Chapter 285: American Fungus?
“A tool…”
Kisaragi Mika murmured, repeating Lin Jiayao’s words.
She knew what a tool was, and that’s precisely why she found it difficult to understand.
The other person was a powerful A-rank. Why would Lin Jiayao so casually call her a tool, right in front of her?
In Kisaragi Mika’s mind, even a C-rank Awakened, let alone an A-rank or B-rank, was revered in any camp.
From her observations of the ash area these past few days, it was clear that China was no different; Awakened were treated with respect and awe.
But none of that seemed to apply to Lin Jiayao. An A-rank daughter… an A-rank pet (the Blue Serpent)… and now an A-rank “tool”…
Nine years of compulsory education had taught Kisaragi Mika that gods didn’t exist.
But looking at Lin Jiayao now, she began to question everything she had learned.
Regardless, at least Lin Jiayao didn’t seem particularly interested in that beautiful, golden-haired girl with heterochromia.
But…
What about her? In Lin Jiayao’s eyes,
Was she also just a tool?
This question weighed heavily on Kisaragi Mika’s mind. She nervously fidgeted with the hem of her red miko outfit, then, mustering her courage, looked up and asked, “Lin Jiayao-sama, am I… am I also a tool?”
The moment she asked, she regretted it.
If she hadn’t asked, even if she was just a tool, being able to stay by Lin Jiayao’s side and watch her would have been enough, a sliver of hope remaining in her heart.
But now… if she received confirmation, the disappointment would be unavoidable. More importantly, she would know that even reaching A-rank might not change her status as a tool.
After all, that beautiful, golden-haired girl was also an A-rank, and still just a tool.
“Of course not.” Lin Jiayao, who had been pondering where to have Goldie commit suicide, turned to Kisaragi Mika upon hearing her unexpected question. “You’re much more important than her.”
Goldie was a descended body, a zombie, a disposable asset. How could she be compared to a human life? That’s what Lin Jiayao thought.
What Lin Jiayao didn’t know was that her decisive answer brought Kisaragi Mika immense relief.
“I’m sorry, Lin Jiayao-sama, I shouldn’t have asked…” Kisaragi Mika quickly bowed deeply in apology. Straightening up, she glanced at the golden-haired girl, who still showed no reaction.
Unaware of the turmoil in the young girl’s mind, Lin Jiayao proceeded to explain the remaining handover tasks, instructing Kisaragi Mika not to harm the large Black Stem in the river or those strange, modified zombies.
She also told her to receive the Myanmar survivors who would be arriving in about ten minutes and reminded her to make good use of the Huayibai translator.
After giving these instructions, Lin Jiayao controlled her mycelium clone, went to a house near the Black Stem Fungus by the river, and went idle.
Then, Lin Jiayao switched to Goldie, had the flying insects sweep Ruili City again, confirming there were no omissions or remaining zombies, and then directly controlled Goldie to fly away, finding a deserted place and having the flying insects pierce Goldie’s brain, her figure dissolving into light spots.
“Three hundred and forty-one…” Lin Jiayao sat up on the sofa, murmuring.
There were still three hundred and forty-one Blood Crystals being transported, and she had another eighteen on her.
She only needed to collect another one hundred and forty-one Blood Crystals to reach five hundred.
Even if she only killed B-rank zombies, she would probably have to kill five or six to reach this number. After all, the strength and blood crystal reserves of B-rank zombies varied greatly. Not every B-rank zombie was like a Hive Zombie that could yield a large amount of Blood Crystals.
Unfortunately, the largest Hive Zombie nest had already been destroyed by Lin Jiayao, so she could only rely on the blood crystal map to determine where there were more Blood Crystals.
One hundred and forty-one, it might have seemed like an impossible number before, but now, with Goldie, it didn’t seem so difficult.
The key was that after collecting these five hundred, Lin Jiayao still had to accumulate Blood Crystals for A4 and Mask’s promotions… those were large numbers. As for Ino, Lin Jiayao had already put its promotion on the back burner.
The larger the body, the more Blood Crystals needed for promotion. Lin Jiayao didn’t have enough Blood Crystals for the mountain-sized Ino to evolve.
She had to quickly log into Goldie to collect Blood Crystals.
Lin Jiayao put her hand on the purplish-red mycelium blanket beneath her, slowly controlling the blanket to transfer from the sofa to the insect chair, then sat down on the chair and had it carry her back to her room.
The sunlight in the living room and outside was gone, only the last rays of sunset remained. There was no need for Lin Jiayao to continue sunbathing outside, so she chose to return to her room.
She had grown fond of the feeling of basking in the sunlight. It made her feel warm all over after each consciousness switch, which was very comfortable.
Just as Lin Jiayao was about to get into bed, she suddenly remembered something.
