Book 4, Chapter 272: Previous Ingredients To Complement Training
Book 4, Chapter 272: Previous Ingredients To Complement Training
It was night, but light shone in the forest. Chen Chuan stood in the dazzling light, though even it couldn’t chase away the darkness entirely.
There seemed to be countless twisted, invisible things tumbling about and pushing against each other in the darkness. They were letting out all sorts of strange and bizarre sounds. Even the ground underneath seemed to have come alive and started panting heavily, as if it couldn’t bear the weight on it.
Chen Chuan ignored all these things and focused on his stance while guiding his breathing.
He had been training since the afternoon without stopping for a single moment.
This was the first night he spent in the wilderness of the merged space without any defenses, but he didn’t feel too much discomfort from it. A martial arts master’s biofield and the Blinding Blaze’s stance helped him ward off the corruption from outside and the mental world from trying to fuse with him.
However, due to the other world, he was burning way more energy. Whenever he felt that he had used up too much, he would eat a huge piece of honeycomb before returning to his training. He couldn’t take the honey with him if he couldn’t finish it, so he didn’t find it a pity to eat it now.
The surviving Rusted Bees surrounded him and kept trying to attack him. Since it was night, they became even more aggressive, but it was useless. They were two completely different life forms, and the bees couldn’t hope to harm him in any way. As long as his biofield was out and he had a bit of mental energy left, the bees couldn’t break through his defenses.
That was why he didn’t chase them away and just threw himself into training.
The number of bee carcasses around him kept increasing, though the mental world would soon drag them into the darkness and turn them into wisps of black smoke to gather into something. When the Blinding Blaze’s light shone on it, the black smoke dissipated like ice and snow melting when exposed to the sun.
Dawncall had descended from the sky before night arrived and had its wings wrapped around a honeycomb. It lay curled up on the ground under the protection of his biofield and was sleeping without a worry in the world.
In the darkness filled with all sorts of unseen things mingling around, Chen Chuan was like a pillar of fire that would never burn out. The light only grew brighter and more dazzling around him.
A long time passed before the darkness around him fell away. A ray of light shone into the forest and landed on the ground.
Daytime had arrived.
Chen Chuan stopped moving, and the light coming out of him also faded away.
He had spent half a day and the entire night training, which allowed him to become familiar with one of the moves in the Blinding Blaze. He was sure that his skill with it would continue increasing thanks entirely to the Rusted Bees’ honey for giving him a good start.
Theoretically, as long as a martial arts master had enough energy and their bodies could handle the strain, they could train very quickly.
Chen Chuan was able to endure through the strain because his foundation was much stronger than that of any martial arts master at his level. The Veshahan artifact also helped him find the correct path to train much easier.
The Rusted Bees disappeared after the sky turned bright; Chen Chuan believed that this was a sign that they had given up. There wasn’t a single bee carcass left on the ground either.
He looked at the remaining nest. It was still as tall as a tree. Even after Chen Chuan had been peeling off pieces of it throughout the night, he only managed to eat the bottom layer. He had read that the shelf life of honey was the longest among all calorie-dense ingredients. Apparently, even after being stored for up to a hundred years, it didn’t lose its nutritional value.
But Chen Chuan couldn’t take much of it back alone. He might also encounter better ingredients later. Besides, he was treating this place as his hunting ground, not an extermination ground. So, he only took a portion of the nest and put it in his suitcase with the full intention of savoring it after going back to Central City. He wasn’t going to touch the rest.
Then, he called out to Dawncall, who had, at some point, climbed up a tree. The Bird Reptile flapped its wings and took to the sky while chirping.
Chen Chuan picked up his suitcase and the Frost King Saber before heading further into the undeveloped area.
Despite training for the entire night, he didn’t feel tired but was instead full of energy due to the abundance of nutrients.
This time, he didn’t have a planned route. Chen Chuan picked his paths based on the terrain and water sources. After walking around for more than three hours, he reached a hill. The moment he got close, he sensed something different about the place.
It was too quiet here. Soon, he noticed a violent wisp of mental energy suppressing all the creatures in the hill.
A creature with mental energy? Interesting.
He pushed his hat down and strode toward where the mental energy was. Half an hour later, he arrived at a large mudflat, and he saw a creature with the body of a camel and head of a ram.
