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Xiang Kun examined the mouthpart he had detached from the creature, unable to make sense of the organ it was connected to. It bore little resemblance to anything he had seen in various biology and medical textbooks.

He examined the lifeless spider body again, carefully touching its head and tapping its eyes. He also used the infrared imaging tool for the observation.

It was pretty much confirmed that the mutated spider was dead.

The hardest part seemed to be the mouthpart, which was the spider’s essential organ for survival. Remove it, and the creature quickly perished.

It was evident that the mutated spider had been desperate, with no strategies left to try.

If its mouthpart had struck Xiang Kun’s eye, he speculated that blindness would have been the least of his problems. If the spider had gotten closer, it might have pierced his brain.

Xiang Kun laid the mouthpart next to the spider’s body and started to take photos with his phone which was in airplane mode since he entered the mountain to conserve power. There was no signal anyway. Besides a few photo sessions, he had hardly used it, so there was still remaining battery life.

After turning on the flashlight, he took several photos, including the insides of the spider’s body. It was effectively dissected already with its abdomen wide open.

The structure of this spider was rather complex and peculiar. He would need to study it properly later to understand how it had evolved into such a monstrosity.

Keeping his phone away, Xiang Kun looked at the spider’s corpse and fell into a quandary. Normally, the bodies of mutants dissolved into ash shortly after they died, so he had to drink its blood quickly.

But how was he supposed to start?

The spider had been severely injured and was badly beaten. Its body was mostly crushed by rocks and had lost a considerable amount of blood.

Inspecting the spider’s body, Xiang Kun noticed that the mutated spider’s blood was red, not green, blue, or any other color like he had assumed.

The sight of the blood elicited his blood-drinking impulse. It felt like every cell in his body was cheering, waving chopsticks and forks for him to drink the blood.

As he fiddled with the spider to find a spot to drink from, he was strangely reminded of his first experience eating a crab as a kid…

According to his calculations, his next “blood-drinking period” was tomorrow noon. Even if he started heading back now, he would still be on the road when hunger hit. But, from previous experiences, he knew that drinking a mutant’s blood significantly reduced the duration of his sleep period, ensuring nothing would happen to him on the road.

Though this mutated spider was huge compared to other spiders, it was still tiny compared to the mutated owl. After it was injured and lost a lot of blood, Xiang Kun drank only a bit of blood mixed with rainwater. Purely in terms of blood, it was probably less than 50ML.

If it was rabbit blood, this small amount wouldn’t even be sufficient as an appetiser. But he now felt joy and satisfaction, even sleepiness coursing through him already.

Xiang Kun stood up and wiped the rain and blood from his face. He held up his hand to rinse the rock that had just been extracted from the spider’s body through the rain, and contemplated where he was going to go into sleep.

If he went into his sleep state after consuming fresh blood, he would sleep for around 25 hours under normal circumstances. However, if he had consumed a mutant’s fresh blood, the sleeping time would significantly reduce. After the first time he drank blood from a giant owl, he only slept for a little over an hour. When he drank Guo Tianxiang’s blood for the second time, he slept for 30 to 40 minutes. The discrepancy in his sleep schedule might be related to the level of mutation of the blood source.

Originally, he thought considering how little spider’s blood he had drunk, it might not be enough. He thought he would need to hunt other creatures for more blood. However, he was already experiencing joy and satisfaction, and became sleepy. Was it because the spider was highly mutated, or because it was dead, or was it because the blood he had drunk happened to be from a particularly important and thus efficient part of it?

Theoretically speaking, since he was already feeling sleepy, the duration of his sleep this time shouldn’t be too long. If quick, it could be within half an hour, at the slowest, no more than two hours.

However, during this period, he was at his most vulnerable, unable to resist any threat. He had to choose a good place to fall asleep. Perhaps the former lair of the mutated spider, the hidden cave on the cliff?

But that place was a bit far, and it took a considerable amount of time to get there. Moreover, it couldn’t be guaranteed safe.

Or should he climb up a tree and nest there? Hopefully, he wouldn’t get struck by lightning.

Watching as the spider’s corpse and various parts of its body gradually dissolve in the rain, turning into grey dust that was absorbed by the water and soil, it was as if it had been “melted” by the rain.

Xiang Kun did not choose to fall asleep wherever he found himself. Instead, he swallowed the stone, using the discomfort in his stomach to temporarily “suppress” his sleepiness.

Following the path he had tracked, he hurriedly examined every mark along the way.

Xiang Kun had a vague feeling that something was off. Although he couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, he knew that if he had such an intuition, it meant he had received some special sensory information; however, his brain’s processing power was insufficient, and he had not yet “calculated” the specific results, so it merely gave a warning from intuition.

As he walked back the same way, he constantly observed the traces on the road, thinking back to the tracking process, all while coping with sleepiness and suppressing the pain caused by the stone in his stomach. It was exceedingly arduous.

But if he didn’t confirm what was going on, Xiang Kun didn’t dare to fall asleep casually.

