Chapter 59: Summary, Corpse-Looting

To sum up, what he most needed to resolve now were three things: bone strength, scale defense, and underwater swallowing.

The first two were the foundation guaranteeing his strength, while the last was something he had to have before entering the sea—otherwise he couldn't guarantee surviving in that boundless ocean.

And evolving the first two would also give him stronger guarantees after entering the sea.

Of course, during this period he could also evolve his crocodile's bite force, or even other powerful abilities. But those couldn't be put first.

After thinking his plan through clearly, Baichuan stopped letting his mind wander.

Next came the much-loved segment: corpse-looting and scanning ability.

Thinking of it, Baichuan was a little amused too, and slowly dragged his broken-boned tail back to the corpse.

A pair of sharp snake eyes kept examining everything on the corpse.

Now Zhang Dadan's shirt was already gone, and his pants were also somewhat tattered—there was no way anything could be stored in them—so only the waist was left.

Thinking this, he extended a sharp claw and flipped the corpse over, and sure enough saw a cloth pouch tied there.

But what could fit in such a small cloth pouch?

A flicker of doubt flashed through his mind, and Baichuan hooked the cloth pouch up with his claw tip, gently sliced open the binding, and poured out its contents.

In an instant, the contents of the cloth pouch clattered to the ground.

What met Baichuan's eyes were: a Compass, a quaint Nameless Book, a Folded Cowhide Map, and some silver.

Seeing this, Baichuan clicked his tongue in disappointment—there was no Martial Stone, the thing he had been hoping for most.

After that sigh of regret, the somewhat curious him directly picked up the Compass, because for some reason the Compass actually showed a heat source in his eyes—was this life?

But no sooner had he picked up the Compass than he saw it tremble.

"This is… a living thing?"

Tilting his snake head, he was a little uncertain, so he gently sliced it open with his sharp claw—and sure enough, inside this Compass-shaped object was actually a Strange Insect of bizarre appearance.

At this moment, the Strange Insect seemed to have sensed his aura and actually began trembling in fear.

So what was this Strange Insect used for? Pointing the way?

Baichuan didn't know either, but it was fine—in not too long, once he scanned out the ability model, wouldn't he know?

He wasn't in a hurry; seeing the bug didn't look like it would run, he set it aside.

Next he examined the other two paper objects one by one.

No sooner did he look than Baichuan realized he seemed to be an illiterate in this world…

That's right, illiterate.

Because the script on them was completely unrecognizable to him, bearing not the slightest resemblance to any writing he was familiar with or knew of.

Only then did he realize that while his ability let him understand their speech, the written script really seemed beyond him.

After all, normally any species with existence would basically have some form of communication.

For example, mantis shrimp used polarized light—light invisible to other animals—to communicate, thanks to their developed visual senses.

Snakes used pheromones, sounds, and movements to communicate among themselves.

And humans, in the panel's view, weren't really that different from other animals—the same way, it could extract from the genes the human portion related to language comprehension, granting him the ability to understand this world's language.

This could be understood as: what he understood was not sound, or not only sound.

But rather every behavior and movement humans made when communicating.

After all, sound was ultimately just a carrier; he didn't need to hear the pronunciation—merely understanding the behaviors made while expressing himself was enough to roughly get the meaning.

This reminded Baichuan of his previous life as a human—seemed like every time he talked with someone, that person would basically make all sorts of movements along with speaking, like nodding, shaking the head, raising a hand, holding up fingers, frowning, and so on.

Once this kind of behavior was paired with sound often enough, one could subconsciously understand the meaning just from hearing the sound.

Just like two humans who didn't share a language could, after a bout of animated gestures, still roughly understand each other's meaning.

But writing was different—it could be said to be a method of recording information that humans had spontaneously created over countless years of communal living and communication; it didn't exist inherently, and represented the spark of civilization.

He forced himself to study it for a bit, and found that the folded cowhide seemed to be a map—after all, anyone who saw so many mountain ranges, rivers, and some circle-like shapes resembling towns, with names written inside the circles, could guess it was a map.

Unfortunately, he couldn't tell where he was, or what the writing inside those circles meant.

And the Nameless Book should be something like a cultivation technique or manual from this world—he hadn't recognized it as such, but had inferred it.

As a martial artist of this world, something he'd carry on his person—besides a manual or the like, what else could the book be?

All those novels he read in his previous life weren't for nothing, were they?

Unfortunately, he had no way of reading these things right now.

Baichuan looked at these objects with some regret and sighed—apart from the Compass Bug that might be of some help to him, these were of no use to him at all.

But he felt it would be a waste to just throw them away—what if in the future he could learn these characters or understand them?

Looking at Zhang Dadan earlier, he shouldn't have been an ordinary martial artist—he was at least a disciple of some great sect—and someone like that should have been carrying a manual that wasn't ordinary.

It had some value, after all.

Thinking this, Baichuan decided to bring them back to that temporary cave from before and store them there. If a chance came later, he could come back and retrieve them—couldn't waste them, right?

Having made up his mind, Baichuan used those claws that were far less dexterous than human hands to carefully pack up the objects.

And after this came the main event: scanning Zhang Dadan's ability model!

Let's see whether Zhang Dadan's ability differs from other humans' ability models.

With the size difference between the two not being especially large, Baichuan finished scanning in just three hours.

By then the sun had already tilted westward, and the surrounding light had begun to turn dim and yellow, making the lush green forest around him look somewhat darkened.

The wind swept through from time to time, making the branches and leaves rustle, as if whispering in secret.

Clearly, night was falling.

A dark forest, broken limbs scattered across the ground, and a snake-dragon-like monster—if placed in any other setting, it would clearly be another bizarre murder scene.

Fortunately, this wasn't one.

Baichuan thought cheerfully.

After basking in the sun for nearly an entire afternoon, he wondered whether some remnant of his serpent nature still lingered—say, a fondness for warmth.

At this moment his whole body felt warm and cozy, utterly comfortable.

This comfort made him almost forget the pain of his broken tailbone.

He glanced at the corpse tossed carelessly aside; Baichuan, who had originally meant to leave straightaway, thought it over and decided to deal with it after all.

No one could tell whether this encounter with Zhang Dadan was a coincidence or something premeditated. Without knowing the specific methods these humans might employ, he decided it was safer to err on the side of caution and clean up every loose end.

……

I'm not nerfing the protagonist's strength… Zhang Dadan himself is no weakling—otherwise he wouldn't have escaped the pursuit of the human orthodox sects and earned the favor of the demonic cult.

I've mentioned his strength a few times: peak Six Limits. He walks the path of power. The protagonist's strength is only a single line above his, his physique is at LV2, and his strongest asset is that right hand. He keeps his venom in his mouth, but with his personality he wouldn't risk biting with his own mouth; venom injection takes time, and taking effect also takes time.

When you bite someone, the other person can also punch you in the head—at that point even if your skull doesn't shatter, you'll still be stunned.

No matter how much the protagonist evolves, his current bone density is still what it is.

What's more, after several days of evolution, his own condition was one of extreme hunger and poor state.

Throughout the whole process he was thinking of controlling the opponent's strongest point, or at the very least not letting a vital spot take a hit, planning to use his current strongest attack, Frost Strike, for a one-shot kill.

Who would have thought that even after the guy's head was blown apart he could still land a vicious blow. Any normal person would instinctively assume that once the head explodes, it's dead.

(End of this chapter)