sinovels Chapter 150 The Traces of the Contracted Beast, and the Trip to Sichuan and Chongqing with Wen Yue
Chapter 150 The Traces of the Contracted Beast, and the Trip to Sichuan and Chongqing with Wen Yue
He recalled the recent battles.
The most serious incident was when Wen Yue was sent flying by the Ghost King's attack. If Su Yunqing's healing output hadn't been excessive, she might have already died.
The first squad's offensive power is already overflowing, but its weaknesses are equally obvious.
The fault tolerance rate is too low.
Once the main tank can't hold out, or the firing positions are focused on, the entire team's line will collapse instantly.
When things are going well, you can crush everything in your path, but once you get into a tough fight, casualties are highly likely.
This problem must be solved.
Lu Yan returned to his dormitory and directly accessed the military's top-secret database.
A massive stream of data cascaded down before his eyes like a waterfall.
[Authorization: Dragon Guard Certified Member, First Squad, Lu Yan.]
[Repository: S-level or higher database.]
He set the following filtering criteria: [Type: Armor/Special Item], [Effect: Team damage reduction/damage transfer/invincibility/defense].
The existing equipment only improves armor and resistance, but it cannot fundamentally change the predicament of being focused down. It's a band-aid solution, not a cure.
Half an hour later, Lu Yan exited the official database.
"No, I can't find it."
He then logged into China's largest forum for awakened individuals.
Abandoning the most popular sections, he swiped his finger across the screen and clicked into a grayed-out section—"Strange News and Speculations".
This is the graveyard of forums, filled with all sorts of unverified rumors, wild ideas dismissed as nonsense, and countless old posts forgotten by time.
Tens of thousands of pieces of discarded information are quickly scanned, filtered, and categorized by his sensory network.
Most of it is useless junk information.
Just as he was about to close the page, a post that had been upvoted more than ten times before sinking to the bottom popped up.
Posted five years ago.
Title: [A strange place was discovered in the Sichuan-Chongqing Basin. The monsters there can be caught but not fought. Aren't they just pets? I'm about to go bankrupt from being eaten! Help!]
Lu Yan clicked on it.
The poster is a freelancer who has awakened to the truth. His ID is "Shudaoshannan".
In the post, he described his discovery in an almost devastating tone.
He stumbled upon a secret place in a mountainous area deep in the Sichuan-Chongqing Basin, a place that had not been officially recorded.
The secret realm was chillingly cold, and the monsters were extremely low-level and as fragile as paper, but their numbers were frightening.
Lu Yan's finger slid across the screen.
The core message of this post is simple: there is a secret realm deep in the mountains of Sichuan and Chongqing, where the monsters don't bite and can be captured to become contracted beasts.
Contracted beasts don't fight; their sole purpose is to buff their masters.
The method of advancement is simple and brutal—devouring.
They accept whatever comes their way, whether it's equipment or materials.
The more you eat, the higher the quality will be, going up from C grade all the way to C grade.
The poster sold everything they owned, using up all their B-grade junk from the past, only to end up with a shield that couldn't even withstand a single slap from a C-grade monster.
He left a vague coordinate at the end of the post, jokingly calling this thing a "pay-to-win monster".
There were only a few replies below, and they were all mocking the original poster for making up stories to gain experience points.
Lu Yan switched out of the forum interface, logged into the military intranet, and entered the poster's ID "Shudao Shannan" into the search bar. The file popped up on the screen.
Li Shan, a C-level Awakened, is deceased. His death occurred two months after the post was published.
The cause of death was driving while fatigued, and the car rolled off a cliff, which was classified as an accident.
A C-rank Awakened who can single-handedly navigate unclassified secret realms might fall off a cliff due to fatigue at a crucial moment in their exploration.
This post wasn't buried; the clues were deliberately cut off.
Lu Yan closed his laptop screen and grabbed his coat from the back of his chair. What China has in abundance right now is scrap metal.
If he were truly a pay-to-win monster, he could feed these monsters until they vomited with the current equipment production.
Heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor.
The door was kicked open, and Zhao Leiguang, carrying the newly issued S-class shield, squeezed into the room, his loud voice making the windowpanes rattle.
"Old Lu! Let's go find a high-level secret realm to train in! The blessing from the Goddess Houtu is just too amazing, I have inexhaustible energy right now!"
Lu Yan put his arms into his coat and squeezed out the door past Zhao Leiguang.
"This time, you can stay."
"Where are you going?" Xiao Qianyu asked.
"I'm going to investigate the secret realm this time. There shouldn't be any fighting, so you guys can rest." Lu Yan strode towards the stairs.
"Going alone?" Zhao Leiguang turned and took two steps after him. "Take me with you! I don't want to rest!"
Lu Yan didn't turn around and went down the stairs.
In the underground parking garage, Lu Yan had just opened the driver's side door of a military jeep. A person was standing in front of the vehicle.
Wen Yue carried the heavy weapon case of the World-Destroying Thunder on her back.
"What are you doing here?" Lu Yan asked curiously, placing his hand on the car door.
Wen Yue slightly raised her chin and pointed to the garage exit.
"I'm going to Sichuan and Chongqing too," she said. "My home is there, and I'd like to go back and visit on the way."
"But your luggage..."
"No luggage, let's go, let's go, let's go quickly."
Seeing that she was fully armed but hadn't brought a single suitcase, Lu Yan let go of the car door, feeling both amused and exasperated.
Wen Yue opened the back door, stuffed the weapon case that could fit half a person inside, then sat in the passenger seat and fastened her seatbelt.
The military jeep drove out of the base and headed straight for the military airport.
Three hours later, the two landed in Sichuan and Chongqing.
Lu Yan picked up a heavy off-road vehicle locally and, following the coordinates from ten years ago, drove deep into the mountains deep in the basin.
The asphalt road broke, and it was replaced with a gravel road. Eventually, even the gravel ran out.
The SUV's wide tires crunched over waist-high weeds as it bumped along the old provincial road that had been abandoned for decades.
The navigation signal on the center console had been cut off half an hour ago, so Lu Yan had to memorize the route entirely.
Five kilometers left.
The car's air conditioning was set to heating mode, and warm air was pouring out of the vents.
"Aren't you going home to check on things first?" Lu Yan asked, one hand on the steering wheel, turning his head to the side.
Wen Yue was looking down, checking the armor clips.
Her home is only a few dozen kilometers away; it takes less than forty minutes to drive there.
"It's okay, it's the same as helping you finish your business."
Wen Yue smiled and tapped the spare magazine twice with her fingers.
The SUV stopped in front of a narrow pass between two mountain peaks. The air directly in front of it was severely refracted.
Lu Yan removed the car key and opened the car door.
Air leaked in through the crack, and his exhaled breath turned into ice crystals that fell down.
The combat boots stomped firmly on the ground, and the withered grass cracked crisply, turning into powder.
Wen Yue pushed open the passenger door and dragged the heavy weapon case out of the back seat with one hand.
The metallic clang of the mechanism snapping echoed through the empty pass. The world-destroying Thunderbolt Crossbow was held in his hand.
She pulled back the bolt and checked the feed belt for the spread grenade. The moment her feet touched the ground, she was already in combat readiness.
Lower the muzzle and aim the crosshair at the refracted ice mist in front of you.
"Let's go." Lu Yan zipped up his coat and led the way toward the pass.