Good Material

"My goodness."

After Yao Leden landed, she did not argue. Instead, she blurted out a local saying and stared blankly at the Ironclad Boar with a huge hole twisted through its head, then glanced at Li Ye's fingers smeared with red and white matter.

"Are your hands really that hard?"

Even striking an Ironclad Boar with a weapon was like hitting iron. Killing one took a great deal of time, and other demons and monsters were far more dangerous than Ironclad Boars.

Yao Leden had seen people who followed the Adamantine Gate path before. Even Yang Jie from their own school counted as halfway through that gate. Having him withstand an Ironclad Boar's attack would not be a problem, but having him instantly kill one was completely beyond his ability.

Those who trained the Adamantine Gate all cultivated some strength, but who did it like Li Ye? One grab, and he bored a hole straight through it.

"What are you doing, flying all over the place? Are you really going all out like this? Shouldn't you save some stamina? It's still early."

Yao Leden said, "It'll still take several days to clear this trial."

"I can't wait several days." Li Ye smiled.

Several days?

How much time would that split apart?

Since he was already here, naturally it was best to clear everything in one go.

"Perfect, I ran into you guys, so I'll give this to you." He held out his fist.

Yao Leden: "..."

"No, isn't this a little too fast? We've only known each other for a week. Even if you're exceptionally gifted and your future is boundless, you still have to let me think about it!"

"What is it?"

Li Ye opened his hand and showed her the Green Bamboo Dart Mantis poking out a tiny head. "Didn't you want to collect them? This should be worth quite a bit, right?"

Yao Leden's eyes lit up. "A Green Bamboo Dart Mantis? You caught it alive?"

As she spoke, she took out her phone, turned on the rear flash, and shone it on the mantis. At once, the mantis, whose little head had still been struggling, stopped moving.

The Ironclad Boar's weak points were its eye sockets and rear passage, and those required physical strikes. The Green Bamboo Dart Mantis's weakness was its fear of direct strong light. It usually lived beneath tree shade and came out at night.

Catching one during the day was indeed rare.

"I'll take it! If you sell it to me, the school would normally pay ten thousand. How about this—I'll give you twelve thousand, a twenty percent premium." Yao Leden said.

"What?!"

Deng Hao exclaimed, "Twelve thousand for this bug? Is it made of gold?"

"Do you even understand what ornamental value means?"

Yao Leden took the mantis, keeping her phone's rear light trained on it and not daring to loosen her grip. "Look at that jade-like color under the light. Look at those forelegs, like glass-grade jade. It's worth more than jade. Keeping one after catching it is ornamental enough, and if you sell it to someone who likes this sort of thing, it'll go for twenty thousand."

Buying bugs for display.

Though they did not understand it, people who liked this sort of thing did exist.

"Don't underestimate how useful demons and monsters can be, especially mutated animals and plants like these. Take Ironclad Boars—though their meat tastes awful, they can indeed be used for seasoning. Their most valuable part is still their hide; shoes made from it are all high quality."

"For a hard-to-catch Green Bamboo Dart Mantis like this, leaving aside its ornamental value, its forelegs can be used as material for ophthalmic micro-carving blades. The tiny dart-spines beneath its wings are also an excellent painkiller. You've bought 'Mantis Wind Pain Relief Patches,' right? This is the main ingredient."

"Huh? This is the main ingredient?" Jia Dong froze for a moment.

They really had bought those before. When training martial arts at the gym, who did not end up bruised black and blue all over? Stick one on the painful spot, and it worked extremely quickly.

The traditional medicine of this world was far stronger than in his previous life, especially in Divine Land, where it stood above modern medicine.

There was no helping it. Too many things could be used as medicinal ingredients. Some demons and monsters were great scourges, but some also carried healing effects.

Every ingredient Li Ye ate had excellent effects, far surpassing the medicinal cuisine from his previous life.

Take eggs, for example. Everyone knew eating more eggs could strengthen immunity, promote brain development, and protect eyesight, but in his previous life, no one took it seriously because of how weak the effects were.

But here, as long as something was related to demons and monsters, even an egg had an extremely obvious effect.

"Brother Ye."

After obtaining one, Yao Leden immediately said with a beaming smile, "Let's look for more. If we get a few more of these, we won't even need to do this trial."

"Do you think they're cabbages? I don't have time to run errands for you either. I just happened to see you while passing by. If I hadn't run into you, I might have crushed it to death. We'll see later."

