Chapter 141.1: Sea Monster in the Desert
No matter how much honey badger DNA Lord of Tata had, she wasn’t an actual honey badger.
Mutants were still human, and humans knew how to seek advantages and avoid danger.
Lord of Tata was rapidly retreating with her people—
High above, where the air was thick with dust and haze, more than a thousand Blue Sea people hovered in the murky fog, their wings gently beating.
They slowed their breathing and remained utterly silent, their figures concealed within the pitch-black haze, making it impossible for the people below to catch even a glimpse of them.
Beneath their black masks, their eyes silently followed Lord of Tata and her group as they moved.
They were ready to dive down at a moment’s notice if the Tata side changed its mind.
“Go! Go! Drive faster!”
Lord of Tata wasn’t merely reconsidering her decision now. She practically wished she could attach a pair of wings to the vehicle herself, urging the convoy to flee as fast as possible.
Inside this enormous vehicle—which was considered quite luxurious in the northern district of Moon Silk Star—sat four of Lord of Tata’s trusted aides.
Each of the four had their own role, and under normal circumstances, no matter what happened, they could always offer their two cents.
But at this moment, all four were quiet as chickens, and not one of them suggested, “My lord, why are we running? Why don’t we just charge them head-on?”
After all, the person in the entire Tata Territory who loved charging in blindly the most was their honey-badger-gene lord.
In the past, it was always their lord who ignored the disparity in strength between both sides, rolled up her sleeves, and prepared to charge into battle, while the four of them desperately tried to talk her out of it from behind.
If someone could make their lord flee at the mere sight of them, just how terrifyingly powerful must that opponent be?
Lord of Tata had no time to care about what her trusted aides were thinking. Her entire body was taut, the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up.
Danger! Danger!
Inside her body, the portion belonging to her honey badger genes was currently roaring out a warning.
Even though she was sitting inside the vehicle, she could sense that something from all directions had locked onto her.
She was one of the few lords who had risen to such a position yet still personally took part in combat. This instinctive sense of impending danger had saved her life several times before.
But never had the danger she sensed been as overwhelmingly intense as it was today.
Lord of Tata desperately suppressed the trembling in her body caused by the warning and slowly closed her eyes, carefully sensing her surroundings.
She could feel danger on the left, danger on the right, and danger above her…
Wait, what? There was danger underground too?!
At this point, it wasn’t just the hairs on Lord of Tata’s back standing on end. Even the small tuft of white hair right in the middle of her head had puffed up in alarm.
“Forget it! I’m leaving first! Hurry up and catch up with me!”
Lord of Tata didn’t even bother telling them to stop the vehicle. After giving her trusted aides a brief instruction, she simply opened the door and jumped out of the speeding vehicle.
In just two seconds, she had overtaken the vehicle and disappeared into the distance.
The astonishing physical prowess of a mutant was on full display at that moment.
The four trusted aides left behind in the vehicle: “…”
What they were feeling right now was like something straight out of a supernatural horror movie: their powerful companion, who possessed supernatural vision, suddenly screamed and ran away, leaving a bunch of ordinary people like them behind.
As ordinary people, they couldn’t see anything at all, yet they could guess that their companion must have seen something to react like that.
Now, it was the four of them whose hair stood on end as they frantically urged the driver to go even faster.
“Faster! Faster!”
With their increasingly urgent cries, Lord of Tata’s convoy followed their incredibly fast-running lord, speeding away from the area near Tu’ao in a trail of dust.
Once the vehicles had disappeared into the distance, the Blue Sea people stationed overhead to keep watch finally shifted their gazes and turned their attention to the mutated creatures in this area.
Meanwhile, beneath the wasteland, Zhu Feifan had already grown to more than ten meters tall after consuming a considerable number of nuclear crystals, thanks to his powerful sea-monster digestive abilities.
With a sea-monster head protruding from the ground, he emerged from beneath the soil.
He looked toward the road, where a cloud of black dust had been kicked up. The vehicles were already nowhere to be seen.
He first shook the dirt from his body, then opened his mouth and let out a muffled cry.
“Uuu~”
Ma Yuetian jumped out of his mouth and likewise looked in the direction Lord of Tata’s convoy had disappeared.
“Why did they run so fast? Did they discover us?”
Zhu Feifan: “Awooo~”
Ma Yuetian patted his sea-monster head.
“It’s fine. Next time, we’ll dig deeper. I refuse to believe they’ll still be able to detect us if we’re ten meters underground!”
Ma Yuetian and Zhu Feifan had originally been colleagues and friends at the Agricultural College. Then, while on Green Billow Star, the two had forged a deep friendship after nearly starving to death together. Their relationship had grown even closer after that.
Once they arrived on Moon Silk Star, the two hit it off all over again.
As everyone knew, Zhu Feifan, once regarded as Blue Sea’s only person who fainted at the sight of blood, possessed the supernatural ability [Beast Transformation].
Back on Green Billow Star, he could transform into a four-meter-long sea monster.
At the time, Blue Sea had brought a huge amount of seawater into the Safe City for storage. Besides raising quite a few native Green Billow Star aquatic species in that seawater, they had also tried keeping some sea monsters in it.
After all, the sea monsters of Green Billow Star were simply enormous—and they ate a lot.
But the moment they left Green Billow Star’s territory, the sea monsters practically all died on the spot at the same time.
