Chapter 65: Once More Into the Fray

At this moment, he was spreading both arms wide, unfurling a pair of enormous bat wings as he flew out from within the valley, heading toward the crowd.

Seeing this, Baichuan's eyes lit up, and his mind suddenly cleared, as if he had been enlightened.

Bat wings!

Right—he had only thought that flying required bird wings, yet he had forgotten that among flying animals, besides birds there were also bats, and compared to birds, bat wings might suit him even better!

As a snake, if he were to evolve wings like those of birds, covered in feathers, he might have to bid farewell to the underwater world.

That would conflict with his current goal of entering the great ocean.

After all, bird wings are made of feathers—once they get wet in water, a soaked wing absolutely cannot take flight again, or at the very least would find it extremely difficult.

But if it were bat wings, that kind of fleshy membrane full of elasticity, even if they got wet, as long as he gently stretched and flapped them, he could quickly shake the water droplets dry.

Not only that, because bat wings are made of fleshy membrane, when folded up they take up very little space and would not affect his daily activities on land or underwater at all.

Moreover, if this fleshy membrane were tough enough, with defensive strength comparable to cowhide, it could even wrap around the vital areas of his upper snake body when his wings were folded.

Not to mention, among bats' abilities there is an extremely cheat-like one—Ultrasonic Positioning!

This is a positioning system even more precise than the radar from his previous life!

Or rather, radar was created inspired by this creature's ability.

Just as Baichuan was overjoyed, down below.

Soon, the man with bat wings also landed in front of that group. The group showed no particular surprise, clearly already familiar with one another.

Unfortunately, Baichuan was too far from there and couldn't hear clearly what they were saying.

He flicked his forked tongue, looking at the situation inside the valley—so should he go take a look?

No need to ask—of course he had to go down. Putting everything else aside, the bats alone were worth the risk of going down.

Wild bats are very hard to come across. They roost deep in hidden mountain caves during the day, only coming out at night.

Yet Baichuan, as luck would have it, was active by day and rested by night—exactly the opposite of their schedule. So even though he had lived in the forest for so long, he truly had never seen any bats.

Sometimes when he moved about at night, he still didn't encounter any, because his night vision wasn't great and he could only rely on heat-sensing.

And those creatures flew far too fast—sometimes they might have flown right over his head without him ever knowing.

Now, since the man down below could grow bat wings, then needless to say. Following the ability model from Zhang Dadan before, without a doubt this man should be about the same.

If so, there must definitely be bats nearby.

And looking at how hidden and vast this environment is, it could be called a fairly enormous human settlement.

Moreover, when the man had just flown out, he had come from a house suspended in mid-air within the valley.

And there were many such houses.

From this point, it seemed this place might also be a settlement of some large gang faction.

A place that could survive in such a desolate, harsh environment and still build up such an enormous force.

Then inevitably, there was a very high chance that Strange Beasts like the Ice Silkworm existed here, and the type of Strange Beast was most likely closely related to bats.

Because Zhang Dadan had said before that whether a faction was powerful or not must be tied to whether it had Strange Beasts. Back then, the Zhang clan, the local tyrants of the entire Hedong region, had risen to prominence precisely because their ancestor had obtained a Strange Beast, the Ice Silkworm.

It could be said that only with the existence of the Strange Beast did the Zhang clan gain its illustrious might.

He figured Zhang Dadan wouldn't deceive him about something like this.

And the Ice Silkworm of back then had also made the Baichuan of today possible. Although he still hadn't uncovered how those humans truly utilized the Ice Silkworm.

But he could already say he had benefited greatly from it—capable of long-range attack and self-protection, it had at one point become his strongest Burst technique at present.

Looking at it this way, whether Strange Beasts existed down below should be pretty much certain.

After all, the powers these humans obtained were all closely tied to animals in nature.

Just like himself, or rather a weakened, youthful version of his panel.

From this point, he had no choice but to take the risk on this trip.

As for his confidence?

The first was definitely the stealth ability, or rather the environment simulation ability. Although this ability wasn't very obvious in its effect on the Bianseyong.

But for him, its effect was enormous.

Because on the Bianseyong, various factors could still cause it to not necessarily perform at its maximum effect.

But don't forget. For him, every ability from evolution had, under the panel's effect, reached the extreme performance level that ability could achieve.

In other words, at the very least he could display the scale of that ability's level.

Simply put, the lower limit of that ability was fixed, but the upper limit was still that upper limit.

Yet ordinary animals, influenced by natural factors, might sometimes only reach the level of "Environment Simulation LV1."

This point had already been verified during the fight with Zhang Dadan.

One must remember that even fighting a disciple from a renowned major faction like Zhang Dadan, his stealth had never been seen through directly by him—the strength of this ability's effect was self-evident.

The reason he was seen through later was only because he had used it too much and hadn't really hidden it.

Added to that, the environment at the time was under sunlight, and that was how his shadow under the sun gave him away.

But what about now?

Baichuan swept his gaze over. Right now, even though it was daytime, the valley was full of thick fog and shadows everywhere, and with houses scattered about in mid-air, on the ground, and on the stone walls.

It could completely hide him thoroughly. Combined with striking with preparation against the unprepared, the odds were good it would work.

As for Ultrasonic Positioning from bats—not that Baichuan looked down on them, but aside from a few that could fly, most of those in the valley still lived on the ground or on the stone walls.

So Baichuan didn't believe they all possessed this ability. Even if a few did, the valley was so large—surely they couldn't be scanning the entire valley every single moment?

The valley was so huge, with countless people coming and going producing massive amounts of useless information—could that be easily sorted out?

Furthermore, ultrasonic waves like these—human ears couldn't hear them, but that didn't mean Baichuan couldn't hear them!

Did they really think those two bumps on his head were just for show? As long as it was a sound, and it entered within a hundred meters centered on him, he could hear it.

Of course, one shouldn't speak too absolutely—this effect would still be affected to some extent underwater and underground.

This was because the sound transmission medium had changed, not a problem with his ability.

After all, no matter how strong his ability was, he couldn't change the external transmission medium; in the end, this was only an LV1-level ability.

Besides, he, Baichuan, was just a snake — snakes were very common in places like this, right?

He glanced at the small snake that had slithered past not far from him, silently thinking to himself.

(End of chapter)