Chapter 18: Half a Year

In the days that followed, Baichuan's life returned to calm once more, slowly accumulating points.

Because his crawling speed had increased, and along with it his improved digestion, he had also expanded his territory outward once again.

As for where the expanded territory came from? Naturally, it was from invading the territories of other creatures.

And invasion meant battle—after all, no matter how vast this mountain range and forest were, they couldn't withstand the sheer number of creatures living within.

Every region had its own Banzhu. For instance, before Baichuan expanded his territory, around his domain: the east was occupied by a wolf pack; the west by a wild boar herd; the south by a black bear; and the north?

The north was a great river stretching in all directions. He even suspected that the little stream he used to drink from at the very beginning was a tributary of this great river.

He had once seen a beautiful cat with black spots all over its body appear on the other side of the river—a leopard, perhaps a Chinese leopard?

As for now, perhaps because he had previously slaughtered a wolf pack, the eastern direction had quite a bit of territory left empty.

And the territory he had expanded into was precisely this stretch.

So during this period, he had experienced quite a few battles—some where he took the initiative to strike, others where he responded defensively.

In the blink of an eye, quite a few new scars had appeared on his scales.

At the same time, because he had evolved the vision he was accustomed to during his human period, he no longer possessed the visual weakness of snakes.

So Baichuan also began trying to collect creatures with powerful and unique Characteristics, such as ants.

Unfortunately, ideals were beautiful, but reality was stark.

These small animals were far too tiny in size, and Baichuan himself didn't dare casually swallow them, because he feared that eating them recklessly might end up killing him.

One must know that many illnesses enter through the mouth.

So… collecting models in this area was too difficult, to the point that he gave up.

Because the scanning rate was too low. And Baichuan had no hands to craft any good tools to preserve small insects like ants, allowing him to scan them at all times.

So he had experienced the hardship of staring and scanning the day before yesterday, getting most of it done, only to be unable to hold on and rest for a while, and by the next day or that very night, the target had vanished.

Thus, the plan failed once again.

Fortunately, he didn't hold too great an expectation in this regard. After all, with such vastly different body sizes, who knew whether those ability structures would suffer from too low compatibility.

But regarding compatibility, he now also had a bit of his own insight.

He discovered that whenever the ability structure mostly involved external limbs, compatibility tended to be too low.

Of course, he wouldn't elaborate on this here.

At this point, he realized he seemed to have fallen into a predicament: points were greatly insufficient, coupled with the lack of any particularly powerful abilities to strengthen his combat power, and surrounded by a bunch of tough nuts to crack.

After discovering this problem, he pondered carefully for an entire night and realized that his evolution Time was still too short, his foundation insufficient.

Because he had grown far too quickly.

It seemed he needed to settle down for a period, waiting for his points to become plentiful.

At the same time, he had also roughly formed a plan in his mind—one that would greatly aid his future battles.

But this required him to carefully devise the plan.

And this also required Time.

……

Time passed slowly just like that.

In the blink of an eye, half a year had gone by.

On this day, beside the great river.

Several spotted deer, under the watchful vigilance of their companions, lowered their heads and drank the river water cautiously.

A pair of dark, clever eyes kept turning, surveying the surroundings, afraid that a predator might suddenly attack from behind, or that some massive creature might burst out from underwater.

However, at this moment, beneath the water's surface.

Accompanied by a "gulu-lu-lu" sound and a string of bubbles rising, a huge black shadow swam over from underwater, shaped like a snake or a dragon, incomparably agile.

Soon, he seemed to have spotted his target. His body suddenly paused, and he swam toward the shore.

At this moment, those several spotted deer were still drinking water in ignorant bliss, completely unaware of the approaching danger.

"Boom!"

The next instant, a tremendous explosion erupted, crystalline water spray flew up and splashed everywhere, turning into a fine rain that fell over this small patch of land.

Along with the curtain of water appeared a giant snake with a gaping bloody maw. The scales on this snake's back were pitch-black, emitting a metallic luster, looking incomparably hard at a glance.

Only its belly still bore several sets of golden ventral scales forming mysterious patterns, these golden scales shining brilliantly under the sunlight.

This sudden turn of events, along with the massive jaws right before their eyes, terrified the spotted deer out of their wits, and they all broke into a desperate run.

In an instant, dust rose on all sides, and the little rabbits and squirrels drinking water nearby also vanished without a trace.

Yet the instigator of all this was secretly laughing in his heart. This was none other than Baichuan, half a year later.

Ever since he had successively strengthened his diving and Underwater Breathing abilities, he liked to dive into the water whenever he had nothing to do, striving to rid himself of the psychological shadow from half a year ago.

And during this period, after once accidentally coming ashore and startling a group of animals, he suddenly found a way to relieve stress—that was to scare these animals drinking water, letting him vent the pressure accumulated in his heart.

Looking at the masterpiece he had created, Baichuan amused himself on the spot for a while before preparing to leave.

Suddenly he froze, the corner of his eye catching sight of something that seemed to be on the ground.

Lowering his head to look, he saw the ground in a complete mess, covered with all sorts of footprints and muddy marks.

Yet amidst this mess appeared an oddity—a small spotted deer collapsed on the ground.

"Hm? What's going on?"

A little deer lying on the ground? Baichuan remembered he hadn't attacked it. Could this be an animal-world scam?

Baichuan moved his snake head closer and carefully examined the small spotted deer lying on the ground, and only then did he understand what had happened.

This spotted deer was probably a young one that had only just reached adulthood not long ago. This should have been its first time being scared by him, but its courage was too small, and he had directly scared its Spirit out of it.

"Goodness, that's… that's really too timid."

After realizing this, Baichuan was speechless. He hadn't expected that playing a usual entertainment scare game could still net him food—how interesting.

After carefully sizing up the deer, he found he could just barely swallow it whole, so he stopped hesitating.

Looks like he'd saved himself a day's worth of hunting effort.

……

Inside the cave — an enormous, luxurious cave that Baichuan had dug out himself.

At that moment, a great serpent measuring 5.3 meters long was coiled up inside.

Yes, 5.3 meters.

Over the past half year, even though he hadn't enhanced any ability to strengthen his physique, his body had naturally grown to 5.3 meters in length, and his girth had increased considerably as well.

(End of Chapter)