Translator: AnubisTL
Just then—
Scar Dog suddenly strode toward Chen Jiang, who was sitting by the tree root. "Brother Jiang."
"Hmm?" Chen Jiang tilted his head to look at Scar Dog approaching him. A sudden impulse struck him: he decided to test the effects of his new item.
He casually activated the item effect of the Blue Jade Thumb Ring and glanced at Scar Dog.
Immediately—
A panel materialized before him.
"So bored. I'll go chat with Brother Jiang."
"Speaking of which, is Brother Jiang hungry? Should I get him something to eat?"
"I wonder what Brother Jiang is doing sitting alone under the tree."
"Ugh, all these messy affairs are so annoying. They've even killed my motivation to build a perpetual motion machine."
"Judging by how things are going, I have a feeling my future lies with the space pirates."
"Should I start growing my hair out now? After all, if I'm going to be a pirate, I need a flowing mane to look properly badass."
"That Caribbean pirate? All he had was long, flowing hair."
"Speaking of Brother Jiang's unrestrained modification, could it create a cosmic warship? Maybe I should start designing one now to prepare for becoming a pirate later?"
"I wonder..."
The panel before him abruptly cut off.
Nothing more.
All the information displayed was what Scar Dog had been thinking in the past ten seconds.
Chen Jiang expressionlessly looked up at Scar Dog, wanting to ask, Why is your mind always filled with such nonsense? How did you even get to interstellar pirates?
Just then, Scar Dog strode over to Chen Jiang, casually sat down beside him, and said, "Brother Jiang, what are you doing sitting here alone? Want to grill some meat?"
"There's nothing else to eat anyway, since we don't know how to cook anything else."
"I told you we should have captured a chef."
"Alright, enough."
Chen Jiang had to interrupt. "Let's go eat."
"Sure thing."
Meanwhile, in a remote valley on the planet...
Yan Pomen stood before a railing, gazing at the mutated beasts piled high in the valley below. He nodded in satisfaction and asked, "How many mutated beasts have we collected so far?"
"Um..."
The subordinate behind him tapped his tablet a few times before reluctantly replying, "Lord Yan Pomen, it's impossible to give an exact number. There are simply too many."
"We have nearly 300 mutated beast spawn points in total."
"Some were only recently discovered, while others we've known about since the beginning of the Ten Thousand Races Arena."
"Each spawn point generates 17 mutated beasts per hour."
"After accounting for casualties due to various accidents, there are at least 50,000 mutated beasts piled up in this valley alone."
"And we control over 40 such valleys."
"Moreover, the spawn points continue to generate new beasts, meaning we likely possess close to 2 million mutated beasts in total."
"And that's a conservative estimate."
"In reality, there could be even more."
"Two million mutated beasts?"
Yan Pomen rested his hands on the railing, a faint smile playing on his lips as he gazed confidently into the distance. After a moment, he asked, "Do you think Chen Jiang can still surprise us this time?"
"Absolutely impossible."
The subordinate standing beside him shook his head firmly. "We possess nearly two million mutated beasts—a number Chen Jiang could never match."
"This event lasts only twenty-four hours."
"Even if Chen Jiang could kill eighty thousand mutated beasts per hour, he'd still need twenty-four hours to reach two million."
"But let's set aside whether he even has that kind of power."
"Even if he did, he couldn't possibly find that many mutated beasts across the wasteland in just twenty-four hours!"
"Virtually every mechanical race city has already cleared out all nearby mutated beast spawn points, taking what they could and destroying the rest."
"Even if Chen Jiang encountered mutated beasts in this situation, they would only be small groups, not the absurd number of nearly two million."
Yan Pomen nodded in satisfaction, fully agreeing with his subordinate's words. He then let out a long sigh, gazing at the distant white clouds and savoring the momentary tranquility.
Just twenty more hours.
Soon, everyone would know his name: Yan Pomen.
It was a pity that the difficult conditions prevented them from securing more mutated beast spawn points.
These things were notoriously difficult to transport. Cities far from the mechanical race's main base simply lacked the resources to move nearby spawn points to the capital.
As a result, these cities typically placed mutated beast spawn points in controllable locations within their own territories, often underground shelters or abandoned warehouses.
Each day, they sent teams to cull the beasts and harvest items.
But even if mutated beasts seemed manageable individually, their sheer numbers could overwhelm any defense.
Most cities, within their capabilities, established mutated beast spawn points within their walls. Any spawn points they couldn't contain were immediately destroyed upon discovery.
"Hmm?"
Li Hao, who was sitting beneath the world tree, grilling meat by a stone, suddenly glanced at the map that had materialized beside him with a strange expression. "Hey, Brother Jiang, someone else is coming."
Chen Jiang followed Li Hao's gaze and saw a green dot suddenly appear near the light gate on the map.
This indicated that a human player had emerged from the light gate.
"Seriously?" Scar Dog shook his head wearily. "Another human player with ulterior motives? Why hasn't Kindling City sealed off this light gate yet?"
"They probably have," Li Hao replied with a serious nod. "If they hadn't, we'd be dealing with hundreds, if not thousands, by now."
"Fine," Scar Dog said listlessly. "Let's see how many times this one can circle the world tree. The last woman managed three laps."
"This time, at least four laps, I bet."
"I'm betting on two laps," someone said.
"Five laps!" another countered.
To everyone's surprise, the green dot on the map emerged from the light gate and headed straight toward them, without deviating even slightly.
"Impressive," Scar Dog remarked, mildly surprised. "This one's certainly being straightforward."
Soon, the human player stood before them, only seven or eight meters away.
"Liu Yiping?" Scar Dog's eyes flashed with surprise as he casually pulled a shotgun from his chest, rested it on the table, and aimed at the approaching elder. "Halt! Don't move!"