The 《Sea Monster Self-Sustaining Breeding Base Construction Plan》 that Blue Sea had enthusiastically put together could only be declared a failure.
The sole surviving “sea monster” was Zhu Feifan, who had spent his days running around on the seabed and working part-time for the Institute of Marine Science.
Even Blue Sea’s Institute of Science and Technology couldn’t figure out why he was fine.
They could only tentatively conclude that the sea monsters produced on Green Billow Star might be influenced by some unknown energy unique to Green Billow Star, while supernatural powers were unaffected by this influence.
Although Zhu Feifan himself wasn’t affected by that unknown energy, whether it actually existed or not, he still retained certain characteristics of a sea monster whenever he transformed.
For example, he could swallow nuclear crystals whole to increase his strength.
Another example was that he had no problem tolerating the radiation in the soil and air of Moon Silk Star.
Of course, he also had a sea monster’s weakness: he couldn’t handle dry conditions. Although he could remain exposed to the air, he needed to replenish his water supply constantly.
And Ma Yuetian’s supernatural ability just happened to be water-based!
The [Fate Unordinary] duo had made their comeback, and with remarkable creativity, they had invented an entirely new survival method on Moon Silk Star.
Relying on the sea monster’s immense strength, Zhu Feifan would dig furiously through the ground underground, while Ma Yuetian stood inside his mouth, constantly supplying him with water. At the same time, he would sprinkle water over the dry, hardened wasteland, soaking the surface and softening the rigid soil so that it was easier to excavate.
The two of them were practically a pair of underground excavators, digging away beneath the earth at astonishing speed.
Then Zhu Feifan would suddenly leap out, causing the ground above to collapse and any mutated beasts nearby to fall straight into the “trap.”
Using this method, the duo killed quite a number of mutated beasts on Moon Silk Star, and most of the nuclear crystals they earned were fed directly to Zhu Feifan.
The more nuclear crystals Zhu Feifan ate, the larger he became, and the larger he became, the faster he could dig. This allowed them to target mutated beasts across a wider area and earn even more nuclear crystals.
Then they’d take those nuclear crystals and feed them to him again…
He’d grow larger and become an even better excavator…
Then they’d continue searching all over for mutated beasts, digging traps and earning nuclear crystals…
The two became completely absorbed in this cycle. They no longer bothered with eating and drinking for pleasure, nor did they buy flashy clothes anymore. Aside from setting aside a few days to return home and tend to their crops, they spent practically every day the same way: the moment their eyes opened, they headed underground.
They weren’t trying to improve their quality of life.
They weren’t trying to climb the social ladder.
Every day, they were covered in dirt from head to toe.
They simply loved being excavators.
By the time Cheng Qisheng noticed that something had changed in Zhu Feifan’s faith chain, she discovered that the little four-meter-tall sea monster he had once been had now grown to roughly fifteen meters in body width.
To put it another way, Ma Yuetian could now set up a tent inside the sea monster’s mouth.
Cheng Qisheng checked the two men’s hazy memories and discovered that, since arriving on Moon Silk Star, Zhu Feifan had consumed roughly five thousand nuclear crystals in total.
From the outside, he still looked exactly the same as before, just considerably larger in proportion.
But through Zhu Feifan’s faith chain, Cheng Qisheng could faintly sense that the power he had accumulated inside his body had now reached some sort of critical point.
If one had to describe it, Zhu Feifan was like a caterpillar. Without realizing it himself, the energy inside his body had already begun forming a cocoon.
There was no way to know whether the creature that emerged once the energy reached its limit would be a butterfly or a gigantic moth flapping its wings wildly, but one thing was certain: his sea-monster transformation would become far more powerful than before.
Interesting.
Five thousand nuclear crystals had already been enough to grow him to fifteen meters wide.
If Zhu Feifan were continuously fed nuclear crystals, just how large would he eventually become?
The sea monsters on Green Billow Star couldn’t leave their home planet. Was that, in essence, also a kind of evolutionary lock?
After all, in theory, if sea monsters could keep growing by consuming energy, then as long as they had enough energy to eat, wouldn’t it be possible for them to grow to the size of a planet?
It was simply because they couldn’t leave their original planet that their evolutionary path had been permanently restricted.
But Zhu Feifan wasn’t affected by this kind of “genetic lock.”
Could he, one day, grow into the truly colossal creature she had envisioned?
Cheng Qisheng watched as Zhu Feifan carefully let Ma Yuetian jump back into his mouth before huffing and puffing as he rapidly dug out a huge pit.
Once he burrowed inside, his enormous body worked in perfect coordination with Ma Yuetian’s water-sprinkling efforts, digging tunnels at a speed that made him look even more like an earthworm than an actual earthworm.
Clearly, the duo intended to wipe out the remaining mutated hyenas.
Ma Yuetian had also advanced to the third rank. His control over water had become even more precise, and he could now shoot water blades.
Cheng Qisheng reached out and patted both of them on the head.
The duo, who had been happily digging away, froze for a moment.
Then they became even happier.
Zhu Feifan couldn’t speak, so it was Ma Yuetian, sitting inside his mouth, who spoke:
“Thank you, my God!”
“Thank you, my God!”
She deliberately said it twice. The second time, she was speaking on Zhu Feifan’s behalf.
With a smile on her face, Cheng Qisheng patted the heads of her two believers again.
Grow up well.
She was already looking forward to seeing what her believers, each with their own unique talents and abilities, would eventually become.
