Setting the Scene

Luo Feng sprinted down the stairs, from the sixth floor all the way to the first, reaching the hotel's back entrance. He scanned his surroundings. "Hmm?" Luo Feng mused. "No large monster groups around, this is a bit troublesome." He frowned. He could spot a few monsters, but their numbers were too small, not nearly enough for his plan. After all, he needed the other seven members of the Thunder Squad to believe that Zhang Zehu and Li Xiao were killed by monsters. Luo Feng then dashed out along the alley. After exiting, he immediately spotted a large group of Unicorn Wild Boars not far away, at least several hundred of them. An ordinary Warrior would flee in terror, but Luo Feng cracked a smile. "These are perfect," Luo Feng quickly approached them. "Roar!" Many Unicorn Wild Boars glared at the human Warrior. A furious roar erupted from the herd—it was their leader! Instantly, the entire herd charged Luo Feng, hooves pounding. The street vibrated with their thunderous advance. "Boom! Boom!" The wild boars charged! "Damn, I was going to kill one or two first to make them hate me more. Didn't expect them to chase me so easily." Luo Feng turned and ran, quickly rounding a corner and heading into an alley. "Boom! Boom!" The alley was wide enough for two Unicorn Wild Boars to run side-by-side. Luo Feng sped ahead, with the enraged herd hot on his heels. "Whoosh! Whoosh!" Two dark streaks of light circled behind him before returning to Luo Feng. Instantly, the two leading Unicorn Wild Boars collapsed dead, while another suffered a massive wound. The herd's furious roars intensified, clearly growing even more enraged. "The angrier, the better!" Luo Feng, like a bolt of lightning, darted up the hotel stairs through the back entrance. "Boom! Boom!" One after another, the Unicorn Wild Boars charged madly upwards. The concrete stairs, decades old, proved sturdy enough to withstand their onslaught. With Luo Feng deliberately controlling his speed, maintaining a lead of about ten meters over the herd, he reached his destination—the sixth floor! On the sixth floor, under Luo Feng's psychic control, Zhang Zehu's broadsword and Li Xiao's machine gun floated into the air, the machine gun trailing a long ammunition belt. The machine gun hovered before Luo Feng, as did the broadsword. "Roar!" The monsters, like a flood, thundered into the sixth floor, immediately rushing down the corridor towards Luo Feng. "Come on!" Luo Feng grinned, a hint of madness in his eyes. His psychic powers pulled the trigger, and the machine gun's thick barrel roared, spitting out a torrent of bullets that tore into the Unicorn Wild Boars. However, the charging force of each boar was immense; the bullets' impact couldn't stop them! "Thwack! Thwack!" The hovering broadsword danced wildly, slashing the throats of one Unicorn Wild Boar after another. These out-of-control boars crashed into the surrounding walls, "Boom! Boom!" collapsing and cracking the room walls. With the combined power of the machine gun bullets and the broadsword, he single-handedly slaughtered dozens of Unicorn Wild Boars, their corpses littering the corridor. "Roar!" With an angry bellow, a giant Unicorn Wild Boar, its fur mottled with silver and black spots, appeared. But by then, the broadsword and machine gun had already fallen beside the two corpses in the room. Luo Feng himself had long since leaped out of a northern room's window! "Whoosh!" Luo Feng shot down from the sixth floor like a streak of lightning. A surge of psychic power acted on his armguards, creating a lift that drastically reduced his downward momentum. Luo Feng landed effortlessly on the roof of a two-story building, then swiftly dashed, leaping into an alley, and quickly vanished. ... "Roar!" The Unicorn Wild Boar herd, having lost dozens of their kind, rampaged furiously through the dilapidated hotel, searching for the hateful human Warrior. They didn't find the human Warrior, but they discovered two fresh human Warrior corpses. The Unicorn Wild Boars immediately began tearing at the flesh of the human bodies. To the Unicorn Wild Boars, human flesh was indeed a delicacy. Even more Unicorn Wild Boars began devouring the corpses of their fallen kin! For monsters living in harsh environments, they rarely got to eat humans; most of the time, they consumed other monster carcasses. As creatures with strong wild instincts, eating their own kind was perfectly normal. Soon, both the human and Unicorn Wild Boar corpses were reduced to scattered bones. ... Luo Feng stealthily returned to his original hiding spot, observing silently. "It took about two hours for the Thunder Squad's seven members to return." Luo Feng finally spotted the seven in his line of sight. "Makes sense. Monster roars can be heard everywhere in City 003, and the battle happened inside the hotel. The Thunder Squad was several kilometers away, so it's not surprising they didn't notice." ... At the hotel's