Chapter 32 Millipede

Primitive society life was quite calm, unlike during the end of the world where there was fighting and killing everywhere. Zhou Ji himself didn’t like killing, and in a situation like this, if there hadn’t been for the matter of he and Xiong Ye getting married, he would’ve simply stayed in the area to cultivate with the energy that this mysterious plant had drawn in, and wouldn’t have had any thoughts of trying to obtain the plant.

He wasn’t pursuing ultimate strength. As long as he could survive and live on, he had no need for such a rare natural treasure.

However, there was now a Xiong Ye in his life.

Xiong Ye’s strength was considered strong within the tribe, but if he went outside…

There was a Seismosaurus amongst the dinosaurs that seemed to be… Around forty to fifty meters long and weighed forty to fifty tons?

And then, if these dinosaurs ate a lot of energy-rich plants and mutated to become one size bigger, they might even reach a weight of one hundred tons?

Even if his mammoth animal form was the so-called largest mammal on land, it still paled in comparison to those dinosaurs, let alone Xiong Ye.

Of course, the particularly large dinosaurs like the Seismosaurus were all herbivores and wouldn’t hurt humans for no reason, while the carnivorous were in fact a little bit smaller.

But even if they were a little bit smaller, those carnivorous dinosaurs still had very high killing and attack power. Zhou Ji didn’t want Xiong Ye to be seriously injured by them and maybe even… lose his life.

Zhou Ji’s body automatically began to absorb the energy around him even while his spiritual powers continued to observe the situation inside the cave.

The centipedes inside the cave were all piled up together. The smaller ones prevented anyone from approaching the plant, while the larger ones stayed closer to it.

His eyebrows were pulled together in a frown, and he was trying to figure out how to obtain the plant when suddenly, he noticed a huge centipede over ten meters long coming out of the dead leaves under a giant tree nearby.

Zhou Ji’s spiritual power swept over, and he discovered that these creatures that looked very much like centipedes might actually be millipedes instead.

Millipedes were also known as the ‘worm with a thousand feet’, scientific classification diplopoda. This type of insect liked wet, dark places and tended to live in groups. They generally fed on decaying organic matter, and their bodies could curl up into a disc or spiral shape when they were frightened.

Before the apocalypse, the largest millipedes were several tens of centimeters long, and the average millipede was only a few centimeters long. Some of them secreted toxic liquids, but most of them were harmless.

These gigantic millipedes actually looked quite gentle. Their intelligence shouldn’t be very high–Zhou Ji hadn’t bothered to hide himself, but these millipedes had all ignored him.

That gigantic millipede slowly entered the pool and swam towards the crevice in the rock. Meanwhile, the millipedes that were inside the cave all came outside and made their way into the surrounding forest.

This scene would make the scalp of anyone who was watching go numb.

Before long, the millipedes that had been tangled together within the stone cave had all tunneled into the nearby leaves and dispersed completely. The huge millipede then went into the cave on its own and went to sleep next to the plant.

This stone crevice should be the huge millipede’s territory. As for the other millipedes, they must have been taking advantage of the time when this huge millipede needed to go out for food in order to obtain some dregs of energy. Now that the master of this territory had returned, they had to leave.

Previously, Zhou Ji had still been worrying about finding a way to obtain the plant, but now he had found a way.

This stone crevice was very narrow. People could get in, and those long and flat millipedes could get in, but his animal form would be stuck outside. It was impossible for him to use his animal form to snatch that plant, and as for using his human form… He felt that his figure was a bit weak when compared to that of the millipede.

Fortunately, he had his spiritual powers.

Zhou Ji’s spiritual powers gathered around that huge millipede, and he began to try and control it.

There was something similar to a beastman’s crystal core in this huge millipede’s body. It was round and smooth and contained a lot of energy–at least, it had much more energy than Zhou Ji’s core.

However, this huge millipede that should’ve been a powerful opponent against Zhou Ji ended up being easily controlled by his spiritual abilities.

It could only be said that while this millipede’s body was really big, its brain capacity was too small, and its IQ too low…

After Zhou Ji had taken control of the millipede, he guided it to dig out the plant with its mouth and bring it out of the cave for him.

He didn’t intend to fight and kill. Instead, he wanted to bring the plant away using much gentler methods.

In the future, these millipedes might no longer be able to enjoy such abundant energy, but at the very least, they would still be able to live well.

