly slipped out of control.
More and more savage beasts poured out of the mountain forests on all sides like a tide, all of them red-eyed, mingled together, charging madly toward the herb garden.
But what truly drove these two squads into a hopeless position was that within this chaotic beast tide, two Hundred Beast Kings had actually appeared at the same time!
One was a colossal boar king whose body was like a small mountain of flesh, every collision setting the earth trembling; and the other was a mutated lizard king with fleshy tumors growing along its back, exceedingly fast, and possessing the ability to spray venom.
Under ordinary circumstances, a five-man elite squad with a full configuration and seamless coordination was already qualified to handle a single Hundred Beast King, with difficulty.
But now, under the impact of a sea of chaotic beast herds, with two Hundred Beast Kings pressing down at once, the defensive formations of the two teams were instantly torn to shreds.
"Aaagh—!"
A Rank 2 Gu Master was struck full in the face by the lizard king's venom and collapsed to the ground screaming, instantly losing all combat capability.
A fatal gap appeared in the defensive ring, and that boar king immediately lowered its head, eyes red, preparing to follow the gap through and utterly grind everyone to pulp.
"Hold on a little longer! The distress signal went out a long time ago!"
One of the squad leaders circulated his Gu worms, eyes bloodshot, roaring himself hoarse.
But on this outer defensive line where fires had broken out everywhere, everyone knew that no one could possibly be certain when reinforcements would arrive — or whether there were any reinforcements at all.
Despair clung to them like a shadow.
Just as that tusked boar king was about to smash through the last few men's defenses and begin its slaughter—
Whoosh—!
In the sky, a sound of wind exceedingly swift and fierce suddenly swept past.
A green shadow, without the slightest warning, fell across this battlefield mired in hopelessness.
The next instant.
Lin Mu's figure, like a divine soldier descending from the heavens, hovered directly above the battlefield.
Suspended in midair, Lin Mu's cold, severe gaze instantly locked onto the two Hundred Beast Kings flaunting their power below.
He did not choose to drop into the center of the beast herd and entangle himself meaninglessly with those ordinary savage beasts; instead he locked onto his targets with precision.
"Go."
Lin Mu's thought stirred slightly, and the Flowery Silver Primeval Essence within his aperture instantly boiled.
A pitch-black chain, like a venomous dragon emerging from its lair, descended from the heavens — the Iron Chain Gu — and coiled tight around that boar king charging at full speed.
The immense inertia collided thunderously with the iron chain's backward drag; the tusked boar king let out a howl of terror, its enormous body instantly losing balance, tumbling wretchedly across the mud.
In the very instant it staggered and fell.
Swish, swish, swish!
Several ordinary-sized Metal Sever Leaves, their edges glinting sharply, cut into the boar king's defensive blind spot with a shrill whistle.
Splurt!
Blood sprayed wildly. That boar king, which an elite squad had needed to fight desperately to handle, had not even room to resist; in a single instant its vitality was utterly shredded and it dropped dead with a thunderous crash!
On the other side, seeing that the situation had turned ill, the mutated lizard king immediately abandoned its pursuit of the remnant troops.
It whipped around, opened its gaping maw, and spewed a great mass of foul, rank venom at Lin Mu in midair.
Clang!
In midair, a black semicircular light screen instantly condensed — the Iron Curtain Gu, steady as Mount Tai, blocking that mass of venom in its entirety.
Lin Mu paid no attention whatsoever to the blocked venom; the Green Wing Gu behind him beat abruptly, and his figure pulled higher into the air once more with exceeding nimbleness.
This time, he increased the output of Flowery Silver Primeval Essence.
As the Primeval Essence poured in violently, the dark golden leaf blade at his fingertip swelled madly in midair.
One foot, three feet… in the blink of an eye, it became a colossal golden leaf blade like a giant guillotine!
"Die."
Looking down from on high, Lin Mu abruptly pressed his finger downward through empty air.
