Updated: 2012-08-10

"A strong opponent is not terrible, what is terrible is the cowardly heart that you dare not face the challenge!" - Bald Eagle Lanqi

In a martial arts training room equipped with new-age equipment, a man with short blond hair slams the boxing doll with a fist wrapped in red flames. The figures made of high-strength resin armor are good at resisting, and even the flames on their fists have not shown the slightest signs of scorching. Even if the temperature of the red flame in this man's hand has reached a high temperature of six hundred degrees.

The high temperature of six hundred degrees is a sign of the mastery of the third-order fire element. And the man in the fist is Sauron.

With all his strength, he struck a blow to the puppet, the flames on his fist dissipated, and Sauron lay on the alloy floor in a large shape.

This is an underground combat training room set up in the base camp where the Parkland family is located, and Sauron should have stayed in the Eternal Night City of the Dark Council at this time to receive advanced training for the Blood Rider. The reason why he stayed at home was because of the failure of Sauron's previous mission, and he was temporarily suspended for up to three months.

Leah's blood specimen has been brought back to the Dark Council, and the three tubes of the sample have been immediately accepted by the Council's Academy of Sciences for study. But just as Sauron had thought, he should have brought back Leah, the Discord ** specimen. Because of Leah's death, the mission was considered by the upper echelons of the Blood Rider to be mishandled by Sauron, so it was considered a mission failure.

So now Sauron will appear at his house, indicating that he is on vacation, but in fact it is a punishment in disguise, which Sauron knows better than anyone. And during the three months of his vacation, the rivals in the Blood Rider could take advantage of this vacuum to move up. This will lead to a series of unpredictable consequences, and it is now certain that Sauron's position has been shaken, not only in the Blood Rider, but also in the family.

Thinking about this, Sauron remembered the golden eye. If he hadn't killed a zero halfway, how could he have ended up like this. But Zero's rampage was still deeply ingrained in Sauron's mind, and Sauron didn't dare or want to touch Zero again until he forgot about him.

But just because Sauron doesn't want to touch Zero doesn't mean he's willing to let him go. In fact, he already has a target candidate. That man was Ka'b's father, and he was also a fifth-order sniper expert. Sauron knew that when the other party learned that his son had died at Zero's hands, the man would not let Zero go.

Because that man put all his heart and soul into Ka'b.

It's a pity that the man nicknamed Bald Eagle went to a place in Little Elk Town after he retired. It is far from the coastline that was redeveloped after the cataclysm, and it is inaccessible. Even if Sauron had sent his retinue two months earlier, it would only take him two days to reach Elk Town.

And if you get this news and use some special means of transportation, it will take more than ten days for the bald eagle to come back. But it didn't matter, as long as he could come back, Sauron imagined that Zero's death should not be far off.

At the thought of this, a faint smile fell back on Sauron's lips.

The continent of Middle-earth is very large, and in the past fifty years after the cataclysm, under the development of companies and nobles, many lands have been reclassified into the embrace of civilization. According to incomplete statistics, there are not 800 or 1,000 settlements or bases in the form of civilization in the Central Continent alone. However, these large and small human settlements only occupy a coastline from east to north of the continent.

From west to east, nearly eighty percent of the continent is still chaotic and unknown. It was full of darkness and danger, and even the Dark Council, the most powerful organization on the mainland, and the Scarlet Knights, its armed group, had never planted that crimson banner on the land of the southwest. There are too many unknown lives there, countless ruins are shrouded in savage darkness, and the light of civilization has not yet touched this forbidden land of life.

Therefore, the southwest land is an adventure paradise for all kinds of strong people. Some people bring back priceless species or resources in this mysterious land, while many more become killed by the mutated creatures that roam the land undiscovered, and become their belly food, leaving only a pile of bones on the desolate land. Sometimes, there are no corpses.

But even so, more people are flocking to this uncharted territory. There are hundreds of missions issued by the Dark Council through the corporate networks alone, and the top leaders of the Dark Council and other chaebols are eager to spread the secrets of this land. For them, the unknown means a lot of undiscovered resources, which are great treasures.

Elk Town.

It is a small town located on the edge of the southwest land, and according to legend, before the cataclysm, the town was surrounded by fertile forest resources, and a large number of elk lived and bred here. The inhabitants of the town made a living by domesticating elk, hence the name Elk Town.

But after the cataclysm, the elk either died or mutated into a ferocious species. Large swaths of forest have been replaced by sand and gravel, and a huge wound in the earth separates the town from the mysterious southwestern land. Until twenty years ago, a major of the Scarlet Knights led a thousand soldiers to the town, rebuilding Elk Town and setting it as a bridgehead to the southwest.