Zhou Ji had great intentions but something went wrong after all–after he obtained the plant, he discovered that the energy contained within the plant had begun to dissipate, and he could see that it was beginning to wither.

He hadn’t expected that such a thing would happen. In a moment of shock, he unhesitatingly used his plant abilities to save the plant.

His plant abilities were effective; after absorbing the power from his plant abilities, not only did the energy in the plant stop dissipating, it even began to gather a lot of energy and started to grow.

Zhou Ji was caught by surprise, but he also felt rather helpless–as soon as he stopped using his plant abilities, this plant would once again start to wither!

And he was probably the cause of this situation… When that huge millipede dug out the plant, it had broken off parts of its roots.

Breaking the roots of other plants wouldn’t have posed much of a problem, but it was obviously not the case for this one.

As for why… Zhou Ji rather helplessly discovered that much of the energy that was now surging up around the plant had originally come from underground.

This plant might have grown out of something underground that contained a lot of energy…

Zhou Ji had no choice but to continue using his plant abilities.

With Zhou Ji’s current level of strength, it only took him a matter of minutes to produce plants. He could grow them very quickly, but the plant in his hand wasn’t so easy to grow.

His plant powers entered the plant at an incredibly fast pace, but the plant actually only grew by a tiny bit!

Zhou Ji could only give the plant even more of his power.

Even then, the plant still didn’t grow much.

If he had sprouted a ginseng using his current output of power, perhaps that ginseng would be a hundred-year-old ginseng by now, but the plant in his hand hadn’t even produced a fruit with all this power!

However, since this was the case, he could only grit his teeth and persevere.

Zhou Ji’s power quickly reached its limits, but the plant was still immature and would start to wither as soon as he stopped using his plant abilities.

Zhou Ji could only make use of the energy that had accumulated in his body and try to absorb the energy that was so plentiful around him while continuing to feed the plant. Only, using this method, he no longer had any attention to spare for the huge millipede that had still been under his control.

The millipede broke out of his control almost instantaneously and lunged towards him.

If it had been a modern millipede, Zhou Ji could have just trampled a good many of them under his foot with a single step. A millipede of this size, however… The shell segments on its back were like sharp blades, and its mouth looked savage. It could probably crush him to bits in under a minute.

Zhou Ji: “……”

As an insect, the millipede’s IQ was very low. However, this didn’t mean that it had no brains all at. In the current situation, there was no way that it wouldn’t hate Zhou Ji even if it was stupid.

Seeing that he was about to be attacked by the millipede, Zhou Ji tossed the plant in his hand up into the air, locked it in place with his spiritual powers, and immediately turned into his animal form, then caught the plant with his trunk.

His human form was too small and weak to take the millipede’s attack, but his animal form could probably withstand it.

Zhou Ji started running away immediately, and that millipede quickly chased after him after a moment of initial surprise.

His four legs couldn’t seem to run as fast as a human with two legs…? He was forced to make some abrupt turns, but for better or worse, that millipede had been unable to catch up so far. Zhou Ji basically used all of his strength to run as fast as he could.

However, not only was he being chased by a huge millipede, he also had to take care of the plant–as soon as he stopped sending power to the plant, the plant that was rolled up in his trunk would begin to wither!

It was a very unique sensation to use his abilities through his nose.

The trees around him were too dense; it wasn’t a problem for Zhou Ji to pass through the obstacles in his human form, but his animal form couldn’t get through at all. He couldn’t escape into the forest and could only run around near the pool in an attempt to avoid the millipede’s attacks.

His animal form was extremely big. Although the millipede was very large, there actually was a chance that he could trample it to death. However, Zhou Ji had a psychological aversion to trampling such a thing.

It couldn’t really be called a psychological aversion… The giant mammoth’s spiritual and plant powers were almost all exhausted, and his eyes were a little red…

Fortunately, at this exact moment, the fruit of the plant that had been absorbing energy without showing any change at all, suddenly turned red.

The fruit was ripe! It finally didn’t need his powers anymore!

Just as the plant reached maturity, it sucked in all the available energy from the surroundings.

At the same time, the fruit that hadn’t even been as big as a strawberry abruptly grew to the size of an apple and turned an unusually bright shade of red.

At the moment it ripened, it absorbed all the energy around it. The trees in the area turned listless, but the fruit itself became even more attractive. When Zhou Ji looked at the fruit, he also couldn’t help but want to eat it.

