Chapter 45: Subterranean Hunting

Early morning, the hunting guild branch was bustling with people.

Zong Ge entered, attracting everyone’s gaze.

“Lord Shi Fu.” The receptionist immediately jogged over to personally receive him.

“Hm.” Zong Ge nodded calmly, then walked to the front desk to look up at the magic panel above it.

Very quickly, he said, “I want that mission.”

The receptionist suddenly exposed their pleasant surprise, then promptly replied, “Quick, process that for Lord Shi Qi!”

Snake Rat Island’s most plentiful resource was its magic beasts.

The island had an abundance of smelt rats and tide snakes, thus the Hunting Guild established a branch here.

However, Snake Rat Island hadn’t been developed for very long, thus most of its residents were ordinary people, there were few cultivators. The island lord was only a silver level, not a gold.

Ordinary people were unqualified to deal with magic beasts. Cultivators were sparse, thus the Hunting Guild branch had many missions piled up that were hard to complete.

Zong Ge was a silver level expert that was interested in completing these missions, this was great news for them.

Zong Ge swiftly used the name Shi Qi to register as an apprentice hunter.

“My Lord, this is the mission map, and on the back is detailed information on the mission.” The receptionist respectfully escorted Shi Qi out the door. “I wish your Lordship immediate success, that mission is very easy!”

The Clam Cloth Merchant Alliance store was conveniently located next to the Hunting Guild branch.

When Zong Ge left the Hunting Guild, he saw Cang Xu walking out of the merchant alliance store.

Cang Xu’s social skills clearly surpassed Zong Ge’s, and it was the same silver level magician that sent him off.

“I’m very sorry, we cannot cooperate with your group in this respect.” The merchant alliance looked cordial, but her tone was firm.

It was evident that talks between Cang Xu and the merchant alliance fell through.

Zong Ge and Cang Xu left the town together.

After they left, many others also left quickly too to pass on information to various parties.

Shi Qi received a hunting mission, the old magician, Zhong Ze, and the Clam Cloth Merchant alliance discussed the sale of magic beast parts.

The Clam Cloth Merchant Alliance’s refusal was explicit.

In a church.

A priest glanced at this information, causing him to mutter to himself.

He already learned about the conflict between Hei Fei’s group and the survivors last night.

The survivors contacted the Hunting Guild and the merchant alliance, but was their acceptance of a hunting mission a pretense? Or did they want to borrow power to deal with Hei Fei, or even Tan Qiu?

Everything still needed to be watched.

The purist put aside the intelligence, and opened a door to a hallway.

It was time for morning prayer.

The Night Devil Hunting Group’s countryside encampment.

The hunting group’s commander was resting after tempering his battle skills when he obtained a report.

Long Fu and Shi Qi dipped their fingers into hunting missions?

“Interesting.” The hunting commander smiled, “Arms smuggling criminals also need to hold concurrent jobs? Hunting magic beasts is not something one can do with merely high combat power.”

The hunting commander was not at all nervous.

There were many hunting missions, for there were plentiful magic beasts.

it didn’t matter if some of it was given to outsiders.

Like Hei Fei and the others, he also saw through the survivors’ mercenary identity and maintained that were secretly arms smugglers.

He did not think Shi Fu and the others would do well at hunting.

He waited for them to make fools out of themselves.

The castle.

Tan Qiu was enjoying breakfast.

He put down his black tea and glanced at the trees and fountain outside his ceiling high window. In his lef hand was the latest intel.

At the top was the latest recorded actions of Zong Ge, Cang Xu, and the others.

“Before the Clam Cloth Merchant Alliance opened its shop, it had reached an agreement with the Hunting Guild.”

“The Hunting Guild branch harvests the magic beasts here, and will sell most of them to the Clam Cloth Merchant Alliance, making use of the latter’s mature transportation channels to trade.”

“It’s a little strange.”

“Why did Long Fu and Shi Qi’s group suddenly start hunting magic beasts?”

“Hunting is not a simple nor shallow business.”

“Will their simple attempts be amusing? Are they probing the relationships between powers on Snake Rat Island?”

On a slave ship.

Hei Fei coldly snorted, “Shi Qi suddenly went hunting?”

“What is he doing?”

“Does he want to draw me out?”

“Long Fu hasn’t appeared…where is he? Are they doing a feint and conspiring to attack my ships?”

“Impossible.”

“This is imperial territory, this is Tan Qiu’s port.”

Hei Fei’s train of thought diverged, and he became a bit hot-tempered.

How last night’s slave rebellion occurred and the baffling reason they were able to rush out of the ship hold were still a mystery to him.

He shook a bell to call a subordinate, who in sternly warned, “Reinforce the defenses!”

Ba Hu was the last one to receive the intelligence.

As a renowned bounty hunter, he also valued gathered intel.

However, because he was singular person, and wasn’t in a force or a group, his information gathering efficiency couldn’t compare to Tan Qui, Hei Fei, or the others.

“Regardless of their aim, their conflict with Hei Fei’s group has nothing to do with me.”

Ba Hu was currently interested in working with Tan Qiu.

Since that banquet, Tan Qiu and he had privately conversed several times.

