Seeing his suddenly rough and burly sister, Wu Zhi gulped in shock. “This seems similar to the effects of a power-boosting pill.”
It allowed people to burst out their potential in advance—now the only question was whether there would be a period of weakness afterward.
Wu Shui really did slaughter ten black-bellied snakes in a row. Her muscles faded, but her mental state showed no sign of fatigue.
She looked at the ordinary-looking chives. “This stuff has miraculous effects!”
Su Cha thought they were being far too optimistic. If that were all, it wouldn’t have taken him so long to neutralize the energy with his demonic power.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe we should test it on a scorpion first?”
That idea was immediately shot down by the others—such precious vegetables couldn’t be fed to a scorpion!
“Ahhh—!”
Wu Shui suddenly let out a scream, startling everyone. The next second, under their stunned gaze, she suddenly started singing: “A-oh, A-oh…”
As she sang, she lowered her head and gripped her collar tightly. “I can’t control myself.”
After singing for more than ten minutes, the song finally ended. Wu Shui explained further: “It makes me irritable, increases strength, and seems to be influenced by the traits of one’s spirit form.”
Her spirit form was a nightingale—and it loved to sing.
Everyone looked at Su Cha. He had eaten the chives too, so why didn’t he react?
Su Cha replied with justified weakness, “I haven’t condensed a spirit form yet.”
“No matter what, if it can provide energy, then it’s useful. As for side effects,” Wu Shui said, lying through her teeth, “they’re tolerable.”
Wu Zhi nodded in agreement. “And eating just one stalk has an effect. We all deserve to have some.”
Su Cha was surprised. Were his friends seriously okay with this?
Compared to the senior students, the freshmen preferred to play it safe. As night fell, more people began searching for shelter, and soon their supply station caught others’ attention.
Enemies met on a narrow road—the team that arrived was the Cold Winter Squad from Jero Academy. Every member wore mechanical gloves, and their strength couldn’t be underestimated. Seeing only four people guarding the supply station, Cold Winter Squad revealed confident smiles. But when their captain Zhou Li paused, his gaze locked tightly on that patch of green.
Chives? Why were there chives at a supply point?
Even stranger, their nearly nonexistent sense of smell still picked up a faint sweet aroma from the chives.
One team member looked puzzled. They still retained some sense of taste from childhood, and this chive tasted very different from what they remembered. But they didn’t have time to dwell on that now. The members of Cold Winter Squad were starving. Seeing the stone grill, they all swallowed subconsciously.
Su Cha warned seriously, “Don’t come closer, or you’ll regret it.”
Eight against four? Not going forward would be the real regret!
“Seize the supply station and steal the chives!” Zhou Li gave the order.
Wu Shui was the one to step forward and block them. Meanwhile, Wu Zhi and Di Yuansi shamelessly took the opportunity to keep eating.
Naturally, Wu Shui couldn’t take on all eight alone, but the delay of just a few seconds was enough.
Zhou Li reasoned, “Nutrient fluid is scarce. In a group battle, you have no chance of winning. Why waste energy?”
“You won’t know until we fight.” Di Yuansi, a man of few words but ruthless action, charged in from behind.
They watched in disbelief as his muscles burst through his shirt. Zhou Li froze for a moment and frowned. “Power pill?”
He quickly warned his team, “The power pill’s effect has a time limit. Once he hits the weakness stage, we’ll have this in the bag!”
But Di Yuansi was not only strong—he was fast. It took four people just to hold him back.
One minute, two minutes… even ten minutes passed, and finally one of the team members couldn’t help but ask, “Wasn’t the power pill effect only five minutes?”
Why did he look more energetic the longer he fought?
Di Yuansi had eaten quite a bit earlier. He and his spirit form—a black-backed jackal—threw back their heads in unison and howled: “Awooo—!”
“….”
The howl even carried a mental shockwave, spreading through the air.
That howl triggered a strong territorial instinct in Di Yuansi, and his attacks took on a primal, feral quality.
Meanwhile, Wu Shui had started singing again.
Wu Zhi remained quiet—but both he and his spirit form, the white dove, had developed a fondness for diving tackles.
Refusing to watch the chaos any longer, Su Cha quietly bowed his head and went back to planting. All around him, the sounds of mixed singing and madness exploded in his ears.
The noise was truly giving him a headache. Su Cha finally couldn’t help but say, “Could you all please be quiet?”
No one paid him any attention—those who needed to shout still shouted.
If you can’t beat them, join them. Su Cha dragged a small chair out of the house, put on his sunglasses, and started bobbing his head and singing to the seeds.
In fact, he was genuinely doing something productive. When Di Yuansi let out that wolf howl earlier, Su Cha realized that singing—with spiritual power infused—could also stimulate seed growth.
Otherwise, staying hunched over the whole time to do it mentally was dizzying.
The livestream commentator was completely baffled by this scene.
Someone in the chat posted: “Are you looking for this old meme?”
[A sunflower in sunglasses singing nonstop.jpg]
For some reason, watching Su Cha now really did feel like seeing that meme come to life.
