"Such a transgression."
What a desecration against humanity.
Meanwhile.
The Earth Envoy, an expert in the Earth Escape Skill, tried to retrieve the charred, barely-breathing body. But Su Chen had been watching him all along, his hundred-meter Resonance still active.
While the leaves rustled and whispered, the earth pulsed like a constant heartbeat. The compression and shifting of every layer of rock underground was transmitted directly to his senses.
He could even track the winding path of the tunnel bored by the Earth Escape Skill. Its user thought he was being stealthy, but Su Chen was aware of his every move.
Just as his opponent tried to use the Earth Splitting Skill to swallow the corpse, a powerful wave of weightlessness erupted.
WHOOSH!
The corpse shot into the air, and the surrounding ground was overturned as if by an invisible giant’s hand. Large swathes of soil and tree roots floated into the sky.
Had it not been for the floating spores providing an early warning, and had he not used his own Gravity Skill to partially offset the impact, the figure rapidly trying to escape underground would have been flung to the surface.
’The others have all run away.’
Through his Resonance with nature, Su Chen sensed that the figures lurking on the periphery had long since vanished.
The Bloodthirsty Fungus’s plan had backfired spectacularly.
’They must have been acting on yesterday’s experience, using the altar as bait to ambush me. They’d probably had a lot of success with this tactic, leading many powerful Rune Professionals to a bitter end.’
’Too bad for them, they underestimated my and Yan Ruoruo’s Perception.’
WHOOSH!
Su Chen brought the figure, still suspended in midair, to hover before him. A scalpel woven of Telekinesis sliced through the creature’s swollen cerebral cortex.
Two brain worms were exposed. The moment they saw the light, they trembled and instantly shot out mycelial tentacles as fine as spider silk, lunging for Su Chen’s face, clearly trying to burrow into his mouth, eyes, and nose.
But just inches from his skin, they were stopped cold, frozen in midair and unable to move in the slightest.
’So this is what the fungal cores look like.’
Su Chen couldn’t be bothered to study the ugly things. Since the brain worms couldn’t move, he simply crushed them all. Brain tissue splattered, and several Runes seeped out from the pulp.
At the same time, a Spiritual Light within the body suddenly collapsed inward. As the last spark of life finally withered, it gradually condensed into a crystal and three portions of faintly glowing, fluorescent powder.
’Spirit Marrow Crystal, Spiritual Dust Sand.’
Su Chen mused quietly.
This was truly unbelievable. The more he considered the implications, the more terrifying it became.
When Yan Ruoruo came up from behind, she naturally saw the scene before her.
’The official broadcasts concealed some things, but that’s to be expected,’ Su Chen sighed to himself. The information previously released had stated that when Rune Professionals died, their Profession Authority would not be dropped.
This information was undoubtedly aimed at dispelling any wishful thinking.
What the officials hadn’t revealed, however, was that when the little spiritual tree rooted in the soil of the Sea of Consciousness withered away, Spiritual Materials would condense from it.
Including the Spirit Marrow Crystal coveted by countless top-tier masters.
Even the lower-tier Spiritual Dust Sand had become a bottleneck for advancement, severely obstructing the path upward. It was a problem that had even been troubling Su Chen.
And now, a method of acquisition so efficient it was almost cruel was laid bare before his eyes.
All one had to do was kill a sufficiently powerful compatriot to obtain Spiritual Materials from the shattered remnants of their spiritual tree. Looting their Runes was almost an afterthought.
"’This is nothing but a system designed to make us kill each other,’ he sighed."
The world’s underlying mechanics were truly sinister to the core.
It practically rolled out the red carpet for the wicked.
’Chaos truly is a ladder to progress.’
The modified human before him didn’t have the three-core configuration; instead, two brain-worm-like fungal cores were squeezed into its single head.
Judging from the Runes that dropped, it seemed the Two-Star Water Element Profession Authority had yielded a Spirit Marrow Crystal, while the One-Star Rune Walker had only yielded Spiritual Dust Sand.
In addition, a total of seven Runes dropped. Two of them were Lv5 Runes. One was the Torrential Flow Skill, which allowed the user to rush forward wreathed in waves and slam into enemies with overwhelming force.
A good skill combining both offense and mobility.
The other was the Water Escape Skill. As its name suggested, it allowed the user to merge with water, transforming into a puddle for either stealthy concealment or rapid movement.
"Good Runes," Su Chen praised with genuine admiration.
’I was lucky to get the instant kill. Otherwise, this highly mobile one might have actually gotten away.’
Then, there was the second captive modified human.
The figure in the Dark Shackles had stopped struggling. It looked as if it had been subjected to torture by a searing iron, its body hanging limp and motionless.
"Finally... free..."
After a whisper as faint as a mosquito’s drone, the eyes on the contorted face finally closed for good.
The three brain worms tried to escape the skull, but Su Chen locked them down with Strong Thought Imprisonment. Mouthparts then sprouted on the surface of their fungal core membranes, and as the fleshy folds writhed, they emitted piercing screeches.
"Beast..."
"You won’t live past tomorrow..."
’Oh, great. They’ve even moved up my expiration date.’
Su Chen couldn’t be bothered to waste words on them and immediately crushed two of the brain worms with a thought.
As for the other one...
"Hand it over, I want to dissect it."
Yan Ruoruo made her offer, and the sharp little knife she always kept on hand, gleaming as brilliantly as gold leaf, smoothly sliced open the brain worm’s membrane.
What lay beneath could no longer be called human brain tissue in the true sense of the word.
Countless mycelial threads, as fine as hairs, had long since burrowed deep between the nerve bundles, twining around every single neural synapse like a root system. The entire brain was nothing more than a remote control for the Bloodthirsty Fungus, used to manipulate the Profession Authority contained within.

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