Li Ye had come to earn Nutrient Solution, not to work for Yao Leden.

After saying that, he kicked out another blast of air, rose several steps in succession, and vanished again like a swimming dragon.

Deng Hao watched Li Ye disappear, then glanced at the Ironclad Boar below with its head hollowed out. After a pause, he asked, "Whose does this count as?"

"Normally, dedicated people analyze and assess it, then calculate the points. Don't worry."

Yao Leden said, "It definitely won't count as yours. After all, you didn't provide any assistance, and you nearly got hit by its counterattack."

"Then didn't we work for nothing?"

"What else did you expect? You think you can leech experience? If a big shot is dead set on stealing your monster, you won't get even a hair. Rest up, then let's find the next one. Searching for traces of demons and monsters is part of the trial too."

Once Li Ye got ruthless, the Martial Arts Students basically had no game left to play. Whenever he found the highly conspicuous Ironclad Boars, he would leap down. Whether someone was already fighting one or not, he would raise a hand and grab, taking the Ironclad Boar's life before moving again.

In just two or three hours, every visible Ironclad Boar in the trial area had been slaughtered by Li Ye.

Only after he looked down from the air and confirmed that he could no longer find any trace of an Ironclad Boar did he land on the trunk of a giant tree atop a mountain peak and sit down to rest.

"There really weren't many."

Li Ye estimated that he had only killed around fifty before no more Ironclad Boars could be seen.

"Next, I'll have to search for them."

Green Bamboo Dart Mantises were somewhat difficult to find. During the day, encountering one was purely a matter of luck. As for nighttime, Dragon Mountain did not allow trials at night.

There were few other types of demons and monsters as well, but Li Ye knew of one that Dragon Mountain should still have some of, a broad category much like the Ironclad Boar.

Whirlpool Saliva Grey Toads—frogs that generally lived in places with water.

The mountain had flowing streams. While using Lightness Skill to bound around everywhere, he had seen signs of streams. Following them should let him find this kind of demon and monster.

After resting for more than ten minutes, Li Ye leaped up again. He borrowed force from the tree trunk with a step, then used the momentum to tread through empty air.

Not far from Dragon Mountain stood a small Barracks. On one of the monitoring screens inside, several staff members watched over a hundred video feeds that left nowhere in the trial grounds to hide, while another surveillance screen displayed several first-person perspectives.

"This kid's pretty ruthless."

One staff member pointed at a video feed showing someone moving swiftly through the air, with most of the footage in the sky and only occasional descents to kill Ironclad Boars.

The drone footage also recorded a short-haired youth in a silver-white school uniform, cleanly and decisively piercing through demon and monster skulls with a single strike.

"He practices gate-breaking martial arts? Which school came to Dragon Mountain this time?" an officer-like man beside him asked.

"It's still No. 14 Middle School. Their trial isn't over yet. It only ends after this trial is completed."

The officer was taken aback. "Other than that little girl from the Fu family, that school has someone this formidable? Last time, there was one with pretty good Lightness Skill. I don't seem to have seen him this time, and he wasn't nearly this fast when he struck."

Before summer vacation, No. 14 Middle School had also trained at Dragon Mountain. Two students had left a deep impression on them. One was a two-meter-tall student, who was here now and had decent horizontal-training martial arts.

The other had excellent Lightness Skill. His claw techniques were also quite good, and he could likewise kill demons and monsters easily, but he did not seem as clean and decisive as this person.

So decisive that even this officer was somewhat astonished.

His Lightness Skill could only be called fairly good, but when he attacked, he crushed everything in his path like dead wood before a gale.

An Ironclad Boar's outer hide had extremely high toughness. Even handgun bullets could barely pierce it and would lodge beneath the skin. Yet this person could make a hole with one grab. Such people were rare at No. 14 Middle School.

"The Ironclad Boars are gone?" The officer noticed a problem.

"All the ones we released are gone."

The staff member said, "Should we release another batch? Otherwise, at this rate, they'll finish this trial in a single day."

"There should be however many there should be. Why release more? If we release more this time, what about next time? We were clearing out this batch to begin with. We're not serving the schools—we're only giving them a hand on the side."

The officer waved a hand, then looked back at the screen. "Are you sure we haven't seen this person before?"

The staff member said, "No. He should be a newly promoted Martial Arts Student."

The officer nodded. "Check who he is afterward. If he meets the conditions, see whether he's signed a contract. If not, sign him to a targeted contract."