Her main body’s Adaptive Armor hadn’t been tested yet.
She could have her main body stay and train Adaptive Armor while she was logged in, training both at the same time, without wasting any time.
After making up her mind, Lin Jiayao left a note for her sister on the bedside table, telling her that the border transport mission was going very smoothly, and that she was going to the arena to train, so her sister didn’t need to worry.
After writing the note, Lin Jiayao controlled the insect chair and quickly headed towards the arena.
By the time Lin Jiayao arrived at the arena, dusk had almost completely fallen, and the only illumination came from the faint green glow within the vines.
Standing in the center of the arena, Lin Jiayao didn’t rush to start.
This was reality, after all, not the training ground. To train Adaptive Armor, she had to take it step by step.
Lin Jiayao had the flying insects collect dry branches while she controlled the vascular network to modify the arena.
The building-trees and vines twisted and turned the earth and the surrounding broken buildings. Soon, a hemispherical, nest-like structure appeared around Lin Jiayao, with Lin Jiayao in the center.
Lin Jiayao, sitting on the insect chair, thought for a moment, controlled the insect chair to the edge, picked up Huayibai, who was lying on the mycelium cushion with a dumbfounded look, and placed her on the edge of the structure, away from the center.
“Rest here, Mommy is in the middle, you can see Mommy when you open your eyes.” After softly comforting Huayibai, Lin Jiayao controlled the insect chair and returned to the center.
By now, the flying insects had piled up the dry branches. She just needed to light a fire.
Because Huayibai was afraid of fire, Lin Jiayao had her stay far away.
And the Blue Serpent, which had been watching from the insect chair, also tactfully climbed down and stayed with Huayibai after Lin Jiayao put her down.
Judging by its look, it still seemed reluctant to part with the mycelium blanket.
Back in the center, Lin Jiayao lit the bonfire with a lighter and began to modify her insect chair.
Rows of bone spurs, like steel nails, emerged from both sides of the insect chair, clamping tightly onto Lin Jiayao’s arms.
A purple light flashed under Lin Jiayao’s skin, and the Divine Skin Armor beneath was deactivated.
The bone spurs slowly exerted force, piercing into Lin Jiayao’s arms. Although there was no bleeding because of Perfect Self-Healing and Hunting Rhythm, the pain was real.
After a round of piercing, Lin Jiayao slowly retracted the bone spurs, and while waiting for her arms to heal, she controlled the bone spurs to pick up several burning wooden sticks.
The bone spurs, holding the wooden sticks, slowly approached Lin Jiayao’s pierced arms, and before the wounds healed, the burning sticks were directly inserted into the wounds.
“Tsss…”
The sound of burning flesh filled the air, and a wisp of white smoke rose from the wooden sticks as the flames slowly extinguished, even carrying the smell of roasted meat.
But Lin Jiayao’s hands remained motionless, without even a flinch.
Having fought countless times in the training ground with pain perception on, and even “committed suicide” or “been killed” countless times in reality, this level of pain was nothing to Lin Jiayao.
After waiting for the residual heat of the wooden sticks to dissipate, Lin Jiayao threw the sticks back into the bonfire and quietly waited for her arms to heal.
With the enhancement of the mycelium blanket, this mobile oasis, coupled with Lin Jiayao’s own Perfect Self-Healing, the burns on her hands healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Soon, the bloody holes and burns on her arms disappeared, and there were almost no scars or blemishes on her tender, white skin.
Was this enough?
According to Lin Jiayao’s understanding of Adaptive Armor, she should continue this process… Anyway, let’s try it again.
Lin Jiayao controlled the sharp bone spurs on the insect chair and stabbed them into her seemingly soft arm skin again.
This time, the bone spurs couldn’t directly pierce Lin Jiayao’s arm. After pressing down for a long time, they finally penetrated the skin.
But after penetrating, they were blocked by the muscles for a while, unable to quickly pierce the bone.
If the first piercing was like a hot knife through butter, then the second piercing was like pressing a wooden board into mud. Lin Jiayao’s puncture resistance had significantly increased.
After painstakingly piercing several holes in her arm, Lin Jiayao picked up two torches again and directly inserted them into the bloody holes on her arm.
This time, Lin Jiayao only felt a continuous stinging pain, without the excruciating pain from the first time.
And the red-hot charcoal only left some burned flesh and blisters on her hand, without the charring from the first time.
Her fire resistance had also greatly increased.
If she continued to train like this, it wouldn’t be impossible to evolve the fire resistance of a B-rank with fire evolution.
She would just continue this cycle for now, and after finding a more convenient and fully automatic “self-harm” method, Lin Jiayao would switch to it.
While continuing this almost crazy self-abusive behavior, Lin Jiayao opened the login interface and looked at Goldie.