To him, sleeping in such a wilderness brought worries not about beasts or poisonous insects—his body temperature was lower than normal, and his scent was also different from other creatures. Hence, even when sleeping, regular poisonous insects or beasts were unlikely to pose a threat to him.

Only other mutants and humans posed real threats and were the problems he needed to take into consideration.

Moving swiftly in the rain, he returned to the spot where he had avoided the poisonous spray of the falling mutant spider, picked up the first stone he had thrown, the bow and the quiver he had discarded, as well as the torn pieces of clothes.

Not far from where the mutant spider had landed after being hit by the stone, Xiang Kun’s infrared vision discovered little blue spots on a waist-high shrub.

Under the visual mode acquired from Guo Tianxiang, this color generally denoted a mutant.

Approaching, Xiang Kun switched to night vision mode and saw that the little blue dots were small red pearls with thin outer membranes, and inside looked like fresh blood—and could indeed be real blood.

Before, while tracking the mutant spider to this spot, when the rain had not yet started, Xiang Kun had already deduced from the smell that a small part of this shrub was a “branch” of the mutant spider. But he was certain that at that time, there were no tiny beads on this shrub, and he hadn’t seen any blue spots under the infrared vision mode.

In other words, these blue dots appeared after he had chased after the injured mutant spider and left.

Xiang Kun turned his gaze to where the mutant spider had fallen earlier. The remnants of its body tissues and blood were all gone, which should’ve been turned into grey dust washed away by the rain.

The contents of the small beads on this shrub should have been something it extracted from its remaining tissues and blood, using some methods. But, why hadn’t they disappeared or turned to dust? And why did they still exist even after the mutant spider’s death? Could it be that it hadn’t fully died but was still existing in a new form?

Standing in front of the shrub, the branches with red beads swayed under the pouring rain, quivering as if in fear.

Xiang Kun speculated that these pearl-sized, bead-like objects were probably the mutant spider’s way of perpetuating itself when it knew it was dying. It could be related to its ability to create and control “branches”. But he wondered whether the final results were its “clones”, its “offspring”, or a new type of mutant.

Xiang Kun really wanted to leave these tiny red beads and observe their changes slowly to see what they would eventually become. This would undoubtedly help him understand the root of the mutation and its patterns.

That being said, he was quite curious himself.

But now he was extremely fatigued after his blood-drinking period and did not want to risk getting “counter-killed” by this thing while he was asleep. Who knew what it would transform into and when it could become a threat.

So Xiang Kun took out his phone, snapped a photo, and then plucked a small bead. He crushed it and sniffed the thick red liquid that burst out from within it. He licked it to confirm that it was the blood of the mutated spider.

After tasting it, Xiang Kun didn’t detect anything wrong with the blood and decided to consume all the beads.

After eliminating all the blood in these beads and destroying the “branch” parts on the bush, Xiang Kun’s earlier strange feeling disappeared. Even though he wasn’t yet certain how he became aware of the threat or which aspects of the information triggered the alarm, it was clear the source was the beads.

After scanning his surroundings again and finding no other blue spots, Xiang Kun walked for about ten minutes to find a shallow depression on the hillside to protect him from the rain. He spat out a stone from his stomach, stored it away, set a timer on his outdoor electronic watch he had bought specifically for this trip, and then fell asleep instantly.

When Xiang Kun awoke, the rain hadn’t stopped; it had just lessened a bit. But the sky was considerably brighter.

He checked the time on his wristwatch. He had been asleep for 33 minutes, which was within the duration he had predicted.

His first move was to get up and check what had changed about him.

He hadn’t grown additional arms, eyes, or any green stripes or vines. From the outside, he still looked like an ordinary man.

However, Xiang Kun was acutely aware that significant changes had occurred within his body. His sensory abilities seemed to be greatly enhanced to the extent that it made him slightly dizzy.

After a short period of adjustment, he checked each of his sensory abilities. He looked far into the distance but his vision had not significantly improved, and there were no changes in his night vision or infrared thermal imaging modes.

He used his hearing to sense the sounds around him. His ability to distinguish types of sounds and directions had slightly improved, but not very noticeably.

The same was true for his sense of smell; there was no significant change.

Xiang Kun felt somewhat puzzled. He could clearly feel an increase in his sensory perception and information collection. This sensation should not be mistaken, as he had felt it during his first sensory training after mutation, and then again after his first blood-drinking period when his sensory abilities had improved.

Xiang Kun didn’t dwell on this. He would think about it more later on. He continued checking for other changes in his body, examining his wrists. There were no hidden pores to shoot silk from, and no powerful suckers had developed on his fingertips. He didn’t find any new structures when he checked his mouth. He didn’t feel any spider silk or similar stuff in his abdomen, so it seemed he hadn’t developed any new organs like spinnerets or silk glands.

He hopped up and down, jumped left and right, and his bouncing ability had significantly improved. It seemed like his entire body had become lighter. His core strength in areas like his thighs and abdomen had greatly increased, and his joints must have correspondingly strengthened.

He walked into the rain, to the edge of some shrubs and weeds, and stretched out his hand to meticulously feel these plants. He plucked a blade of grass and chewed it slowly for two or three minutes before swallowing the pulp and residue.

