Chapter 260: Mommy Hug p2
After rubbing Huayibai’s head, Lin Jiayao refocused her attention on the illusory system interface in front of her.
The matter with Huayibai was perfectly resolved. After she finished retaining A4’s evolution, the next step was to strengthen the other zombies, and after the results of the Spirit research were out, she would directly log into Goldie and try to evolve Goldie to A-rank.
After her mood calmed down, a slight tremor under the bed caught Lin Jiayao’s attention.
She curiously knocked on the mattress and saw the small Black Stem huddled under the bed, holding its head in its hands and trembling, through the image transmitted by Bone Spike Lurker.
“Huayibai, let it come out.” Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai.
With Huayibai here, it would be much more convenient to let the two mushrooms talk than for her to spend Blood Crystals to control it.
“Okay.” Huayibai nodded, raised her hand and knocked on the mattress, casually glancing under the bed.
After a while, a small figure with short, flaxen hair, trembling, crawled out from under the bed.
Although the Black Stem Fungus’ face had no other expressions, it could be seen from its body movements that it was now extremely afraid of Huayibai.
Huayibai had already shown her fear of Huayibai when she was at B-rank, and now that Huayibai had reached A-rank, she showed an even more terrifying suppressive force towards the Black Stem, like a bloodline suppression.
“Don’t scare it.” Lin Jiayao patted Huayibai’s head.
“I didn’t…” Huayibai covered her head and said aggrievedly.
This wasn’t something Huayibai could control, it was just the Black Stem Fungus being afraid. In fact, Huayibai didn’t threaten it at all.
In order not to let the Black Stem continue to tremble, Huayibai could only glare at the Black Stem Fungus and say indifferently: “Don’t tremble.”
But to Huayibai’s surprise, she just glared at the small Black Stem, and the entire fungus froze.
It stood there in a daze, staring straight at Huayibai, and after a while, it fell straight backwards.
It had fainted from fright.
The moment the Black Stem Fungus fainted, the brains it cloned also stopped functioning, and even Lin Jiayao’s mental power decreased slightly.
“Hiss…” Lin Jiayao felt the tearing pain in her mind, rubbed her forehead, and looked at Huayibai helplessly.
It seemed that she had to find time to reconcile the problem between the Black Stem and Huayibai. Otherwise, if the Black Stem fainted every time it saw Huayibai, her mental power would also be affected.
But she would deal with this after the Black Stem woke up.
“Do you want to continue resting?” Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai, who had already sat up, and asked.
“No, Huayibai feels very energetic now.” Huayibai moved to Lin Jiayao’s side, leaned on her shoulder, and said.
“Okay.” Lin Jiayao tilted her head slightly, rested her cheek on Huayibai’s small head, and looked at the system’s retain evolution interface.
[Please retain your evolution.]
[1. [Lava Black Scales Lv.1 (Purple): Generates black scales on your body surface that can eject flames, consuming blood crystals when burning.]]
[2. [Worm’s Eye Lv.1 (Gold): Drags the target into your constructed spiritual world, making them unable to control their body.]]
[3. [Adaptive Armor Lv.1 (Gold): Makes your body’s defenses compatible with each other, automatically recording the last attack and evolving targeted defenses.]]
Black scales were an evolution that Lin Jiayao had always wanted. Although the consumption was a bit high, the advantage was that she could fly.
It was just that if her skin and muscle strength were not high enough, she might be directly melted by the overloaded black scale flames.
If she had the third one, Adaptive Armor, she could slowly burn her skin with low heat until it was resistant to the black scale flames.
A4 could also do this, but she didn’t have that much time to slowly roast herself when she was in the seabed before.
The second one…
After glancing around, Lin Jiayao’s gaze finally stopped on the second evolution.
Undoubtedly, this was a very powerful single-target control ability, and it was closely related to mental power.
After her Spirit research was complete, it was estimated that even an A-rank wouldn’t be able to leave the spiritual world she created in a short time.
And not all blood crystals knew about this thing called the mind, and not all of them could use the spiritual world as a “training ground” like her, skillfully utilizing it.
This skill should be the most helpful for Lin Jiayao.