Tan Qiu promised: if Rou Zang was defeated, he would give a portion of the pirates, highly wanted criminals, to Ba Hu.

This aroused Ba Hu’s interest.

Ba Hu was a bounty hunter, and developed at the Bounty Hunter Guild. Pursuing fugitives and completing bounties was how he lived.

He was a lone man, and found it difficult to deal with Rou Zang’s large pirate group. But with the help of Tan Qiu’s strength, perhaps his guild rank could ascend substantially.

Snake Rat Island had massive subterranean caverns.

It was very easy to enter these subterranean areas, for there were many natural passages scattered across its surface.

There were both small and large caverns and tunnel entrances.

Thanks to the Hunting Guild branch’s operations, most of these caves had been scouted out.

The circumstances of these caves varied, those with abundant resources had many people entering them, while those that were dangerous and infertile had fewer hunters visiting them.

The Night Devil Hunting Group was Snake Rat Island’s largest hunting group, and occupied the best cave, enjoying all of its resources.

The mission Zong Ge chose was not in one of the popular caves, but in a remote area.  

The further they went into the countryside, the harder it was to track Zong Ge and Cang Xu.

“This is the place.” Zong Ge compared it to the map.

This cave mouth was three meters wide. Half of it was open wide, allowing sun to shine through, illuminating it and allowing one to see the dense cyan vines growing inside.

Zong Ge and Cang Xu quickly vanished into the cave.

The scouts following them hesitated one after the other, none of them entered the cave.

“A smart calculation.” Cang Xu smiled.

After Zong Ge and Cang Xu entered the cave, they didn’t enter deeper, rather they waited for a spell, and didn’t notice anyone following them.

If one did, they would’ve disposed of them.

These were humble scouts, and were not their opponents.

The tunnel was sealed, and was an ideal place to bury a murdered corpse.

Even if it was exposed, the survivors would make their stand. They were hunting, and these people were tracking them, they must have harbored dark thoughts, and were so evil that even death would be an insufficient punishment.

The two then officially explored the cave.

The terrain slowly sloped downward, and the deeper they went, the darker and damper it was.

Since Cang Xu was a magician, light was not a problem.

Zong Ge took out a cutlass and lifted a small wooden shield.

These were both common equipment. In this narrow cave, they were more convenient to use than his broadsword.

For this first mission, hunting was side objective, their main job was to explore nearby caves. For example, bringing back intel on the topography, the distribution of magic beast groups, and other such things.  

If those scouts had kept following them, they would have discovered something strange.

Because according to common sense, Zong Ge and Cang Xu should’ve encountered magic beasts already.

This was the exploration period, the nearby caves hadn’t been exploited yet, and there should’ve been many tide snakes living here.

But it took Cang Xu and Zong Ge 15 minutes to see a living animal.

It was not a snake, nor a rat.

Instead, it was a bird.

A scouting bird puppet.

When the bird saw Cang Xu and Zong Ge, it didn’t react, rather it continued to move its head to look all over the place.

When Cang Xu and Zong Ge saw the bird, they knew their exploration route was correct.

This time, they were merely follow-up troops.

The dragonman youngster had secretly set out a long while earlier.

With the Deceptive Disguise formation and the Bloodcore transformations, he could easily sneak into any location on Snake Rat Island. Let alone a place where people rarely tread.

Continuing forward, Cang Xu and Zong Ge successively noticed smashed rocks, splattered blood, and other traces of fighting.

It was very clear that many traces and clues had been intentionally cleaned up.  

Then in one location, Zong Ge suddenly stopped and stooped down to pick up a scale.

This snake scale was as big as a hand palm. It had been roasted, its edges were uneven, and it looked like it had been torn apart in an explosion.

The half beastman gaze focused, “It seems our captain has already switched his battle qi. This battle qi is filled with the fire attribute, and seems to have powerful explosions.”

This scale evidently hadn’t been cleaned up by the dragonman youngster.

Cleaning up a battlefield required perfection, which was unrealistic.  

But Zong Ge, with a single snake scale, was able to infer many things that allowed his keen eyes to see the battlefield clearly.

The necromancer wasn’t surprised, Zong Ge was talented in this area, and had done this both on Mystifying Monster Island and Stone Egg Island.  

Cang Xu nodded, “That’s right, in fact, it wasn’t only the Lord Captain. Our Miss Zi Di also broke through.”

Along the way, he sensed some residues of necromantic magic power.

The residues’ aura was very faint, and it wouldn’t be long before they completely dissipated. If Cang Xu wasn’t a necromancer, he wouldn’t have had the keen perception needed to sense them.

The dragonman youngster successfully switched his battle qi, while Zi Di once again became a magician, the survivors knew this was going to happen.

Zong Ge and Cang Xu were happy that their comrades had improved their strength.

The underground tunnel was growing more spacious.

At the beginning, the passage was at most three people wide, now it could fit two carriages side by side in it.

The dragonman youngster and Zi Di intentionally left behind secret marks, so Zong Ge and Cang Xu weren’t misled by the wayside, allowing the exploration team to follow.

By the time they caught up, they were just in time to see the dragonman youngster and Zi Di devastate a snake group.