Volume 2 Setting Out on the Journey Chapter 22 Meeting an Old Acquaintance Again

Half an hour later.

Emerging from the forest, Wang Jue felt quite pleasant as he walked along the path through the wilderness leading toward the camp.

"Rumble..."

Suddenly, Wang Jue felt a faint vibration coming from behind him, prompting him to turn his head.

In the far distance to the west of the wilderness, three figures were running frantically in a panic, occasionally sprinting and sometimes leaping over a dozen meters at a time, moving at an extremely fast pace!

"Huh... That figure running in front looks a bit familiar?"

Wang Jue squinted slightly in surprise and gazed ahead. "If I remember correctly, isn't this guy named Wan... Wan Qianshan?"

At a single glance, he recognized that one of the three figures fleeing in such a flustered state was none other than Wan Qianshan, the only person who had been able to match him during the initial adventurer actual-combat assessment!

Right behind them was a dense, pitch-black wave of star beasts. Each star beast was about half a meter long and thirty centimeters high, roughly the size of an ordinary dog.

Yet, it was this tide of small star beasts, surging forward like a flood, that had driven Wan Qianshan and his two companions to cast aside their weapons, shields, backpacks, and anything else that hindered their speed, running for their very lives!

"This is... a rat tide?" Wang Jue was startled. A rat tide, also known as a plague of rats, meant certain death even for an Orange Star Realm powerhouse once surrounded by an endless sea of them.

The pitch-black expanse of the rat tide did not look entirely boundless.

However, everywhere it passed, the half-meter-high wild grass was completely flattened by the overwhelming wave.

Judging by his visual estimation, the number of creatures in this rat tide was definitely in the tens of thousands, qualifying it as a small-scale rat tide.

Even a small-scale rat tide was something no one dared to underestimate, for countless past rat tides had proven that before such numbers, powerhouses of the Red Star Realm or even the Orange Star Realm would be swallowed up and annihilated!

Terrifying!

"No good, I have to run..."

Wang Jue immediately turned around and sprinted away without looking back.

It wasn't that he didn't want to save them.

It was simply that his strength did not permit it!

...

Meanwhile.

"Huff..."

"Hoo..."

"Huff..."

Wan Qianshan and the other two had long since discarded everything they could possibly throw away, running desperately.

The rat tide behind them was steadily closing in, the distance between them shrinking from thirty meters down to twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven...

"Damn it, they're catching up!"

"What the hell are those people in the camp doing? Why aren't they sending reinforcements yet?"

"If they don't come soon, we're really going to die this time..."

Wan Qianshan and his companions cursed continuously in their hearts, then gritted their teeth and burst into a sudden speed spurt, slightly widening the distance between themselves and the rat tide again. Only when the gap reached a little over fifty meters did the three of them slightly ease their pace.

"I'm done for, I can't run anymore."

"Me too."

"Same here..."

The three exchanged glances, their faces filled with helplessness and agony.

Truth be told.

In terms of pure speed, their limit running speed could actually be much faster than this rat tide.

However, since it was a limit speed, it was destined to be unsustainable!

Much like the one-hundred-meter dash in the Olympics of the previous era, running a hundred meters in ten seconds back then made someone a "god."

A hundred meters took nearly ten seconds.

What about a thousand meters?

Could it be done in one hundred seconds?

As for ten thousand meters?

Surely not in a thousand seconds?

In reality, the world record for the men's ten thousand meters on Earth was 26 minutes and 17.53 seconds!

Converted into seconds, that equaled 1577 seconds, or roughly 1578 seconds rounded up!

Although martial artists were far stronger than ordinary people, they were bound by the same physiological limits.

While Wan Qianshan and the others could momentarily burst up to sixty or seventy meters per second, they had already been fleeing for nearly half an hour, and now they could barely maintain a speed of thirty-odd meters per second!

Whenever the rat tide drew closer, they had to desperately push their limits to run a bit faster!

Especially since the three of them had fled for nearly two or three hundred miles by now, one could easily imagine how utterly exhausted they were!

"Somebody, help..."

"With commotion this loud, why hasn't anyone come to reinforce us?"

"Damn it, we're so close to the camp, hasn't a single person noticed?"

"No, no, I don't want to die..."

At this moment, all three felt as though their legs had lost all sensation, the extreme fatigue of their muscles making it impossible to pick up their pace.

...

On the other side.

Wang Jue, carrying his weapons, shield, and backpack, maintained an astonishing sprinting speed of over seventy meters per second.

While Wan Qianshan and the others carried nothing, Wang Jue was burdened with a heavy load that impeded his speed.

However, let us not forget.

While Wan Qianshan's group had suffered massive stamina depletion, Wang Jue was still in peak condition!

Combined with the considerable initial distance between Wang Jue and the rat tide, he left them far behind almost immediately.

"What terrible luck. I've stayed here for nearly two months without ever encountering a beast tide, so why did I run into one this time?"

As Wang Jue ran wildly, he couldn't help cursing inwardly. "Damn it, I'd better not find out who is responsible for causing this beast tide, or I'll make sure they never hear the end of it. Phew, carrying such a huge pack is absolute murder..."

If he hadn't realized that the rat tide couldn't catch up to him for the time being, Wang Jue would have discarded his backpack long ago.

Between money and life, Wang Jue naturally valued the latter far more!

Although he had never accomplished the feat of single-handedly fighting dozens or hundreds of star beasts, the star beasts in the current rat tide weren't numbered in the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands—there were tens of thousands of them.

No matter how reckless he was, he wouldn't commit such a suicidal and foolish act!

"Huh?"

