Qin Feng had been tailing his quarry for nearly an hour, confident he had perfectly blended into the surroundings. That’s when, in the sand ahead, an unremarkable, fist-sized rock sprang to life without warning.
It wasn’t a rock at all. It was an Insect Race unit, camouflaged to perfection.
It shot up, its body unfolding in mid-air to reveal wings as thin as a cicada’s and sharp mouthparts.
It didn’t attack Qin Feng. Instead, it unleashed a silent shriek, one potent enough to shatter the mind.
An Insect Race sentinel!
The shriek was a pheromone—an alarm—that spread in an instant.
’Not good!’
Qin Feng’s pupils constricted, and alarm bells screamed in his mind.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he abandoned all thoughts of stealth, and a torrent of power erupted from within him.
Fierce Bird Footwork!
His body blurred, moving like an arrow released from its bow. Dropping all pretense of stealth, he bolted at top speed in the complete opposite direction of the transporter’s escape route.
At the very same moment he revealed himself, dozens of smaller Insect Race units erupted from the sand around the transporter’s feet and from the crevices of nearby rocks. They let out piercing HISSES and surged toward Qin Feng like a tide.
In the distance, the ground began to tremble violently—a sign that the main force had been stirred.
’Damn it! So the transporter wasn’t truly alone. It was surrounded by a complete, invisible network of sentinels and guards.’
’This was a meticulously laid trap, just waiting for some overconfident Hunter to walk right into it.’
Qin Feng’s expression was grim, but there wasn’t a trace of panic in his heart.
He pushed his speed to the absolute limit. Each step was imbued with the explosive power of the Fierce Bird Fist, his body leaving a long afterimage across the barren plains.
’Escape!’
That was his only thought.
The swarm pursued him relentlessly, their shrieks rising and falling. Under the unified command of the Insect Nest’s Will, an invisible net was rapidly closing in.
「Three full days and nights.」
Qin Feng didn’t stop for a single moment. Relying on stamina that far surpassed other Martial Artists of his rank and the optimal escape routes provided by his S-class Intelligent Assistant, Hammer, he was locked in a life-or-death chase with the swarm across the vast Gobi.
He was nearly surrounded several times, but on each occasion, he used his uncanny sense for opportunity to tear through the weakest point in their encirclement and narrowly escape with his life.
Not until dawn on the third day did the heart-stopping sensation of the chase finally vanish completely.
He dove deep into a massive cavern, collapsing against the cold stone wall and panting heavily.
His first hunt had ended in utter failure.
Not only had he failed to so much as scratch his target, but he had also nearly gotten himself killed.
The failure taught him a cruel but valuable lesson: never underestimate your enemy, especially when that enemy is the Insect Race.
...
「On a black stone platform that towered into the clouds.」
On the mentors’ light screens, the image of Qin Feng’s desperate escape was on full display.
"Haha, he ran into a ’sentinel-decoy web.’ This kid’s luck isn’t so great."
An old man with a goatee, Mu Lin, chuckled and took a swig of wine from the gourd he was carrying.
"Elder Mu."
A curvaceous, red-headed female mentor beside him, Yue Hong, shook her head. Her tone held a hint of admiration. "To escape a deathtrap like that, relying purely on stamina and battlefield assessment... that’s already quite astonishing. Any other student would have become insect-food long ago."
"Yue Hong is right."
A refined, composed middle-aged mentor named Lv Lan stroked his chin and nodded. "His physical conditioning is absurdly powerful. His stamina is far beyond others of his rank. I wonder what his physical potential is."
Master Yu Han remained silent, merely watching the light screen where Qin Feng was sitting cross-legged to recover. A thoughtful flicker passed through his deep-set eyes.
’This performance is certainly impressive,’ he thought, ’but... it’s still not enough to explain Lord Zhou Xiong’s unusual actions.’
Time flowed on relentlessly, applying the same pressure to every student in the assessment.
It seemed Qin Feng’s first failure was only the beginning of a difficult journey.
He spent a full ten days recovering to his peak condition before setting out again, searching for new areas rich in Spiritual Material.
This time, he was far more cautious. He pushed his senses to their absolute limit, scanning every inch of the land like a radar, searching for any telltale sign of an Insect Race trap.
Another ten days passed. At last, in a ravine between two massive mountain ranges, he found a rare underground river. Its banks were overgrown with a strange moss that pulsed with Spiritual Energy.
He waited there silently for eight days.
On the evening of the eighth day, his prey finally appeared.
But when Qin Feng got a clear look at the arrivals, he could only give up in frustration.
It wasn’t a single transporter, but a whole procession of more than a dozen. However, they were all only level three.
’Not the mission objective.’
He could only retreat silently and continue his search.
A full month had now passed since the assessment began.
An invisible pressure began to weigh on him.
After another ten-plus days of tedious searching, he finally found his prize. Deep underground, in a massive cavern never marked on any map, he discovered a vast, dense forest of fluorescent fungi.
The Spiritual Material here was more concentrated than anywhere he had been before.
He settled in to lie in wait, his patience renewed.