Chapter 141: Let Us See How He Stirs Things Up
The moment the courier heard Li Mu’s words, he froze.
The Three Profounds and Song Chuhe were stunned as well.
The Three Profounds exchanged looks, to the point that they were almost ready to spread their hands in helplessness.
There was just no helping it...
“Yes!”
The courier answered and walked out. After two steps, he still could not help turning back to look at Li Mu, hoping he might add a few more words—something to soften what he had just said, even a little.
But there was nothing.
Li Mu turned around and was already preparing to head back to the room and test the medicine on Kurozawa Ranzi.
Song Chuhe reached out and stopped him.
“Wait. A coward like Kurozawa Ranzi would never dare come without a safe route.”
“Based on the distance you measured last time, this place is several thousand kilometers away from their camp.”
“And the elephants only have one-way teleportation, so they would have had to travel for at least a full day.”
“Besides, when we first discovered this Vacuum Zone, Ma Jun said that the Divine Elephant Nation people first sent a small group.”
“Then they left, and less than two hours later, a much larger group arrived.”
“Taken together, those two things mean there must be another Divine Elephant Nation outpost within roughly two hours’ travel.”
“That makes sense.” Li Mu smiled and strode back into the room.
Song Chuhe, meanwhile, found two battalion commanders.
“I’ll trouble you two to increase patrol density in the surrounding area and see whether there are any other suspicious traces of the Divine Elephant Nation.”
The two battalion commanders acknowledged the order and left. Only then did Song Chuhe walk to the doorway.
Before he even entered, Kurozawa Ranzi’s screams of pleading had already begun coming from inside...Sure enough, under Li Mu’s renewed questioning, Kurozawa Ranzi finally spilled the secret information he had originally intended to keep in reserve to save his life.
There was a mysterious resource zone in the southeastern region from Tiger Roar Camp.
Judging from his testimony, he had been teleported out from the Balibali Military District, and the method of teleportation had been a golden elephant.
In total, he had teleported through five Vacuum Zone camps in sequence.
Those five camps formed a line.
Each one contained a golden elephant.
He had even asked the people beside him about it out of curiosity, and the Divine Elephant Nation people had told him that this was called the “Mother-and-Calf Elephants.”
The one in the Balibali Military District was the mother elephant.
The other five camps each had a calf elephant.
The golden elephants possessed teleportation ability. Ordinary elephants could teleport to the side of either a golden calf elephant or the mother elephant.
But the calf elephants and the mother elephant could carry out point-to-point teleportation with one another.
And the range was extremely long.
Of course, if a calf elephant was to go to a brand-new teleportation point, it still had to run there first.
After Kurozawa Ranzi left the fifth camp—that was the camp Li Mu had robbed—they began their long overland journey.
They had indeed traveled along a route already opened up by the Divine Elephant Nation, all the way to the vicinity of that mysterious resource zone, and only then had they turned and come this way.
Naturally, Song Chuhe also became suspicious of the location of that mysterious resource zone.
If the enemy had truly expected Kurozawa Ranzi to be captured, then they most likely would not have exposed the real location of the resource zone to him.
After all, exploring the Abyss was not as simple as riding around and staking out land.
How many people could fly in the sky like Li Mu?
Everyone else had to push outward little by little, day by day, exploring monsters and resources alike. Reaching a place a thousand li away was not something that could be accomplished in a matter of months.
Once they had extracted all the information, Li Mu asked the seniors from the Research Institute about the proper usage and dosage of the Corpse Dissolution Flower liquid. After diluting some of it with water, he poured it into several bottles.
Then, when Kurozawa Ranzi and the others were thirsty beyond endurance, he handed the water out to them.
The moment Kurozawa Ranzi saw the water, he did not hesitate in the slightest and gulped down an entire bottle at once.
But when they offered the water to the other Divine Elephant Nation men, the first of them took only a single sip before spitting it out with a puff. His face turned deathly pale with terror as he shouted something and curled backward.
The others began crying out as well, shrinking back in the same way.
Li Mu could not understand what they were shouting, but Kurozawa Ranzi could.
He froze as though struck by lightning.
“What are they saying?”
Li Mu kicked Kurozawa Ranzi and pointed at the other Divine Elephant Nation men.
Kurozawa Ranzi stared blankly at Li Mu.
“What kind of water is this? They’re saying something about demon blood... something about not wanting to become demons...”
Clearly, as people of the Divine Elephant Nation, they had seen the Corpse Dissolution Flower liquid take effect before.
And it was equally clear that the effect had not been anything good.
“What they want doesn’t matter. I want to see it.”
Li Mu gave a cold laugh and stepped forward. He clamped his fingers around one man’s temple and held the bottle to his lips.
If the man resisted even a little, Li Mu’s fingers dug a little harder into his temple.
No words were needed. The meaning was obvious enough.
Drink, or die.