…
The only ones close enough to appreciate the “Su Cha meme” were the Cold Winter Squad—but they had zero interest in laughing.
“Retreat!” Zhou Li said grimly.
Was this team insane?
As Cold Winter Squad began to withdraw, Wu Shui wanted to chase after them. However, Wu Zhi acted out the startled-dove-refusing-to-leave-the-nest trope, and Wu Shui ultimately compromised—after all, she still needed to keep singing.
After successfully driving off the Cold Winter Squad, three more teams arrived in succession. Each charged in excitedly, only to flee in fright.
By nightfall, the desert temperature began to drop rapidly.
Three figures trudged through the sand. Rong Shao had just finished repairing Ji Tianjin’s mechanical gloves and was now cleaning the sand out of Liu Xiqin’s gloves.
Suddenly, Ji Tianjin stopped in his tracks.
Rong Shao looked up and noticed a team had appeared ahead, seemingly out of nowhere. Narrowing his eyes, he handed Liu Xiqin her gloves. Just one day into the competition, they’d already realized that aside from beasts, battles over nutrients between teams were inevitable.
The opposing team showed no signs of backing down. Ji Tianjin and the others prepared to fight.
“Are you going back?” the Blade Squad asked with an odd question instead of attacking.
Rong Shao’s expression changed. Misunderstanding the question, he thought something had happened to the supply station. “What did you do?”
The Blade Squad all gave him a long look and simply said, “Don’t go back.”
With that, they walked past without any attempt at robbery. One girl in the group suddenly turned her head and added, “Your teammates have gone mad.”
Watching their retreating figures, Rong Shao frowned. “What nonsense are they talking about?”
They walked a bit further, and a student setting up camp behind a sand dune spotted them and began waving frantically. With sand blowing hard, and seeing they were fellow schoolmates, he softened and used this as his way of warning them not to go back.
Unfortunately, his urgency didn’t get through to Ji Tianjin and the others—it only made them move faster.
Twenty minutes later, they followed the map back to the supply point.
“Awooo~” Under the moonlight, Di Yuansi was even more excited.
Wu Shui ran off to one side to sing quietly. Wu Zhi was practicing flying with his spirit form.
The three of them each occupied a different area, not disturbing each other.
Su Cha stood up from beside the chives and showed a weary smile. “You’re back.”
Ji Tianjin stared at him for a moment, then suddenly said, “I just remembered—there’s still a beast we haven’t killed.”
Just as he turned to leave, a hand grabbed him. Su Cha looked up at him, face cool, and asked, “You just got back—where do you think you’re going?”
Ji Tianjin had no choice but to face reality. Without Su Cha saying anything, he already had a guess. “Food poisoning?”
“No poison. Just a tiny bit of… negative enhancement.” Su Cha raised his hand as if to swear. “I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen.”
That afternoon, he’d also planted an orange tree. The trunk was thin, and a few small, dry fruits were barely hanging on.
Su Cha briefly explained the effect of the fruits. Liu Xiqin muttered, “So they boost strength.”
She looked visibly tempted.
Su Cha: “…”
Back inside the house, Ji Tianjin took out a paper map and marked several spots on it.
“The triangles mark other discovered supply points. The circles are snake clusters.”
Su Cha opened his smart device to check the current rankings. It didn’t take long to find their team, “He’s Here,” currently ranked fifth among the freshmen. That three people could achieve this result spoke volumes about their combat power.
“For the next two days…”
“Awooo~”
Ji Tianjin: “For the next two days…”
“Awooo~”
Ji Tianjin closed his eyes. “How long is he going to keep howling?”
Su Cha shook his head. “First leek, just one howl. Second leek, five minutes. By the third, it got totally out of control.”
He suspected it had to do with the amount consumed in a short time—overeating quickly led to this.
Rong Shao looked worried. “That’s way too noisy.”
There weren’t many beasts near the supply point, but there were other dangerous creatures and rival teams.
Su Cha remained calm. “They’ve already been drawn here many times.”
Rong Shao looked up in surprise.
“Every time someone comes, if we can’t beat them, we eat. If we win and need energy, we eat. Sun rises, moon falls, repeat.”
“…”
Rong Shao’s mouth twitched hard.
Suddenly, the world fell silent. Ji Tianjin had used his spiritual energy to seal off the area. He continued, “With a steady food supply, we can make the top three in the next two days.”
The later the game went, the bigger their advantage would become.
Meanwhile, outside the arena, discussions were reaching a fever pitch. Nighttime viewership was at an all-time high.
Former Xilin Group CEO Luan Zheng was also watching the broadcast. “Looks like Ningze wasn’t lying. Su Cha’s ability really is a potential threat.”
With his sharp eye, he could naturally see that Su Cha was using spiritual power to stimulate plant growth.
After a moment of thought, Luan Zheng raised his head. “Everything’s in place?”
“Don’t worry. This time, we’ll definitely—”
“Awooo~”
“This time we’ll—”
“Awooo~”
Even through the screen, the wolf howls were incredibly piercing. The person responding was so eager to finish that he panicked and blurted out, “Next time for sure.”
