Chapter 337: Are You Tickling Me? A Mysterious Wild Beast Attacks!

So, what is your choice?

Having finished controlling Gu Shi, Baichuan turned his head to look at the other captives.

"Mighty king, I am also willing!"

A gaze as if it were solid caused the dazed crowd to jolt awake with a start.

Among them, one person reacted swiftly and raised a hand, his expression carrying a hint of restraint, and shame? Or perhaps self-satisfaction?

Very good, Baichuan nodded, gesturing for the other to step forward.

Yet the instant the other drew near, Baichuan smiled.

His extremely high neural response granted him reaction ability and observation beyond ordinary people, so he saw with perfect clarity that the Phantom Knight, who had nearly been stripped bare by the little squirrel, the moment he cautiously approached, the look of restraint on his face turned resolute and cold!

Every twitch and contortion of the muscles on his face was magnified and laid bare before Baichuan's eyes.

He saw the muscles of his right foot pull and drive down with force, propelling his whole body's abnormally bulging muscles into a high-speed charging war chariot, then channeling the power of his entire body into his raised right fist as it smashed forward!

His fist's momentum nearly took the shape of a tangible blood-colored wild beast waiting to devour its prey!

"Demon, die!"

Yet facing this sudden attack, Baichuan didn't even move, not even bothering to defend; even though he could have easily dodged with the slightest movement, he simply refused to budge.

To leave an indelible imprint of true invincibility in the eyes of onlookers, so that they would never again entertain thoughts of resistance, he had to shatter their hopes at the moment they were most pleased with themselves, using the most unyielding force!

Yet Baichuan's motionless stance, in the eyes of the attacker, looked as if he had been stunned, making the attacker feel even more self-satisfied.

A beast is a beast! No matter how strong, even if it possesses wisdom comparable to the human race, how could it understand the true wisdom of the human race!

"Die!"

The attacking knight howled wildly within his heart; that fist, which at that moment gathered the power of his entire body, brought up violent wind at its extreme as it slammed into the mirror-bright metallic chest.

"Boom!"

A muffled metallic impact exploded thunderously, the ground shattered, rubble flew.

The tremendous counterforce directly rebounded the attacker, whose strength was spent, back.

At the same time, among the Phantom Knights seated on the ground, someone also reacted, springing up, snatching up the lance that had been tossed aside, and as Spirit light flickered across his whole body, he violently channeled it into the lance and hurled it.

Lance after lance, each one condensing the full power of Tier 2, forged from the most special parts of wild beasts as materials, shot forth carrying an unmatched momentum.

During their flight, these lances seemed to trigger something; strands of light like silk threads instantly linked all the lances together, making the momentum they exuded even more terrifying!

"Rumble rumble rumble……"

Terrifying explosions continuously sounded at this moment; the earth turned into a deep pit, waves of wind surged, rubble flew, and billowing thick smoke began to spread.

"D-did it work?"

At this moment, everyone—even the knights who had not joined the attack—looked toward the center of the explosion with hope and anticipation, hoping that this power, which had gathered their all-out efforts, had actually succeeded in slaying this newly born Wild King.

A few breaths later, the thick smoke slowly dispersed.

Revealing a figure no different from before!

Still smooth and bright, a mechanical body that could serve as a mirror, with not a speck of dust upon it, with occasional arcs of electricity leaping across it, exquisite like the finest display piece, a pair of golden eyes like bright lamps revealing not the slightest emotion:

"Are you tickling me?"

The emotionless mechanical electronic voice rang out once more, yet that seemingly questioning tone, combined with the seemingly emotionless timbre, caused the faces of all the knights who had previously been so self-satisfied to flush red with anger, and a sliver of the deepest despair!

There is nothing more despairing than pouring out everything you have, only to receive not the slightest response!

Everything they had been proud of—that seemingly mighty power, that carefully planned ambush—could not even leave the faintest mark on the other's body; in the other's eyes, it only deserved a single "tickling?"

What a despairing enemy!

An incomparably bitter taste welled up in their hearts, and the knight who had led the attack dropped to his knees with a crash:

"I-I am willing to submit……"

"We are willing to submit……"

Following the appearance of the first, all the knights began to kneel down one after another.

