Translator: AnubisTL
"Good heavens..." Scar Dog muttered in astonishment. "This is utterly unscientific! Can someone explain to me how this thing is even flying?"
He hadn't heard the whir of propellers or the roar of jets, yet the colossal structure had simply lifted into the air.
Even the most fantastical contraptions must have some source of propulsion, right?
Where was this thing's power source?
"Quite human-friendly," Chen Jiang remarked with a satisfied nod. He had initially assumed only the world tree could fly and had already resigned himself to carving out a home within its trunk. He never imagined the surrounding earth would ascend with it.
This made things far more convenient.
Activating his Seven-Eyed Mechanical Wing, he strode to the edge of the floating landmass, leaped off, and hovered in mid-air, observing the world tree from the side.
The sight was breathtaking!
It wasn't just the sheer scale of the tree—nearly 200 meters tall with a canopy spanning almost 2,000 meters—that left him awestruck.
Nearly 50 meters of soil had been lifted from the ground by the world tree and now hung suspended in the air!
Outside the soil, root-like structures resembling fleshy buds protruded from the surface.
Through the world tree's integrated item panel, Chen Jiang realized that the soil had become one with the world tree itself!
In other words, the nearly 50-meter-thick layer of soil was no longer just soil. It had become part of the world tree, like a human finger.
Unlike loose soil, it now possessed the same strength as the world tree itself.
The plan had succeeded perfectly!
The "city heart" and the "world tree" had indeed merged flawlessly!
Chen Jiang grinned with satisfaction, already envisioning the possibilities.
He had gained another reliable channel for quickly acquiring one-star items.
By continuously bombarding mechanical race cities and then lowering the world tree over them, he could earn a steady stream of one-star items!
As for why he kept targeting the mechanical race...
The reason was simple: currently, only the mechanical race had cities where players tended to gather. Most other races remained scattered, making it difficult to find such concentrated populations.
He slowly descended onto the world tree, sighing with a hint of regret. "What a pity."
He had just obliterated a mechanical race city earlier that day. If he had landed the world tree there, he could have undoubtedly acquired a substantial number of one-star items.
The problem was that they had used a light gate to quickly traverse the vast distance to that mechanical race city.
The actual distance between the two locations was immense, and they didn't know the specific route.
That's right.
All their current map coordinates originated from Li Hao's map manifestation. Without it, they had no way of knowing the exact routes to other locations.
Meanwhile—
Wang Defa, who had been diligently throwing punches, finally noticed the strange atmosphere around him. He froze, his expression blank for a moment, before a look of terror erupted on his face, and he instinctively stopped moving.
But as he tried to stop, the perpetual motion machines kept whirring!
And so, Wang Defa continued to flail his fists wildly, his face frozen in terror.
To be fair, his panic was understandable.
After all, anyone who had been staring at their phone and suddenly looked up to find themselves surrounded by white clouds, high in the sky, would inevitably wonder if they had died and ascended to heaven.
"Alright, alright, calm down," Scar Dog said into his walkie-talkie, trying to reassure him while gazing around in awe himself.
The sight was indeed breathtaking.
At that moment, Chen Jiang turned to Li Hao. "From now on, the world tree will advance eastward. Your task is to map our route as we go."
"Understood," Li Hao replied with a serious nod.
Flying at a hundred meters above the ground, they could easily spot mechanical race cities ahead using their eyes and basic equipment.
This strategy was primarily to avoid wasting time on dead ends.
Once an area was mapped, they knew it had already been searched and wouldn't need to be revisited.
As for whether they should worry that alien race players might hide in areas they'd already searched, only to ambush them later under the cover of darkness—
There was even less reason to worry about that.
After all, any area Li Hao had mapped would be permanently stored in his mind as a 3D map.
While the map only clearly displayed alien race players, fellow race members, or mutated beasts within a 1,000-meter radius as distinct glowing dots, and wouldn't update in real-time beyond that distance, returning to check periodically wouldn't be much trouble.
