Strike the First Blow

by Tai Baiyang

  In order to ensure his safety, Zhang Mu put the soul crystal that he just took out and placed in front of his eye to look carefully. He resisted his desire and observed closely, trying his best to recall the moment when he saw the soul crystal exhibited on an enlarged projector.

  After comparing the soul crystal in front of his eye and the one on his memory, Zhang Mu could only found one difference between the two, that is, the one on his hand right now, the color was slightly paler.

  At least, that could explain why a first-ranked Nightmare Worm was able to produce the soul crystal that only other type of third-ranked psychological mutated animal could cultivate as it was still lacking in some area.

  But, even if that was the case, it was still astonishing.

  Zhang Mu could vaguely guess how these Nightmare Worms gathered their source of energy, and that was constant killing. They kept on consuming the souls of human and mutated animals to cultivate the soul crystal, so much that their evolution speed was slowed down. Therefore, their physical strength was at the bottom of the bottom amongst the first-ranked mutated animal, as it turned out that their energy had transferred to the crystals.

  After some inspections, Zhang Mu finally confirmed that this was the weaker version of the one he saw that year. He immediately put it in his mouth without thinking twice and swallow it down.

  The soul crystal melted in Zhang Mu's mouth, just like a clear stream moistening his throat before entering his body. Lastly, it slowly dissolved in his stomach and fused to all the limbs and bones in his body.

  Right now, even in the cold wind, Zhang Mu did not felt any discomfort. The power from the soul crystal traveled around his body before gathering at the vertebra area.

  After all of the power was gathered, the mass of energy crawl along Zhang Mu’s spine and continued crawling upwards. The feeling of numbness made Zhang Mu incredibly pleasant.

  Soon enough, the energy extends along the nerves of Zhang Mu’s brain and into his spine, before touching the deepest part of his soul at the end.

  The moment it reached the brain, the icy cold chilled Zhang Mu’s entire being as he trembled with a start and sobered up. His brain region seems to receive an impact and expended a substantial amount. The most obvious characteristic was his psychic power as it received a great deal of stability. He could clearly compare the differences he had before. For instance, if he was psychologically bound by the bunch of Nightmare Worms again, he would not be suppressed for a long time.

  It was indeed an item that a Nightmare Worm had cultivated using all of its essences!

  Zhang Mu breathed a sigh of relief. This refreshing taste was so overwhelming. Now he felt that the control of his body had reached a new height.

  That was why psychological evolvers usually had a unique advantage during battles.

  But after recovering for a while, Zhang Mu had an odd expression on his face.

  Because the fragrance in the air, did not dissipate at all. It was so strong that it caused Zhang Mu to be elated instantly.

  He turned his head and looked at the body of dozens of Nightmare Worms laying disorderly on the ground as a crazy idea emerged on his mind.

  Just now, he had randomly selected one of the Nightmare Worm’s body, and it was not chosen specially.

  So was there a possibility that all of the Nightmare Worms on the ground, have such a soul crystal inside their body?

  Zhang Mu did not hesitate as he went to the body of the Nightmare Worms straight away as if their greasy corpse were the most lovely thing in the world.

  He shouted in his heart.

  I’m coming!

  Chapter 137: Quantity and Quality Changes

  After taking out one of the soul crystal, it appeared that the odor in the air did not change much. Therefore, the proportion that one crystal held should not be much too.

  Zhang Mu thought of it this way. Meanwhile, his hands already touched many corpses of the Nightmare Worm nimbly. Using both hands, he pulled the Nightmare Worms on both sides together and used both his nimble hand to wander inside the fat meat.

  In no time, Zhang Mu skillfully touched the soul crystals and fished out to take a good look at them. Sure enough, it was different than the one he had taken earlier. Besides the color being paler or darker, Zhang Mu guess that it was also related to the power of the Nightmare Worm. In their group, there should be a gap between their strength. For example, the ten Nightmare Worms which was abandoned, had overused their power and burned the soul crystal that was bred inside their body for a long time. Since they were relatively weak, they were sent to bring up the rear for the retreating troops.

