After determining his target, Chris went outside the gas station and found the entrance to a mine shaft.
He remembered that most of the Mutants/Deformed Persons lived in the mine shafts to avoid being driven out by the America government.
It was also because they spent a long time in the dark mine shafts that these Mutants/Deformed Persons preferred to be active at night, and their combat effectiveness during the day was particularly weak.
Recalling the information the Mutants/Deformed Persons displayed in the movie, Chris took out a monomolecular combat knife and entered the mine shaft.
After advancing dozens of meters along the mine shaft, the light from outside could no longer penetrate deep into the shaft.
If an ordinary person were in this environment, even without any danger, prolonged darkness would drive them mad.
Fortunately, Chris was not an ordinary person. He stood still for a few seconds, waiting for his eyes to adapt to the surroundings, after which the mine shaft was not much different from the outside world to him.
This place was not truly a lightless environment after all; not to mention the mining lamps that still emitted faint yellow light, even if there were no light at all, Chris could simulate the surrounding environment with his extraordinary senses.
So, walking in the silent mine shaft, Chris didn't even need to use his Calamity Radar to find people; his powerful physical sensory abilities were exceptionally useful here.
Before long, Chris sensed the presence of a group of Mutants/Deformed Persons nearby.
Following their direction, Chris went straight towards them to kill them.
"Kill, kill, kill! I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat!"
"Don't rush, a group of unlucky guys have already fallen into the trap. Now we just have to wait until nightfall, and then we can start hunting."
"I can't wait, I want to go now!"
"Boss Jupiter won't agree. He has already gone with a few of our kin. Let's just wait for his good news!"
Chris, gradually approaching, listened to the communication of these Mutants/Deformed Persons and found that although they were irritable and looked monstrous, they still possessed reason and could communicate with each other.
However, in Chris's perception, he clearly saw that the guy clamoring for meat was holding a human thigh bone and licking it.
And the ground around was full of human bones and remains, completely covering the entire cave.
So, although Chris confirmed that these guys possessed intelligence and could communicate, they were indeed no longer human.
Although Chris knew from his Calamity Radar that these guys' human attributes were mixed with other things, even now that these Mutants/Deformed Persons appeared before Chris, he still didn't understand what those non-human things were.
However, this did not prevent Chris from clarifying one point: to eliminate this group of cannibalistic monsters.
While these Mutants/Deformed Persons were chatting happily, Chris pushed off the ground, lunging out of the mine shaft with a powerful Kick, his combat knife swinging repeatedly, covering dozens of meters in the blink of an eye.
As a flash of light streaked through the mine, these Mutants/Deformed Persons, who were still conversing, had just noticed Chris's figure when they turned into a pile of minced meat in their astonishment.
This was Chris's current strength; with a sharp blade in hand, as long as a creature's reaction speed was still in the millisecond range, killing it was simpler than killing fish.
After all, killing fish still required careful cleaning of scales, but killing these monsters was not so troublesome.
As eight Mutants/Deformed Persons were cut down by Chris, he also felt eight streams of grayish-white energy being absorbed by him.
However, as Chris perceived the increase in his own strength, he noticed that the numbers didn't match.
The life essence Chris had devoured so far could be categorized from low to high as gray, grayish-white, white, blue, and red.
From these colors, Chris had a general understanding of the life essence each color represented.
Gray represented ordinary creatures, only increasing physical strength; grayish-white also only increased physical strength, but because the increase was very significant, it was tinged with white.
After reaching the white level, it would bring Chris some miraculous abilities.
For example, the Ogre, which was the only one to provide Chris with white life essence, gave Chris powerful regenerative abilities in addition to strong physical strength.
And the blue essence obtained after killing Mickey enhanced Chris's mental power and gave him some minor mental abilities.
As for the higher-level red essence, Chris only knew from Dumpling that this thing had already been tainted by laws, so he only knew that this essence was more advanced than the previous ones, but he didn't know much about the specifics.
Excluding the too high-end red essence, Chris already had a roughly similar understanding of the grayish-white and blue life essences, where the differences were not too great.
According to Chris's own deductions, these three essences were all attached to the human body's essence, and their effects would only increase the human body's own life essence.
Chris even deduced from the blue essence given by Mickey that the Ogre's life essence should have been of a higher level, but it might have been too weak, causing its life essence to drop, which is why it only gave Chris a white-level essence.
Otherwise, it would be illogical for a mere white-level life essence to give Chris cell-level recovery ability, while a blue-level essence only gave Chris a little mental ability.
Unless the Ogre's life essence was just a trigger, awakening Chris's own powerful recovery ability; or if the essence of mental abilities was inherently superior to cell-level recovery, then Chris would have nothing to say.
But this was also a point Chris didn't understand between white and blue life essences; as for the difference between gray and white, Chris understood it perfectly.
There was no need to elaborate on gray essence; of the thousands of humans he killed in the Death God World, all of them, without exception, had gray essence.
It was precisely because of this that Chris could now estimate how much power boost gray essence could provide based on the depth of the color.
According to common sense, these Mutants/Deformed Persons in front of him all provided grayish-white essence, which should have given a power boost far exceeding that of gray essence.
However, after Chris's estimation, he found that these eight grayish-white essences combined were only equivalent to the power boost provided by fifty top-tier gray essences.
This meant the numbers didn't match at all; there was a shortfall of power from three grayish-white essences.
Upon realizing this, Chris was no longer in a hurry to hunt other Mutants/Deformed Persons. He wanted to thoroughly investigate what was going on.
After all, it concerned his fundamental talent, and Chris could not afford to ignore it.
To prevent any abnormality in the Mutants/Deformed Persons themselves, Chris walked up to the minced meat and chopped it up a few more times.
But even after Chris did this, no more essence boosts appeared.
Seeing this, Chris took out the gasoline he had just gotten from the gas station, preparing to imitate the method he used to kill the Ogre by burning these Mutants/Deformed Persons to ashes to see what would happen.
After several attempts, there was still no change; his missing essence had indeed vanished.
Seeing that he couldn't find any clues from these dead creatures, Chris prepared to look for answers from the living Mutants/Deformed Persons.