She had been running in the wilderness all day, and by late afternoon, she was chasing a plump rabbit, planning to kill it and then find a place to set up camp.
The rabbit, exhausted from being chased, began to slow down. Ye Nai raised her gun and shot it down with one shot.
Just as she was about to run forward to pick it up, she suddenly heard a gunshot, and a bullet landed near her foot.
"Kid, that’s our rabbit, scram!"
Ye Nai stood up straight and looked back to see a motorcycle with two men in leather jackets; the shooter was the one seated behind.
When the two men saw Ye Nai’s face, they even whistled twice.
"Yo, it’s a young chick."
"Carrying such a big gun, can the chick use it?"
"Want to try a better gun?"
"Haha...gah..."
The laughter of the two men was suddenly cut short as if their throats were choked, and they painfully tumbled off the motorcycle, gasping for air with their mouths wide open.
Ye Nai leisurely picked up her rabbit.
Then she walked up to them.
"Where do you come from? What are you doing here?"
"Spare us... spare us..."
"Where do you come from? What are you doing here?"
Ye Nai repeated her questions.
The two men were still desperately begging for mercy.
Ye Nai impatiently pursed her lips, "Forget it, move along, remember to be a polite person in your next life."
As soon as her words fell, the two men and their motorcycle disappeared on the spot, entering Space.
Two men, one motorcycle, and a long gun; either one of them was a Space User with equipment out hunting, or there was a large team recently set up camp coming out on patrol. Either way, first, erase the traces.
The ground covered in fungus threads guided Ye Nai to a suitable camping spot.
Just as she was lighting the camp lantern and tidying up the tent, she heard car sounds and gunfire.
She quickly stored her things into Space and hid in the withered grass.
"Fuck, where did those two guys go?"
"The walkie-talkie won’t respond."
"Did something really happen to them? Were they dragged away by mutant beasts?"
"Those two, with guns and a vehicle, what mutant beast could take down both in one go?"
"A pack?"
"Did you see any traces of pack animals?"
"It can’t be that they ran away out of fear, could it?"
"Never mind, if we can’t find them, we can’t find them. Just go back and report, and keep an eye on those laborers, don’t let them escape."
"Let’s go, forget it, if we don’t earn this money, we’ll get a bigger share."
"Exactly, let’s go."
The sound of vehicles and voices gradually faded as Ye Nai emerged from the dry grass, releasing a massive amount of superpower spores to catch up with the people in the vehicle, leaving a trail of fungus signals before riding a motorcycle to pursue them.
A laborer, commonly known as a Transporter in the Secret Realm, is a job that involves selling physical strength for money, earning a thousand a day, paid upfront before work and responsible for one’s own life and death.
But from what she had overheard, it seemed the laborers hired by that group had another purpose.
Ye Nai surely had to follow to see for herself.
After about a quarter of an hour of stumbling pursuit, Ye Nai spotted a brightly lit large camp.
The camp was neatly organized, clearly the work of superpowers, with all the vision-blocking dry grass around it removed. Ye Nai had to stay far away to avoid being seen.
She observed through binoculars for a while and noticed, from her angle alone, there were more than ten people patrolling back and forth.
"It seems there really is a big operation going on," she muttered.
Ye Nai murmured and released another wave of superpower spores, letting the newly grown fungus encircle the camp and look for their intended hunting target.
She wanted to see what valuable thing they had discovered that warranted such heavy preparation.
The growth and reproduction of fungus takes time, so Ye Nai stealthily retreated, planning to return the next day.
This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.
Before dawn, Ye Nai quietly returned; the fungus had completed its task overnight and identified the hunting target of the people in the camp.
Two kilometers from the camp, there was a deep trench that people could enter, inside which was a huge nest of the Double Blade Fire Ant.
The double blade refers to the ant’s mandibles, which are shaped like scythes; being double means they are doubly scythe-shaped, large and sharp enough to easily slice off chunks of flesh, leaving any animal or human encountered cleanly dismembered into a bare skeleton without a trace of flesh.
Such ferocious ants also had economic value because of their large size, resembling the giant flying cockroaches of the south, giving both their double blades and fresh red shell a practical use.
When the fungus feedback identified it as the Double Blade Fire Ant, Ye Nai felt something ominous. It was very likely that the laborers were hired as bait.
Though the Secret Realm was fraught with dangers, and everyone who entered was responsible for their own life, using people’s lives as bait for hunting crossed a moral boundary, Ye Nai felt.
Although she didn’t have many boundaries herself, readily killing when provoked, she recognized one quality in herself: she only acted against those who bothered her and never provoked others first.
Ye Nai carefully bypassed the camp and headed directly to the deep trench. Now that she had discovered it, it belonged to her.
The fungus was already at work.
They invaded the giant ant nest, flooding in like waves, engulfing every ant they encountered, regardless of size, sucking them into the Space to be disassembled.
The ant nest was intricate with numerous passages; as the fungus encountered each fork, it split, leaving no space unchecked, heading directly towards the Ant Queen’s platform.
The plump, tender Ant Queen was no match for the fungus. Once inside the Space, she perished, her body sprouting dense, fur-like fungus, making her look like a fuzzy ball.
While still en route, Ye Nai stopped abruptly as the fungus extracted a pomegranate seed-sized, bright red Heart Core from the body of the Ant Queen, the largest Heart Core she had collected to date.
Ye Nai took the Heart Core out and examined it in her palm for a moment, sated her curiosity, then without hesitation, she threw it back into the Space to let the fungus digest it, using it to expand the volume of the Space, taking the entire ant colony with her, leaving none behind.
The Heart Core of the Ant Queen indeed provided ample energy, unlike previous expansions of the Space, which were silent and gradual, almost imperceptible until measured.
This time, Ye Nai distinctly felt the Space expanding.
Ye Nai then took out a small box from the Space, used to collect Heart Cores, thought for a moment, and poured its contents into the Space, letting the fungus use it all.
She collected these to satisfy her own collecting habit, but when it was time to use them, she wasn’t stingy.
The use was for herself, not giving benefits to others.
The larger the Space, the more fungus there was inside, the faster the speed of dissecting and digesting prey. When Ye Nai finally reached the trench above the ant nest, the first batch of ants brought in were left with only the valuable double blades and fresh red shells, and a small pile of ant acid glands.
The rapid speed made Ye Nai laugh out loud.
The ground above was safe, as the soil below was all fungus. Ye Nai sat there, pulling out provisions from the Space to eat breakfast.