Chapter 18: Carrots and Sticks

"Professor, should we continue to go deeper?"

"Professor... we are just like headless flies here!"

Deep in the mountain forest, the research team being watched by Spirit Mouse Xiaobai had only traveled a few hundred meters when an accident occurred; a male student carrying a pack tripped and slid several meters down a small dirt slope.

Although he only suffered some scratches.

It caused the others in the group to have thoughts of retreating.

This deep mountain forest looked quite beautiful, but staying here for real made one feel completely uneasy.

Especially since the old hunter's hunting dog refused to move forward no matter what, and in the end, it even dragged the old hunter until he had no strength left, forcing him to give up on this big job.

How much schadenfreude these people felt earlier when watching the old hunter struggle with his dog.

That is how much panic and anxiety they felt now.

The professor leading the team, however, still did not want to return empty-handed.

He wanted to appease the crowd and prepared to dangle a carrot before them.

Before the words could leave his mouth, he heard a series of exclamations.

"Found a mouse?"

"No! It's snakes! Everyone be careful!"

The professor turned his head and was shocked to see five or six colorful venomous snakes rushing out from the bushes; upon discovering their team, they immediately stopped moving and assumed an attacking posture.

These venomous snakes had had their nest overturned by Su Ping, who had come here, and were intentionally driven in this direction.

Su Ping, who was preparing to train the mouse colony, did not intend to spare the energy or a Spirit Mouse to pay attention to this team.

Thus, he planned to create a little bit of trouble for them, letting them know when to retreat while not exposing the anomalies on his side.

"Don't run! Don't panic, everyone back up slowly together!"

A tall male student in a peaked cap stood out, waving his arms nervously as he stood beside the professor.

The next second, before these people could do anything else.

As Xiaobai, standing on a tree branch, unleashed its extraordinary spiritual pressure to stimulate the venomous snakes below.

A series of screams erupted from under the trees, followed by shouts of "run!" and the sound of frantic footsteps.

After being bitten by the venomous snakes, this team quickly rushed out of the mountain forest and underwent emergency treatment.

Fortunately, even if they hadn't prepared themselves when coming here, the hosts had already prepared snake medicine.

As a city near a nature reserve, Yushu City's hospitals were quite experienced in treating snake venom and mushroom poisoning.

The members of the team would not lose their lives because of the venomous snakes.

But after this experience of being attacked.

This team would not dare to go deep into the mountain forest again in the short term.

It wasn't that no one had a sudden thought, wondering if the mice they were investigating were behind it.

It was just that such a seemingly ridiculous guess to others couldn't even pass the group meeting stage, let alone be submitted to superiors as an official report for review.

"Now, no one will come to disturb us."

Deep in the mountain forest, near a pond.

Su Ping sat cross-legged, smiling as he looked at the dense colony of mice crawling on the ground in front of him.

At the very front of the colony, Spirit Mouse Xiaobai and Xiaohui stood up in a human-like manner, squeaking as they lectured the colony.

There were about three thousand mice qualified to come before Su Ping, each one an Elite among mice, intelligent and human-like.

In the Cultivation World, these mice would belong to the same category of spiritual creatures as Xiaobai and Xiaohui.

"Has human life in the information age influenced these mice too?"

"There are more mice capable of spirituality than I imagined!"

"This is actually a good thing for my next plan!"

Su Ping saw that the timing was right; these mice had all submitted to the pressure of the two Spirit Mice in a short time.

Next was to add the gift of delicious food to this layer of pressure. A carrot and a big stick—regardless of whether it's extraordinary or not, this trick is always a classic! Su Ping took out his Storage Bag and took out over a hundred pounds of spiked bread.

Smelling the unusually tempting fragrance emanating from the bread.

The mouse colony immediately became restless.

Squeak! Spirit Mouse Xiaobai was full of disdain for these fellow creatures from another world; it immediately let out a sharp screech, turned into an afterimage, and rushed into the colony, biting off the head of a mouse in one go.

Squeak squeak!

Spirit Mouse Xiaobai stood upright, sweeping across the colony like a foreman wielding a whip, its pressure erupting to the maximum.

It directly suppressed the restlessness.

Xiaobai snorted coldly, then immediately dropped to all fours and crawled quickly to Su Ping's feet, looking up with a fawning expression.

"Eat."

Su Ping divided two pieces of bread and gave them to Xiaobai and Xiaohui.

They ate first, and once they were full, they distributed the rest to the mice in the first three rows.

After the mice in the front finished eating, they distributed it to the remaining peers, which counted as establishing the mouse colony's respective team organization during the distribution process.

Afterward, Su Ping thought of a secret technique from the inheritance obtained by Shu Daoren and passed it on to Xiaobai and Xiaohui.

Squeak squeak squeak! Xiaobai and Xiaohui operated the secret technique and actually succeeded in forming a faint yet real connection with one Elite Mouse each! This connection was similar to the contract produced by the Beast Taming Art Su Ping used on Xiaobai and Xiaohui.

Yet it lacked the mandatory effect on both parties, merely creating a remote communication bridge.

Even so, it was enough.

Subjected to double suppression, the mouse colony had already submitted to the command of Xiaobai and Xiaohui from the depths of their souls.

This secret technique solved the command problem perfectly! The only problem was that this method also required the consumption of Dharma Power.

Even if the consumption wasn't high, it couldn't withstand the fact that there was no Spirit Qi on Water Blue Star, plus the absolute number of mice that needed to establish a connection was not small.

Fortunately, Su Ping is not a pretentious person.

With a wave of his hand, he spent 10 Fishing Coins to exchange for a bottle of Mana Potion.

Relying on the ability of the Mana Potion to continuously restore Dharma Power while in effect, Xiaobai and Xiaohui raced against time, successfully establishing a connection with the three thousand Elite Mice present after using up Su Ping's entire bottle of Mana Potion.

And so, by the side of a pool in the depths of this desolate mountain forest.

If anyone were nearby at this moment, they would surely be so astonished that their mouths would hang wide open, unable to speak.

Because by this pool, there were thousands of mice, one moment forming an 'O' shape, and the next forming a 'Z' shape.

A moment later, they even set up a complex Eight Gates Golden Lock Formation!

Su Ping was also having a great time playing—oh no, that's not right, he was seriously learning the limits of these mouse swarms through practice.

He even had Xiaobai and Xiaohui each lead fifteen hundred mouse soldiers, then staged a mouse-versus-mouse battle.

The winners would get to eat more bread.

The losers would only be able to drink water to recover from their injuries.

"When the numbers are high, even a fight between mice is quite spectacular."

"It's just that as individuals, they are still a bit weak."

"But there's no need to worry; once Shu Daoren arrives at Jinque City and prepares the secret medicine for me to enhance the physique of the mice, these mouse soldiers will have a promising future!"

Spirit Mouse Xiaobai and Xiaohui had established a connection with this swarm of mice, so there was finally no need to stay here.

After Su Ping stood up, Xiaobai and Xiaohui immediately leaped up and perched on Su Ping's shoulders.

Immediately, Su Ping put on his bamboo hat and picked up his fishing gear.

Since he was already here, he might as well try out any potential Fishing spots along the way.

Otherwise, wouldn't it have been a wasted trip!

Besides, what if he happened to run into another Fishing spot? (End of chapter)