Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Five: Grape-Sized Explosions
The intersecting crimson flames instantly slashed at the approaching Sarcoma Worm, carving a large cross-shaped wound onto its pitted face.
“Woo—”
The roar resounded again, but this time it couldn’t affect Lin Jiayao. With the system existing outside her own mind, this kind of mental attack and illusion had no effect on her.
Thick, black blood sprayed from the sarcoma, bathing Lin Jiayao in gore. Her hoodie, already riddled with holes burned by the scales, was now completely soaked with black blood, which quickly evaporated, emitting an indescribable bloody stench. It was the smell of decay mixed with rust.
After successfully tearing open this huge wound, Lin Jiayao didn’t stop her attack. The twin swords, enveloped in red flames, danced rapidly in her hands, quickly slicing off large chunks of rotting flesh. The edges of these wounds were cauterized the moment they were created, making it impossible for them to heal in a short time.
As long as Lin Jiayao sliced off its entire massive head, she would definitely find the brain hidden within.
But soon, Lin Jiayao, in the midst of her rapid attack, realized something was wrong.
Although the wounds where she had cut off the flesh couldn’t regenerate, Lin Jiayao observed that there were still endless monkey corpses crawling out of the sarcoma head, their dense arms clinging to the wounds, forming new “coral clusters.”
It was actually regenerating flesh and blood through this direct connection method.
She knew that continuing to cut like this was pointless, only prolonging the battle and consuming her physical strength and Blood Crystal reserves. Although she could also recover by devouring zombies, her battle had a time limit—she still had to extract.
Lin Jiayao quickly stopped her attack, jumped back a short distance to quickly withdraw from the inside of the sarcoma head, then turned her footsteps, pointing her sword at the worm body composed of countless zombies connected to the huge sarcoma head.
Besides the uphill path she had blocked with fire, more monkey corpse zombies had climbed up from the unburned areas on the mountain slope.
And from the mountain, there were endless monkey corpses falling and mutating, then clinging to the ugly worm body, sticking to it, becoming a part of its nutrient supply.
This nutrient supply connection had to be severed.
Lin Jiayao flashed to the connection point between the giant sarcoma and the twisted worm body, leaned forward, pointed her right sword at the ground, and then suddenly flicked it upwards.
A simple and swift upward slash, without any fancy moves, almost completely severed the neck connection, leaving only a few arms at the very end still connected to the sarcoma head.
“Woo—”
Before the huge wail could subside, Lin Jiayao’s raised sword slammed down heavily, and the blood-red blade light carrying flames directly severed the last few arms connecting the sarcoma head.
The moment it was severed, the originally clustered worm body quickly dispersed, and they began to surge towards the head from all directions, hoping to reconnect.
This time, they weren’t connecting to the previous wound, but wanted to create several more worm bodies for supply.
Although this would further reduce its movement speed, it would also make it harder to kill.
However, Lin Jiayao did not give it this chance to reconnect.
The cut that Lin Jiayao had just made was wriggling and contracting, as if hiding something inside. It was not very clear under the cover of black blood.
Lin Jiayao did not pursue with her sword, because those monkey corpse zombies would reconnect to this huge sarcoma in the next second.
She opened her mouth directly, and a crack quickly spread along the corner of her mouth, making her bloody mouth open to its limit.
“Pfft—”
A massive amount of mycelium spewed out from her bloody mouth, like a giant stick, directly piercing into the connection point that had just been cut open. Inside was a fleshy cavity completely different from the other sarcoma structures.
The mycelium continuously absorbed the sarcoma’s life force, and continued to go deeper.
As if sensing the threat to its life, the wails all over the mountain suddenly stopped, and Shenfeng Mountain, which had already entered the night, instantly became quiet.
For a moment, the only sounds on the entire mountainside platform were the running of the monkey corpse zombies, the “splat” of the giant sarcoma struggling frantically, and the “splash” of a large amount of viscous black blood falling on the ground.
Suddenly, the mycelium that had entered the sarcoma seemed to have grabbed something, making Lin Jiayao’s eyes light up.
Found it, the main body.
“Rip—”
“Eek—!”
With the sound of flesh being torn and a terrifying cry like a baby’s wail, a mass of about one and a half meters in size, stained with black blood, was dragged out by Lin Jiayao.
This zombie was hairless, and its skin was covered with black blood, making it impossible to see its color. It had no arms or legs, and its whole body was covered with holes for connection.
