The place Bai Xiaohu found was on the hillside going up from the factory, in a small woods area; she felt more comfortable in the woods than in the building. MengMeng flew around patrolling to protect her. She looked at the crystal core for a while, put it in her palm, tried covering it with her spiritual consciousness, and absorbed the spiritual energy in it.
As soon as her spiritual consciousness penetrated the core, she found that the spiritual energy in it was very heterogeneous. The spiritual energy was sparse and disordered, full of various impurities, which made her feel a little uncomfortable. She vaguely felt MengMeng’s feelings when it ate demonic energy. To her, the aura in the core is like a small edible fruit that has fallen into a pile of poisonous and inedible fruits, and needs her to put in great efforts to pick out that singular edible fruit.
But she has to do it because if she doesn’t eat this fruit, she may starve to death.
She filtered out those impurities bit by bit and extracted the small traces of spiritual energy painstakingly. It took a lot of time to absorb all the spiritual energy.
MengMeng flew over and asked her how she felt. Has she become much stronger?
Bai Xiaohu smiled wryly: “It’s like a drop in the ocean, but it’s better than nothing, just gotta save up more!” Thinking of something, she said with bright eyes, “Aren’t there still a lot of walking corpses over there? This is called crystal core, right? Let’s go dig it all out.”
They ran back to take a look, wow, there are hundreds if not a thousand of the walking corpses all over the ground. They have been lying there for as long as the Bai Xiaohu took to absorb that crystal core, and they have been exposed to the sun to the point they emit a foul stench.
Bai Xiaohu used all the spiritual energy she had just absorbed to seal her sense of smell and resigned herself to start digging into the brains of these guys together with MengMeng.
One, two, three… She used the small knife left by Lu Ye. Not sure what it is made out of, this knife is really sharp, comfortable to hold, and very easy to use. With a poke and a pry, a brain is broken.
Bai Xiaohu feels uncomfortable doing this, so she hypnotized herself that what she dug was not heads, but large nuts.
The sun gradually set to the west, and before sunset, the two of them finally dug out the brains of all the walking corpses and collected a large and heavy bag of crystal cores, which jingled in the bag.
Carrying a bag of such things, she returned to the original place on the mountain and seized the time to absorb the spiritual energy.
Also, it’s strange that the colors of these crystal cores are actually different, there’s red, blue, white, and gold. The spiritual energy in each different colors of crystal cores contain different elements. Bai Xiaohu is not sure what it was, so she just regards all of it as impurities that need to be filtered out. The spiritual energy she absorbed in the end, was invisible, colorless, and pure to her standard.
Because of this, the spiritual energy she can get from each crystal core is very limited, not to mention that some crystal cores are extremely small and thin as if they are stunted.
She also cultivates as she absorbs the energy, for a full day and two nights. While she did that, some walking corpses approached, but since there were not many of them, MengMeng dealt with all of them. The little chicken demon also forced itself to absorb some demonic energy, which barely helped it get a bit stronger.
When the last crystal core shattered in Bai Xiaohu’s hands, she finally opened her eyes.
The little chicken demon standing on the tree also opened its eyes, chirping.
Bai Xiaohu stood up with a smile, stretched her waist, and carried the little chicken demon from the tree: “The results are good. These hundreds of crystal cores have provided me with a good amount of spiritual energy, but I was injured too badly, so they were totally not enough. As for now, self-protection shouldn’t be a problem.”
Little Chicken Demon: “Peep?”
Bai Xiaohu looked sad and worried: “The interspatial treasure, not sure if it is because I broke through the world barrier that affected the treasure, it won’t open.”
Hearing what she said, the fluff of the little chicken demon flopped.
Bai Xiaohu suddenly laughed: “I’m just joking, see this?” She flipped her hand, and there were two bright red fruits the size of a baby’s fist in her hand. The skin of its brilliance circulates, and as soon as it appears, it emits a quiet and sweet fragrance, which shows it is not ordinary.
This is a kind of fairy fruit that has no name, so Bai Xiaohu just calls it the Red Fruit. It has a little healing effect, but it is usually eaten by her and the little chicken demon as snacks.
Bai Xiaohu put a fruit near MengMeng’s mouth, and it immediately jumped on her forearm happily to peck at it. Bai Xiaohu took the other one and gnawed while saying, “But I didn’t lie to you, there is a real problem with the treasure, I can only take things of this size from it right now. I can’t get out anything bigger, and we can’t go in from the outside.”
As she said that, she got a little worried. Her interspatial treasure is super huge. Enough to be regarded as a small world of its own. It was refined for her by her parents and brothers. All of her belongings are in it. Although she doesn’t have that much stuff and is not good at taking care of it, it is still very inconvenient without it.
For example, she really wanted to jump into the spiritual spring inside to take a bath at the moment, but she couldn’t get in. Her vestment was damaged, and she couldn’t get a new one out to wear.
After eating a fruit, the spiritual energy in the flesh also spreads throughout the body, bringing a tiny little bit of healing effect to Bai Xiaohu’s wound. Compared to the healing effect, Bai Xiaohu prefers the comfortable feeling when spiritual energy enters her body. The spiritual energy from her interspatial treasure is so much better than those cores.
Not sure what was going on, but in the past hundreds of years, she never felt hungry. She ate simply because she was craving some taste. However, when she got here, after two days and one night, she was very hungry.