Terrified though they were, the Divine Elephant Nation men still chose to cling to life rather than die on the spot.
Each of them was forced to drink a full bottle.
The medicine took effect very quickly.
Not long after they swallowed the diluted Corpse Dissolution Flower liquid, they all began crying and screaming.
Kurozawa Ranzi was the first to let out a shriek.
Immediately afterward, his entire body began turning red, and the rope binding his hands suddenly snapped apart.
Li Mu and the others slowly retreated to the corners of the room.
With the Three Profounds present, it did not matter whether he was bound or not.
After breaking free of the rope, Kurozawa Ranzi did not go mad and charge outside. Instead, he tore frantically at his own clothes.
Then horrible veins like little snakes began rising across his body.
In agony, Kurozawa Ranzi reached out and grabbed one of the iron pillars.
Because the room was only a temporary structure, it had been stabilized with a few solid iron support columns.
But the moment Kurozawa Ranzi clenched his hand, that iron pillar twisted and deformed under his grip!
Everyone present, including the Three Profounds, had their pupils contract.
If a Sixth Grade Martial Artist could crush hard rock like tofu, that was perfectly normal.
If he could smash through fine steel with a punch or kick, that was also normal.
But to deform solid fine steel through grip strength alone—that was absolutely beyond the strength of a Sixth Grade Martial Artist.
At the very least, it would take someone of the Eighth or Ninth Grade to do that.
Soon afterward, the other Divine Elephant Nation men went mad as well. Every one of them struggled wildly, clawing at their own bodies until they were covered in blood, as though there were biting insects inside them.
Then their bodies turned red, their roars became beastlike, and their physical strength became terrifying.
One of them charged straight at Li Mu.
Li Mu kicked him back, and it felt as though he had kicked an ironclad war chariot.
Then he brought the Ghostface Cudgel down onto the man’s shoulder. Without using any True Qi, he relied solely on the weight of Divine Weapon Art.
More than eight thousand jin came crashing down on him, and the Divine Elephant Nation man merely dropped to his knees with a thud.
Immediately afterward, he let out a furious roar and actually forced himself back to his feet under Li Mu’s weapon.
Li Mu gradually brought forth the strength of Mountain-Bearing Art.
He used only about thirty percent of his strength.
Only when that Divine Elephant Nation man’s body could no longer withstand it, and his legs snapped with a crack, did he collapse and begin rolling around on the ground, clutching his broken legs and screaming.
Their frenzy lasted for roughly twenty minutes before they slowly returned to normal. They lay sprawled on the floor, drenched in sweat, their faces white as paper.
Their hands and feet were in especially terrible condition. While in that frenzied state, they had struck and smashed against various objects, and once they recovered, their limbs were either fractured or split open, covered in blood.
“Keep a close watch on them for the next couple of days,” Li Mu said.
Even if he planted the herbs for the Jade-Pure Bone-Cleansing Pill today, it would still take five days before he could harvest them.
Which was perfect. He could observe the condition of these experimental subjects over those five days.
...
Bloodsea Military District, Military Oversight Headquarters.
When Zu Yuanji and the others received the report sent up from the Pearl Military District, everyone was stunned, and the room fell silent...
Only after quite some time did Zhong Xinghai, commander of the Bloodsea Military District, laugh.
“This really is an interesting kid! An ultimatum like this should have been sent long ago!”
Luo Dongyun, Chief Commissioner of the Military Merit Bureau, nodded.
“The Divine Elephant Nation had no justification to begin with. That was why they wanted to drag the Little Sakura Nation into it. If we show no reaction, it will only give them the impression that we fear the two countries together. That would be even more dangerous!”
“Li Mu’s methods may be a bit sharp, but there’s no harm in pricking both the Divine Elephant Nation and the Little Sakura Nation with them. At the very least, it gives us the initiative and lets us see how the two nations respond!”
Zhong Xinghai slammed a fist on the table.
“Those damned bastards from the Little Sakura Nation! I refuse to believe they have spare troops to meddle in the Divine Elephant Nation’s nonsense. If they dare interfere, then beat them to death! That tiny little country full of stunted fools—I’d like to see where they’d find the guts!”
For once, there was not a single voice of opposition. In the end, Zu Yuanji made the final decision.
“When it comes to matters involving a nation that borders us, if it cannot be handled through negotiation, then it must be suppressed through force. That much is imperative. Thunderous methods may not be a bad thing. The only question is whether that boy Li Mu is up to it.”
Zhong Xinghai said, “I don’t think there’s any need to worry. I can’t even find a single soldier under my command who’s this hard-nosed. If this were handed to someone else, they simply wouldn’t be able to do it! Just let him handle it. I think it’s excellent!”
A few officers under Zhong Xinghai exchanged gloomy looks, all of them helpless.
Zu Yuanji smiled.
“Then... let us see how he stirs things up.”