Five days passed in the blink of an eye.
At seven in the evening, the setting sun gradually sank behind the mountains.
After dinner, Li Jun rushed straight into his bedroom in a blazing hurry.
He booted up his computer with practiced ease and put on his headset.
Throne of Heroes, launch!
This epoch-making battle game had taken the world by storm.
Over the past month, Li Jun had been insanely addicted to it.
The main interface opened. Li Jun moved his mouse toward Start Game, but in the next second, his eyes caught the friends list on the right.
The first ID on the friends list was [Night Ends, Dawn Breaks].
Li Jun had pinned it to the top, but the profile picture was gray.
Offline.
Li Jun scratched his head and opened the chat history, only to discover that the last time he had teamed up with Lin Ye had already been more than two weeks ago.
Ever since the baseline exam, Lin Ye had seemed like a different person.
No, to be precise, he had already changed before the baseline exam.
In the past, after school, the two of them would either head straight to an internet café, or Lin Ye would go home first—and by the time Li Jun logged in, that guy would definitely already be online.
Those days when the two of them played through the entire night even made Li Jun feel a little nostalgic.
But now...
Li Jun sighed, his enthusiasm instantly dropping to rock bottom.
He opened the contacts on his wristband and sent Lin Ye a message.
“Ah Ye, coming online? I’ll gift you a skin!”
The message was sent successfully, but no reply came for a long while.
Li Jun did not mind. He knew Lin Ye had most likely gone off to cultivate again at this hour.
More than once, Li Jun had seen Lin Ye quietly walk toward the practical combat training room after school.
He had even secretly peeked inside. It was Old Tiger Chen sparring with Lin Ye.
Mm, strictly speaking, that could not be considered sparring. It was called a one-sided beating.
Every time he saw Lin Ye get blasted away by Old Tiger Chen’s punch, then climb back up without a word and charge in again, Li Jun felt his own body ache along with him.
He could not understand why Lin Ye had suddenly become so desperate.
Ding.
The communicator vibrated.
It was Lin Ye’s reply, concise and to the point.
“No time. Cultivating.”
Looking at those four words, Li Jun could not help sending a voice message.
“Bro, are you addicted to cultivation or something? Games aren’t fun anymore? Do you understand what a balance between work and rest means?”
This time, Lin Ye replied very quickly.
“Mm. A little addicted.”
Li Jun was completely speechless.
He closed the game and lay on his bed, but in his mind, he could not help recalling the scene of Lin Ye punching out 612 kilograms on the testing field.
And his astonishing vitality index.
Perhaps...
He should work a little harder too?
That thought flashed through Li Jun’s mind for only an instant before he snuffed it out.
Li Jun sat back down in his gaming chair and clicked Start Game.
...
The last trace of sunlight at the horizon also disappeared beneath the skyline, and the entire ruined city was completely coated in darkness.
Lin Ye closed the chat window with Li Jun.
Then he set it to silent mode.
The night wind blew through the broken buildings, letting out a ghostly wail.
The air was filled with dust, decay, and a faint, almost imperceptible scent of blood.
Lin Ye’s figure blended into the shadows, merging with the ruins without making the slightest unnecessary sound.
Five days.
For a full five days, aside from completing his daily virtual combat missions, he had spent almost all of his remaining time here.
On the first day, through his own active exploration, Lin Ye discovered this mutated black panther.
He also confirmed its core territory.
With a half-collapsed department store as its lair, the area within roughly three square kilometers around it was all its hunting ground.
This mutated creature possessed an extremely strong sense of territory. Any living being that stepped into this area would be hunted down mercilessly.
On the second day, Lin Ye personally witnessed it hunt.
It was an LV6 mutated porcupine, its size already comparable to the panther’s, and its defensive power was astonishing. Its hard hide was comparable to low-grade alloy.
However, before the black panther, it was like a fragile toy.
A black afterimage flashed past beneath the moonlight.
There was no earth-shaking battle, no prolonged struggle.
Only a single, incomparably swift pounce.
The black panther’s sharp claws, flashing with a cold metallic gleam, tore open the porcupine’s toughest dorsal armor, and its sharp fangs directly crushed its cervical vertebrae.
The entire process took no more than three seconds.
Clean, sharp, efficient.
But at the same time, the porcupine’s dying counterattack had also caused several quills to pierce the black panther.
Fast speed, high attack, but low defense.
Overall, it belonged to the high-attack, high-agility glass cannon type.
On the third and fourth days, Lin Ye did not approach it again. Instead, like an urban planner, he began frantically drawing maps.
He gave up on the surface and turned his attention underground.
This ruined city possessed an underground pipeline system as intricate as a spiderweb.
He found three sewer entrances that could lead to the area near the black panther’s lair and entered each one to investigate, confirming the internal structure, air circulation, and whether there were any other mutated creatures inside.
At the same time, he also firmly memorized every usable piece of terrain above ground.
Then came the fifth day—today.
Even by today, Lin Ye still had not discovered any obvious weakness on its body.
No old injuries, no flaws.
However, through observation, Lin Ye discovered something else of even greater value.
The ecological chain of the ruined city.
This black panther was the apex predator of this region, but it was not without things it feared.
At the eastern edge of its territory, a flock of LV7 mutated vultures had entrenched themselves. They were numerous, and even the black panther was unwilling to provoke them lightly.
As for the deeper parts of the ruined city, this black panther absolutely would not set foot there.
As if some great terror existed in that place.
The intelligence gathered from these observations allowed the blueprint for hunting this black panther to gradually take shape in Lin Ye’s mind, stroke by stroke.
Since it had no weakness, he would create one for it.
If it was fast, then he would use a narrow space to restrict it.
If he could not win alone through direct combat, then he would create a trap.
Lin Ye walked out from the shadows and arrived at a location he had marked before.
It was a long, narrow alley. Towering buildings stood on both sides, and at the end was a thick wall. It was a dead end.
Above the alley, a massive concrete slab, due to the collapse of the building, was hanging precariously seven or eight meters in the air at an extremely dangerous angle.
All it needed was a sufficiently powerful external force, and it would come crashing down completely.
Lin Ye began planning the route.
He needed to lure this black panther here.
The entire process demanded extreme precision in both distance and timing.
He had to provoke the black panther without allowing it to discover him in advance, then ensure that he remained within its pursuit range while also not being caught too easily.
After successfully luring it, he would rush into this alley.
The instant the black panther chased after him, he would use all his strength to throw a length of steel rebar he had prepared in advance at the fragile support point holding up the suspended concrete slab.
The concrete slab would fall.
Even if it could not crush the panther to death directly, it would be enough to severely injure it.
If the black panther did not die, or was not even severely injured—if it managed to dodge completely—
Lin Ye had also prepared a backup plan.
His gaze turned toward the wall at the end of the alley.
On the other side of the wall was the interior of a six-story residential building he had scouted in advance.
He would rush into the building at top speed.
He knew the internal structure of that building like the back of his hand. He would use the complex terrain to maneuver around the black panther, constantly moving upward.
At the stairwells on the third and fifth floors, he had set up simple traps.
Some sharpened steel rebars, and some metal barrels that would create a tremendous amount of noise.
These things could not kill the black panther, but they could buy him a precious few tenths of a second.