  However, these Nightmare Worms, which were used as cannon fodder, could not block the attacks from the Obsidian Beetle even when they burned the soul crystals as a fuel for their power.

  Zhang Mu thought to himself, "Since that was the case, then why did they bother to block the attacks even though it would all be in vain? Why didn't they be obedient and become the fish meat on a chopping board? Anyway, even by burning their soul crystal, they still couldn’t escape the fate of being slaughtered. Now the soul crystals had lost its shine after being burned and consumed, causing the effects to be reduced greatly."

  Zhang Mu had a heartache when he thought of how wasteful these Nightmare Worms were.

  He had a regular soul crystal on his left hand and a spoiled on his right hand. He put them into his mouth one after another and swallowed in one mouthful. When the energy dissolves and flows inside his body, he knew he had guessed correctly.

  The regular soul crystals had tremendous energy while the other was defective. Zhang Mu merely felt a trace of the remaining power rushed to enter Zhang Mu’s brain.

  He looked at the remaining 25 Nightmare Worm’s corpse. Out of them, 9 of the soul crystals were defective while the remaining 16 were normal. Zhang Mu made a sudden arrangement in his heart.

  He would eat those defective soul crystals first. Otherwise, when he ate the regular crystals first, there would be a variation of resistance if he consumed too much of them. Then these defective soul crystals would not come in handy anymore.

  Zhang Mu took the initiative and picked out those from the Nightmare Worms that shrank after burning out, then took out all of the defective soul crystals and placed them all on the open space in front of him.

  He sat cross-legged on the ground and seemed to make a decision. He looked up at the dark night sky after the wind was calmed down and reached out a hand to grab the soul crystals placed in front of him, and took them down.

  Even though these were defective, but there were 9 of them precisely. These nine energies whirled inside Zhang Mu’s body. They would intertwine and separated now and then. When gathered together, it was extremely overbearing inside Zhang Mu’s body.

  Zhang Mu’s face was a little hideous, with blue veins popping out one by one slowly. He had underestimated the accumulative power of these soul crystals. Even though they were defective, he had quite a hard time dealing with them.

  When he first took it, because there was only one of them, it felt surprisingly pleasant and gave him a misconception that all the soul crystals would felt the same way. But he never expected that he had assumed too much.

  He laughed at himself, luckily he had self-awareness and did not experiment with the regular soul crystals. If he ate together in one go, he felt that his brain would not be able to hold up at all.

  Fortunately, this was still within the tolerance range of Zhang Mu. Therefore, he was feeling pain and pleasure at the same time. He could feel his psychic ability building gradually, at a stable and continuous rate.

  There was a rapid improvement in his psychic ability. Zhang Mu opened his eye abruptly, and he could clearly perceive all the things around him. Furthermore, it was not because of his keen hearing that he was prided of in the past, but it was his psychic ability dispersing around his surrounding slowly.

  Right now, he had a crazy idea in his mind.

  He wa
nted to make use of the newly acquired psychological-type ability and advanced to the second rank!

  Relying on the evolver’s ability was far more powerful than solely accumulating energy to progress to the second rank.

  Zhang Mu was somewhat glad that he did not let himself use the second-rank advancing potion recklessly, as he would miss an opportunity to change himself from the ground up.

  This excitement caused Zhang Mu’s heart to boil straightaway. Now he actually had a chance to use his awakening ability to advance. Although it was acquired, it was much powerful than most of the innate awakening ability.

  Zhang Mu knew that it might take a certain amount of time for this process, so he got up first to inform Yuan Rui while dragging the mutated wolfdog back together and looked for a house to sleep in like before.

  Yuan Rui was still sleepy since she did not sleep well for the first time. Previously, the constructed dream by the Nightmare Worms caused her mind into a jittery state. Once Zhang Mu told her to sleep, the exhaustion in her body came rushing up. After telling Zhang Mu to be careful, she turned around and slept.

