Published: February 12, 2025
Ye Zhongming clutched his abdomen, running through a patch of strange, brightly colored vegetation.
This plant somewhat resembled the willow trees on Earth, but its branches were more like transparent tubes filled with multicolored bright beads.
When touched, the bright beads would immediately flicker like breathing, and the transparent tubes would begin to contract towards the tree crown.
This annoyed the King of Cloud Summit, as it prevented him from shaking off his pursuers.
The pursuers were not novices, but rather a dozen parasitic insects.
Right now, Ye Zhongming would rather encounter those top-ranking novices than these parasitic insects.
These bugs seemed to go insane, becoming extremely aggressive when encountering other life forms, and for some unknown reason, they had significantly improved in strength. Some of them had even become somewhat terrifying, like those currently chasing Ye Zhongming.
In his previous life, being stabbed to death by underground insects left Ye Zhongming with some psychological scars. The parasitic insects had suddenly emerged from the ground to launch their attack, numbering over twenty. After Ye Zhongming killed five or six, he began to retreat.
This came at a cost, as one of the insects had pierced through his abdomen with its sharp long claw. Fortunately, it did not damage any internal organs, and after taking medication, his wounds were on the mend.
Ye Zhongming glanced at the scoreboard and noticed that his points had suddenly increased by over five hundred, meaning each of these insects was worth around one hundred points.
Luhua No. 17 parasitic insect, slaughtering charm crab.
This creature was indeed powerful, but Ye Zhongming was certain that their points could not exceed one hundred; it was rare for communal life forms to have scores exceeding three digits.
Yet now, their scores had somehow surpassed one hundred.
What was going on?!
Moreover, through his observations of the scoreboard, Ye Zhongming discovered two shocking things.
The first was that the number of novices had decreased significantly within just over a day—so much that it made one's scalp tingle!
How many had died in the first three cycles? The current death toll was almost the sum of all previous ones!
The second shocking fact was that the points of the surviving novices had increased quite a bit. This was unrelated to the increase of hunting areas, as those in the earlier zones were experiencing the same phenomenon.
Combining his own feelings, Ye Zhongming speculated that the points of the prey must have increased.
The criteria for determining points by the recorder had two standards: one was the type, which established the base score; the other was energy assessment.
These two methods combined determined the score of a life form.
For example, if a parasitic insect had a type score of ten and its energy was high at three, then its total score would be thirteen.
Under this system, the abnormal speed of point accumulation among novices was likely due to the score of the parasitic insects being maxed out, meaning that while the type scores remained unchanged, the energy scores were all at maximum.
But why had these parasitic insects suddenly increased in strength? Without knowing the reason, Ye Zhongming naturally blamed it on Zizikaba and other management layers for some unknown mischief.
He carefully sensed the movements behind him; the slaughtering charm crabs seemed to have gone underground, temporarily quieting, uncertain if they were continuing the pursuit.
Ye Zhongming didn't care anymore; he needed to reach the designated spot agreed upon with He as soon as possible.
The small cycle had started nearly two days ago, and previously, due to those pursuers, he had hesitated to lead anyone in that direction, fearing it would put He in danger. Now, the situation was much better, and he had to check it out.
At this moment, He was indeed facing trouble.
Previously, as a support-type specialist, she would have been a sought-after member in every team. With her, life had an extra layer of security.