The descended body had entered a 12-hour cooldown. Fortunately, there was nothing that particularly needed the descended body, so she just needed to wait for the cooldown to end.
After selecting Goldie as the login zombie, Lin Jiayao glanced at the system’s blood crystal map.
In the entire America, besides the area where Goldie was, which was an extremely deep red, there was another large red area, which was the west coast of America.
On the contrary, the blood crystal concentration in the central region was relatively low. If Lin Jiayao wanted to harvest a large amount of blood crystals, the blood crystals around her could no longer satisfy her needs.
If Lin Jiayao remembered correctly, the west coast seemed to be the landing point of the seabed zombies, and also the gathering place of a super-large organization in America, the “Hand of Freedom”.
She just happened to have a few brain worms spread to the west coast with the survivors, so she could just take a look at the situation there.
Thinking this way, Lin Jiayao selected Goldie, endured the pain in her arm, and confirmed the login.
When Lin Jiayao closed her eyes, Huayibai and the Blue Serpent, who were standing not far from Lin Jiayao, stared dumbfounded at Lin Jiayao, who was repeatedly self-harming in the center.
Your mom,
What is she doing?
The little blue serpent widened its eyes, looked at Huayibai beside it, and the blue light on its forehead flickered.
“I dunno.” Little Huayibai looked at the scene in front of her, also a little confused, but after a while, Huayibai was also stunned.
“Wait, Golden Mommy is calling me.” Huayibai said, and directly closed her eyes in the scary firelight, entering a short dormancy.
Far away, across the Pacific Ocean, in America, in the central ruins of Chicago, Huayibai slowly opened her eyes and looked at the little golden mommy beside her, who had broken free from her embrace and stood up.
“Mommy, Mom,” Huayibai also got up, patted the dust off her skirt, walked to Lin Jiayao’s side, and asked carefully, “Why are you barbecuing yourself?”
In Huayibai’s view, Lin Jiayao’s action of putting herself on fire was no different from torture, and it was the cruelest torture that Huayibai could imagine.
She couldn’t understand why Mommy would torture herself like this and was very worried about Mommy’s current mental state.
After all, she was a little mushroom who had taken psychology classes and knew that self-harm was a stereotypical behavior that could occur in any creature.
If she was in a depressing environment for a long time, not to mention humans, even mushrooms would be unable to bear it.
“Huh?” Lin Jiayao, who was looking at the Extraction Point, was stunned when she heard Huayibai say the word “barbecue”, and looked up at the tall Huayibai beside her.
“Mommy, if you want to eat roasted mushrooms, you can roast Huayibai, don’t roast yourself, okay…” Huayibai squatted down, looked up at Lin Jiayao, and said in a pleading tone.
“No…” Lin Jiayao took a deep breath, calmed down, reached out and touched Huayibai’s head, and explained, “I was training my abilities just now…”
Lin Jiayao roughly explained the Adaptive Armor ability to Huayibai. Huayibai, whose comprehension ability had already reached the level of an ordinary high school student, quickly understood what Lin Jiayao was saying.
“It’s still so scary…” Huayibai thought about the terrifying scene just now and asked carefully, “Then will Huayibai also have this ability in the future?”
“No.” Lin Jiayao replied indifferently.
This was an ability inherited by A4 after devouring the Living Weapon, and then retained by Lin Jiayao. Its origin was quite complicated.
And other blood crystals couldn’t “eat whatever they wanted” like A4. At most, they could fuse with other blood crystals during evolution to obtain more evolutionary abilities.
But doing so would greatly increase the probability of evolution failure. It could be said that Huayibai, who was already A-rank, had almost no chance of obtaining this evolutionary ability.
“That’s good…” Huayibai patted her chest and breathed a sigh of relief.
At this time, Lin Jiayao had also determined the Extraction Point.
Perhaps because Goldie had the ability to fly, her Extraction Points were all within three or four hundred kilometers, and even flying would take a long time.
It was in the west, about three hundred kilometers away, Iowa City.
This was a small town known as the “City of Literature” before the apocalypse, with a population of less than sixty thousand. After five years of consumption in the apocalypse, there were probably not many blood crystals left.
Lin Jiayao’s ultimate goal was not here, she chose this place simply because it was relatively close to the west.
The extraction time was a full ten hours. Lin Jiayao wouldn’t stay in this small place for such a long time. She had to go to the west coast of America, where there were the most blood crystals, and harvest a wave.
“Huayibai, get ready to go.” Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai beside her, thought for a moment, and asked, “Do you have a form that consumes less but flies faster?”
Goldie could only fly by using enlarged insect wings. To be honest, her flying speed was very limited. Even crossing Myanmar was difficult, let alone flying back and forth across the nearly 2,500 kilometers of the west coast within ten hours.
After all, Goldie’s specialty wasn’t speed or flight.