main entrance, the seven members of the high-spirited Thunder Squad walked back, laughing. "Young Master's strike was truly magnificent, slicing through that Commander-level 'Swift Wolf's' throat with such precision," the Tiger Fang Captain complimented with a smile, but his smile suddenly froze. "Hmm?" The Tiger Fang Captain looked inside the hotel. The other members of the Thunder Squad also looked in. "The smell of blood!" The Liu-named elder walked directly into the hotel, followed by the others. "The smell of blood is even stronger now." "There must have been a large-scale battle here; one or two monsters wouldn't leave such a strong scent," the Tiger Fang Captain frowned. The one-eyed middle-aged man beside him immediately pressed his communication watch and called out, "Hu Zi, Ah Xiao! Hu Zi, Ah Xiao, respond quickly. What happened?" The faces of the four members of the Tiger Fang Squad changed. "Captain, they're not responding," the one-eyed middle-aged man said to the captain. "Maybe they didn't notice their watches vibrating," the bald strongman couldn't help but say. How could a Warrior, with such keen senses, not feel it? The Tiger Fang Captain said in a low voice, "Let's go up and check." "Let's go, let's check," the Liu-named elder also spoke. Instantly, the seven arrived at the stairs, but seeing the marks on the staircase, their expressions subtly changed. It was clear the stairs had just undergone massive trampling, with much of the concrete cracked. "Everyone, be careful." Cautiously, the seven slowly advanced. Even moving slowly, it didn't take long to reach the sixth floor. "Hiss!" The seven members of the Thunder Squad gasped. The sixth floor of the entire hotel was clearly the most chaotic, a scene of utter devastation. Even some of the hotel room walls had collapsed, the floor was covered in blood, and there were numerous skeletal remains, mostly of monsters. The Thunder Squad's seven members' hearts sank. They knew that Zhang Zehu and Li Xiao were likely doomed. "Look, bullet holes in the wall." "There are many spent casings here; Ah Xiao must have been firing to hold back the monster horde. Too bad there were too many monsters." Everyone quickly found many clues. A moment later, they all looked at the tattered combat suits on the ground, the trampled broadsword with its slightly deformed hilt, the completely mangled machine gun, and a small amount of human bones. "Hu Zi's broadsword, and Ah Xiao's gun." "These two combat suits..." The combat suits were very durable. Although torn and tattered by the Unicorn Wild Boars' bites, they were still identifiable. They were indeed Zhang Zehu's and Li Xiao's combat suits. "How could this happen?" the bald strongman gritted his teeth. "How could Ah Xiao and the others be so unlucky, encountering a foraging monster horde in their room?" "Let's go, downstairs!" the Liu-named elder suddenly ordered. "Downstairs?" The one-eyed middle-aged man, the bald strongman, and Ah Dong were all startled, then a hint of anger flashed across their faces. The Tiger Fang Captain frowned and barked, "Alright, gather Hu Zi's and Ah Xiao's belongings, then we go downstairs!" With the captain's order, they dared not refuse. ... A moment later, in the hotel's ground floor lobby, the seven members of the Thunder Squad stood. "Everyone should know," the Tiger Fang Captain, Pan Ya, said in a low voice, "Given Hu Zi's and Ah Xiao's alertness, even if a monster horde entered the hotel, they would have more than a fifty percent chance of escaping! Even if they couldn't escape, they should have been able to contact us via their watches when they realized the danger!" The other team members' expressions subtly changed, and they nodded. "Exactly," the Liu-named elder nodded. "The strange thing is that neither of them contacted us before they died. So I'm worried someone deliberately set this up and left listening devices at the scene. That's why I asked everyone to come downstairs to discuss." The Tiger Fang Squad members couldn't help but look at the Liu-named elder with newfound respect. To make such a quick judgment and decision, indeed, the older the ginger, the spicier it is. "That's one possibility, and there's another... it could be a Commander-level monster among the horde! It discovered their traces and launched a sneak attack. Then a large horde rushed in... in the chaos of an emergency battle, they had no chance to contact us." The Liu-named elder added. The four members of the Tiger Fang Squad exchanged glances. A hint of worry appeared on the mixed-race youth's face. The Liu-named elder chuckled softly, "Don't worry, Young Master. Even if someone set this up, it wouldn't be targeting you. War God-level Warriors wouldn't bother with such methods, and Warlord-level Warriors wouldn't dare provoke the Young Master." "Elder Liu, for the Young Master's safety, perhaps we should return to the Base City," the Tiger Fang Captain, Pan Ya, suggested.