This also signified that the spirit of these proud knights had been completely shattered by Baichuan; from here on, controlling them would encounter no further obstacles.

……

"Go. You all already know what to do."

One day later, at that same clearing, the ever-expanding steel kingdom, the Mechanical Bixuan, looked at the fully re-equipped Phantom Knights before him and nodded.

"Yes! My king."

As the words fell, the sounds of wings flapping began to ring out one after another; then a great number of beast shadows, like wyverns, took to the sky and departed toward the distance.

Baichuan watched these departing knights for a while, before turning and leaving.

Now this batch of Phantom Knights, who held considerable status, were about to return to the Forest People; next, he had to create some opportunities for these servants, such as a Beast Tide attack!

One day's time was enough for Baichuan to devise a plan to completely control the Forest People.

Using these Phantom Knights as seeds, he would infiltrate the Forest People's interior, while he himself, on the outside, used his own power to infect a large number of powerful beasts, driving them to expel other living creatures and set off a Beast Tide of exaggerated numbers; relying on these Beast Tides to besiege the Forest People, then driving some elite, powerful beasts to clean out the high-level members of the Forest People, allowing those servants to rise to the top, praying for the descent of a god/savior.

Only then would he descend in an invincible posture, turn the tide, and take control of this vast power, expanding outward step by step!

The entire plan was very simple and clear; one could even call it an open scheme.

Even if someone saw through it during the process, or was exposed, as long as they could not defeat him, knowing was useless.

Because his control over his subordinates was absolute!

The only troublesome point was the Spirit God of the Forest People, whose whereabouts outside were unknown; as long as the Spirit God did not die, the faith of those Forest People was extraordinarily firm, and could easily cause him trouble in a short time.

Of course, this was also a breakthrough point: as long as the Spirit God they believed in died or submitted before everyone's eyes, then everything would be settled without suspense.

Unfortunately, the Spirit God's whereabouts were unknown; otherwise, he wouldn't have needed to go through so much trouble and control so many humans—he could have simply beaten the Spirit God behind the Forest People into submission and been done with it.

While thinking, Baichuan also began to roam through the territory he controlled, selecting suitable fierce beasts to infect and strengthen.

……

One hour later,

"Sigh, what a pity."

Hidden silently behind a bush at the boundary of a one-kilometer radius, Baichuan watched the Saber-Tooth Tiger drinking by the stream outside, drooling with some regret.

According to the memories of the Phantom Knight from before, that Saber-Tooth Tiger was a rare and powerful Fierce Beast, considered one of the few powerful creatures below the rank of Desolate Species. Legend had it that its ancestors carried the bloodline of Desolate Beasts, much like the Earth-Sand Beasts of the Desert, making it very suitable for him to infect and turn into a claw and fang.

But the current him could not leave the area of his own Environment Assimilation; of course, putting it that way was not entirely accurate.

Leaving was possible, but it would cause him to suffer enormous losses, like cutting a large chunk of flesh from an ordinary person's body—directly abandoning all the unconverted territory he had painstakingly infected.

The current him was in the midst of the Environment Assimilation power infecting and devouring the surrounding land. At this stage, according to normal circumstances—such as if a little lizard were to use it—he would not possess a form of his own.

Or rather, his body was the range of land he had infected. Within this range, every inch of soil, every flower, grass, and tree was a part of him. This was the terrifying aspect of the Environment Assimilation power—silently and without form, like a mysterious disaster eroding all things, growing ever stronger the more it devoured.

And because it was formless and shapeless, even if discovered, as long as one could not destroy the entire area in one breath, then no matter what kind of attack, as long as it fell into this region, it would be dispersed to every part of it. To oppose the land was to oppose the entire stretch of earth. If its power grew to the extreme, it could even devour the whole world.

Back when he had encountered the little lizard, the little lizard was in this very state unconsciously on that rocky planet. If not for the fact that the little lizard was still ignorant and clueless, and he had nearly destroyed the entire continental plate in one breath, he would never have discovered it at all.

However, such a powerful ability came with an extremely slow erosion process, requiring an enormous amount of power. It was a typical late-stage ability, gradually revealing its might as Time went on.

