Terrifying! Dangerous! Impossible to resist!
Feng Xue felt his entire body trembling—that was fear born from biological instinct, with no room for luck whatsoever. This thing was absolutely not something he could contend against.
Source Energy surged within his body. Although flesh-and-blood Source Energy couldn't strengthen his physique like internal energy or true qi, it could continuously reset his body's condition—equivalent to exchanging Source Energy for ATP.
Compared to Character Creation, which consumed more than half his energy with a single use, this consumption was negligible, more than enough to support Feng Xue running at a suicidal sprinter's pace at all times.
But this was clearly still not enough. Feng Xue couldn't care less about qi deviation now, pushing even the skills of Heavenly Martial Killing Path to their limit. Although wielding such a domineering martial art to flee was undoubtedly inefficient, it was still better than nothing no matter how you looked at it.
His figure shuttled rapidly through the trees, kicking up gusts of wind. Yet the tremors behind him only grew stronger. Feng Xue could even feel the fetid wind from the colossal beast's maw brush against the back of his neck.
"Faster! Even faster!" Feng Xue roared inwardly. To maintain his balance while sprinting madly, he didn't even have the leeway to turn his head and glance behind him. He could only rely on the vibrations in the ground to judge the Tusk Rhino Beast's position and direction.
But whether by coincidence or because the Tusk Rhino Beast had truly locked onto him, despite changing directions several times, Feng Xue could still feel the vibrations growing closer and closer.
"No good—it's about to catch up!"
Feeling the tremors that nearly bounced him into the air with every step the beast took, Feng Xue gritted his teeth and directly activated his skills—
"Rocket Headbutt! Nigerundayo! Activate!"
Following the mental command, the two skills activated simultaneously. A force with no apparent source suddenly acted upon the back of his head. In that instant, his body became a single unified whole, shooting straight forward like a rocket toward wherever his eyes faced.
Air resistance was instantly shattered. The independent multiplier of Nigerundayo's Gold Legendary entry was so supremely potent that it directly tripled Rocket Headbutt's speed. Triple the speed of sound instantly tore through the sound barrier, while the effect of "taking no damage from skills" firmly protected Feng Xue's body.
However, a mere three-second burst at triple the speed of sound was insufficient to shake off the madly charging colossal beast. When Rocket Headbutt's effect faded, Feng Xue—having already shot out three kilometers—felt the vibrations closing in again before he had even opened much distance. He suddenly stopped.
There were still twenty-seven seconds remaining on Nigerundayo's buff, but thanks to his brainpower boost, he had clearly realized the reality of the situation: with this colossal beast dead set on chasing him, escape was simply impossible.
"Damn it! I'll fight! Even if it's just a four-star prosthetic body, it's still Heavenly Martial Killing Path and Hell Sword!"
Feng Xue gritted his teeth and stood his ground. Operating under the mindset that he wouldn't truly die anyway, he assumed a combat stance and fully activated Heavenly Martial Killing Path and Hell Sword, preparing to deliver a head-on blow to the colossal beast. After all, by the survival logic of beasts, if he could make it realize that killing him might result in injury, there was a chance it would back down.
However, just as he pushed that momentum to the absolute limit...
Hwoosh—!
A violent wind pressure swept over from above his head. Even though it was more than ten meters up, the resulting air current nearly blew him away.
That hideous colossal beast covered in bone spines had actually... stepped right over him?!
"Holy shit! If I wasn't your target, why did you chase me no matter how I turned?"
Feng Xue was completely unable to comprehend the Tusk Rhino Beast's behavior, but the domineering killing intent of Heavenly Martial Killing Path, pushed to its limit, had already begun eroding this body's brain. Excessively secreted hormones amplified the violent factors within his body, forcing Feng Xue to expend effort suppressing this restlessness.
Looking now in the direction from which the colossal beast had charged, it was a scene of utter devastation—fallen giant trees, shattered earth—and amid the carnage, there was no sign of life whatsoever...
No, not completely devoid of life!
Feng Xue's gaze suddenly focused. Before the feeling of having narrowly escaped death had even faded, a heart-palpitating sensation far exceeding that of being chased by the colossal beast erupted without warning.
This wasn't a natural disaster like collapsing mountains or splitting earth, but rather a cold, sharp, fatal threat—as if a blade were already pressed against his heart.