Its basketball-sized head was similar to those of the monkey corpse zombies, with no ears, nose, mouth, or tongue, only densely packed eyeballs. Unlike the monkey corpses, its pupils were blood-red, unique to blood crystals.
It was estimated that it ate entirely through the holes on its body, letting other monkey corpse zombies deliver blood crystals and nutrients to it.
Was it another B-rank zombie with pseudo-social behavior…?
Lin Jiayao didn’t know if it was her illusion, but besides a very small number of zombies that focused on single combat power, most zombies, after reaching B-rank, would exhibit some kind of twisted social behavior.
Was this their spontaneous evolution? Or was it driven by blood crystals?
At this time, all the eyeballs on its body were angrily looking in Lin Jiayao’s direction, and countless monkey corpse zombies rushed towards it, about to reinsert their arms into the holes on its body to reconnect.
Obviously, Lin Jiayao wouldn’t give it this chance.
Almost without any hesitation, Lin Jiayao used the fastest execution method.
She tightly pinched the main body of this B-rank zombie with her left hand, which had transformed into a claw, and her gaping mouth bit fiercely into its eyeball-covered head.
“Pop—”
With a viscous popping sound, its head was instantly crushed by her teeth, and several eyeballs that were not covered by the oral cavity were squeezed out and shot out.
It was like stuffing a long string of grapes into her mouth and biting them, and the red juice splashed everywhere.
The moment Lin Jiayao bit its head, the monkey corpse zombies running all over the mountain instantly stopped moving, their mutated bodies also slowly shrinking, turning back into dried corpses, falling to the ground and turning into dust.
The mycelium spewing from her mouth quickly wrapped the entire zombie, binding it and stuffing it straight down her throat.
When this B-rank zombie was stuffed down her throat, it even made Lin Jiayao’s neck, which had several eyes open, bulge slightly. After it was completely swallowed, the zombie seemed to have completely melted into her body and disappeared.
“Huh—”
Black blood dripped from Lin Jiayao’s lips, and the mycelium spewing from her mouth was quickly devouring the blood sticking to her body, even extending to roll the few eyeballs that fell on the ground into her mouth.
The violent blood crystal energy rushed to Lin Jiayao’s limbs, quickly recovering her consumption from the battle just now, and repairing her cracked lips.
Her eyes also turned completely scarlet at this time, and slightly glowed in the night. This was a sign of extremely abundant blood crystals.
It was only then that Lin Jiayao was slightly stunned.
She ate too fast just now and forgot to leave some of the body to precipitate some Blood Crystals.
Generally speaking, blood crystals that had reached B-rank evolution could precipitate about twenty or thirty Blood Crystals, and the rest were in the flesh and fusion of those blood crystals.
Soon, what happened in front of Lin Jiayao made her give up the idea of trying to dig the zombie out of her stomach to see if she could get one or two – unless she was crazy poor, who would do such a thing?
In front of her, the huge sarcoma, originally inhabited by the B-rank zombie monkey, began to slowly soften, and the pus and black blood inside flowed out along the pitted holes.
This blood slowly precipitated in the moonlight, condensing into small Blood Crystals, reflecting the moonlight in the blood-stained black soil.
Suddenly, Lin Jiayao frowned slightly.
She felt an inexplicable itch on her right arm. This itch, which affected her combat, was not even suppressed by Hunting Rhythm.
She could feel that something was slowly emerging from her skin.
“Tsss…”
At the connection between A4’s right sword and arm, besides the tightly fitting black scales, cracks began to appear at the connection between the skin and the sword.
These cracks continued to expand, revealing round pupils of different sizes underneath.
After the cracks completely formed the shape of eye sockets, these pupils slowly began to protrude, and the black pupils began to rotate.
These were the eyes on the heads of the monkey corpse zombies… So it was the eyes, not the sound, that activated the illusion?
The sounds and movements made by the eye monkey zombie just now were probably a low-level evolution used to assist the illusion and mental attack, to distract others.
Unfortunately, this devouring only gave Lin Jiayao this one evolution.
As Lin Jiayao wished, these eyeballs closed one by one, and the long sword in Lin Jiayao’s right hand also wriggled and retracted into the bone, dissolving into the flesh and blood.
At this time, A4’s hands still looked as pale and delicate as usual, without a single crack.
It was a good evolution, just a little disgusting.