She already had [Annihilation Pupils] for powerful single-target damage, [Crystal Vibration Pressure] for group control, [Metamorphic Swarm] for group attacks, and [Divine Skin Armor] for defense…
Coupled with many other control, attack, and enhancement evolutions, Lin Jiayao now basically only lacked a powerful single-target control ability.
[Worm’s Eye] could just make up for Lin Jiayao’s lack of single-target control.
She would eventually obtain the other evolutions on A4. She could log in and get them at any time after her mental power recovered.
Now, let’s get [Worm’s Eye] first, and let her sister simulate the feeling of entering the training ground.
Lin Jiayao chose to retain the second evolution, [Worm’s Eye]. Soon, the system interface disappeared, and she felt a slight burning sensation in her eyeballs.
After the burning sensation came an intense itching, as if countless worms were crawling in her pupils.
Slowly, as Lin Jiayao mastered it, the feeling of worms crawling in her pupils also gradually disappeared.
Blinking her eyes and confirming that her eyes were fine, Lin Jiayao turned her head and looked at Huayibai, who had somehow left her shoulder.
Huayibai was looking at her with a puzzled look, looking her up and down for a long time, and finally focusing on Lin Jiayao’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Seeing Huayibai’s unusual behavior, Lin Jiayao asked.
“I don’t know… it feels…” Huayibai hesitated for a moment, then told Lin Jiayao about her feelings just now, “Just now, it felt like Mommy had become a different person… the smell changed a little, but it quickly disappeared, I don’t know if it was my illusion…”
“It’s not an illusion.” Lin Jiayao didn’t hide it, but said directly, “My body did change a little just now… do you have any specific feelings?”
Lin Jiayao didn’t hide it from Huayibai because she wanted to know more about retaining evolutions from Huayibai.
Before, when Huayibai was still B-rank, she had retained evolutions countless times in front of her and her sister, but they didn’t have any doubts about her evolving.
But after Huayibai reached A-rank, she could actually sense that her body was being modified by the system… This had never happened before.
And Lin Jiayao hadn’t asked Huayibai about her feelings after evolving to A-rank yet. Perhaps she should take this opportunity to have a good chat with Huayibai about these things.
“More…” Huayibai closed her eyes, carefully recalled what she felt before, and shook her head, “No, I just felt that Mommy’s smell became strange, but it quickly returned to normal.”
Huayibai only knew that there was a “change”, but she didn’t understand what exactly had changed.
“Hmm…” Lin Jiayao pondered for a while and asked, “Then after you evolved, did you have any ‘instincts’ or ‘epiphanies’ that you didn’t have before?”
“For example, about devouring blood crystals.”
Lin Jiayao continued to ask.
“Instincts… maybe it’s because I have very little blood crystal liquid in my body now, but I do have a very strong desire to devour.”
Huayibai answered Lin Jiayao’s questions while closing her eyes to feel, and then continued:
“Epiphany… I don’t know if it can be considered an epiphany, but I have a very strong sense of crisis, always reminding me to quickly devour blood crystals, as if I won’t have enough if I don’t devour them soon.”
Lin Jiayao grasped the key point and asked: “Not enough? Why not enough? Blood crystals?”
“It should be…” Huayibai was also a little uncertain. Those feelings were vague, like instincts engraved in her DNA, and couldn’t be described very directly.
“I roughly understand…” Lin Jiayao gently tapped the mattress with her finger, and after a while, asked again, “Then besides devouring blood crystals, do you have any other urges now?”
Huayibai thought carefully and said, “Yes.”
“What?”
“I want Mommy to hug me.” Huayibai said sincerely, “Besides this, there are no other urges.”
Lin Jiayao: “…”
It seemed that after evolving to A-rank, blood crystals would all be activated with a kind of “reminder”.
Like the most idle Blue Serpent, which was more like a salted fish than a snake, would have a strong urge to devour.
Then their sense of urgency must come from the continuously consumed Blood Crystals.
After all, besides death and the Blood Crystals stored in the body, a large amount of Blood Crystals were also used to release abilities.
If there was a global countdown timer for the total amount of blood crystals, then the global blood crystals must be continuously decreasing at a fast speed.
And what they said about not having enough later…
Not enough for what?
Not enough for evolution?
If they waited any longer, the total amount of blood crystals in the world wouldn’t be enough to create an S-rank? Was that what it meant?
What would happen if an S-rank couldn’t be created?
