Lin Ye did not go back to that garbage disposal station.
The monsters there were already far too low-level for him, and the maximum vitality the Soul Furnace could draw from them was negligible.
On top of that, the space was cramped. Even if he turned the entire garbage disposal station upside down, he probably would not be able to gather many mutated beasts.
He needed to find a larger, more stable “leveling area.”
Lin Ye opened the light screen on his wristwatch, pulled up the map, identified the direction, and headed straight toward the southern suburbs.
As Lin Ye continued walking toward the outskirts, the signs of human habitation and modern buildings he could see grew fewer and fewer.
Until in the end, a stretch of wilderness even appeared before him.
He had arrived at the destination of this trip.
The ruins of Dongjiang’s abandoned city.
This place had once been Dongjiang City’s old industrial district. With changes in urban planning and industrial upgrading, as well as a serious chemical plant explosion,
the entire district had been affected.
The factories relocated, and the residents withdrew.
The whole district gradually became a forgotten steel jungle.
The authorities had designated this place as a Level Three restricted zone, strictly forbidding ordinary citizens from approaching.
Lin Ye’s figure was like a wisp of a ghost, silently merging into the edge of the abandoned city.
The air was filled with a strange odor of rust mixed with dust.
He had not stepped even a hundred meters into the ruined city when a dense chorus of “squeak, squeak” sounds came from the abandoned factory building beside him.
The next second, a dark, oppressive tide of over a hundred mutated rats surged out from the factory’s shattered windows and swept across the cracked street.
They turned a blind eye to Lin Ye, this uninvited guest.
In this vast ruin, the scent of humans was no longer anything novel.
This was their true territory.
Lin Ye’s gaze swept over the rat swarm. Above their heads, without exception, were green characters reading LV1.
He did not make a move.
Lin Ye merely watched coldly from the side.
This place was fraught with danger. Even LV1 mutated rats moved here in packs.
The farther he went, the more deathly still the surroundings became.
Towering chimneys stood like silent giants, casting enormous shadows. The dilapidated factories and residential buildings were like slumbering beasts, gazing at him coldly.
In the darkness, one or two pairs of eyes of different colors would light up from time to time, but after a brief peep, they would quickly disappear.
The creatures here seemed to possess an extra measure of cunning and caution compared to those at the garbage disposal station.
Lin Ye slowed his steps, and even his breathing became nearly imperceptible.
Like an experienced hunter, he used broken walls, ruined structures, and abandoned vehicles as cover, slowly infiltrating deeper into the abandoned city.
His eyes shone with astonishing brightness in the dark.
That was the superhuman adaptability to dark environments brought about by pushing his mental strength to its limit.
He saw a mutated cat the size of a hunting dog crouching silently on the fifth-floor balcony of a residential building, its pair of eerie green pupils staring fixedly at the street below.
【LV5】!
At the end of its line of sight, a creature covered in bone spurs, resembling a pangolin, was rummaging through a pile of construction debris.
【LV6】!
Farther away, a seemingly unremarkable patch of Boston ivy had vines that were faintly writhing. At the tip of one of the vines was, shockingly, a mouthpart filled with fine, dense teeth.
【LV4】!
Here, a complete ecosystem of the weak being prey to the strong had clearly already formed.
Lin Ye’s heartbeat quickened—not only because of fear, but even more because of the excitement of discovering a new continent.
This was the place he ought to have come to!
This leveling area had formed its own ecosystem, and it was vast enough—enough for him to remain here for a very long time.
Lin Ye continued to move stealthily.
As he kept going deeper, the mutated creatures he saw grew higher and higher in level.
When he passed through a completely destroyed commercial street and arrived at the edge of a massive circular plaza, he stopped.
This place was still more than ten kilometers from the core of the ruined city according to the map.
But the level numbers above the heads of the monsters entrenched here had already turned a glaring, vivid red!
A gigantic lizard over three meters long, its entire body covered in dark green scales, was sprawled atop the statue pedestal in the center of the plaza, its crimson tongue flicking in and out.
At the other end of the plaza, several strange birds shaped like vultures but with wingspans exceeding four meters were tearing at the carcass of some unknown creature with their sharp beaks.
Lin Ye even glimpsed, in the shadow of a half-collapsed department store not far away, a huge figure nearly three meters tall, completely impossible to identify as whatever animal it had been before its mutation.
These mutated beasts were all at least LV8.
As for that three-meter giant monster, the number marked above its head was LV10.
Lin Ye held his breath.
Not a single one of them was something he could easily deal with at his current level.
Lin Ye knew that this was the limit of what he could explore at this stage.
Any farther forward, and it would be a true death zone.
However, just as he was preparing to retreat—
Roar——!!!
A roar that seemed to come from the abyss of hell suddenly erupted from the dark core far in the distance!
That voice was filled with endless brutality and majesty, like an invisible heavy hammer smashing fiercely into Lin Ye’s heart.
In the plaza, whether it was the carrion-eating giant lizard or the three-meter giant monster atop the ruined high-rise, all of them instantly fled in panic under that roar, disappearing in the blink of an eye.
The next moment, Lin Ye felt that every sound around him had vanished.
All was deathly silent!
Lin Ye’s pupils contracted sharply.
He saw, within the deepest darkness at the city’s core, a massive fleshy wing covered in black keratin, as though pieced together from rotten flesh and bones, abruptly stretch toward the sky, blotting out the already dim moonlight!
Just the half of the wing that had unfurled was estimated to be over seven meters!
Lin Ye held his breath.
He did not know what that thing was.
He only knew that it was extraordinarily huge—so huge that it exceeded his imagination!
At the instant that giant wing unfurled, a string of numbers he had never seen before—red so dark it was almost black, as if dripping blood—slowly emerged from within that darkness.
【LV.20】!
No one knew that in a ruined district less than fifty kilometers from Dongjiang City, there was actually such an utterly terrifying mutated beast lying dormant!
If it charged out of the abandoned city one day…
Lin Ye did not dare think any further. His body’s instincts had already overwhelmed everything, driving him to retreat step by step, without a sound.
And the instant he withdrew into the shadows, the system’s cold notification suddenly rang out in his mind.
【Ding! Detected that the host has discovered the ultimate lord of the current region!】
【Special phased mission issued!】
【Mission: No Two Kings!】
【Description: In these ruins that you regard as your territory, the existence of another “king” cannot be tolerated. Go, challenge and crush it. Let its bones become the first cornerstone of your throne!】
【Mission Objective: Kill the LV.20 regional lord!】
【Mission Reward: EXP +25000, Skill Points +10, unlock new phase: P2!】