Chapter 68: Section 69: Exploring the Secrets of the Demon Core


    “The most important thing is—I survived!”


    “I survived!!”


    The joy of survival was so intense and moving that Zhenjin couldn’t help but repeat the phrase subconsciously.


    At one point, Zhenjin thought he was surely going to die!


    Ever since he had awakened, he had experienced such near-death encounters several times, and the joy of surviving each time touched his whole body and soul. This time, it felt particularly intense, as if every cell in his body was cheering.


    Panting heavily, Zhenjin gradually calmed down.


    ...


    Though his shoulder blade wound was covered by the scorpion shell, pain still struck relentlessly.


    But soon, the young man’s attention was drawn to the tail standing in front of his eyes.


    This scorpion tail shone like gold, reflecting a metallic luster.


    Previously, in his encounters with scorpion swarms, Zhenjin had suffered greatly from this type of tail. But now, this scorpion tail was his own.


    It felt very strange.


    With a thought from Zhenjin, the scorpion tail stiffened upright, motionless as a bamboo pole.


    Another thought, and the tail curved into an S shape, then undulated continuously like waves.


    It was like an extension of his own body!


    “Although it’s my first time having a tail, it feels like this scorpion tail has always been a part of my body.”


    Zhenjin then reached out to touch the scorpion tail.


    The cold, hard sensation transmitted into his heart.


    “But the scorpion tail doesn’t feel touched.”


    Zhenjin looked down at his chest.


    His chest was covered in scorpion armor, which seemed like a layer of natural armor, tightly protecting his body.


    Touching the scorpion armor on his chest, he felt the same cold hardness as when touching the tail.


    “Similarly, the scorpion armor on my chest doesn’t feel touched.”


    “But earlier when the armor protected me from the spikes of the gun scorpions, I did feel a significant impact. That means it’s not that there’s no tactile sensation. It’s just that light touches, like this one, aren’t enough to be felt.”


    Humans have many kinds of sensations—


    primarily sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.


    Most beasts have shells, fur, feathers, etc. In comparison, human skin is delicate and thinly haired, so human defensive power is weak.


    However, at the same time, human skin and fine body hairs provide a sharper sense of touch. Sometimes, the landing of an insect can be quickly detected.


    In terms of touch, scorpion shells are inferior to human skin. But the defensive power they offer is incomparable to that of human flesh.


    “It was the scorpion armor that saved my life!”


    Without the scorpion armor, he would’ve been pierced through by several gun scorpions’ tails.


    Zhenjin attempted to introspect again.


    Very smoothly!


    Or rather, without any hindrance, he saw the Demon Crystal inside his heart again.


    The Demon Crystal flickered with a bloody light, continuously depleting, silently supporting Zhenjin’s current mutation.


    With a glint in his eye, Zhenjin tried to control the Demon Crystal to stop the current consumption.


    The next moment, the brilliance of the Demon Crystal in his heart quickly diminished, and in less than a breath, it completely ceased.


    Without the support of this mysterious crystal core, Zhenjin’s scorpion shell and tail quickly turned black, then carbonized. Almost instantly, the mutated organs turned to carbon ash and fell to the ground.


    Immediately, a wave of weakness surged from the depths of Zhenjin’s heart.


    This sensation was all too familiar to Zhenjin.


    He had experienced it when his hands mutated into bear claws, and also when his arm mutation subsided, and even with the emetic potion.


    Zhenjin looked down at his chest.


    The original scorpion armor was gone, revealing his muscular chest and the wound on his left shoulder.


    Of course, the muscles weren’t very huge.


    “I’m only sixteen, still growing.”


    “Moreover, it seems the mutation doesn’t heal wounds.”


    The wound on his left shoulder blade was severe, completely penetrated by the Silver Spear Scorpion’s tail, nailing Zhenjin to a huge rock.


    Even with Zhenjin’s robust physique, he couldn’t stop the bleeding. Bright red blood still slowly streamed from the wound.


    “The wound must be treated immediately!”


    As the joy and happiness faded, the young man gritted his teeth, took out a potion, and sprinkled it on the wound.


    The potion, given by Zi Di, could help stop the bleeding. Sёarch* The Novёl?ire.n(e)t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.


    Then Zhenjin tore off the front of his shirt, twisted it into strips, and started bandaging.


    The strip of cloth, serving as a bandage, covered the wound and immediately became stained with red blood.


    Zhenjin looped the fabric under his armpit, bit one end of it with his teeth, and then tied it tightly with his hands.


    A sharp pain made him see stars.


    The boy gasped in a breath of cold air, endured for a few seconds, and the pain then slightly eased.


    He wiped the cold sweat on his forehead, panting continuously.


    After a while, his gaze finally regained focus.


    For now, that was as much as he could do for the wound.


    Zhenjin continued to investigate, having just wrapped his entire body in scorpion armor to fend off the scorpion swarm’s assault.


    Now that the armor had dissipated, restoring his original form, Zhenjin found no lingering adverse changes.


    Afterward, he reached down to touch his buttocks.


    The pants covering his rear had a hole torn in it.


    This was where the tail had punctured through when it grew.


    Zhenjin touched his coccyx.


    Just like before—very normal.


    Zhenjin breathed a sigh of relief.


    He then refocused his attention on the Demon Core in his heart.


    He discovered that the more attention he focused on this mysterious and magical Demon Core, the clearer his perception of its condition became.


    When his perception reached a certain level of clarity, Zhenjin was able to detect the remaining energy reserves within the Demon Core.


    “The level of transformation I experienced before, if each transformation lasts the same amount of time… I can probably transform two more times.” Quite naturally, Zhenjin calculated the result. Moreover, his intuition told him this calculated result was very accurate.