But the good news was that Lin Jiayao no longer needed to consume a lot of Blood Crystals to simulate eyeballs with mycelium for observation. She could now directly fuse new eyeballs from her body surface that could both observe and attack mentally.
After trying out her new ability, Lin Jiayao activated super-sense.
After the B-rank eye monkey zombie was devoured by Lin Jiayao, the entire super-sense blind area, which was like a black hole, had completely disappeared.
Through super-sense, Lin Jiayao could see countless lines being torn open, and some blood-red threads falling out from inside.
If compared with the naked eye, it could be found that those blood-red threads were Blood Crystals.
After the monkey corpse zombies dried up and fell, they all precipitated about 1~2g of Blood Crystals. With such a large amount all over the mountain, these grams could also add up to a lot of Blood Crystals.
Lin Jiayao turned off the energy-consuming Super-Sensory Hunt and looked at Shenfeng Mountain under the moonlight with her naked eyes.
At this time, Shenfeng Mountain was twinkling with red starlight under the moonlight. These were the Blood Crystals hanging from the trees or falling into the soil, gram by gram.
Before a smile could appear on the corner of her mouth, Lin Jiayao thought of something and took a deep breath.
Damn it!
She just remembered that A4 didn’t have little green bugs, so how could she collect these Blood Crystals all over the mountain? Collect them one by one?
If she collected them one by one, it was estimated that even when the extraction time was up, she wouldn’t be able to get many Blood Crystals.
And now, besides the difficulty of collecting Blood Crystals, there was another thing that gave Lin Jiayao a headache.
That was the fire she had set just now.
If she didn’t deal with it quickly, if the fire continued to spread, it was estimated that it could burn all the way to the river.
This was not ordinary fire, it would even burn Blood Crystals as fuel!
Otherwise, her sister wouldn’t have only found that little Blood Crystal in the ash area that day. So many building-trees, mycelium, vines, and two B-rank Awakened corpses died, but she couldn’t even get thirty or forty Blood Crystals? They were obviously burned.
Those that weren’t burned might be in open areas that didn’t come into contact with the flames. After all, no matter how strong the fire was, it couldn’t directly use cement boards and soil as fuel.
There was no other way. In order to avoid getting nothing, Lin Jiayao could only shatter the ground and jump up, preparing to extinguish the fire she had started.
This time, Lin Jiayao’s fire extinguishing was much faster than her body’s.
When her body was extinguishing the fire in Kun City before, she could only rely on the building-trees to break themselves and separate a firebreak, using this traditional and common but effective method to extinguish the fire.
But…
What era was it, and she was still using traditional fire extinguishing methods?
“Pfft, pfft—”
Lin Jiayao, who was propelled by flames in the air, turned into a “water sprinkler”, throwing a large number of poisonous eggs in the air along the direction of the fire.
You have to lose something to gain something. Only by quickly extinguishing the fire could she harvest more Blood Crystals. These consumptions were necessary.
When she tried to use the combination skill in battle just now, she discovered that the poisonous eggs could resist the flames for a while, and even if these red flames attached to them, they would not explode immediately.
It was considered to have some resistance to flames.
But after the things inside exploded, they could even directly extinguish the flames. Lin Jiayao even directly used poisonous eggs to cool down the scales.
These poisonous eggs were not only used for poisoning.
After throwing them around in the air, the fire was completely controlled.
After this large circle of flames was completely extinguished, Lin Jiayao flew back to the platform on the mountainside.
Phew…
After taking a slight breath, Lin Jiayao looked at the twinkling Blood Crystals all over the mountain again, and after struggling for a long time, she still sighed softly.
Forget it, let Huayibai collect them, she was good at this.
Now A4 was at the border of Qingzhou City. She could let Huayibai in Chongyu City send a few flying insects to collect all the Blood Crystals and bring them to Lin Jiayao.
As for the Blood Crystal fragments all over the mountain, they were enough to compensate for the consumption of Huayibai’s flapping-wing insects.
After picking up the Blood Crystals precipitated around the lotus seedpod sarcoma, there were a total of seven, all of which were put into the Safehouse by Lin Jiayao.
Now Lin Jiayao, including the Blood Crystals in the Safehouse and the warehouse, had a total of sixteen Blood Crystals… Finally back to double digits.
After collecting all the Blood Crystal fragments on this mountain, she didn’t know if she could collect sixty or even fifty Blood Crystals.
After giving A4 the command to run and extract, Lin Jiayao’s consciousness switched back to her body in the villa room.
