Monarch of Evernight (Web Novel)

[Volume 3 - The Place Where My Heart Feels At Peace]

A moment later, Qianye hunted a Forest Boa in the thick forest. Then, he let out its blood and swallowed every drop. This was a commonly seen survival technique when one didn’t have food with them. Even if the powerful observers hidden in the surroundings had seen this, they wouldn’t suspect that he possessed a vampire’s ability.

Qianye drained the forest boa’s blood, rested for a moment and slunk towards the direction of the Zhao household’s hunting team once more.

By now the sky was approaching the night, and the Zhao household had already set up camp to rest and reorganize. After the afternoon’s chaotic battle, Zhao Junhong had already lost all mood to continue his hunt. He appeared to be incredibly irritated as he walked back and forth inside his tent.

At first, Zhao Junhong was fully confident in this spring hunt. He wasn’t even paying too much attention to their point acquisition because the event wasn’t all that challenging. He was more curious to know about Song Zining and Yin Qiqi’s family secret arts.

However, the spring hunt was already turning into a disaster for him after it had barely started, and the cause of all this was Qian Xiaoye, an insignificant rank-five bodyguard! He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt less confident in the bodyguard’s chances to hunt down Qianye. It was just his intuition, and in reality, it counted for nothing.

Suddenly, a bang broke through the air!

Zhao Junhong almost jumped to his feet. It was Eagleshot again!

A bodyguard taking water by the riverside let out a blood-curdling scream as bloody light blossomed from his body. His entire body was sent flying by the impact before he landed heavily on the ground. Lucky for him, he was able to find a spot to hide after a rolling a couple of times on the ground. Therefore he was hurt, but the wounds were not so serious that they were categorized as grievous or fatal.

On a hill a thousand meters or so away, Qianye appeared and waved a hand at Zhao Junhong. Then, he turned around and vanished from sight.

It took a long time before Zhao Junhong finally reacted with a howl, “Let’s fight sniper with sniper! Someone get out there and kill that guy!”

To his surprise, no one answered him despite his howl. It was only then Zhao Junhong recalled that the farthest shooting range his team possessed was three hundred meters, and no one among them carried a sniper type origin gun.

Zhao Junhong felt only immeasurable irritation as he waved his arm strongly and yelled, “We sleep for the night!”

However, they were destined not to have a good night’s rest, for Qianye would fire once or twice at the tents with his sniper rifle. Maybe Zhao Junhong was just unusually unlucky, but a flying shrapnel from the shot managed to cut his finger. Although it was an insignificant small wound, the injury only made Zhao Junhong angrier.

A new day finally arrived, and Zhao Junhong continued the hunt with a dark expression on his face. He had already made up his mind to hunt Qianye down personally if he dared to show his face again! As for the loss of reputation he would incur for hunting this extremely daring guy personally, what else did he have to lose after all this?

Zhao Junhong and the remaining bodyguards formed a counter-sniper formation and continued onwards.

Eagleshot rang once more, and this time it was fired from the maximum range of 1200 meters away. Its target wasn’t a man but a rank seven werewolf that had already been struck to the brink of death. As he watched the tiny light float towards high altitude, Zhao Junhong let out an angry roar that resounded throughout the entire mountain range. He chased at top speed in the direction where Qianye’s shot came from!

The chase lasted for more than half a day, and in the end, Zhao Junhong wasn’t even sure if he was treading the right path. At any rate, he was no longer able to find any traces of Qianye at all, and none of his bodyguards were able to catch up to him either.

Since Zhao Junhong couldn’t chase down Qianye, he vented his anger onto the surrounding prey instead. By now they were already inside the highly dangerous black circle of the hunting field. Here in this zone, dark warriors were beginning to show up in droves. They were not mindless wild beasts, so naturally, they would group up and not act alone. They readied themselves to hunt down, in reverse, the humans of the spring hunt and fight for the opportunity to live.