  When they entered the house, the Obsidian Beetle subtly flew out from Yuan Rui’s pocket and rested quietly on Zhang Mu’s shoulder. It passed a message to Zhang Mu, “You want to rank up? Alone? Do you know that any mutated animal can destroy the process of your advancing? You have such a big gut”.

  In fact, Zhang Mu was thinking of giving full control to the Bloodvine Lotus when he was advancing. But now that the Obsidian Beetle had said so, he would have another layer of insurance.

  Zhang Mu nodded his head to the Obsidian Beetle and gestured it to go far away. Because when Zhang Mu hand over the full control to the Bloodvine Lotus, it would treat anything with flesh and blood equally, and slaughter them all, including the Obsidian Beetle.

  When the time comes with no enemy, yet they had fought with each other first, things would get interesting then.

  Even though the Obsidian Beetle expressed that it was not afraid of the Bloodvine Lotus, but in the eye of Zhang Mu, it still hid in a quiet corner to protect Zhang Mu obediently.

  When the Obsidian Beetle went far away, Zhang Mu lifted up his left arm and summoned the Bloodvine Lotus. He then took out a bunch of first-ranked crystals around him before he handed over the full control to the Bloodvine Lotus.

  The Bloodvine Lotus started to swell up after recovering its ability and natural instincts. It did not build a cage according to Zhang Mu’s order, instead, it spread out in all direction and drained the corpse of the Nightmare Worms when it passed by, using this method to protect Zhang Mu’s surrounding.

  With the protection from the Bloodvine Lotus and the Obsidian Beetle, Zhang Mu felt that he could be at ease and let himself progress.

  Making a prompt decision, he immediately swallowed two soul crystals on the ground in one go and closed his eye.

  Boom!

  It has started.

  Chapter 138: Real Slap in the Face

  After Zhang Mu swallowed down the soul crystals, it felt like there was a hot stream inside Zhang Mu’s body gathered in one place, accumulating before finally merging together.

  He felt a little anxious. If he continued to do so, he was afraid that his brain would not be able to withstand this amount of impact, and he would become an idiot. Then he would really die unjustly.

  But it was too slow as it was still gradually accumulating and accumulating until Zhang Mu, who felt all of this, was becoming frantic. However, there was nothing he could do.

  Soon enough, Zhang Mu became at ease immediately. Because once it reached a specific stage, the energy was traveling upwards as if something was pulling it.

  As though this was a turning point that was opened exclusively by Zhang Mu, his soul felt like it was being cleansed again and again, as if it were about to sublimate. The feeling now felt amazing as Zhang Mu could not help but to close his eye. Furthermore, everything around him had become better, whereas the cold environment and the piercing wind had become non-existent.

  Zhang Mu had become more vigilant too. He knew that even though psychological-type evolver would not suffer much during the advancement compared to the other types of ability such as cleansing their meridian and their physical body, but it was easy to lose oneself when trying to break through the psychological boundary. Moreover, there was no other way to solve this problem, not even helping him externally.

  The only one that could help Zhang Mu was himself. He had to harden his heart, just like a tough stone. No matter how strong the temptation outside, he should not be carried away and lose his true self.

  The moment he felt the energy of those two soul crystals were about to deplete, he quickly stuffed another two pieces into his mouth and continue to maintain the strength of the psychic fluctuations.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! The stone in Zhang Mu’s heart did not waver a single bit when facing the psychological energy coming in waves. Instead, he gained the power that this energy brought to him from time to time.

  His eyes were shut tight. As if everything were under his control, he could clearly detect the Obsidian Beetle staying motionlessly under a shelter. Meanwhile, he could also distinguish the roots of each vine on the Bloodvine Lotus, making threatening gestures like a beast searching for its prey.

  Zhang Mu’s psychic power was enough to spread about a few hundred meters away. He could even detect some small mutated animals attracted by the Bloodvine Lotus. However, they sensed the brutal side of the Bloodvine Lotus and faint vigor from a second-ranked mutated animal in the air. Therefore, they were hesitant to go over and continued to linger around about one-kilometer range or so.

