Chapter 63 – Surrounded

After the bloodline gene was promoted, Lin Feng checked the fighting strength ranking. He wanted to see if the bloodline gene had given him an increase in his fighting strength ranking.

As expected, Lin Feng’s position was still 1230th, his fighting strength ranking had not changed.

Apparently, the apocalypse watch calculated battle strength ranking based on physical strength and soul crystal. Other variables, such as Lin Feng’s martial arts or bloodline genes are not taken into account for the fighting strength.

Lin Feng saw that in the mercenary system the Devil"s Snare request that he posted was unexpectedly accepted by many people. Since they all hid their names, though, Lin Feng wasn’t able to see who they were.

Before coming to the Tian Heng mountain range, Lin Feng had posted the task of retrieving a Devil"s Snare. Even though it is known that only the Tian Heng mountain range contains the Devil"s Snare, Lin Feng didn’t dare to a.s.sume that there weren’t any in the hands of others. So he issued a 2nd cla.s.s retrieval mission for a Devil"s Snare with a reward of 5000 white crystals.

Lin Feng found it unexpected that so many mercenary teams had excepted the request.

The request has been posted for a short time and n.o.body had completed it yet. 5000 white crystals were quite the temptation, though, and many were willing to risk their lives in order to obtain it. If you found a Devil"s Snare, you could get 5000 white crystals, so many white crystals that most people hadn’t seen this many in their entire lifetime. As the salmon rot and perish on their journey to reproduce, man will lose his flesh and life in the pursuit of riches.  Many people were willing to lose their lives to gain this bit of wealth.

Even more unexpectedly, Lin Feng found that he was not the only person to post a request for a Devil"s Snare. There was also a 3rd cla.s.s retrieval request that awarded 5000 white crystals. It seemed to be posted at around the same time and similarly had many mercenaries who had accepted the request.

It seemed like it wasn’t only Lin Feng’s teammate that had mithril in their blood, but someone else did too. From the looks of it, the other group had a lot of money on their hands as well, as 5000 crystals wasn’t an amount that individuals and small teams could just take out. Except for groups with extraordinary strength, none could spend 5000 white crystals on a single life.

Even so, Lin Feng was going to search the Tian Heng mountains for a Devil’s Snare. Even though many mercenary groups had accepted the request, they still might not find one. So Lin Feng entered the mountains and, as they say, even with dangers ahead, since you’ve already arrived, you might as well find what you’re looking for. Finding this Devil’s Snare was the utmost priority for Lin Feng.

The savage beast was a 3rd cla.s.s mutated Black Panther, and within its territory, there were practically no zombies. In the apocalypse, it seems as though zombies and savage beasts were opposed, and where there are high-cla.s.s savage beasts, there won’t be zombies. The black panther was a 3rd cla.s.s savage beast, rivaling a 4th cla.s.s zombie in strength. Low-cla.s.s zombies dared not provoke it.

Lin Feng searched the territory of the black panther for half the day and didn’t even see the shadow of a Devil’s Snare. Helplessly, he could only head towards the deeper regions of the Tian Heng mountains.

Lin Feng traveled for two kilometers and found the traces of some zombies.  He also encountered a stream flowing down from the mountains. It wasn’t very deep or wide, with pebbles sticking out of it, but it appeared very clean. Lin Feng still didn’t try to drink from it. He didn’t know if anything contaminated in the water, and even with his strength as a cultivator, he knew that it was dangerous to eat or drink anything in the wild.

The stream twisted its way down the mountain with zombies standing on both sides of it. Zombies seemed to have a fear of water, as even though the stream was shallow, none of the zombies stood in it.

Following the stream down the mountain, Lin Feng took a silenced rifle and took out the zombies bordering the stream. Since Devil’s Snare only grew in the valleys of the mountain range, Lin Feng started to head towards an area of lower elevation.

Before coming to the Tian Heng mountain range, Lin Feng went to the Southern Mountain Base  and bought two silenced automatic rifles. In the mountains, zombies tend to gather together, so when using ordinary guns, especially in a mountain range where the sound carries very well, the noise of a gunshot will attract a small zombie tide. So Lin Feng decided to get some silenced weapons to draw less attention.

After half an hour, Lin Feng killed hundreds of zombies and arrived at a basin. Between two mountains was a flat stretch of land where the stream flowed through and started to form a riverbed.

Suddenly, Lin Feng sensed that something was off, and realized that he had not encountered a high-cla.s.s zombie for a while.

Normally, most of the zombies grouped up in order to increase their level faster. As more 1st cla.s.s zombies came together, they had the chance to survive for longer and increase their strength and become 2nd cla.s.s zombies.

This allowed cultivators to count the number of high-cla.s.s zombies to determine the total number of zombies in a zombie tide.

In general, for every ten zombies, there will be one higher cla.s.s zombie.

Regarding the War Wolf Base zombie tide, there were two 4th cla.s.s zombies, 20 3rd cla.s.s zombies, three to four hundred 2nd cla.s.s zombies, four to five thousand 1st cla.s.s zombies, and seventy to eighty thousand regular zombies, bordering on 100,000 zombies in total.

Oddly enough, Lin Feng, who had killed zombies while following the stream, had killed at least a hundred normal zombies already. Common sense would dictate that there should be at least some 1st cla.s.s zombies, but among all the zombies the Lin Feng had seen, even those on the fringes that he did not provoke, there were no high-level zombies.

“Where are all the high-level zombies go?”

It wasn’t the Lin Feng was eager to face some high-level zombies, but it was odd, like seeing students out wandering without a teacher.

Suddenly, Lin Feng saw movement beyond the basin. Zombies started to emerge from the intersection of the two mountains bordering the riverbed.

Lin Feng had a bad premonition, and it was exactly as he feared.

When he looked back he saw even more zombies coming out from where he entered the basin.

The zombies that approached were high-cla.s.s. Judging by the way they walked, they were all at least 1st or 2nd cla.s.s with 3rd cla.s.s zombies spread throughout.

He now understood why he only saw low-cla.s.s zombies. It wasn’t that there weren’t any, but that they were all lying in wait around this basin.

Lin Feng sweat dropped as he looked around and saw all the high-cla.s.s zombies densly surround him.

Feedback is awesome

Please decide if you would rather read BTSTTA as close to the original translation as possible or as easy on the eyes as possible. I will start translating my own style of BTSTTA that is easy on the brain so that I don’t write ten commas and a bunch of repeats in the same sentence.

“Simply put, Prop was writing, the readers he was telling, the editing he was referring to, about how, he was going to edit. Saying again, making the writing easier on the brain, he was intending to do, so Prop thought. ”

Please comment if you are okay with this. If not, comment anyways.