bookandnovel Chapter 7 Waiting! Waiting for the right opportunity!
Chapter 7 Waiting! Waiting for the right opportunity!
The three rested by the stream for about fifteen minutes, then got up and continued walking north.
Mingfei waited until they were fifty meters away before emerging from behind the bushes and trailing behind at a distance.
He followed for about two hours.
During this time, the three-person team encountered two groups of soul beasts.
One of them is a 1,500-year-old ironback lizard with thick skin and flesh. Its attack power is average, but its defense is amazing.
The woman took the lead, while the two men cooperated, and it took them nearly twenty minutes to wear it down.
Mingfei watched from a distance, secretly memorizing the woman's sword techniques.
She is fast and accurate, but lacks variety. Once her opponent is faster than her, she will be put on the defensive.
The other was an 800-year-old Wind Blade Bird, which swooped down from the treetop to launch a sneak attack, but was blocked by the man in the team who used a shield spirit.
When the Windblade Bird realized its sneak attack had failed, it immediately flapped its wings and flew away, without lingering for battle.
Mingfei noticed that the three-person team did not absorb any spirit rings after killing the Ironback Lizard.
Clearly, the soul ring of the millennium-old ironback lizard was not their target; they were merely eliminating a threat incidentally.
The lizard's corpse was left on the spot. After they had gone far away, Mingfei quietly took the corpse into the underworld.
The gray fog churned.
This was the first corpse he had collected deep in the Sunset Forest.
An eight-hundred-year-old soul beast, though not a thousand-year-old one, is still much stronger than those hundred-year-old beasts in the outer areas.
The underworld seemed quite satisfied; the slow pulse quickened for a moment before returning to normal.
As darkness began to fall, the three-person team set up camp at the foot of a mountain wall.
They chose a very strategic location: backed by a mountain wall, with open views on three sides, offering excellent visibility and making it difficult to be ambushed.
The two men took turns keeping watch at night, while the woman and another man rested.
Mingfei did not approach.
He found a branch in a large tree about 200 meters from the camp, leaned against the trunk, and closed his eyes.
He didn't sleep; instead, he sank a part of his consciousness into the underworld.
On that scorched earth, the corpses of more than a dozen soul beasts, including Crimson Flame Scorpions, Netherworld Wolves, and Ironback Lizards, lay scattered on the ground.
The gray mist churned above them, as if an unseen hand was tearing at the remnants of souls and energy within the corpses.
Mingfei could sense that the Underworld was slowly absorbing this energy, and with each bit absorbed, the area of the Underworld expanded by a negligible amount.
He opened his eyes and looked in the direction of the three-man squad's camp.
The light from the campfire flickered in the darkness, like an orange eye.
Mingfei adjusted his position on the tree branch to make himself more comfortable.
He doesn't plan to act tonight.
Ghost Tigers are nocturnal animals, so if the three-person team is really looking for one, they will most likely find it during the day tomorrow.
And he will always be following behind.
Until they found Ghost Tiger.
Until he saw how that ghost tiger fought.
He waited until he was sure he could pick up the prey after the three-man team.
Or, find your own opportunities in their failures.
The night wind rustled through the woods.
Mingfei closed his eyes, and his breathing gradually became long and even.
He didn't fall asleep, but he minimized the strain on his body.
His mental energy was like an invisible net, spread within a fifty-meter radius around the camp, and no movement could escape his perception.
A deep roar came from afar, but it was quickly swallowed up by the night.
The night breeze swept through the forest, carrying a damp coolness.
Mingfei leaned against a tree branch, his eyes closed, his breathing almost inaudible.
His mental energy was like an invisible net, spreading within a fifty-meter radius of the camp, sensing every abnormality.
The campfire of the three-person team had been burning for most of the night, but the flames had dimmed from bright to dim, leaving only a pile of dark red embers, with an occasional spark.
The man with the shield was on night watch.
He sat by the campfire, his back against the mountain wall, his shield resting on his knees, his eyes half-open and half-closed.
It wasn't really sleeping, but rather in the kind of shallow rest that only a seasoned hunter would have.
The body is relaxed, but alertness remains constant.
Mingfei observed him for a long time.
This man is very steady.
When on watch, one should not wander around, yawn excessively, or look around aimlessly.
His gaze would sweep across the darkness surrounding the camp every now and then, with a fixed frequency and even rhythm, like a wound-up machine.
Such people are difficult to deal with because they won't give you any obvious weaknesses.
But Mingfei wasn't in a hurry.
He is waiting.
We weren't waiting for those three people.
They are looking for Ghost Tiger, and Ghost Tiger is waiting for them.
Or perhaps, the Ghost Tigers are waiting for them to make a mistake.
Mingfei was waiting for that opportunity.
Time passed little by little.
The moon peeked out from the gaps in the tree canopy, then sank again.
The nocturnal animals in the forest began to stir, and a few wolf howls came from afar, but were quickly drowned out by more sounds.
An owl flew over Mingfei's head, unaware of the child perched on the tree branch, as quiet as a stone.
In the latter half of the night, around three or four in the morning, there was movement in the camp.
It wasn't an enemy attack; it was a shift change.
The man on watch gently patted his companion's shoulder, whispered something, then hugged his shield, leaned against the mountain wall, and closed his eyes.
Another man, the second-ring Soul Master who wielded a short sword, took over the night watch, sat by the campfire, and rubbed his eyes.
Mingfei's mental power detected a subtle change.
The new person in charge is less vigilant than the previous one.
He glanced around less frequently, only looking up once every minute or two.
He wasn't sitting up straight; he was leaning slightly forward, as if he were on the verge of dozing off.
He even yawned, the sound not loud, but exceptionally clear in the silent forest.
The instant that yawn ended, Mingfei's mental energy detected another movement.
About sixty meters northeast of the camp.
Something moved.
It wasn't the wind. It wasn't a tree branch.
It is an extremely fast, extremely light movement that almost blends into the night.
The thing slid out from the shadow of a tree, skimming the ground and silently approaching the camp.
Its speed was neither too fast nor too slow, each step precisely catching the wind and masking all other sounds with the noise of nature.
Mingfei's pupils contracted slightly.
Ghost Tiger.
It wasn't what he saw; his naked eye couldn't see anything, the darkness was too thick.
But his mental powers told him that the thing was approaching the camp with astonishing stealth.
Its soul power fluctuations were extremely weak; if it weren't for the fact that the spiritual power bestowed upon him by the underworld far exceeded that of others of the same level, he would have had almost no chance of discovering it.
Ghost Tiger wasn't there to test us.
It came to hunt.
Mingfei gently stroked the hilt of the Hades Sword with his fingers, but did not move.
He focused his mental energy intently on the movement of the ghost tiger, while also sensing the condition of the three people in the camp.
The man on watch was still yawning and completely unaware of the danger approaching.
Of the two people who were asleep, one was breathing evenly, while the other, the woman, was breathing at a different rate.
She was not asleep.
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