Suddenly, Wang Jue's vision caught a black shadow flying toward his direction from the distant horizon. At first glance, he mistook it for some kind of flying star beast, but as the dark flying object drew closer, he finally saw it clearly.

It turned out to be a combat aircraft similar to the fighter jets of his past life, except its exterior was far sleeker and its size much larger!

While military forces were absent from the safety zones, they did exist along the border battlefields, though they were typically stationed on the front lines and rarely seen in City Number One during peacetime.

Of course, this did not mean City Number One lacked a military garrison.

On the contrary, the number of troops stationed in such major cities often exceeded public imagination. Because beast tides rarely reached them, the idle soldiers spent their time cultivating or blending into the city as ordinary martial artists.

The moment an emergency arose, they would instantly resume their military posts to defend the city!

Some military units chose to conceal themselves within the supply camps surrounding the city. On one hand, they could protect the camps; on the other, if they encountered a beast tide beyond their capacity to resist, they could immediately send signals to the city so authorities could make early preparations.

Right now, there was a high probability that this combat aircraft belonged to the military forces secretly guarding the supply camps.

...

"That's great!"

"Reinforcements are here!"

"It's a military aircraft!"

At this moment, the utterly exhausted Wan Qianshan and his companions let out excited shouts of joy upon seeing the approaching aircraft in the distance, their speeds surging once more.

Wang Jue also stopped running. Seeing a combat aircraft for the very first time in this life, he quickly raised his head to look.

The flying combat aircraft was diving steeply toward the rat tide. When it was still about a hundred meters above the ground, it hovered right over the upper airspace of the swarm. With Wang Jue's sharp vision, he clearly saw four or five massive gun barrels emerge from the belly of the craft.

"Rumble..."

Endless torrents of scorching flames erupted fiercely from the barrels, directly blanketing the rat tide below. Amidst the searing temperatures that likely reached several thousand degrees, a massive number of rat beasts caught fire and were burned to death instantly.

"Squeak, squeak, squeak..."

In an instant, the previously orderly rat tide completely collapsed amidst frantic, terrified cries as the beasts scattered in all directions.

Yet, under the blanket of flames, the overwhelming majority of the rat beasts were burned alive, while a fraction managed to escape into the nearby wild grass, burrowing straight into the ground and vanishing.

"Attention, four adventurers. A small-scale rat tide has broken out across a radius of nearly a thousand miles, classified as a Level Four hazard. All adventurers are requested to return to the supply camp immediately. Do not venture into the wilderness areas until the rat tide alert is lifted."

A voice echoed from the combat aircraft, which then swiftly sliced through the air and sped away to rescue other martial artists trapped in the rat tide.

"Phew..."

Wan Qianshan and his companions all let out long sighs of relief.

"We finally cheated death."

"Just a little closer and we would have been done for."

"I'm telling you, I was almost in absolute despair, but I never expected the military rescue to arrive right on time. We're not going to die after all!"

Judging from their sweat-drenched appearances, however, it was clear that all three of them were currently suffering from extreme exhaustion.

"Wang Jue."

Wan Qianshan sat heavily on the ground, feeling both starving and parched. Catching sight of the familiar figure standing not far away, he couldn't help calling out, "Do you have any food on you? Spare some food! And water?"

Hearing Wan Qianshan's words, Wang Jue walked over with a smile.

He noticed that the Wan Qianshan before him lacked his usual aloofness and gloom, replaced entirely by profound fatigue and the joy of surviving a catastrophe!

He understood very well that after fleeing for nearly two or three hundred miles on a razor-thin line between life and death, the toll on their physical stamina was terrifyingly huge.

Wang Jue smiled, reached into the side pocket of his backpack, and pulled out a pouch containing three small biscuits. "Here, I only have compressed biscuits. If you don't mind, take them to tide your stomachs over. Oh, right, I also have a water pouch."

As Wang Jue handed them over, Wan Qianshan and the other two quickly swallowed the compressed biscuits in a couple of bites, then rapidly shared and finished off the pouch of water.

"Wang Jue, thanks."

Having consumed the provisions, Wan Qianshan felt noticeably better and said with a look of gratitude, "Come, let me introduce you. This is Luo Peng beside me, and the other one is Zhou Libo."

"I'd already heard the great name of the 'God of Slaughter' Wang Jue back when I first arrived at the camp," the handsome-looking Luo Peng said with a smile. "It's a pity I never got to meet you until now, and certainly not under these kinds of circumstances."

"Hehe, Slaughter God Wang, this single piece of compressed biscuit tastes even better than delicacies from mountains and seas," Zhou Libo, who had a rugged face, chuckled as well. "I was practically starving to death a moment ago, but now I feel much better."

After letting the three of them recover a bit of their stamina, Wang Jue chatted with them as they walked together toward the camp.

"By the way, how did you guys run into the rat tide? And what did the people in that combat aircraft mean by a 'Level Four rat tide'?"

Since Wang Jue mostly operated around the vicinity of the camp and rarely visited the core supply areas, he naturally knew little about matters concerning beast tides.

"Speaking of which, we were terribly unlucky. We had just come out of the Foggy Forest and were resting in the trees," Wan Qianshan couldn't help saying. "Who would have thought that suddenly, countless rat beasts would burst out from the ground everywhere? It was truly boundless! We were so scared we immediately used steel wires to swing from one large tree to another, not daring to set foot on the ground at all. This time, I've truly witnessed just how terrifying a rat tide is!"

"Hiss..."

Hearing this, Wang Jue drew a sharp breath inward, easily picturing the scene of countless rat beasts erupting from the earth.