Compared to Goldie, Huayibai’s flying speed was much faster, she could even cross the entire Pacific Ocean, flying almost half the Earth.
The only drawback might be that the consumption was a bit high. If there was a mode that flew fast and consumed relatively less, then she could let Huayibai carry her.
This was also one of the reasons why Lin Jiayao had Huayibai come to America – to assist Goldie, who had low mobility, and help Goldie harvest Blood Crystals on a large scale.
“Low consumption?” Huayibai looked at Lin Jiayao, blinked, then looked up and thought for a moment, and asked, “How far do we have to fly?”
“More than two thousand kilometers.” Lin Jiayao replied.
After hearing Lin Jiayao’s request, Huayibai bit her lip, thought hard for a while, and then shook her head, saying, “No…”
“To fly so far, Huayibai has to fly at high altitude, but if I have to climb to a certain height, the blood crystal consumption during the climbing process is the highest…” Huayibai looked at Lin Jiayao and explained.
Huayibai could achieve low-consumption, long-distance flight, but only at high altitude. Ascending itself was the biggest consumption for Huayibai.
Unless there was some device to help Huayibai ascend, this Blood Crystal consumption couldn’t be avoided.
“Ascending?” Lin Jiayao nodded and said, “I can do that.”
The golden flying insects crawling on the surrounding buildings swarmed back to Lin Jiayao’s body.
At the same time, Lin Jiayao left one flying insect on her back, continuously enlarging its body.
“Become smaller.” Lin Jiayao, with the flying insect on her back, opened her arms towards Huayibai.
“Okay!” Huayibai nodded, returned to her small form, about the same height as Goldie, and then directly pounced into Lin Jiayao’s arms, wrapping her arms around Lin Jiayao’s neck and hugging her tightly.
“Buzz—”
After hugging Huayibai, Lin Jiayao vibrated the insect wings behind her, carrying the two of them and quickly ascending into the air.
Although the flying insect’s long-distance flight speed was slow, and its carrying capacity was not good, its ascending speed wasn’t so slow, and it didn’t consume so many Blood Crystals.
After about twenty minutes, Lin Jiayao had already climbed to the top of the troposphere, more than ten thousand meters high, and reached the stratosphere.
After reaching the stratosphere, it should meet Huayibai’s requirement for high altitude.
Lin Jiayao and Huayibai looked at each other, and then Lin Jiayao saw Huayibai nod at her.
After ascending a little further, Lin Jiayao directly let the insect behind her merge into her body.
The two small figures, embracing each other, were pulled downwards by gravity.
Before falling into the troposphere, Huayibai had already climbed onto Lin Jiayao’s back, wrapped her arms around Lin Jiayao’s shoulders from behind.
A red light flashed, and Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai behind her, who had changed slightly.
The arms that were originally hugging her, and the legs wrapped around her waist, had completely turned into mycelium, tightly wrapping around Lin Jiayao’s body like a tight suit.
And Huayibai behind her had completely become two pairs of huge wings, flapping alternately.
Where Lin Jiayao couldn’t see, on her back, a naturally breathing flesh and blood air sac had appeared at some point.
As the wings flapped slowly, this air sac continuously filled with air, and this air was continuously compressed into the small air sacs inside.
Finally, the wings behind Lin Jiayao stopped, the air sac instantly exploded, and the compressed air propelled them forward like a cannonball. And this process of naturally inhaling and then compressing air was also continuously ongoing.
After adapting to this intermittent, explosion-powered flight, Lin Jiayao began to throw a golden flying insect downwards every once in a while.
The golden flying insects fell from the sky, and after falling to a certain height, like missiles with a guidance system activated, they directly aimed at the nearest and seemingly largest urban area or town and flew towards it.
Then the golden flying insects exploded in the air, like cluster bombs, releasing countless terrifying black and white brain worms.
These brain worms, like a plague of locusts, directly swept through these cities and implanted themselves into the brains of those blood crystals.
And Lin Jiayao was also getting closer and closer to the west coast.
Three hours passed. Just as Lin Jiayao was preparing to take a break, switch her consciousness, and return to her main body to upgrade the fully automatic “self-harm” device, she felt her speed decrease and heard Huayibai’s voice beside her ear.
“Mommy… I seem to sense a big mushroom…”
“Shall we go back…?”
A big mushroom?
Lin Jiayao felt the wings behind her stop flapping and was puzzled.
They should be almost at the west coast, right? A mushroom? A fungal zombie? Were there also fungal zombies in America?
Anyway, it didn’t seem appropriate to continue forward without any information.
“Let’s stop for now.” Lin Jiayao said softly, “It’s okay, Mommy’s here.”
Lin Jiayao planned to hover in the air and then send some flying insects down to scout and see if there was any danger.