"Good," Chen Jiang nodded in satisfaction, gazing forward. "From this moment onward, we'll advance eastward, slaughtering every alien race player we encounter along the way and converting their flesh and blood into one-star items!"
"Let's temporarily name this operation—"
"Global Journey!"
In the next moment—
The world tree, suspended in mid-air, began to drift slowly eastward, gradually accelerating until it reached its maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour.
Soon, less than an hour later, they discovered a gathering of nearly 500 alien race players.
The specific race remained unknown.
Li Hao's map could only identify them as alien race players.
The world tree slowly drifted to a halt above the alien race players' gathering point.
Immediately afterward, a phantom gate materialized in the sky above the jungle encampment.
A barrel etched with violently flashing red runes slowly extended from the gate.
The next moment—
BOOM!!!
A blinding white light erupted across the heavens and earth once more!
[Giant Super Annihilation Bomb!!]
When the light faded, the world fell silent. The jungle below had vanished, leaving behind a massive crater, deep in the center and shallower around the edges.
Yes.
To eliminate a gathering of 500 alien race players, Chen Jiang had deployed the [Giant Super Annihilation Bomb!]
After all, the weapon had no real drawbacks. At most, the turret would be unusable for three minutes after firing—a negligible inconvenience.
The only downside was that using the bomb completely drained the energy cartridge. Replenishing the cartridge required 1,000 human race merit points to purchase an energy cartridge supply gun. From a merit point perspective, using such a powerful weapon against a mere 500 alien race players was clearly wasteful.
But...
Chen Jiang activated his Seven-Eyed Mechanical Wing, hovering in the air as he watched the world tree slowly descend into the massive crater. He nodded in satisfaction.
Just as he had predicted.
Perfect fit.
The soil beneath the world tree seemed divinely ordained to perfectly match the sky pit he had created with the Giant Super Annihilation Bomb!
It looked extraordinarily fitting, as if it were meant to be this way.
As the world tree slowly settled into the massive pit, fruits began to form gradually within its canopy.
One, two, three... five hundred.
"Excellent."
Chen Jiang couldn't help but nod in satisfaction again. Exactly five hundred, no more, no less.
He had initially worried that the alien race players, having been vaporized, wouldn't provide any flesh for the world tree to absorb. Yet, to his surprise, the tree had managed to absorb them after all.
Now, his last concern had vanished.
"Heh."
Scar Dog, standing at the edge of the world tree, grinned at Brother Jiang. "This strategy is brilliant! At this rate, we'll soon have a massive stockpile of one-star items."
"Though it might be a bit cruel to the other alien race players."
"After all, they basically have no chance of fighting back now."
Their development had been too rapid.
This situation was like playing a game where the opposing team picked Nasus. The moment the match started, they hid in the jungle, trying to leech experience and survive until the late game, slowly farming up.
Then, suddenly, the enemy team appeared fully equipped with six legendary items.
Six fully equipped gods were bad enough, but they were also cheating.
How could they possibly win?
Surrender?
Sorry, there's no surrender button.
What else could they do but wait to die?
In gaming terms, it was like activating "Musou Mode" and slaughtering everything in their path.
Currently, only Li Hao, Scar Dog, and Chen Jiang remained on the world tree.
Zhao Ritian and Wang Defa had been left behind at the original location.
The mutated beast manufacturing machine was located beneath the original world tree. They couldn't stray too far; otherwise, the mutated beasts wouldn't be able to fall properly into their current world tree.
It would become far more complicated and waste a lot of energy blocks, as they'd need to constantly open phantom gates over increasingly long distances.
And it wasn't just a matter of opening and closing the gates once; they needed to keep them open for extended periods, which consumed vast amounts of energy blocks.
Thus, Zhao Ritian and Wang Defa were left behind.
Scar Dog had fed a substantial number of energy blocks into the phantom gate connecting the steel pipe and the white space, ensuring it would remain open for approximately eight hours while he was away. After that, the energy would be depleted, and the gate would automatically close.
No more mutated beasts would fall from the steel pipes.