This was the danger of the spring hunt. When the dark races appeared in droves, the lone landowning household warrior would be hard-pressed to resist against them. That was why most of them very smartly roamed the rank six zone of the wild beasts, but didn’t dare to enter the black circle. They wouldn’t lose too many points hunting just rank six beasts alone, but they would face far fewer danger than had they been hunting inside the black circle. Lone hunters wouldn’t enter the black circle so deeply at all without a special reason. The black circle was the aristocratic families’ personal domain. It was here battle results and family honor began to differ greatly.

Zhao Junhong was no ordinary hunter. When five dark race warriors appeared before him, he opened fire at the first moment and caused silver light to spit twice from his gun’s muzzle, blasting away the upper torso of two werewolves in an instant. Then, the second young master of Zhao withdrew his gun and took out a blade, striding toward the remaining three warriors!

It was a bloody battle!

In the blink of an eye, the three werewolves were hurt all over. Zhao Junhong himself had suffered a few scratch wounds, and among them, two had penetrated the back of his battle armor and left behind long bloody wounds.

Just when Zhao Junhong was about to finish off these three werewolves, Eagleshot’s sound broke through the air again!

A werewolf suddenly flew away and startled Zhao Junhong. When he finally came to, the second werewolf was also blasted into the distance!

Zhao Junhong finally came to a realization and immediately swung his blade to kill the last werewolf.

Five rank six werewolves added up to make a total of three hundred or so points. They were basically all killed by Zhao Junhong, and his combat strength was worthy of his title as one of the four Zhao household’s young masters. However, if one were to look at the points, they would notice that a small half of the total points had been robbed by Qianye. This caused Zhao Junhong to feel like a huge rock was sitting inside his chest. It was an indescribably uncomfortable feeling.

He strode forwards and roared out loudly at the empty mountains and thick forests before him, “Qian Xiaoye! Show your face! I, Zhao Junhong, am standing right here! Do you dare stand up and fight like a man? Or do you only know how to use Eagleshot? Then shoot, shoot at me!”

However, the only thing that greeted him from the mountains was silence. Zhao Junhong’s roar was the only thing resounding throughout the mountains.

There were also two werewolves lying beside Qianye, but he hadn’t taken their blood. That was because he had been sensing vaguely that he was being watched all this time. It was very normal to drink a beast’s blood, but it was a different story if he drank a werewolf’s blood.

Qianye’s face darkened when he heard the bloody name “Qian Xiaoye”. Then he ignored it and calmly injected himself with a stimulant. After he had regained a small amount of origin power, he then sat cross legged on the ground and actually began cultivating.

The core aristocratic descendants in this spring hunt were given special protection. This was a red line clearly stated inside the rules.

With the strength he had observed from the second young master of the Zhao household, there was no telling how effective his shots might be if he shot him directly at anywhere that wasn’t his head. Plus, if Qianye really did show killing intent towards Zhao Junhong, the powerful observers Duke Wei had arranged would definitely interfere in the battle. These were the rules of the game known as the spring hunt.

Zhao Junhong himself felt awkward after shouting madly for a while. Then, he began walking aimlessly along the mountain ridge. Suddenly his pupils shrank, and he saw Qianye walking openly a thousand or so meters away on a parallel mountain route, moving forwards together with him.

Qianye had shown clearly that he was planning to move and retreat together with Zhao Junhong. As long as prey showed up, he would rely on Eagleshot’s great power, super long range, and his own peerlessly exquisite sniping skills to interfere with their hunt. Moreover, past results proved that there was a high probability that he was going to succeed in robbing Zhao Junhong of his prey.

Qianye’s battle tactic was incredibly clear: “Yes, I’m bullying you for having a shorter range!”

For a time, Zhao Junhong actually wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t catch up to the guy, and he couldn’t kill the prey before Qianye did either. Most importantly, he couldn’t run and escape from this bastard who just wouldn’t go away because he was Zhao’s second young master.