Baichuan of course could not endure such a sluggish early-stage growth, so he directly modified the usage of this ability. Unlike the ability's original owner, who merged his entire body into the earth, he retained the core of his power during the erosion, transforming it into his current Baihu form.

In this way, he could move freely in concrete form within the infected range, searching for some servant forces to take root in the territory he had eroded, acting as his claws and fangs reaching out to the world, adding fuel to his great enterprise of erosion. Besides this, when encountering danger, he would, depending on the situation, abandon that portion of his earth-body that had not yet been converted and flee.

However, no matter how much he modified it, it could not change the fact that he, who had only just taken root in the earth and begun eroding, could not leave the one-kilometer range he had eroded, unless he gave up all the energy he had accumulated and the one-kilometer radius of land he had eroded.

With a long sigh, Baichuan took one last look at the somewhat alert Saber-Tooth Tiger, then left with the wild boars, Frenzied-Tooth Beasts, and other targets he had caught.

Returning to the previous cave location, Baichuan dropped these targets, repeated his old trick of intimidating their weak minds for a while, and then began his great enterprise of erosion.

Eroding unintelligent creatures was still relatively easy; there was no need to consider any resistance from consciousness. Liquid-like tentacles, living-snake-like things, wound their way up, inscribing upon them the marks that belonged to him.

Time moved forward as always, and soon three days passed amid Baichuan's selecting targets and eroding them.

During this period, the human servants he had previously subdued took the opportunity of continuing their patrols to report to him once: "The Forest Folk have changed! The clan elders have seized power."

But for now, this was none of Baichuan's business; no matter the coup, it would be hard to affect the Phantom Knight.

And he, taking advantage of that rare spare time, also devoured several special parts from the Desolate Species he had hunted before, such as the remaining electronic eye of the former White-Eyed Wolf, and the mutated single horn of the Horned Crocodile.

As for whether this ability came from the Environment Assimilation or was inherent to the Desolate Beasts themselves, Baichuan was still unclear; he was too busy, with too many matters to handle.

What resulted from this was that, on his mechanical Baihu body, among the two horns inherited from the Thunderbird ability, one of them flickered with red electric light, and among those two pairs of golden biological eyes, one had completely transformed into an electronic eye, emitting the white light characteristic of electronic eyes.

The former came from the power of the Horned Crocodile, which controlled a special lightning that could detonate Blood Qi; the latter was from the White-Eyed Langwang, possessing the power to scan for weaknesses exposed during a target's movements, and to suddenly Burst forth white light to dazzle those who looked directly at it.

Now, he was increasingly unlike a living creature.

"What a strange world."

Even though it was not the first time he had witnessed it, Baichuan could not help but complain.

This world was too strange.

Fortunately, he now no longer needed to worry about the manufacturing issues of his Gold Finger ability. During the process of eroding the earth, almost no creatures within the range escaped his control; they were all silently controlled by him. Without his permission, they could never leave this small area for the rest of their lives!

Because of this, the targets he had selected, as well as the little squirrel, also began to grow stronger.

The only pity was that perhaps because the stronger the creature, the stronger its perception of danger, so even though he later converted the eroded land and various plants back to their normal state, those powerful creatures still did not dare approach this area, regarding it as a demon's den!

This left his subsequent cultivation of claws and fangs somewhat lacking in materials to nurture.

Only those herbivorous creatures, upon observing that carnivorous creatures did not dare approach, began to treat it as a paradise and rush in.

Currently, he was in urgent need of a relatively powerful claw-and-fang material!

Unfortunately, he had previously been in urgent need of energy and had slaughtered all the Desolate Species in the surrounding area.

On this day, just as Baichuan was routinely nurturing his biological claws and fangs, he abruptly raised his head and looked toward the due-south direction.

That was the direction of the deeper reaches of the Forbidden Forest, where he now sensed a powerful aura approaching.

Wherever it passed, even from such a distance, Baichuan, through the sympathetic resonance of the land he controlled, discerned a clue! The earth was parched and cracked, flowers, grass, and trees losing their vitality and withering, turning to ash that drifted and scattered across the ground, as if the life force of all things had been devoured.

A realm stripped of all life was slowly drawing near!

……

(End of this chapter)