    “After the mutation, I will become very strong.”


    “But the number of such mutations is limited. It cannot allow me to mutate endlessly.”


    “The fundamental reason is that the energy in the Demon Core is finite.”


    A contemplative light flashed in Zhenjin’s eyes.


    “It’s not just this limitation.”


    “There are other constraints—I can only transform into scorpion shells and scorpion tails.”


    The pincer-like limbs of the gun scorpion could not be transformed.


    “Wait! What is this?” Zhenjin’s perception delved deeper, and he discovered something new.


    A trace of joy crossed the young man’s face.


    Because he found that he could not only transform the body parts of the gun scorpion but also the Monkey-tailed Brown Bear again!


    But like the limitations with the gun scorpion, he could only transform the bear’s claws and limbs and could not mutate any other organs of the Monkey-tailed Brown Bear.


    “Besides the Monkey-tailed Brown Bear, can I also transform into a Fire Poison Bee?!”


    Discovery followed discovery.


    Accompanying Zhenjin’s thoughts, the Demon Core in his heart was quickly stimulated.


    The transformations of the gun scorpion, Monkey-tailed Brown Bear; Zhenjin was clear about these. Other mutations need to be tried and experienced one by one.


    This point of energy could not be saved.


    The mutation of the Fire Poison Bee was immediately generated!


    Zhenjin looked at the back of his hand.


    A black-and-yellow color quickly spread across his hands, covering them with a layer of down.


    This was the down of the Fire Poison Bee, similar to the stripes of a zebra, only black and yellow.


    “I can cover all the skin on my body with this layer of down. However, doing so would consume a lot more energy.”


    Zhenjin immediately stopped stimulating the Demon Core in his heart, and a scene similar to before happened again.


    The down of the Fire Poison Bee quickly turned grey, then transformed into a pile of fine carbon powder.


    Zhenjin gently shook his hand, brushing off this layer of carbon powder, revealing the same normal skin as before.


    “Gun scorpion, Monkey-tailed Brown Bear, Fire Poison Bee… um, I can also transform into a goat.”


    However, this goat mutation could only transform Zhenjin’s flesh into goat meat.


    Compared to the previous mutations, it was of low value.


    Zhenjin still tried it out a bit.


    “The transformed goat meat does not contain the previous chaotic frost magic power. However, this is also normal because those goats contained it due to eating those green grasses.”


    He stopped the Demon Core in his heart, and the portion turned into goat meat quickly reversed back to normal human flesh.


    “If I carved out the transformed goat meat with a Dagger, could it be used as food?”


    “Eating myself?”


    Zhenjin thought again and shook his head slightly.


    Previous practices had proven that once the mutated part was detached from the support of the Demon Core’s energy, it would quickly decay into a pile of carbon ash.


    So, his plan to eat himself would not succeed.


    When Zhenjin delved his sensing to the limit, he found that he had two other mutations.


    One was moss.


    The other was the meat of the Acid Liquid Green Lizard.


    “This moss?” Zhenjin looked at the mutated back of his hand and immediately felt it looked familiar.


    In the next breath, he recognized it.


    “Isn’t this the moss that poisoned me?”


    Starting from the cave of the Monkey-tailed Brown Bear, he and Zi Di explored the path together. In this process, his skin was poisoned due to abrasion against this moss.


    Zi Di tried to detoxify him, which could only alleviate but not cure. In the end, they found the source of the poison and used the moss to make a potion that finally cured Zhenjin completely.


    “Just call it Green Speckled Poison Moss.”


    Zhenjin remembered that after being poisoned, green spots grew on his face, these spots were round and small, and he felt nothing unusual himself.


    He also transformed into the meat of the Acid Liquid Green Lizard.


    Like the goat meat, it was basically the same, not of high practical value.


    After a session of probing, Zhenjin’s understanding of the Demon Core in his heart deepened quite a bit.


    “So, the energy absorbed, transformed, and stored in the Demon Core after absorbing external life is universal for any form of mutation.”


    “But why can I transform into these and not transform into the Blue-haired Evil Wolf, Python Vine, Scale-Horned Black Panther, and Blade Spider?”


    After some thought, Zhenjin came up with his own answer.


    “Gun scorpion… is it because I activated the Demon Core and took all its life?”


    “Monkey-tailed Brown Bear… is it because I received a lot of blood transfusion while being treated by Zi Di?”


    “I ate a lot of goat meat. Similarly, lizard meat too. The main food recently has been lizard meat.”


    “However, I also ate snake meat, Flying Squirrel meat, and other small insects like spiders and scorpions. Maybe I ate too little of these foods.”


    As for the Fire Poison Bee?


    “I was poisoned. My body once contained a large amount of Fire Poison, which nearly caused my death.”


    “Toxins and flesh both entered my body. From this angle, there’s no difference.”


    “So, they were all quietly absorbed by the Demon Core.”


    “As for other Magic Beasts, although I encountered them, I didn’t have close contact. The Blue-haired Evil Wolf, Molten Giant Turtle, Python Vine, and others were like this.”


    Thinking this far, Zhenjin arrived at another very valuable speculative conclusion.


    “As it seems now, the object of the Demon Core’s absorption and transformation is a living entity.”


    “Plain magic power cannot be absorbed by the Demon Core.”


    Zhenjin had once been poisoned by “Cold Poison,” and his body contained a lot of chaotic frost magic power. But this magic power was not absorbed and transformed by the Demon Core; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been poisoned.


    “So, the role of the Demon Core in my heart is probably to forcibly absorb and transform life, forming a kind of special and mysterious demon energy. Once this demon energy is activated, it can produce a certain degree of human mutation, transforming into a series of life structures related to the life previously absorbed.”