  But something was not right. By right, if these first-ranked mutated animals were attracted by the movement from the Bloodvine Lotus, then they would not linger in the vicinity of Zhang Mu in this case. So there was only one possibility, the soul crystals that Zhang Mu placed in front of him, was a great temptation to them. And the degree of temptation was enough for them to forget the gap in ranks and the level of danger.

  There were more and more mutated animals gathered around. At first, it was just a small cat-type creature, but it slowly heaps various types of odd looking mutated animals that even Zhang Mu could not recognize some of them. However, he could clearly sense the greed in their eye and agitated heart. That was the power of psychic ability.

  Of course, this was only limited to those mutated animals that could not control their feeling. However, if Zhang Mu encountered people who could control their emotion flawlessly, then he could not determine if they had any hostility as the rank of Zhang Mu’s psychic ability was not high enough. However, with the growth of Zhang Mu’s psychic energy, then he would be more refined in capturing their state of mind. When that time comes, even if that person was great at acting, Zhang Mu could identify what was hidden under that smile precisely. After all, they were not robots and would show signs or trace in the slightest.

  Slowly, within the range of Zhang Mu's ability, nearly a hundred mutated animals were gathered. All of them were attracted by the dozen of soul crystals that Zhang Mu placed in front of him. In the end, they could not suppress their desire as they began to go near.

  Zhang Mu could not move a single step now as he was already straining himself to maintain stuffing the soul crystals into his mouth once it was used up. He could only place his hope on the Bloodvine Lotus and the Obsidian Beetle now.

  Nevertheless, Zhang Mu also believed in their strength because soon enough, a killing feast was starting on one side.

  The Obsidian Beetle had sensed the mutated animal approaching long ago, but it never expected that these mutated animals would dare to ignore the vigor that it carried in the air. It felt that its dignity was provoked all of a sudden.

  It slowly recovered from a lifeless state. With a loud and resonant roar, it attracted the gaze of every mutated animal that was about to attack. At this moment, the Obsidian Beetle returned to its normal state, even though it
was not the form whereby it was four meters tall, still, it was possessing an ominous look.

  The moment the mutated animals saw the Obsidian Beetle, they were afraid, but they lost their mind when they smelt the soul crystals. Only greed filled in their eyes as they stared at the direction where Zhang Mu was heavily protected by the Bloodvine Lotus.

  The mutated animals had long forgotten the gap between first-rank and second-rank. As long as they were able to eat the thing that was attracting them from far away, everything would be worth it. At this juncture, the suppression of ranks has been firmly overcome by the instinct for evolution. Who cares if you were second-rank or third-rank, at this time, even if you had the impose of a sixth-rank, as long as they could advance, they would pay no deed.

  The Obsidian Beetle clearly understood the way they were acting. Burning with rage, the wings behind it shuddered as it sped towards the direction to the hundreds of mutated animal.

  Zhang Mu was somewhat worried when he looked at the battle that was going to start. Although he knew that there would be an enormous gap in power between the first-rank and second-rank, the difference in number was very high. Furthermore, the Obsidian Beetle did not have any combat skill for such a long range. Facing an enormous figure of low ranked mutated animals would be tricky.

  However, Zhang Mu received a big slap to his face within five seconds as the Obsidian Beetle proved itself vigorously.

  It had not flown near the bunch of mutated animals, yet attacks from all kinds and types of attributes emerged in front of it.

  Flames, water column, sudden spur raising from the ground and wind blade that emerged from certain corners in the air, looked powerful yet the Obsidian Beetle did not evade from them and slammed against the attacks head-on.

  Looking at this, Zhang Mu was worried for the Obsidian Beetle as the accumulating powers were very powerful. Furthermore, there was various type of mutated animals. Zhang Mu had no idea what was the Obsidian Beetle’s weakness. In addition, what if it was found now?