The colossal Metal Sever Leaf came crashing down from high altitude with the momentum of Mount Tai bearing down and an armor-piercing edge that nothing could withstand!
Crack—!
A bone-splitting sound that made scalps crawl rang out. Under the frontal cleave of the giant Metal Sever Leaf, that hard hide the lizard king took such pride in was sliced open as though it were fragile tofu.
The enormous leaf blade embedded itself deep into its spine, instantly crippling it and pinning it fast into the mud!
Two Hundred Beast Kings, one dead and one gravely wounded — the entire process had taken place in the span of a flint's spark.
As the two Hundred Beast Kings successively lost their combat strength, the herds each of them commanded were the first to fall into chaos.
And those wild beasts that had already been mingled together with no unified command were swiftly swept up in this chaos as well; their originally ferocious momentum at once crumbled to nothing.
The two elite squads below, which had already been on the verge of collapse, immediately seized the opportunity, reorganized their line, and completed the mop-up of the remaining wild beasts.
In midair.
Lin Mu confirmed that the situation had stabilized.
He said not a single word more.
The green wings beat again.
His whole person became a streak of green light, flying swiftly off into the distance.
Only after that figure had utterly vanished behind the mountain ridges did those blood-drenched Gu Masters finally seem to wake as if from a dream.
"Is… is that the strength of a clan elder?"
A Rank 1 Gu Master looked at the boar king's corpse on the ground and swallowed hard.
Beside him, that wounded Rank 2 squad leader gazed in the direction Lin Mu had departed, his expression complicated.
"That just now was… Clan Elder Lin Mu, wasn't it?"
"I remember a year ago, he was still just a member of Young Master Lin Feng's squad…"
"The past is the past."
An older Gu Master shook his head.
"Now he's a clan elder at Rank 3 middle stage."
"Compared to us…"
"he's long since been on another level entirely."
The Gu Masters' remarks below naturally did not reach Lin Mu's ears.
At this moment, soaring above the mountain forests, Lin Mu's mood had not swelled on account of that instant kill just now.
The Green Wing Gu's performance can be called perfect.
Lin Mu nodded inwardly.
In an exceedingly chaotic ground environment like a beast tide, being able to hold air supremacy — its strategic value truly is beyond measure.
It's just somewhat too costly in Primeval Essence.
He furrowed his brow slightly; clearly, the consumption rate of this Gu worm caused him some heartache as well.
The Iron Chain Gu for control; the Iron Curtain Gu for defense; and the Metal Sever Leaf Gu, switching between large and small, pushes both lethality and tactical flexibility to the extreme.
This system of mine really isn't bad.
But… that's all it is.
Lin Mu looked at the Flowery Silver Primeval Essence slowly recovering within his aperture, a trace of helplessness flashing in the depths of his eyes.
His Four Flavors Liquor Worm was only Rank 2, and had utterly lost its purifying effect upon Rank 3 Primeval Essence.
Not only that, he had yet to master a single mature Rank 3 tier killer move.
To those low-rank Rank 1 and Rank 2 Gu Masters below, his performance just now had indeed been strong enough to make them look up in despair.
But if he were truly compared against other Rank 3 Gu Masters…
As he was now, he could naturally be counted a strong contender among Rank 3 middle stage.
Yet compared to that former feeling of steadily suppressing those of the same realm, even of slaughtering across ranks, he had fallen off by no small margin.
Let alone against those veteran Rank 3 who possessed rare core Gu, mature killer moves, and had even polished their own Gu worm systems for ten or even several dozen years.
Lin Mu let out a light breath.
I still need to move the matter of the Liquor Worm up the agenda as soon as possible…
Just as Lin Mu was sweeping through the air,
Hum!
An Sound Transmission Gu at his waist suddenly gave off an exceedingly violent, even somewhat piercing tremor!
Lin Mu's brows knit slightly as he mobilized his Primeval Essence.
What came through this time was no longer a distress call from some ordinary outer squad.
But rather—
an emergency signal from a clan elder!