His heart suddenly contracted, his blood seeming to freeze in an instant.
And his gaze finally confirmed the source of this sensation: right in the center of the great path—over twenty meters wide—that the colossal beast had plowed out, there stood a creature that looked like an arthropod-type kaijin from a tokusatsu film.
This thing was at most a little over two meters tall. Its appearance resembled a combination of a mantis and a beetle, yet it maintained a humanoid upright posture. No matter how you looked at it, it didn't seem like something nature could have evolved.
That pair of orange compound eyes showed no emotion, but that cold, chilling aura had already enveloped Feng Xue.
"So it was just 'as long as you run faster than the others'?"
Looking at this bizarre creature, Feng Xue more or less understood the mentality behind the Tusk Rhino Beast chasing him earlier. Perhaps it was precisely because of the abilities he had displayed that the beast believed he could delay this weird thing slightly?
But if that were the case, didn't that mean this thing was even stronger than the Tusk Rhino Beast? And... probably much, much stronger!
The strange insect seemed to advance in a leisurely manner, yet its speed was astonishingly fast. In the blink of an eye, it had already closed to barely twenty or thirty meters away.
The terrifying ice-cold aura stimulated the tyrannical will of Heavenly Martial Killing Path that Feng Xue had already pushed to its limit, prompting him to make a decision—
"Spinosaurus Form!"
An indescribable, bizarre sensation began spreading as the skill triggered. Feng Xue felt his spine rapidly lengthening, his waist involuntarily bending, his hands subconsciously curling against his chest, his neck stretching out, his body leaning forward. No further explanation was needed—Feng Xue could already imagine what kind of monstrous form he had taken.
But compared to the change in physique, what deserved his attention more was that the entire world seemed to slow down.
The receding tremors became disjointed, the desolate wind gained pauses between gusts, and that insect...
That insect!
Feng Xue's eyes captured the strange insect's lunge. The moment his will moved, Hell Sword instantly activated. The thirty-meter distance was traversed in an instant, and the insect's catapult-like advance was actually captured perfectly by Feng Xue.
The so-called explosive increase in agility wasn't simply a boost in output or reflexes, but rather—like in a game—a comprehensive enhancement of all attributes related to "speed." His brain's processing speed was also strengthened, allowing him to predict the strange insect's trajectory in a single glance. His neural reflexes were enhanced to transmit his brain's judgments to his body at the fastest possible speed. His muscular explosiveness was strengthened solely to convert the information transmitted by his nerves into results.
And the brainpower buff from Nigerundayo that had yet to end made this speed even faster still!
Thus, the sword struck!
I feel like Source Energy alone has already made the caliber of the predecessor civilization abundantly clear. This was a civilization capable of manipulating macroscopic matter at the information level, and it could directly write this kind of technology into the DNA of its descendants. The point isn't the DNA—it's that information affects macroscopic matter.
Secondly, I only said it can absorb and utilize conventional detection methods that use electromagnetic waves, preventing technological means from penetrating the cloak to confirm identity. Somehow, in the eyes of certain people, this became "completely absorbing electromagnetic waves," and they started rambling about perpetual motion machines. Me being able to turn off the lights means I'm gouging your eyes out, right?
What can I say? This is what brats who learn a little knowledge and can't wait to show it off are like.
Additionally, the post-apocalyptic setting means exactly this: I have it, I can even produce it, but I don't know why it works, nor can I necessarily process or utilize it.
For example, take a solar-powered cloning vat. Provide it with organic matter and water, and it can produce clones. A nascent civilization that doesn't even have language discovers it and believes it to be an altar. When the sun god's power is strongest, they take it out, offer livestock and wine, and receive a slave. You might say this thing is enough to develop an entire tech tree, but it's useless—barbarians' technology and intelligence only support them using this thing to make people.
Of course, perhaps a clone could awaken with abilities and lead the tribe to develop civilization, but what if the altar produced a piece of cloth? Even if it were made of perpetual motion machine material, the savages could only use it to make clothes. At best, they'd make a ghillie suit.
As for instruction manuals... not to look far, how many words of a modern cutting-edge paper could you understand if placed before you? If you simply handed C=πd to Zu Chongzhi, he wouldn't know what it was either!