By then, Wang Defa would finally get some rest.
As for Wang Defa and Zhao Ritian's safety, there was no need to worry.
The original location of the world tree had long been marked on Li Hao's map. No matter how far they flew, they could deploy the turret through the phantom gate to the world tree's original site at any time, unleashing a dimensional strike upon their enemies.
In truth, there was little reason to fret about Zhao Ritian and Wang Defa's safety.
With Wang Defa's current physical prowess, he could likely crush a tank with a single punch. In this state, few players posed a threat to him.
After absorbing the blood of 500 players, Chen Jiang nodded in satisfaction, stepped onto the world tree, and the tree ascended once more.
Originally, he had planned to search in a straight line, targeting the mechanical race cities along the way.
But now he realized that these clusters of a few hundred alien race players, though offering only meager "mosquito meat," were still meat nonetheless.
Most importantly, it wouldn't take much time at all. The entire process was remarkably efficient.
Only three steps:
Fire the cannon, land, take off!
Then, he pulled an item from his pocket:
[Item Name]: Heaven's Eye
[Item Star]: Two-Star Item
[Item Effect]: Upon activation, it automatically reveals the nearest alien race gathering point with at least 100 individuals.
[Item Restriction]: 500 merit points per use.
[Item Description]: If you're a jackal, this item will help you easily find prey. Conversely, it can also help you avoid dangerous areas.
This was the last item he had brought from the item shop in City 18.
The item's sole drawback was its lack of directional control. In other words, they couldn't aim their advance, which would leave many blank spaces on Li Hao's 3D map.
For now, however, this limitation could be temporarily overlooked.
He then spent 500 human race merit points to activate the Heaven's Eye.
Soon, the heaven's eye map revealed another hidden gathering point several kilometers away.
Without hesitation, the world tree immediately flew toward that direction.
Activating the heaven's eye cost 500 human race merit points, but Chen Jiang had no shortage of this resource. With hundreds of thousands of merit points at his disposal, he could spend them recklessly.
And so, Chen Jiang and his group embarked on their journey.
Along the way, every alien race player gathering point with over 100 members was revealed on the map.
Their fate was always the same:
"Fire!" "Land!" "Take off!"
A swift and decisive three-step execution.
At this time, the global event "Beast Tide Assault" had only just begun.
While all alien race players were focused on killing more mutated beasts to earn mutation points and purchase rare items from the mutation shop, Chen Jiang's group had already begun slaughtering even the Mutated Beast Human Race Players.
Meanwhile, a subtle shift occurred in the global mutant beast kill leaderboard.
Global Mutant Beast Kill Leaderboard
[Top Ranking: Human Player, Chen Jiang.]
[Kill Count: 2,102,930]
[Second Ranking: Mechanical Race Player, Yan Fengnian.]
[Kill Count: 169,203]
[Third Ranking: Insect Race Player, Dudu.]
[Kill Count: 89,292]
Previously, the mutant beast kill rankings had been dominated by mechanical race players, with the exception of Human Player Chen Jiang.
Now, an insect race player named Dudu had suddenly appeared.
The mechanical race players' high scores were due to their early capture and storage of large numbers of mutant beasts.
Chen Jiang's success, on the other hand, stemmed from his accidental discovery of the mechanical race's largest mutant beast storage warehouse.
But how had Dudu achieved such a high score?
Could she have stumbled upon a mutant beast spawn point as well?
Chen Jiang raised an eyebrow slightly, dismissing the matter as he continued to scan for nearby alien race player gathering points.
His next task was simple:
Locate alien race players, eliminate them, and convert their flesh and blood into one-star items.
Then, he would enhance his turret to an absurdly powerful level.
However, at that moment—
He suddenly noticed a new post on his tablet:
[Help! I have a massive stockpile of useless one-star items that I can't sell. What do I do?]
Hmm?
Chen Jiang's eyebrows shot up. The words "massive stockpile of one-star items" instantly made his eyes gleam with interest.
(End of the Chapter)
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