Once the decision was made, Li Wei stopped rushing.
He drove the truck off the road first, parking it casually at the edge of a small grove. From a hundred ters away, you'd never notice it — the camouflage was that effective. Even from the air, as long as it didn't move, it was indistinguishable from the scattered patches of woodland dotting the wilderness.
So — cook a al?
Li Wei glanced at Adai, who was crouched beside him like a small divine eagle, staring longingly at the flash-frozen fish that weighed at least 150 kilograms. It was still alive — Adai had been refreshing an ice magic layer on it every so often. Where all that ice mana ca from, and why it was so abundant, remained a mystery.
"I'm not Second Aunt — you're not getting poached fish from . But you've been through a lot these past few days, Adai. You've lost weight. Here — let cut you so sashimi."
Li Wei said it with genuine affection. He really was a caring owner.
"Caw, caw!"
Adai made two low sounds — very satisfied, very happy. You actually want fresh-cut sashimi? Fine, I'll indulge you.
He drew his four-star enchanted dagger and looked at the flash-frozen fish. It was practically a mini-boss — a decent species, with two life cores inside. Nothing unusual, but it was the biggest one Adai had brought back so far.
No hesitation. The enchanted dagger swept down, and the ice in that section dissolved — Adai was cooperating, reclaiming the ice mana. Quite economical of him.
What followed took exactly one minute and thirty-eight seconds. With practiced ease, Li Wei filleted the fish down to the bone, and in the process used precise technique to disperse the fish's second life core, letting it continuously release life energy that concentrated into the flesh slices. A bit wasteful, but the flavor would be exceptional.
Li Wei ate two slices, Adai ate one. Man and bird alike were thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Delightful.
The fish was still alive, since one life core remained in its head.
Then Adai did sothing unexpected. Seeing that Li Wei had eaten his fill and stopped cutting, Adai suddenly darted forward in a flash, pecked with lightning speed, and in an instant achieved the achievent of "blind in one eye."
That single strike scattered the fish's last life core.
Adai's claws were already out — crack, crack, splitting bones, selecting cuts, killing on the spot. In monts, the fish was completely gone. More skilled than Li Wei.
Li Wei watched the creature with suspicion. Then he suddenly felt a warm current circulating inside him — like he was about to burp. But before it ca out, the warmth dissipated.
A notification followed: after months of consuming high-quality food, he had finally earned two free attribute points.
It worked.
It actually worked.
Li Wei was delighted. A good on — and Adai was a good bird too.
Look at that — even contributing to the household.
"Adai, I'm going to sleep. Rest up too — but stay alert. Wake if anything happens."
Li Wei thought briefly and put both free attribute points into Agility. His base Agility went from 49 to 51 — only 9 points from the third-tier awakening.
He looked at the sky. Looked like rain? Good — that was exactly what he was waiting for. He climbed into the truck bed and fell into a deep, relaxed sleep.
He slept straight through from morning until two or three in the afternoon. When he crawled out, the sky was overcast and heavy — rain was genuinely coming. It was already the twentieth of May, nearly sumr. Perfectly normal.
"Adai — let's go take a look around."
As he spoke, Li Wei sent Adai up into the sky at a thousand ters, deep into the cloud layer. Cloud cover was ideal — and Adai was powerful enough now, his wings strong enough, that he was practically an ard reconnaissance drone.
A little rain cloud? Child's play.
Li Wei moved under the cover of gusts of wind, darting through the vegetation along the roadside. His presence beca quiet and contained — a quality of the Ranger. The codena hadn't been formally activated yet, but in practice it was already extrely powerful.
In this kind of environnt, Li Wei was genuinely in his elent.
He was confident he could move without being detected even by enemies within a hundred ters.
He sprinted about ten kiloters forward and spotted the fortress built on the north bank of the bridge. It was quiet over there, and he found no Neanderthal traps in the vicinity — probably to avoid friendly fire. With hundreds of Ability Users coming and going every day around a ruined town on flat ground, accidental casualties would be inevitable.
"Rumble!"
A low, muffled thunderclap rolled across the sky. No rain yet — but the weather was growing darker, the wind picking up.
Li Wei was sharing Adai's vision, getting a clear picture of the fortress interior.
It wasn't a particularly solid fortress. It didn't compare to Ron's, or Scar's, or even Li Wei's own territory hall. It had probably won out purely on location.
