It was a moonless night.
In the pitch-black forest, the cold wind resembled traveling ghosts.
The silver level bat monkey’s corpse was still intact and because it was a warm-blooded animal, its corpse was not yet cold.
Zhen Jin now transformed into a complete iron level bat monkey.
The multi-transformations consumed a lot of magic.
“According to my prior speculation, transforming into a pure creature shape means the organs and the positioning between them are harmonious, thus the burden is carried mutually. But during multi-transformation, the magic crystal is burdened even more, causing magic to be used up more violently as a result.
Zhen Jin pushed down this speculation as he looked at the bat monkey corpse before him, he wanted to try something new.
After activating the core, four blood threads appeared again in his palm.
The blood threads twisted and permeated themselves. After a few breaths, the blood threads appeared again to completely change the bat monkey’s bat wings into essence, then they transported the essence into the core.
After Zhen Jin examined once, his heart became happy.
“Now, I can transform into a complete silver level bat monkey.”
Just as this thought left him, a red light rushed forth and covered his entire body.
In the red light, his vague figure rapidly grew, and his wings became wider. After the red light dissipated, a silver level bat monkey stood where Zhen Jin was.
“My strength has increased a bit; however it is no match for a monkey tail brown bear.”
“Sound……”
Zhen Jin took a deep breath and listened, he then realized a silver level bat monkey had a stronger sense of hearing and could receive sound at a broader range compared to an iron level bat monkey.
He tried to produce an ultrasound wave.
The first try succeeded.
In the scene that appeared in his mind, all kinds of things now presented themselves on the canvas. The canvas rapidly spread until it became blurry at two thousand meters.
“It seems the silver level bat monkey’s ultrasound examination range is double the amount of an iron level bat monkey’s.”
Zhen Jin shut himself up and stopped producing sound, then he opened his mouth again.
Ultrasound was produced successfully again.
And so as he tried over and over again, he discovered each ultrasound wave came out without a hitch.
“It seems I’m correct.”
“A silver level bat monkey has more stable vocal cords and stronger sound.”
“Every night I train these days, when the iron bat monkey form produces ultrasound, there will be some failures for every ten ultrasound waves I produce. Now that I am a silver level bat monkey, I have achieved a one hundred percent success rate.”
“My test this time has another result. Because I have absorbed many low level lifeforms of the same type, my bloodline information reserves are very complete. Absorbing a high level lifeform, even if it's incomplete, I only need a portion to obtain the bloodline information that allows me to transform into a complete high level lifeform.”
Zhen Jin quickly cleaned up the environment.
He also had another matter to do.
Tonight’s objective was not just a silver level bat monkey.
He used his feet to grab the rest of the bat monkey corpse, then he flapped his wings to rapidly ascend into the sky, leaving the scene of the murder.
After a half hour, he came to the habitat of a flying squirrel group.
This was the biggest flying squirrel group near the camp, and it had two silver level flying squirrels.
Zhen Jin flew to the edge, then he threw the silver level bat monkey corpse onto a tree and used ultrasound to scout out the area.
Flying squirrels were living in tree holes as well as underground, however under the ultrasound, all became visible.
Because there were differences between the flying squirrels’ life levels, there were differences in body types. There were some minute differences between iron level and bronze level flying squirrels, this allowed Zhen Jin to judge what their life level was.
Seeing there was no difference between this and prior results, Zhen Jin immediately flew into the flying squirrels’ territory.
Sensing an intruder, the flying squirrel group became agitated. Under the leadership of a silver level flying squirrel, the group flew at Zhen Jin.
Zhen Jin looked at the flying squirrel group approaching as he stood proud on a branch.
After waiting until they were sufficiently near, he opened his mouth and suddenly produced a soundwave attack.
He had mastered this sound wave attack technique earlier.
As far as practicing was concerned, producing ultrasound was harder than this soundwave attack for Zhen Jin.
Human ears could hear the soundwave, but they could not hear ultrasound. The essence of the soundwave attack was not a high frequency, but a strong breath that spurred the vocal cords into producing a louder sound.
Flying squirrels had a keen sense of hearing.
This organism dug underground to look for food, here sight could not work, but a strong sense of hearing would.
This advantage under the soundwave, became their fatal weakness.
Originally, Zhen Jin saw for himself a blue dog fox wolf command many iron level bat monkeys to produce soundwaves together, sustaining that attack could wipe out a silver level flying squirrel group.
Now that Zhen Jin was a silver level bat monkey, the soundwave attack he produced was more powerful than the one the iron level monkeys produced together.
Under the shroud of the soundwave, the still aggressive flying squirrel group collapsed with a loud bang; many flying squirrels were screaming and many of them immediately died from the soundwave.
