"Go back on my word? Don’t you worry! I won’t..." Seeing Lin Li agree to the match in three days, a brilliant smile lit up Su Yue’s pretty face, her bright eyes shimmering.
"Then it’s settled. In the evening three days from now, around this same time. We’ll have our showdown."
"Okay... What are you doing?" After Lin Li nodded, he saw Su Yue suddenly raise her right hand and hold her pinky out in front of him.
"A pinky swear!"
"Hey, aren’t you a little old for this? A pinky swear? You’re so childish!"
"Just hurry up! Since we made a deal, we need a proper ceremony for it..." Su Yue urged, not finding a pinky swear childish at all.
"Sigh..." Lin Li sighed and reluctantly extended his pinky, hooking it with hers.
"Pinky swear, for a hundred years, you’re not allowed to change it." As soon as their fingers hooked, Su Yue began gently shaking her arm while chanting.
The sunset’s afterglow washed over the two of them on the beach. The sun, just about to set, seemed to be bearing witness to their promise.
"There, the deal is sealed." After unhooking their pinkies, Su Yue said with a wide grin, "Oh! Now I’ll have to spend the next few days thinking hard about what to demand from you after I win."
Lin Li watched Su Yue, who looked as if victory was already in her grasp, and inwardly shook his head. But he didn’t let her have the last word, retorting,
"You’re right. Now that you’ve reminded me, I should also spend the next few days thinking hard about what to demand when I beat you."
And just like that, the two of them, each convinced the advantage was theirs and that victory was certain, headed back toward their hotel, bickering the entire way.
...
At twelve o’clock midnight, inside the Rongcheng Spiritual Energy Research Institute, most of the labs were pitch-black, with only a few still lit.
In the laboratory of a senior researcher, a palm-sized Jade Token sat under a glass dome. It was made of a common material and was carved with many indistinct patterns.
The researcher in charge of this laboratory had already gone home for the day. The room was now pitch-black.
Suddenly, a faint golden light shone in the pitch-black laboratory.
The source of this faint golden light was, unexpectedly, the unremarkable, palm-sized Jade Token under the glass dome.
At this moment, not only was the surface of the unremarkable Jade Token suffused with a faint golden light, but it had also begun to vibrate gently.
"HUM."
"HUM."
"HUM..."
After vibrating for a moment, waves of Spiritual Energy began to radiate from the unremarkable Jade Token.
The last time this had happened, it had caused a large swath of Rongcheng to be engulfed by a violent storm.
This time, however, was different. It didn’t affect the city’s weather again; it just continued to hum faintly, seemingly without any effect.
...
The moon was bright and the stars were few. In the wilderness outside Rongcheng, the land did not fall silent after midnight simply because darkness had fallen.
The already perilous wilderness became even more dangerous under the cloak of night.
A closer look would reveal that many nocturnal Mutant Beasts were roaming the wilderness.
Although the surroundings were pitch-black, it didn’t hinder these nocturnal Mutant Beasts’ ability to perceive everything in all directions.
On the contrary, such an environment was even more advantageous for these nocturnal Mutant Beasts to hunt in.
"CRUNCH."
A field mouse gnawing on a wild fruit that had fallen from a tree heard a sound from not far off, and it was so startled that it froze.
Sensing danger approaching, it made a split-second decision, abandoning the fruit and bolting for its burrow without looking back.
"HUU..."
As the field mouse fled, a black shadow shot out from the darkness. It moved as fast as an arrow loosed from a bow, catching up to the frantically escaping mouse in the blink of an eye.
"SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK..."
With a pounce, the hunter pinned the plump field mouse to the ground. The mouse, unwilling to die so easily, struggled frantically, letting out shrill cries.
"CRACK."
With the crisp sound of a bone snapping, the frantically struggling mouse stopped moving and fell silent.
"CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH..."
The sound of crunching bones echoed from the darkness. At that moment, a sudden, strong gust of wind blew away the dark clouds hiding the full moon.
The bright moonlight spilled down, revealing the true form of the creature that had hunted the plump field mouse.
It was a small fox, only a meter long, with entirely black fur except for a white tuft on its forehead.
The black fox emanated the Spiritual Energy fluctuations of the First Rank Initial Stage. The intensity of these fluctuations was considerably weaker than that of an ordinary First Rank Initial Stage Mutant Beast, indicating it had likely broken through to this level only recently.
The black fox Mutant Beast devoured the plump field mouse, but its appetite was clearly not sated. It lolled its tongue out and licked its paws.
A single field mouse was clearly not enough to fill its stomach, so the black fox Mutant Beast prepared to search for its next meal. But just as it was about to leave, something strange occurred.
Against the night sky, a faint crack suddenly appeared.
The crack, at first only twenty-odd centimeters long, rapidly expanded to ten meters in length within a single minute.
This spatial rift was only twenty-odd meters from the ground, positioned directly above the black fox Mutant Beast.