Because the site had originally been so kind of factory, repair shop, or warehouse — cluttered and complex. The surrounding walls, though, were well-constructed.
In the center stood a factory-floor-style building — massive, spacious, fifteen ters tall. The exterior had been reinforced with a layer of reinforced concrete about ten ters high, and the top section was built up with various pieces of timber.
He couldn't imagine what the original pioneer had been thinking. Maybe they'd been a novice like Li Wei, without much intelligence support.
Around the camp were four arrow towers, each twenty ters tall — imposing, commanding the high ground.
Solid and intimidating — clearly built with care.
But still ordinary thinking. Flashy, impractical.
Right now, sixteen Ability Users were on duty across the four towers.
On the wooden top of the fortress, a makeshift guard post — sothing between a watchtower and an arrow tower — had been set up, with four more Ability Users keeping watch.
Half of them were half-cat types, half were half-dog types.
One group had excellent long-range vision; the other had sharp hearing and powerful noses.
Frost Duke seed to have a lot of cat and dog Ability Users — probably because those people had been around cats and dogs a lot before the mutation.
In theory, infiltrating this place was extrely difficult. They were genuinely vigilant — eyes fixed on every direction and the sky, constantly creating overlapping fields of view, a net with no gaps. A tough defensive setup.
Except for Li Wei.
His Perception 7 let him instantly map their individual detection ranges and find the blind spots in their overlapping coverage.
Yes — there were always blind spots. Half-cat and half-dog types inevitably had lapses. They couldn't maintain peak alertness every single second, year after year, eyes wide open, scanning for every movent.
Even if they were genuinely quite diligent.
But capability had its limits.
So Li Wei casually circled around to the downwind side, avoided a few critical trap positions, and then — under the cover of a strong gust, in the 0.1-second window when a few Ability Users' gazes shifted — slipped silently through the wall.
But the mont he entered, Li Wei felt sothing different. Like a force in the ether was calling to him, watching him, sensing him, searching for him.
He knew this feeling very well.
'Inspiration. A caster?'
Li Wei's presence contracted even further. He didn't dare move carelessly. He knew this sensation intimately — back when he and Liang Yuzhi had taken Xavier, Santiago, and a few other Freen to fight the Level 5 mutant spider in the northern town, that creature had spoken in human language and rambled on at length.
And then it had used ntal shock.
He'd learned afterward that it was a caster's Inspiration — like a puppeteer pulling fate's strings. Using fragnts of information — nas, identities — to connect to forces in the ether and unleash devastating ntal attacks.
Strange and unsettling.
Back then, his Perception was only 1, so he'd been hit easily and taken about ten seconds to break free.
Even earlier, during the rookie mission, the Grand Witch had nearly ensnared him.
After he'd grown close to Second Aunt, she'd often casually used ntal shock to punish those who privately complained about her. Li Wei had seen it so many tis that he'd occasionally asked her to use it on him — it was actually quite effective, especially for curing insomnia. Best sleep aid around.
Li Wei figured that if his Perception were still 1 — no, anyone below 4 — would likely be caught. Those at 4 or 5 could probably resist, but couldn't advance further. 6 could manage, but 7 was the most reliable.
Li Wei spent several minutes quietly sensing the field, and finally confird that his Perception 7 was more than enough to move freely here. Then, as the first raindrops began to patter down, it seed to affect the enemy caster's Inspiration rhythm — the previously airtight net loosened, like a curtain stirring in the wind, a few gaps finally appearing.
Li Wei slipped through those gaps like an eel, silent and smooth, and successfully entered the fortress.
Inside, a heavy, rank sll hung in the air. There weren't many Ability Users — by feel, no more than fifty. So were sleeping on the ground floor, others were huddled together gambling. Interesting — these ones seed to have their minds relatively intact.
"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm..."
Just as Li Wei was thinking this, he heard from a dark room nearby the sounds of several large, greasy creatures rolling around like maggots. Quite the scene — and quite the noise.
Half-boars, half-bulls, half-dogs, half-goats. But no Neanderthal crossers?
Wait — half-goats?
Li Wei's gaze moved to the second floor of the fortress. There was a strange altar-like table up there — bizarre, completely indescribable. Li Wei was certain the Inspiration he'd sensed earlier had been emanating from it.
Remarkable.
But even more remarkable was what was fixed to the altar.
A half-goat of indescribable obesity.
He was genuinely, impossibly fat.
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