Obviously, he wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

The huge millipede that had been following behind him abruptly went into a frenzy, and at the same time, many of the millipedes that had been lurking in the leaves around them jumped out as well.

All of the millipedes that Zhou Ji had seen in the cave before, regardless of size, all rushed towards him, seemingly aiming for the fruit he had with him.

Even though Zhou Ji had changed into his animal form, he still had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to deal with so many millipedes all at once. His giant mammoth legs already carried several bite wounds, and not only was he out of energy and spiritual strength, he was also exhausted.

Zhou Ji’s eyes turned red again. He had a very ominous feeling.

The apocalypse and the end of the world was a place that could drive people mad.

The zombies were no longer human, but still carried traces of human appearance. After killing a lot of them and surviving in such a depressing environment, some people would no longer be able to distinguish between humans and zombies, and began attacking everything around them out of despair, until they exhausted all their strength and died.

As a spiritual ability user, he hadn’t been like that at the start and could even use his powers to soothe those who had such problems. Later, however, when humans had basically gone extinct, and he no longer had any food to eat, no clean water, and nobody to talk to… In that endless despair, he had given up on treatment and would occasionally allow himself to turn on a ‘mass slaughter mode’ in order to vent.

Later, after switching to this mode more and more frequently, it became a natural habit–at the time, he had wanted to kill off all the zombies in the world.

In mass slaughter mode, all aspects of his strength would be greatly improved, but he would be unable to recognize even his own closest relatives.

There was nobody left at the end of the world, and it didn’t matter if he did that back there, but in this place…

After he arrived at in this world, he was very afraid that he would suddenly enter this mode and had simply chosen not to kill anything anymore. Now… Zhou Ji had a very bad feeling.

It had only been two months since he transmigrated into this place. He hadn’t had a chance to adjust his mental state and cure his psychological and spiritual problems. If he were to really go crazy…

When it rains, it pours. The situation had already reached this point, but then the fruit that had been rolled up in his trunk went so far as to fall out!

He had wrapped his trunk around the stalk of the plant, but it had withered without warning, and the fruit dropped out.

In order to avoid the millipedes, Zhou Ji had raised his long nose high up in the air. Now that the fruit was falling, he instinctively went up and used his mouth to catch it as it fell.

A warm current of energy tingled in his mouth, and the fruit melted directly into liquid on his tongue.

Zhou Ji: “……”

He had spent so much effort to obtain a wedding present for Xiong Ye, but now it was gone just like this?!

It was bad enough that the wedding present was gone, but he was still surrounded by a big crowd of giant millipedes!

Although these terrible big fellows were all vegetarian, they were now in a frenzy and might end up switching to eating meat.

Zhou Ji felt really helpless against this situation.

The only fortunate thing was that after the fruit entered his belly, his physical and spiritual strength began to recover, and he almost immediately returned to his peak state. When he became aware of this point, Zhou Ji immediately flashed back to his human form, ran towards the forest, and used his spiritual and plant abilities to climb up to the top of a tree and run along the canopy.

The millipedes behind him that had originally been about to catch up gradually fell behind–these insects’ vision and sense of smell were apparently not very good.

After an hour of running, even that huge millipede could no longer be seen.

Not only that, he had also run out of that stretch of forest.

Zhou Ji heaved a sigh of relief, then helplessly found out that he had lost all his clothing.

That was bad enough, but when he used his spiritual powers to make a sweep, a millipede suddenly came up beside him…

Zhou Ji was startled but quickly discovered that this millipede wasn’t from the previous group.

Those millipedes hadn’t caught up.

This millipede didn’t have any intention of attacking Zhou Ji, but Zhou Ji now had a psychological shadow regarding millipedes… He wrapped a vine around the two meter long ‘little millipede’ and tossed it far, far away. Feeling better, he wrapped leaves around himself and headed back towards the tribe.

The millipede, which had innocently encountered undeserved misfortune, was tossed out of the forest that it had lived in since it was a child. It didn’t take it seriously and was instead pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a lot of food out in this new place that it had never eaten before. It burrowed under the fallen leaves and began to eat.

As it ate and ate, a group of two-legged animals came by. They looked like the one who had thrown it so far away before.

That was fine, but one of them had a scent on its body that it really liked…

The millipede lunged at that person.

Shi Li, who had been harassed by all sorts of insects today: “……” Why were even the big ones coming now?!

Juurensha: ….I have to say the last millipede sounds weirdly cute….