Five days passed in a flash.
At seven in the evening, the sun was gradually setting.
After eating dinner, Li Jun rushed into his bedroom.
He expertly booted up his computer and put on his headset.
Hero's Throne, launch!
This groundbreaking competitive game had taken the world by storm.
For the past month, Li Jun had been completely obsessed.
The game's main menu opened. Li Jun moved his mouse to click "Start Game," but in the next second, he glanced at the friends list on the right.
The first ID on his friends list was [Night Ends and Day Breaks].
Li Jun had pinned him to the top, but his avatar was grayed out.
Offline.
Li Jun scratched his head. He opened their chat history and realized the last time he'd partied up with Lin Ye was over two weeks ago.
Ever since the placement test, it was like Lin Ye had become a different person.
No, actually, he'd started changing even before the test.
Before, after school every day, the two would either go straight to an internet cafe, or Lin Ye would head home first. But by the time Li Jun logged on, the guy would definitely be online too.
Li Jun even felt a little nostalgic for the days they would play all night long.
But now...
Li Jun sighed, his excitement instantly plummeting.
He opened the contacts on his wristband and sent a message to Lin Ye.
"Ah Ye, you getting on? I'll gift you a skin!"
The message sent successfully, but there was no reply for a long time.
Li Jun wasn't too bothered. He knew Lin Ye was probably off training again at this hour.
More than once, Li Jun had seen Lin Ye silently walking toward the combat training room after school.
He'd even secretly peeked inside and seen Mr. Chen sparring with Lin Ye.
Well, strictly speaking, it wasn't sparring. It was a one-sided beatdown.
Every time he saw Lin Ye get sent flying by one of Mr. Chen's punches, only to silently get back up and charge forward again, Li Jun felt a phantom pain himself.
He couldn't understand why Lin Ye had suddenly started pushing himself so hard.
DING.
His communicator vibrated.
It was a reply from Lin Ye, concise and to the point.
"No time. Training."
Li Jun looked at the three words and couldn't help but send a voice message.
"I'm telling you, bro, are you addicted to training or something? Isn't gaming fun anymore? Ever heard of work-life balance?!"
This time, Lin Ye's reply came quickly.
"Yeah, I'm a little addicted."
Li Jun was left completely speechless.
He closed the game and lay down on his bed, but the image of Lin Ye throwing a 612-kilogram punch on the testing field involuntarily surfaced in his mind.
And his shockingly high Qi and Blood index.
'Maybe...'
'I should try a little harder, too?'
The thought flashed through Li Jun's mind for only a moment before he extinguished it.
Li Jun sat back down in his gaming chair and clicked "Start Game."
...
The last ray of sunlight vanished below the horizon, and the entire abandoned city was plunged into complete darkness.
Lin Ye closed the chat window with Li Jun.
Then he set his device to silent mode.
The night wind howled through the dilapidated buildings, making ghost-like wails.
The air was filled with dust, decay, and the faint, almost imperceptible scent of blood.
Lin Ye's figure blended into the shadows, becoming one with the ruins, not making a single unnecessary sound.
It had been five days.
For five whole days, aside from completing his daily virtual combat missions, he had spent almost all of his time here.
On the first day, through his own scouting, he discovered the mutant black panther.
He also identified its core territory.
It used a half-collapsed department store as its lair, and its hunting ground radiated outward for about three square kilometers.
This mutant creature had an extremely strong sense of territory. Any living thing that stepped into this area would be ruthlessly hunted down.
On the second day, Lin Ye witnessed it hunt.
The prey was a LV6 mutant porcupine, roughly the same size as the panther. Its Defense Power was astonishing, its tough hide comparable to a low-grade alloy.
However, in front of the black panther, it was like a fragile toy.
A black afterimage flashed under the moonlight.
There was no earth-shattering struggle, no prolonged fight.
Just a single, incomparably swift pounce.
The panther's claws, glinting with a cold metallic light, tore through the porcupine's toughest back armor, and its sharp fangs snapped its neck bones.
The entire process took less than three seconds.
Clean. Decisive. Efficient.
But at the same time, the porcupine's dying counterattack managed to stick the panther with a few quills.
High speed, high attack, but low Defense Power.
Overall, it was a glass cannon with high attack and agility.
On the third and fourth days, Lin Ye didn't get any closer. Instead, like a city planner, he began to frantically map out the area.
He gave up on the surface and turned his attention underground.
This abandoned city had a labyrinthine sewer system, as intricate as a spider's web.
He found three sewer entrances that led to the vicinity of the panther's lair. He entered and explored each one, confirming the internal structure, air circulation, and whether any other mutant creatures were present.
At the same time, he committed every piece of usable terrain on the surface to memory.
By the fifth day—today.
Even now, Lin Ye hadn't found any obvious weaknesses on it.
No old injuries, no openings.
However, through observation, Lin Ye had discovered something even more valuable.
The abandoned city's food chain.
This black panther was the apex predator of this area, but it wasn't without its own fears.
On the eastern edge of its territory, a massive flock of LV7 mutant vultures was roosting. Their numbers were so great that even the black panther was unwilling to provoke them easily.
As for the deeper parts of the abandoned city, the panther would absolutely not take a single step inside.
It was as if some great terror lurked there.
The intelligence gathered from these observations allowed the blueprint for hunting the panther to take shape, stroke by stroke, in Lin Ye's mind.
Since it had no weaknesses, he would create one for it.
It was fast, so he would use a confined space to restrict it.
He couldn't win single-handedly, so he would set a trap.
Lin Ye stepped out from the shadows and arrived at a location he had marked.
It was a long, narrow alleyway, flanked by towering buildings and ending in a thick wall—a dead end.
Above the alley, a massive concrete slab, dislodged by a building's collapse, was hanging precariously at a dangerous angle seven or eight meters in the air.
All it would take was a sufficiently strong external force to make it fall completely.
Lin Ye began to plan his route.
He needed to lure the panther here.
The entire process required the utmost precision in judging distance and timing.
He had to provoke the panther without it noticing him first. Then, he had to stay just inside its pursuit range, but far enough ahead that it couldn't easily catch him.
Once the lure was successful, he would rush into the alley.
The moment the panther gave chase and entered, he would use all his strength to throw a pre-prepared steel rebar at the fragile support point holding up the concrete slab.
The concrete slab would fall.
Even if it didn't kill the panther outright, it would be enough to severely injure it.
If the panther didn't die, or wasn't even badly injured—if it dodged completely...
Lin Ye had a contingency plan for that, too.
His gaze fell upon the wall at the end of the alley.
On the other side of that wall was the interior of a six-story residential building he had already scouted.
He would dash into the building at top speed.
He knew the building's internal layout like the back of his hand. He would use the complex terrain to play a game of cat and mouse with the panther, constantly moving upward.
And at the stairwells on the third and fifth floors, he had set simple traps.
Some sharpened steel rebars, and some metal barrels that would create a loud noise.
These things wouldn't kill the panther, but they could buy him a few precious tenths of a second.