Twenty seconds later, he vomited out the stuff he had just swallowed. Looking at the green residue on the ground, he couldn’t help but frown.

During his period of deep sleep, he had once again dreamt, similar to the previous two times when he had ingested the fresh blood of other mutants. This dream was even stranger and had more scenes.

He now knew those scenes were parts of the mutated spider’s memory. These memory fragments were more numerous than those of the Giant Owl but were far less compared to Guo Tianxiang.

Xiang Kun still needed to organize the sequences of those memory fragments to aid his understanding, but he was basically sure that this mutated spider was not only a mutant itself, but also had devoured at least two mutant plants – this also verified Xiang Kun’s previous speculation on the existence of blood-sucking mutant plants.

In the memory of the mutated spider, there were numerous images of life-and-death struggles with those two different types of mutant plants, which also made Xiang Kun aware of many special abilities of those two plants.

The ability to create “branches,” he surmised, was likely acquired from one of those two mutant plants.

Xiang Kun learned from the memory images that the “branches” created by the mutated spider had two forms, one was that after devouring part of the plant, it would immediately “reconnect” a nearly identical part from its mouth, which Xiang Kun referred to as the “Transformation Branch”.

The other one was that after the mutated spider directly removed part of the plant, it would use its mouthparts and tail organs, along with special organs in its feet, to secrete a large amount of fluid and fiber to “reconstruct” a completely new part of the plant, “grafting” it onto the original plant, which Xiang Kun referred to as a “Reconstruction Branch”.

Both kinds of “branches” had that “particular smell,” but only the “Reconstruction Branch” could bear fruit. The spider had previously built a fake nest in the tree to trap Xiang Kun, primarily using “Reconstruction Branch”. Any reconstructed branches that were cut off would turn into grey powder, just like mutant tissue, those were also “Reconstruction Branch”.

As for the “Transformation Branch”, in many of the mutated spider’s memory images, Xiang Kun didn’t see a specific function, but the mutated spider still produced them in large quantities. Xiang Kun speculated that they might be used for information retrieval and assisting the mutated spider in controlling the “Reconstruction Branch,” serving as individual “base stations” for signal transmission.

Xiang Kun believed that the types of fruit that the “Reconstruction Branch” could bear, the types of venom it could secrete, and its method of growth, were all predetermined once the reconstruction process was complete, like a pre-set program. However, the actual timings of activation and “operation” were dictated by the mutated spider. For those commands to get to the “Reconstruction Branch,” other “Transformation Branches” were needed to assist.

Of course, all of this was only conjectured by Xiang Kun based on the images from memory fragments and would still need further verification.

Just now, as he chewed on that grass, he was trying to mimic the mutated spider’s “Transformation Branch”, but it ended in failure. It seemed that he hadn’t mutated the appropriate abilities, or perhaps those abilities didn’t exist in the same way.

Even though his primary objective for this trip had been completed, Xiang Kun didn’t immediately leave this forest.

He first went to retrieve the arrow that he had previously shot and missed the mutated spider, then went to get his shoes back near the spider’s cave, then went inside the cave and checked it carefully, using the memory images of the spider for precise memory anchoring.

After “consuming” the mutated spider, his “Blood-drinking Period” reset, and he had another full 5×24 hours to consume.

So, he spent two days in this forest testing and examining his own mutation after this period of blood-drinking, assessing the enhancement of various traits, identifying if he had acquired any new abilities, and also using the real world as a reference to help him organize, understand, and interpret the mutated spider’s memory.

Two days later, he started on his journey back and took a little over a day to return to the spot where he had hidden his bow case.

He spent most of his time traversing through the forest, climbing and chasing, barefoot, so his shoes were still in good condition. However, the t-shirt he had worn into the mountains was ripped apart by the corrosive fluid earlier, with the pieces stuffed in his pants pocket. As for those work trousers, although made of resilient material, they were severely damaged because he had been plowing through the forest using his own body, he had even been sprayed with that corrosive fluid, leaving several holes in his backside, they were dirty and torn.

In this state of being bare-chested and wearing a torn pair of pants, should he return to town like this, he feared he would cause a scare and leave a deep impression on people.

He had already considered this before coming, so he had brought an extra set of clothes in the bow case along with his jacket that he had taken off earlier. After changing, instead of throwing away the damaged clothes, he kept them in his bow case – everything was taken with him on his way back, except for a sphere which he left near the mutated spider’s cave as a marker for future navigation, he took everything else.

Having heard what those two men who drove off in the Prado said outside the town hotel before, Xiang Kun suspected that their so-called “company” might have some awareness about the existence of mutants. Maybe after they examined the samples brought from the mountain and the corpse of the wild boar, they might find out something and send people back into the mountain for further investigation.

He didn’t want to leave any traces that could lead them back to him.

Just like his trip here, Xiang Kun didn’t choose to hitch a ride by the roadside, he walked directly back to town by the most direct route. He washed his face with water from a public sink, tidied his clothing, then went to a beverage store to charge his phone and booked his flight back.