Chapter 62: Fellow Villagers of Lu Village

Lu Ran never expected this.After painstakingly mastering the Blizzard Sword Momentum, he wanted to show off in front of the dog.

But the creature simply didn’t get it, treating it like some sort of air conditioning sword technique!

“Indeed, the moment I tried to have a normal conversation and interaction with Erha, I lost!”

Lu Ran’s heart was full of holes, regretting his realization came too late.

Why did he even think of trying to impress an Erha?

Although he felt exhausted, Lu Ran still had to scurry in the middle of the night to prepare the Heart of the Bug for General Ha.

This creature wanted it cooked, so Lu Ran cooked it.

What comforted Lu Ran was that the dog didn’t eat alone.

It even shared the stir-fried and roasted Heart of the Bug with him and the Sudden Death King.

Lu Ran, of course, didn’t eat it, but let the Sudden Death King (the lizard) have a taste, which was deeply moved.

Ignored for a whole day, General Ha still remembered it.

“Woof,” General Ha instructed.

Having eaten this Heart of the Bug, from now on, they would descend into the secret realm together—no escaping.

The Sudden Death King held onto the Heart of the Bug, its expression choked up.

A meal of broken promises, perhaps…

Nighttime.

As Lu Ran lay in bed, he started scrolling through his phone as usual.

He then realized that he had missed an important piece of news today. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the ɴovᴇlꜰirᴇ.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

Fortunately, there was a recorded broadcast, which he promptly watched.

“Currently, the number of registered beastmasters in our country has surpassed 150,000…”

“Among them, 18 to 25-year-olds are the main group in the beastmaster occupation…”

“Therefore, our country has decided to prepare for the establishment of a Beast Taming University to systematically guide young beastmasters…”

“Once again, we urge all novice beastmasters not to blindly enter secret realms…”

“According to official data, in the past month alone, there have been over 1,000 beastmasters who passed the novice trial and died in subsequent challenges in the secret realms, including those who had achieved an S-level rating in the novice secret realm…”

Watching this news, Lu Ran had one feeling—that the authorities were quite helpless.

Seeing so many novice beastmasters die made them feel quite urgent.

Beast taming is undoubtedly a strategic resource now, as losing one means losing one for good. Rather than letting these novice beastmasters grow wildly on their own, the officials prefer to gather them together for quality education to tap into their potential.

This approach not only aims to increase the survival rate of those suited to venture into secret realms but also helps those unsuitable for such challenges to find a more appropriate secondary occupation early on.

Since the dawn of the beast taming era, officials have consistently advised newcomers not to recklessly challenge secret realms. However, there are always some who do not heed this advice, like Lu Ran. Lu Ran possesses an epic item and has support from influential figures, which allows him to grow steadily. Unfortunately, others are not so lucky, and a single oversight can lead to death without a burial place.

Now, the official stance is clearly not in a hurry to make fourth-generation beastmasters capable of standing on their own too quickly. Instead, they hope for them to grow safely and smoothly.

“The beast taming university will enroll beastmasters aged 16 to 25 and will conduct a national recruitment after a period of time…”

“By then, whether already working, a high school student, or a college student, anyone can choose to attend the beast taming university.”

Lu Ran looked at the official announcement and opened the comment section, only to find it filled with complaints…

Most of the complaints were from those over the age of 25.

Lu Ran shrugged his shoulders. The official reasoning was that educational resources were limited, prioritizing the youth first, with plans to gradually open up more slots. However, Lu Ran suspected that the real reason was the higher potential seen in younger beastmasters, which led to the allocation of resources being skewed.

But what shocked Lu Ran the most wasn’t this. He was surprised to find that, indeed, there were elderly people chosen to be beastmasters.

Although they were very rare cases, after browsing through the comments, Lu Ran found evidence shared by others showing people over 60 becoming beastmasters, indicating that the selection of beastmasters does not discriminate by age, although the probability is small.

There are even rumors on the beast taming forum that the strongest beastmaster in Xia Country is currently an elderly person…

Of course, without official confirmation, most fourth-generation newcomers do not believe such claims.

However, the debate over who is the strongest beast tamer in Xia Country has always been a hot topic.

People initially hoped to glean some insights from the Sovereign Species Divine Beast Leaderboard. However, even after being up for over a week, not a single first-generation beastmaster has made it onto the leaderboard; it’s dominated by second, third, and fourth-generation beastmasters.

Besides the first-generation beastmasters being a topic of interest, the next most discussed are the newcomers among the fourth-generation beastmasters.

The question of who is the strongest among the new fourth-generation beastmasters is also a hot topic online. Out of the seventy names on the Divine Beast Leaderboard, seven keep coming up in discussions, including Passerby A.

However, since the reason for Passerby A’s inclusion on the leaderboard is too abstract and the contract is with a snowfield dog, Passerby A is not among the popular candidates for “strongest fourth-generation.”

“Boring, oh so boring, back to the secret realm tomorrow.” After spending half the day browsing, Lu Ran yawned and turned off the light when he found himself back on his own updates.

Before the recruitment for the beast taming university starts, he figures he will be stuck loving and battling the secret realms.

However, rather than continuously exploring the secret realms, he is actually more eager to quickly learn a secondary occupation like forging… Then, he wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of finding someone else to handle the materials he finds.

…

A week later.