It was quite big. When it had all four legs on the ground, it was about four meters tall. Its tough, single-toed hooves were white, and it had a bulge on its forehead. A pair of sharp, curved, long horns were on the sides of its head, while toned muscles were obvious under its smooth, shiny, dark brown skin.
It was among the merged space creatures listed in the bestiary and was known as the Towering Ram. It had a vicious temper. The moment it ran into enemies, it would rather die than retreat, and it was extremely territorial. This creature also practically had no natural enemies at the start of the merged space.
Reality proved the description true. On the way, all creatures fled the moment they sensed Chen Chuan’s biofield. Usually, in order to find valuable creatures, he had to pull it back, but even after sensing his biofield, the Towering Ram refused to leave. Instead, it positioned its legs wider and ducked its head down to shift its horns to the front. Warm breath came out of its nostrils as it got ready to attack.
Since the Towering Ram was choosing to attack him, Chen Chuan decided to fulfill its wish for a fight. He turned to the side the moment it charged at him and punched the side of its neck. A wave of refined force instantly entered its body. After taking a few more steps forward, it staggered before falling on its knees while coughing up blood. Then, it fell to the side and breathed its last.
Chen Chuan went up to the Towering Ram and touched the bulge on its forehead. The mutated tissue on its head was the most important part of this creature, and it was also the source of its mental energy.
He yanked off the thin skin covering the mutated tissue to reveal thin, long, white muscle strips of flesh underneath.
As he ate the white flesh, light spilled out of his eyes and only faded away after flashing for a while.
He clenched his fists and sensed warm waves surging to every part of his body. The mutated tissue not only benefited his body, but also helped his mind grow.
The main reason behind it was that the mutated tissue was fresh. After all, he ate it the moment he retrieved it, so none of the nutritional value was lost. The other reason was because the Towering Ram was a higher life form and only slightly below a martial arts master. Its mental energy had become stronger due to prolonged exposure to the other world too, which was why the mutated tissue had grown on its forehead.
Since most merged space creatures didn’t know how to make good use of mental energy, their mutated tissue kept piling on each other until the merged space creature went through a metamorphosis. This was why certain parts of their bodies had much higher nutritional value and substances that were beneficial to martial arts masters.
After eating the white flesh, even with the energy he burned in a day, Chen Chuan could move around regularly for up to ten days.
It was unfortunate that the Towering Rams were rare and few in number due to their horrible temper. There were even fewer who got to grow to such an extent. According to the bestiary, whenever Towering Rams showed up, martial arts masters hunted them down. It was only because practically no martial arts masters used this place as their hunting ground that Chen Chuan found one.
I made the right choice by coming here.
He cast a glance at the Towering Ram and took out his short saber to cut off its horns. The bestiary mentioned that some martial arts masters liked collecting them and would even exchange mutated tissue and ingredients for them. It was a good idea to bring them back with him.
Once he tied them up and put them in his suitcase, he looked down the hill and decided to explore a little more.
After walking around for around an hour, Chen Chuan noticed that the plants were growing scarcer, and the number of living creatures also became smaller.
This wasn’t normal. Unless something out of the ordinary happened, merged space creatures grew at an explosive rate.
Just then, he smelled something fragrant, and he followed it to a mound that was four meters tall. It was so huge that it almost filled his entire vision, and the fragrance was so thick that he couldn’t chase it away even if he wanted to.
The mound was covered in snow-white, plump grain-like ant eggs that were all ingredients full of nutrition.
Since they were hard to store, by the time they were delivered to a martial arts master’s plate, their nutritional value would be mostly lost, but the mound was full of them.
These ant eggs were hard to digest for regular merged space creatures, and they often hatched within the creatures. Then, the larvae would feast on their host and their mutated tissue to grow. Once they grew into ants, they would tear through the merged space creatures and go somewhere else to lay eggs.
If these ants’ growth wasn’t controlled and no merged space creature that could digest their eggs came by, they turned the entire area into their nest.
Martial arts masters didn’t have a problem digesting the eggs, so this place was practically a granary to Chen Chuan.
The eggs tasted great too. They were soft and fragrant. When paired with other ingredients, even more nutrition could be drawn out of the eggs. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been picked as one of the ingredients for martial arts masters.
Chen Chuan needed to be efficient, and he wasn’t interested in eating the ant eggs by the mouthful, so he used his biofield to make them float up. Then, they shattered and turned into white fog that gathered around him and entered his body.