Based in the small town, the Liliang of the Dark Council has been entering the southwest land, and in the last ten years alone, the Scarlet Knight has invested one general, five major generals, a dozen majors, and hundreds of blood horsemen. For the rest of the area that has been developed, this liliang is enough to destroy all known plutocracy and settlements along the entire coastline. It can be put into the development of the southwest land, but it is like a stone sinking into the sea.

It was as if they had vanished, never to return to Elktown.

The Dark Council then reversed course and opened Elktown to the rest of the mainland. Both individuals and organizations can enter Elk Town for supplies as long as they pay a certain fee. It's just that all those who want to venture into the Southwestern Lands must acquiesce to a contract that doesn't exist in any paper medium, and that is the obligation to map for the Dark Council.

From the moment they stepped into Elktown, adventurers of all identities acquiesced to the reasonableness of this contract. If you don't, it's not as simple as patting your ass and being thrown out of town. Both individuals and organizations will be subjected to horrific retaliation from the Dark Council.

This contract had established its inviolable status with the blood of hundreds of Anomalous Beings two years before it had been put into effect. So now, no one is stupid enough to challenge the authority of the Dark Council and the force of the Scarlet Knights.

Wherever there are adventurers, there will be taverns. This has become almost common knowledge, and Elktown is no exception. The town's only tavern, the Dragon and the Beauty, is run by the Dark Council, and charges more than ten times as much for drinks and service as other taverns on the mainland. If it weren't for the fact that the tavern was run by the Dark Council and housed by a Bloodrider Captain all year round, the tavern would have been destroyed by angry adventurers.

Now, naturally, adventurers have to endure the exploitation of the council in silence. Of course, it's voluntary to come to the tavern to drink and have fun, and the Dark Council won't force you to spend money with a knife around your neck. It's just that there are very few adventurers who don't like alcohol, even if the taverns are all inferior with alcohol and water, but there are still adventurers who enjoy it.

And even if you don't like to drink, there's no denying that taverns are an important place to gather information. You can not drink, but you can't do without intelligence. Entering the southwest without intelligence is like stripping naked and walking beside a fierce beast, and no one will be willing to do that.

The source of information is one for exchange and the other is for purchase. There are adventurers who sell information, but the most accurate and valuable are sold only by the Tavernkeeper, the Dark Council. Of course, you don't have to expect to be able to buy intelligence information above level 3 in the tavern, which is the secret information of the Dark Council, and money can't buy it.

But recently, an adventurer has been peddling all sorts of information in the tavern. While this information is not enough for the Dark Council to sell, it is much more valuable than the information sold by other adventurers or the tavern itself. There were already quite a few adventurers who had bought valuable information from that man's mouth, bringing back something that was several times the value of the information itself, and then left Elk Town in high spirits.

In the eyes of adventurers, they are all lucky guys. They may be impressed by other adventurers along the way, but as long as they return to the base protected by basic regulations, they will have enough food and clothing for the rest of their lives.

As a result, more and more people lined up to buy information from the adventurer, almost with money in hand, and this person's name also appeared on the tavern Captain Bloodrider's tactical board computer.

The man's name was Lan Qi, and he had the nickname Bald Eagle. The ability is a fifth-order sniper mastery, and the first half of his life was to serve Parkland, the marginal chaebol of the Dark Council. It wasn't until five years ago that he left the Parkland chaebol and went on an adventure in the southwest alone. For five years, there were very few records of him entering and leaving Elktown, and it wasn't until a month ago that he began selling all kinds of information.

The captain of the Scarlet Knight looked at the black man with silver hair and silver beard on the tactical board, and recently dropped his information into the folder with a finger stroke. An adventurer who sells information doesn't deserve his attention, and the captain doesn't care how long he'll have to stay in this place where birds don't before he can be reassigned back to the Bloodrider headquarters.

Elk Town is indeed an important stronghold for the Dark Council, and even if the Blood Riders who can be dispatched here do not make any achievements, they will increase their contribution points according to the length of time they have been stationed after returning to improve their rank. But that's all for the blood riders of the combat system. Abandoned in a semi-retired position like a captain, he was still just a captain when he returned. Even with additional contributions, it wasn't enough for him to be promoted to a major.

While the captain was worried about his future, Bald Eagle reappeared in the tavern. It's just that this is the first time he zuihou appeared in the tavern. Because soon, he will receive a message that he has to leave Elktown.