"One step further, and I'll fire."
They recognized the old man—the human guardian who had recently established Humanity's Kindling City. He was a figure of some renown.
"What's this?" The human guardian stood frozen, his brow furrowing as he stared at the shotgun Scar Dog held. His voice rasped, "What do you mean by this?"
"Show your identity panel."
The shotgun's muzzle remained fixed, pointed directly at Liu Yiping. "We can't be too careful. What if a player has an innate ability for disguise? If someone impersonated Liu Yiping to approach us, that could be dangerous, right?"
"Show your identity panel. No unnecessary movements. Any sudden move and we'll shoot."
The human guardian sighed helplessly and shook his head. "You're being overly cautious. So far, no human player has been able to take on four of you alone."
He then displayed his identity panel.
After verifying the panel's authenticity, Scar Dog turned to Brother Jiang.
"Sit down."
Chen Jiang smiled apologetically. "My brother here has a stubborn streak. I couldn't stop him. What brings you here?"
"There's something I need to discuss."
The human guardian glanced around, then lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "This matter is critical. No outsiders can know. Brother Chen Jiang, is this a good time?"
"There are no outsiders here," Chen Jiang said casually, slicing off a strip of meat with his dagger and popping it into his mouth. "Just spit it out."
Scar Dog's expression darkened slightly. What's this? Does he think we're outsiders?
"Ah, Brother Chen Jiang, you misunderstand," the human guardian quickly clarified. "I didn't mean your three brothers."
The human guardian paused, glancing at the woman's head beneath Scar Dog's buttocks. With a peculiar expression, he asked, "Could you ask this outsider to step aside for a moment?"
"After all, this matter is quite important."
"..."
Scar Dog stared speechlessly at the stool beneath him, then sighed softly. "Alright, alright," he relented.
He stood up and waved his hand, summoning a phantom gate beside him.
Suddenly, a massive bronze bell materialized in the air, narrowly missing the woman's hair as it crashed heavily to the ground, completely engulfing her head.
"Hmm."
Scar Dog patted the bell's surface with satisfaction before plopping down against it. "Alright, you can speak now," he said, leaning back against the bell.
"..."
"Um..."
The human guardian's lips twitched slightly as he forced a smile. "This young man certainly has a... unique temperament."
After composing himself, he continued.
"Young Brother Chen Jiang, you might not know about what's happening in twenty hours."
"Is there a global event?"
"Huh?"
The human guardian, interrupted mid-sentence, instinctively paused, slightly taken aback. "How did you know?"
Then, remembering Chen Jiang's strength, he quickly composed himself.
"You know about the global event in twenty hours, but you probably don't know what it entails."
"Is it a beast tide assault?"
"You even know the event's name? Then you must not know the details. The event involves..."
"Killing mutated beasts to earn mutation points, which can be used to buy items in the mutation shop, similar to the previous Blood Sacrifice of the Ten Thousand Races event."
"..."
The human guardian stood silently, his expression blank, momentarily at a loss for words.
He had relied on his three-star building, the Star Observation Pavilion!
And that damned structure required him to kill five human players inside it every day just to function properly.
By deploying this three-star special building, he could gain twenty-four hours' advance notice of upcoming global events.
It was precisely because of this that he had obtained the global event, the beast tide assault.
However, upon learning of the event's arrival, he suddenly realized that even the combined mutated beast populations around Kindling City only amounted to ten or twenty thousand. The number of mutated beasts had drastically decreased compared to when they first descended upon this world.
Just as he was racking his brain, he suddenly remembered that his neighbor was none other than Chen Jiang, practically the strongest human alive.
Without hesitation, he set out alone, without even a guard, to approach the light gate leading to Chen Jiang's location, to demonstrate his sincerity.
Originally, he had intended to share information with Chen Jiang, both to earn his favor and to make him aware of the power of Humanity's Kindling City, fostering closer cooperation between them in the future.
But now, Chen Jiang had interrupted him several times, leaving him momentarily at a loss for words.
After a long pause, the human guardian finally spoke, his expression complex: "Then, young Chen Jiang, do you know how the mutated beasts came to exist?"
"Mutated beast spawn points."
Chen Jiang couldn't help but chuckle. If he'd been asked this just a few hours earlier, he wouldn't have had a clue.
But six hours ago, they'd taken a stroll through Central Control Room 1024. Now, they knew not only how mutated beasts appeared but also the entire process of how they were created.
"As expected," the human guardian said with a wry smile. "There seems to be nothing you don't know."
"Since you know all this," he continued, "you must also be aware that the mechanical race has been collecting vast numbers of mutated beast spawn points?"
"Oh?" Chen Jiang raised an eyebrow, feigning surprise. "That's something I genuinely didn't know."
"You didn't?" The human guardian breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, he'd almost believed Chen Jiang was an omniscient god. He then turned serious and said, "A few hours ago, a human player arrived at Kindling City through the light gate, his face etched with urgency."
"Without a word of explanation, he demanded to see me by name."
"My guards refused him entry."
"Then... that human player took down all my guards, fighting a hundred of them alone. The commotion was so great that news finally reached my ears."
"One against a hundred?" Scar Dog asked, his voice tinged with disbelief. "I don't believe it. Let him come here and try to withstand a burst from my machine gun."
"He sounds like the modern-day Lu Bu. That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?"
"It's true he fought a hundred of them, but my guards didn't use firearms. They went at him barehanded. After all, the human player showed restraint and didn't seriously injure anyone."
"His only goal was to meet me, so it was more of a sparring match than a real fight. No one got truly angry."
"Of course, if we'd used firearms like you suggested, even Lu Bu himself wouldn't stand a chance."
(End of the Chapter)
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