The silver level flying squirrel still wanted to resist, however when Zhen Jin increased the volume again, the silver level flying squirrel died on the spot.
In a split second, Zhen Jin settled the fight.
Wanting to escape, more flying squirrels fled from their holes.
In a sense, bat monkeys could be considered the flying squirrels’ natural enemy.
The first to flee was the other silver level flying squirrel.
Of course Zhen Jin was not going to let it off. With another soundwave, he killed most of the flying squirrels and knocked out the other silver level flying squirrel.
Next, he used the core to absorb the flying squirrel corpses all around him.
The core’s magic reserves steadily rose, and eventually reached a new pinnacle.
Currently, Zhen Jin had not discovered the limit of his magic reserves.
Zhen Jin reflected as he killed, absorbed, and converted the two silver level flying squirrels.
After doing this, Zhen Jin’s flying squirrel form was also upgraded to the silver level!
“It's a pity I cannot produce an electrical discharge.”
In this aspect, Zhen Jin had tried many times but could never unearth this electrical discharge technique.
Zhen Jin could learn how bat monkeys produced ultrasound because ultrasound came from vocal cords trembling. Zhen Jin himself used vocal cords to speak, thus these actions were similar.
But discharging electricity was not.
Humans have never discharged electricity.
According to Cang Xu’s dissection, flying squirrels discharged electricity via tiny, sliced muscles throughout their bodies. These tiny, sliced muscles were similar to those in electric eels.
As a result, flying squirrels discharged electricity by moving their internal muscles. But Zhen Jin was unfamiliar with this, it was a blank space for him.
The problems with learning how to discharge electricity was greater than learning how to produce ultrasound.
Therefore, this time Zhen Jin did not kill the comatose bronze level and iron level flying squirrels, he intentionally preserved some of them.
“These are my house pets.”
Zhen Jin wanted to observe them and learn how they discharged electricity.
After cleaning the battlefield again and removing the ash the core’s conversion left behind, Zhen Jin took the silver level bat monkey carcass, the silver level flying squirrel carcass, and the comatose flying squirrels, and set off.
Due to consuming a lot of time and being far from camp, Zhen Jin decided to return.
The silver level bat monkey Zhen Jin soared through the air.
Because his hands and feet were holding carcasses, he could not jump through the undergrowth as he wished.
The cold night wind could not cool the boiling blood in Zhen Jin’s body.
Once, in order for Zhen Jin to deal with a flying squirrel group that only had one iron level chieftain, he had commanded everyone he led to use all of their strength.
After this night, his bat monkey and flying squirrel forms had been upgraded to the silver level.
The spear scorpion form was also at the silver level.
Because he had been eating a lot of bear and snake meat these days, he could transform into many parts of a monkey tail brown bear and a crocodile head hammer tail boa. The monkey tail brown bear form in particularly, was nearly complete.
“As long as I have enough time, I can become this island’s ruler!”
The cold wind whistled in Zhen Jin’s ears as he nimbly flapped his bat wings and controlled every gust of wind.
The spacious bat wings streaked across the treetops; the countless beasts in the pitch-black forest felt Zhen Jin’s life aura, and every single one of them either fled in a panic or cowered into a shivering ball of fear.
Zhen Jin looked at the forest under him, at that moment, he felt he was trampling the forest and the earth under his feet!
Despite not seeing anything, Zhen Jin could use ultrasound to examine all things within two kilometers, nothing could escape his ascertains.
“I am now the greatest hunter. No prey can escape my pursuit!”
“The reason why I am not killing them is simply because I don’t want to, not because I can’t.”
Soon after, the fires of the camp appeared at the edge of the horizon.
Zhen Jin looked for where he took off his clothes, then he temporarily discarded the magic beasts he was holding and changed back into a human form. After putting on his clothes and equipment, and tidying up properly, he took the possibly dead or living magic beasts to the camp gate.
“It's Lord Zhen Jin!”
“Goodness gracious, what did he come back with?”
After the guards discovered Zhen Jin, they began to cry out in surprise.
Zhen Jin faintly smiled, but his heart softly sighed, an unavoidable feeling of disappointment bubbled forth from it.
“Compared to my magic beast forms, my current body really is weak. I can only see the environment because of the flames and my ears seem to be stuffy.”
“My human form does not have much that can deal with Zong Ge. I must learn how to discharge electricity as soon as possible; steel armor conducts electricity easily.”
“There seems to be movement over in that part of camp? In a tent, Zong Ge seemed to sense something in his sleep, “Zhen Jin returned?”
Zong Ge’s heart guessed; he also knew of Zhen Jin customary nighttime patrols.
Tonight’s celebratory banquet made him worried, the exchange list made him even more sleepless tonight.