Since Lu Ran grasped the basics of Blizzard Sword Momentum, he has been entering the Blizzard Mountain secret realm more frequently.

He hopes to fully mature his Blizzard Sword Momentum with the help of the environment there.

General Ha, naturally, follows Lu Ran into the realms daily and learns Blizzard Sword Momentum alongside him.

Over the week, Lu Ran and General Ha maintained a challenging frequency of once a day in the Mantis Jungle secret realm and twice in the Blizzard Mountain secret realm.

During this period, General Ha used all the useful resources they gathered.

The useless ones were sold to recuperate some expenses.

After all these efforts, General Ha has undergone a complete transformation.

Firstly, its growth level finally reached level 10 on the seventh day.

Moreover, thanks to the Heart of the Bug obtained over the week, its teeth have significantly upgraded.

Name: Wind Dog’s Fangs

Level: Advanced

Introduction: The sharp and hard fangs of a wind series canine beast, which have excellent wind energy conduction properties!

This change greatly pleased Lu Ran.

Now, General Ha’s teeth were far from being useless.

The upgraded level of its teeth also allowed General Ha to better handle Storm Slash.

Using a general power Storm Slash, General Ha no longer ended up with a bloody mouth.

Of course, if pushed to its limit, the results could still be quite grim.

Nonetheless, General Ha’s proficiency with Storm Slash had certainly improved day by day.

However, with frequent changes to its teeth, the Heart of the Bug’s ability to strengthen General Ha had become almost negligible.

To further enhance its abilities, it would likely require even rarer resources.

Additionally, by applying a large number of Wing of the Mantis externally, General Ha became much more sensitive to changes in air currents.

Now, like some animals that can predict the weather, it could clearly sense an approaching rainstorm.

This was particularly evident in the Blizzard Mountain secret realm, where it could detect sudden cold fronts earlier, thus enabling it and Lu Ran to avoid hailstorms.

Of course, this wasn’t the biggest gain.

The greatest achievement over the week was that, by consuming a large number of Seed of Cold Wind, the force of wind within General Ha now carried a bone-chilling coldness.

This advantage made it very quick to learn Blizzard Sword Momentum.

Paired with Lu Ran’s reverse super beast mimicry, General Ha had mastered the basics of Blizzard Sword Momentum two days earlier. Just entering the basics, its cold sword momentum, due to its attribute, was already more potent than Lu Ran’s.

It was powerful enough to leave the Mantis leader suspended in mid-air, completely stupefied for three seconds, freezing its thoughts and preventing any reaction.

After a week of rigorous training, both the Blizzard Mountain and Mantis Jungle secret realms had undoubtedly been raised to SSS-level by Lu Ran and General Ha. Unfortunately, even at SSS-level, Lu Ran had not managed to extract a wind attribute beast taming skill.

This skill book, worth thousands of crystal coins, was indeed not easy to come by.

Moreover, the materials from these secret realms were no longer of much use to General Ha, and Lu Ran was unsure whether to continue challenging them.

After all, General Ha had reached level 10 and was now capable of integrating traits. Perhaps it was time to tackle secret realms of abyssal difficulty?

Lu Ran felt it was about time; other aspects simply lacked challenge.

After a week, there was still no change in the Divine Beast Leaderboard of Infinite City No.3.

General Ha, cutting through the blizzard, continued to hold the first place. Even though the 10 names listed were all level 10, and many had integrated traits or awakened a second attribute, none surpassed General Ha.

Abyssal difficulty secret realms seemed to be the only challenge left for Lu Ran… Waiting for the trait crystal fusion to break through!

“To celebrate reaching level 10, I’m taking you out to eat,” Lu Ran said with a smile to General Ha, after teleporting back from the secret realm to their exclusive room.

“Woof!” General Ha looked skeptical, suspecting that it was actually Lu Ran who was craving food.

“You dare doubt me? Then you can go back to the black card and sleep, I’ll go eat by myself,” Lu Ran pouted, having been caught out.

General Ha: ???

With that, Lu Ran, carrying a bunch of materials ready to be joyfully sold, prepared to treat himself to a good meal.

However, as he reached Beastmaster Square, Lu Ran suddenly paused.

He looked across at four people walking by, frowning slightly.

They were dressed in identical hunter outfits.

Hunter attire was not uncommon in Infinite City, but what was rare was their uniform orange, furry outfits.

This kind of outfit… this kind of outfit… If Lu Ran remembered correctly, he had seen it many times before!

As a child, he often saw his grandfather wearing this, although his grandfather had passed away early, when Lu Ran was still in elementary school. However, many of the photos left by his grandfather also showed him in this attire!

This was the uniform of the hunters from his hometown, Lu Village!

“Are they from Lu Village?” Lu Ran guessed, quite surprised to encounter people from his hometown in Infinite City.

After a moment of thought, he quickly followed them, planning to ask about things related to Lu Village. As a village of hunters, they should be doing quite well in the era of beast taming, right?

The group also entered a restaurant.

Just as the four of them settled down, a voice came from nearby.

“Excuse me, are you hunters from Lu Village?”

The three men and one woman looked up to see a young man, younger than themselves, dressed in a black coat and carrying a sword, looking at them inquiringly.

The group was wary, but the tanned, voluptuously built female hunter in beast skin, seeing Lu Ran’s handsome face, responded, “Who are you?”