According to Lin Jiayao’s previous guess, if the entire Earth was an “experimental ground”, then if an S-rank couldn’t be created, it might mean that the “experiment failed”.
What kind of experiment was this? A blood crystal evolution experiment?
Lin Jiayao shook her head and didn’t continue to think in this direction.
This was just her own guess, after all, and with the existence of the system, this world couldn’t possibly have enough Blood Crystals.
Because Lin Jiayao had already fed hundreds of Blood Crystals to the system.
If this world really had the concept of a total amount to create an S-rank, then the total amount after being consumed by the system would definitely not be enough to create an S-rank.
The statement of an experimental ground was self-defeating because of the existence of the system.
Of course, there was also the possibility that this experimental ground was only built for the system host.
Then this was even more impossible. If they wanted her to evolve, they shouldn’t have released the blood crystal rain in the first place, and just given all of it to a person with a system to swallow, why waste so many years?
After thinking for a while and not coming up with anything, Lin Jiayao could only temporarily give up thinking.
Whenever it came to this kind of time, Lin Jiayao knew that just thinking was useless.
If she continuously became stronger, evolved all the zombies under her control to A-rank one by one, and slowly upgraded all the system’s creations… the truth would naturally come to her.
Lin Jiayao reached out, pulled the soft Huayibai into her arms, and let her lie on her chest.
Lin Jiayao naturally wouldn’t refuse Huayibai’s small request… after all, she had treated her as her daughter for eighteen years.
Even raising a piece of char siu for eighteen years would create feelings, let alone a living little mushroom. (TN: Char siu is a Cantonese-style barbecued pork)
“Are you hungry? Let’s eat something.” Lin Jiayao rubbed Huayibai in her arms, exchanged ten bags of Blood Crystal Serum from the Hideout, and piled them beside Huayibai.
“Thank you, Mommy~”
Huayibai, who was lacking Blood Crystals, naturally didn’t refuse Lin Jiayao’s kindness. After thanking her sweetly, she sat in Lin Jiayao’s arms, picked up a bag of Blood Crystal Serum, bit a corner, and drank it with a “gurgle”.
For some reason, this scene reminded Lin Jiayao of when she fed Huayibai milk when she was little… of course, it was in the dream.
Lin Jiayao slowly recovered her mental power while watching Huayibai drink the blood crystal liquid sip by sip in her arms. In a trance, it was as if she had returned to the time when she was taking care of the little Huayibai.
The eighteen years of dream life made Lin Jiayao much calmer, and also gave her a “family member” with the same status as her sister.
Lin Jiayao, relaxing in the room, didn’t know that her sister had already finished dealing with the matters in the ash area and was rushing back.
And her sister’s hand was holding the dumbfounded Kisaragi Mika.
Lin Xiwan ran quickly through the urban forest, and Kisaragi Mika, being pulled by her hand, floated behind her like a small kite.
Soon, Lin Xiwan, holding the small kite, rushed all the way to the villa area.
When she approached the villa area, Lin Xiwan was already spotted by the green bugs deployed outside by Lin Jiayao.
“Thump—”
Lin Xiwan jumped, leaped over the vine wall, and landed steadily in the villa’s courtyard. She turned around.
It was then that she noticed Kisaragi Mika, her hair messy, had collapsed on the ground, unable to even stand up.
“Sorry…” Although she knew that the other party couldn’t understand Chinese, Lin Xiwan still apologized after releasing her hand. Then, she shouted towards the room, “Huayibai – you know her, right? Come out and take a look—”
Soon, Huayibai walked out of the villa, pushing a wheelchair made of intertwined vines and mycelium, and Lin Jiayao was sitting in the wheelchair.
“Yao? You’re awake!” Lin Xiwan ignored Kisaragi Mika behind her and walked directly towards Lin Jiayao.
And Lin Jiayao, after exchanging a few words with Lin Xiwan and saying that she was fine, looked at Kisaragi Mika on the ground.
“Kisaragi Mika.” Lin Jiayao looked at Kisaragi Mika, who was slowly raising her head from the ground, and said calmly in Japanese, “Long time no see.”
Now that she was here, it was time to let Kisaragi Mika know that the manipulator of the Ino God was her – the Ino God didn’t exist.
Understanding this would be good for her future normal life.