He already heard that this system had been designed and supplied by the scholar Cang Xu.
“This old fellow has great political skill.” Zong Ge’s understanding of Cang Xu deepened a layer.
If Zhen Jin forcefully incorporated people to his side, it would be a bad thing. It would be too impetuous because Zhen Jin could not truly resolve the contradictions between the two opposing sides.
The sailors were represented by Xi Suo while Zong Ge and Tripleblade represented the mercenaries. Because of the deep conflict between them and each guarding against the other, neither party genuinely felt at ease with the other.
If Zhen Jin forcefully incorporated them together, there would definitely be layers of severe internal contradictions that would reduce his authority and energy. If the contradictions were handled improperly, it would trigger terrible changes.
As long as they were handled improperly, Zong Ge would have a real chance. As long as these mercenaries lost hope in Zhen Jin, Zong Ge had an opportunity he could exploit that could bind these people to himself.
But Zhen Jin accepted Cang Xu’s system, and never gave Zong Ge an opportunity.
With this kind of system, Zhen Jin controlled crucial manufacturing technology, one could say his control was rising.
Fair?
Genuine fairness does not exist!
By controlling the manufacturing technology and precious means of production used to make crossbows and potions, Zi Di could set the prices of the exchange.
This in itself contained ample profits.
The exploitation had already begun when Zong Ge exchanged for the first time.
Continuing to use the exchange system was likely to give Zhen Jin’s side the biggest benefits. Take the foot lever and arm crossbows as an example. Zhen Jin’s group controlled the stronger foot lever crossbows and were starting to suppress Zong Ge’s group’s long range military strength.
Reusing a previous example, giving small private favors and benefits was likely to move the mercenaries to tears. Say for instance, if according to the exchange list you could only exchange for two bottles of potions, but I gave you an extra bottle because I found you to my liking, would you not be happy?
By actively controlling these gifts, even if Zhen Jin didn't do it personally, he could attract the hearts of the people, if it continued like this, Zong Ge would become a solitary person.
It was not that Zong Ge could not see it or did not understand it, but he had no methods to deal with it.
There was the close threat of the blue dog fox wolves, along with the distant difficulty of escaping the island that required sailors to control a ship.
Zong Ge knew he had to collaborate.
Since collaborating, his fighting methods were limited.
Cang Xu’s underhanded tactics did not spill blood, but like Zhen Jin’s map, it practically dug its way into the deepest part of Zong Ge.
The less cards one had, the more losses they suffered.
Originally, Zong Ge was at a disadvantage, and now this disadvantage had been exacerbated; Zong Ge already saw himself losing this battle.
“No, as long as I still breathe, I Zong Ge will never give up.”
“I still have a chance.”
“I am a silver level cultivator, even the gold level is just a step away.”
“If I cannot even keep this group of people, how can I stand out among my peers and be true to myself?”
“How can I achieve my father’s expectations and make him proud of me?”
The weak candlelight flickered in Zong Ge’s eyes as it gradually turned into light and shadow.
In the light and shadow, Zong Ge saw himself on the battlefield where his outstanding military service and honor constantly increased.
In the light and shadow, Zong Ge saw himself returning to his childhood castle with honor, his head high and his chest out. This time, he did not reside in a damp and tiny room.
He forged into the hall and partook in a ball.
The hall had a scarlet carpet, a crystal hanging lamp, and a long banquet table with fine food. Its walls had gigantic fine tapestries and invaluable famous paintings.
His heart sighed, finally he could truly enter this place.
He took the leading role in the ball and was the focus of countless debutantes.
After a dance, his father, because of formidable strength, had always maintained his appearance as the middle aged master of the castle. He was Zong Ge’s greatest lifelong idol, and now, he stood up and raised his full red cup of wine.
Afterwards, Zong Ge heard his father’s words echo through the hall: “Now, I have the great honor of introducing everyone to Zong Ge, he is also my son!”
The candlelight extinguished.
The light and shadow dissipated.
Zong Ge’s spirit returned to the dark tent as he gently caressed his arm.
Of course a layer of thick body hair was a distinctive feature of beastmen.
As he experienced countless times throughout his life, with this time being no different, Zong Ge felt a spontaneous feeling of disappointment at the bottom of his heart.
“If I were a pure blooded human, things would be so much better……”
Notes
At last, some backstory into ya boi Zong Ge. I wonder which poor beastmen had the misfortune of meeting Zong Ge’s father that caused him to grow up as a noble neglected bastard. Like I have said previously, all nobles are hybrids, which makes all of this casual racism strange. What is the difference between having a magic beast bloodline and having the bloodline of a sentient race? The answer is strength of course, the nobles are not filthy mutants, but paragons of society that have skills and traits beyond normal humans because...they said so.