She sat on the ground and continued to eat the fruit from the interspatial treasure. She happily ate a bunch of it with the little chicken demon, but soon found that the fruit was delicious, sweet and sour, crunchy and juicy, with spiritual energy in it, but why can’t she feel full?
She touched her stomach, again and again, to confirm that the hunger persisted, and she was a little dumbfounded.
She only has similar fruits in her interspatial treasure. Although she does also have some birds, beasts, and fishes, she can’t get any living things out at the moment.
She grabbed other fairy fruits of similar size from the interspatial treasure and gnawed on them. She even grabbed a ball of water from the spiritual spring and sucked it into her mouth, but none of it filled her stomach.
She and the little chicken demon looked at each other, and they both saw the hunger in each other’s eyes. She held onto with her fluffy hair tie and hesitantly said: “Well, it seems that we still have to go down the mountain to find something to eat.”
Not sure if the human food here can fill them up, but they have to try.
So the two who were leisurely a moment ago, immediately set out on the trip while starving.
After they left the hillside, some humans showed up.
There were three men and two women with green belts tied on their sleeves. This means that their task today is to be cleaners. As the name suggests, they are here to clean up the corpses around the base: zombies’, humans’, and the animals’. Everything they see shall be completely burned to avoid long-term exposure that might breed germs and viruses.
This kind of mission is available every day in the Mercenary Association of Jiangcheng Base, and there is no limit to the number of people and the number of times to receive it. Take a photo when you see the corpse, and take a photo after it is incinerated as proof of completion. Although the pay isn’t high, it is usually picked up by people who went out to search for supplies or do other tasks as a side hustle.
However, the main task of this particular group of people today is to clean up because they heard that there are many zombie corpses all around the abandoned factory on the hillside, and the crystal core should still be there.
There were five people in this group, with weapons in their hands and around their waists, and they went up the mountain with a vigilant expression. When they saw that there were indeed only zombie corpses all over the ground, they felt relaxed.
“It looks like these zombies were all killed by lightning.”
“Captain Lu did it, right? As expected of Captain Lu, he killed so many zombies by himself.”
“Hey, why has the zombie’s head been dug out?”
“Shouldn’t they be untouched? Such bad luck, the trip was a waste of time!”
They spoke disappointedly and angrily. They were annoyed that they fell for false news. They entered and searched the factory with the last bit of hope, but found absolutely nothing. No clue how many times this place has been raided, it’s so damn clean.
The five people got even angrier. They held their anger as they piled all the corpses up, lit the fire, took pictures, and went down the mountain without waiting for the burning to finish.
Among them, a skinny, short-haired man told the others that he had other things to do and parted ways with the other four people. After the four of them were out of sight, he dialed a number: “Miss Ying, it’s me, I’m currently at the Qiu Mountain, nothing was found, no one alive, and no women in white dresses, but the crystal core in the corpses of the zombies here have been dug out. Understood, I got it, I will never tell anyone about it.”
Jiangcheng base, the Zhongyang mercenary team.
A short-haired woman looked at the improved version of the communication device in her hand, and her eyes slightly deeper. A boy with green hair, like a green chicken, passed by and asked, “Ying-Jie, what are you doing? Is there any important news?”
The woman turned her head and smiled: “It’s nothing, I’m just thinking about something.”
The woman has a bright and majestic face, and her short hair is trimmed to the earlobe beautifully styled, which makes her look very capable. She is wearing a black tight combat suit, the material has a leather texture, and there is a red stripe on the arms and legs, which gives it a bit more personality, and looks dazzling.
She is a very competent woman. She looked at the boy and suddenly said, “By the way Gu, Lu-ge gave away his gun. I want to get him a new one. Do you know the model number?”
Pan Gu, the young man, stared blankly for a moment, and his astonishment was palpable: “The boss gave away his gun? Although we never saw the boss use that gun, he never leaves it. He would take it out, wipe it often, and value it a lot. Why did he give it away? Who did he give it to?”
Ying Miao sighed: “I was also surprised. I asked him who he gave it to, and he casually said it was given to a little girl.”
Pan Gu almost spit although he wasn’t drinking water, he hurried over wanting to gossip: “Really? Boss said it himself? Woah, what kind of girl, is the iron tree going to bloom?”
Ying Miao’s smile froze, and a sullen look flashed in her eyes, not because Pan Gu said that Lu Ye was an iron tree, but…she was standing right here, these people for real never thought about the possibility of her and Lu Ye being together?
She acts like she’s saying it with no intention, “It should be a girl that Zhuang Qingzai and the others met before.”
Hearing the name Zhuang Qingzai, Pan Gu unabashedly showed displeasure, curled his lips, and said, “That guy, he still won’t leave the base and comes to us every day to meet the boss, how unshameful, he really thinks that they are family just because they are related by blood? Don’t they recall that the Zhuang family is the one who abandoned boss in the first place?”
Ying Miao listened with a smile and then brought the topic back: “It’s strange, I asked Zhuang Qingzai about it, and those people didn’t know how that girl appeared, and she just got mixed in among them in a daze, dressed in some weird clothes. It is truly strange.”
Thank you so so much for picking up this novel!
These people are rather sketchy. They know about the head crystals. I thought this was an of the world world. I wouldn’t think they would have the resources to destroy the bodies. Thank you for the translation.