Furthermore, even if he did forget about his identity and escape, there was a high likelihood he wouldn’t be able to shake off Qianye. In fact, he might even be criticized by others, saying that Zhao’s second young master, a rank seven Fighter, had fled after he was beaten by a rank-five Fighter. How could he possibly stand tall after that?

From this day onwards, the people paying attention to the spring hunt ranking list began to notice something amiss.

First, the unusually ferocious Wei Family had suddenly experienced a depression and fell off the ranking list repeatedly before being surpassed by the Kong and Nangong Family. It was said that the son of Wei had entered into battle alone and took down a rank seven armored brown bear by himself at the cost of quite the injury to himself. He had no choice but to lie inside the camp in rest for these two days.

The composition of Wei Potian’s team was incredibly extreme, and they even had just one combat strategy, and that was for Wei Potian to hold the frontline with Thousand Mountains while his bodyguards went full throttle from the back. This attack mode was simple and highly effective, but Wei Potian had gone overboard and suffered a great injury. As a result, his team with a deformed distribution of offensive and defensive power immediately exposed its weaknesses.

Although Wei Potian’s actions very much fitted his style of only using his brain once in a certain matter, there weren’t actually that many people who laughed at his expense. In fact, important figures like Duke Wei were rather impressed by him. The fact that Wei Potian was able to kill a rank-seven steel armored brown bear barehanded with his rank six strength meant that Wei Potian’s Thousand Mountains was quite masterful already.

Wei Clan Secret Art: Thousand Mountains was, in fact, an art that could only be cultivated properly by those above Champion rank. However, Wei Potian had cultivated the first level of Thousand Mountains at the same time as the moment he ignited his first origin node at the beginning. For the past few years, he had also been improving at a tremendous rate and proving his talent and potential. This was especially obvious when Wei Potian had not only ascended two ranks in succession during the last half a year but showed no signs of foundation instability at all. In fact, the accumulation of his aura had even given Thousand Mountains some realism. One could even see the faintest hope of a future marshal from this young man.

As compared to Wei Potian, Nangong Wanyun and Kong Yanian could only be rated as average despite their good performances for someone of their strength and background.

The Song household had been hovering very blandly between the fifth and sixth spot. It would appear that Song Zining was as frivolous as rumored; his interest lying more in random knowledge than politics or martial arts.

Yin Family’s Yin Qiqi continued to neglect her proper duties, go on scenic tours, and enjoy big barbecue banquets. However their points rose steadily, and not only had they made it to top ten, their momentum didn’t look like it would slow anytime soon.

The most surprising household of them all was actually the Zhao household. Since the fourth day, the Zhao household’s kills had been falling off in a straight line, and it was only getting worse day by day. If they were to look at a day’s total points alone, then the Zhao household had quite literally fallen out of top five. If they hadn’t accumulated too big of an advantage at the beginning, then the Zhao household would’ve lost its first spot a long time ago.

Just like that, the Zhao household’s points grew fewer and fewer. From the seventh day onward, they didn’t even manage to obtain one-quarter of their original score. After all, they were now at the latter half of the spring hunt, and all aristocratic families had entered the dark races’ activity zone. Their points should be soaring and not the other way around. Therefore, on the seventh day, the Zhao household finally gave up their first spot and became replaced by the Nangong Family.

The instant the ranks had changed, Duke Wei’s side courtyard boiled up in commotion. Everyone was discussing heatedly with each other over this outcome. Something must have happened to cause the Zhao household to lose their ranking this swiftly.

Therefore, a super long range sniper of the Yin Family hunting team fell under everyone’s scrutiny. Moreover, the resume Ji Yuanjia had purposely leaked to the seventh young master of the Song household had also been obtained and remarked upon by the crowd from start to end. Of course, everyone who participated in that dinner feast that day had unanimously overlooked the flash in the pan that was Yin Qiqi’s female companion.