Chapter Seventy-One: The Autumn Hunt

Another day slipped by in the blink of an eye. By noon today, his bloodthirsty mosquitoes would mature once again, and the first batch of Aqua Spirit Fruits would also be ready to harvest. When the time came, he could upgrade the Aqua Spirit Fruit Tree to the fourth tier. Of course, if the Space-Time Ant could be upgraded in quality again, he would do so as well.

However, Lu Sheng didn’t have high hopes for that. Last time, he had tried using a hundred thousand mid-second-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes, but the progress bar hadn’t budged at all. This time, it didn’t look promising either. If it didn’t work out, his main goal would be to strengthen the Aqua Spirit Fruit Tree and the bloodthirsty mosquitoes, accelerating their breeding and raising their tier. That way, improving his other cards would become faster too. Enhancing the Aqua Spirit Fruit Tree would also ensure his own power didn’t lag behind.

When he woke up in the morning and finished washing up, Li Kuang appeared before him, making Lu Sheng seriously suspect that this fellow had been spying on him.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

Li Kuang replied respectfully, “My lord, tomorrow is the day when Celestial Beetle City hosts the Autumn Hunt. Traditionally, the strongest in each settlement leads some of their followers to participate in a seven-day hunting expedition. I wonder if my lord is interested in joining?”

Normally, Li Kuang wouldn’t have asked, but now Lu Sheng was the strongest in the settlement.

Lu Sheng pondered for a moment. He had heard about this from Shi Jiu and the others, though their understanding was surely less comprehensive than Li Kuang’s.

“What are the benefits and drawbacks?” Lu Sheng asked.

Li Kuang considered for a moment. “The advantage is that the wilderness is full of treasures—whether rare plants or spirit fruits, whatever we find is ours. The Xuanbing Sect will clear out the high-tier monsters for us, so we only need to deal with the lower-tier ones. The downside is that it’s dangerous—people die easily out there. Even though the Xuanbing Sect helps with the stronger monsters, some might slip through, or high-tier beasts wandering the wilds might be attracted by the noise of battle.”

Lu Sheng nodded. “I understand. You can take the others—I’m not interested in this sort of thing.”

“Yes, my lord.” Li Kuang left without further ado.

Lu Sheng then entered the sub-dimensional space to check on the growth of his cultivated creatures. He didn’t pay much attention to the Red Fire Ants anymore. Compared to the Aqua Spirit Fruit produced by the tree, the red pouches produced by the ants were unimpressive. To put it simply, the Aqua Spirit Fruit could be rapidly converted into strength—about a hundred times faster than the red pouches. This wasn’t unique to the Aqua Spirit Fruit; any spirit fruit could be absorbed swiftly. In theory, as long as there were enough spirit fruits, a strong fighter could be created in no time. Of course, quantity and quality were both essential.

He checked on the Eye Moths—cocoons had already formed, and soon new Eye Moths would emerge.

Next were the vegetables he had planted. Under the rapid growth device, these mutated varieties were thriving; what originally took seven days to mature would now take just three.

Time soon reached noon.

The bloodthirsty mosquitoes matured again—eight thousand late second-tier, and one thousand early third-tier. The total harvest was:

Late second-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes: 2.4 million
Early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes: 300,000

He tried using 300,000 early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes to upgrade the Space-Time Ant, but as expected, it didn’t work—only a three percent increase in progress. To actually upgrade, he would need ten million early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes, so Lu Sheng had to give up.

He then used 33,300 early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquito cards to upgrade the Aqua Spirit Fruit Tree from mid-third-tier to early fourth-tier. The blue quality offered triple the improvement over white quality. Afterwards, he upgraded the Frogman Spear and the Rapid Growth Device to fourth tier as well, using another 20,000 early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquito cards.

Nothing else was worth upgrading, so he condensed all the rest to enhance the bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

Converting the late second-tier mosquitoes into early third-tier ones gave him 24,000 more, for a total of 270,670 early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes, including the remaining 246,670. Lu Sheng transformed all of these into early fourth-tier mosquitoes, ending up with 24 early fourth-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes—one male, twenty-three females. Although the numbers seemed to decrease, the effect was essentially the same.

This was the decimal system at work; if he only advanced to perfected third-tier, he could have 240 bloodthirsty mosquitoes. In turn, 240 female third-tier mosquitoes could birth 72,000 perfected third-tier offspring. At early fourth-tier, 24 females could produce 7,200 mosquitoes. The difference was only in quantity, not quality.

He also had 4,030 early third-tier bloodthirsty mosquitoes left and advanced them to mid-third-tier—300 females, 103 males.

With that, this round of upgrades was complete. He had to wait for the next batch of bloodthirsty mosquitoes to mature.

However, he noticed a problem—he was running low on resources and needed to gather more Source Pearls.

[Rapid Growth Device]
Quality: White
Tier: Four
Function: Doubles the growth speed of all life within a 100,000-meter radius.
Cost: One fourth-tier Source Pearl per 1,000 meters; at full power, one hundred fourth-tier Source Pearls per day.

This was a considerable expense. Given his current breeding range, even with compressed space, he needed at least 3,000 meters—three Source Pearls a day. Yet he only owned sixteen fourth-tier Source Pearls: fifteen from slaying Meng Yang, and one from the Wind-Fire Twin-Headed Serpent. That would last him just five days. To raise more funds, the Aqua Spirit Fruit was currently his most valuable asset.

If he could reach fourth-tier himself, he could take some to sell.

Ten tier-three Aqua Spirit Fruits had ripened, and now that the tree had reached fourth-tier, there was no rush to pick them—he chose to let them continue to grow.

The Wind-Fire Twin-Headed Serpent had become food—for the bloodthirsty mosquitoes, the Aqua Spirit Fruit Tree, and the Red Fire Ants.

Having settled these matters, Lu Sheng began pondering how to complete the Space-Time Ant’s first evolution.

At the same time, he realized he needed to better understand this world. Whether from his predecessor’s memories or his own, he had little impression of it. His predecessor had always lived on Sky Island, a nearly isolated place. Only those who joined a combat team could leave, and even then, information was scarce.

After taking over this body, he hadn’t left the settlement or made a point of learning about the world. Since Li Kuang and the others were heading to the main city tomorrow, Lu Sheng planned to go with them—not to participate in the Autumn Hunt, but to gather information about the world and acquire the resources he needed.

For instance, the materials required for the Space-Time Ant’s evolution, the Muscle Hound’s advancement, and training equipment for the Muscle Hound. The Black Iron Tree essence was barely sufficient for now, but it wouldn’t work for the next evolution.

It would be best to prepare these materials ahead of time; otherwise, searching for them at the last minute always felt too rushed. His pace of improvement was simply too fast—by the time he found what he needed, it might already be outdated.

Tomorrow, in the main city, it would be ideal to find all the equipment necessary for future training in one go.