Flesh Derivation? (Part One)

Zhang Chen carefully examined the chicken in his hands, a strange look appearing in his eyes. "It's really clean!"

All the blood inside the chicken had been drained completely, as if the entire chicken had never contained blood to begin with. Even the blood within its muscles had been sucked dry.

Not a single trace of blood remained! It was as though this creature had never possessed any blood at all.

"This method is truly unimaginable!" After inspecting it for a while and finding no difference between chicken meat whose blood he had drained and chicken meat from a normally slaughtered and bled chicken, Zhang Chen covered the chicken in mud again and directly made Beggar's Chicken.

Zhang Chen did not have to wait long before the fragrance of the chicken wafted over. The Beggar's Chicken was done roasting, its skin crisp and its meat tender, glistening richly with oil and looking utterly delectable.

Zhang Chen tore off a drumstick and put it in his mouth. After chewing a little, his eyes lit up. "Delicious! Not only is there no bloody smell, there's even an indescribable fresh fragrance!"

The entire chicken was completely free of any bloody odor. Since Zhang Chen had drained all its blood, the whole chicken became especially appetizing.

"Moreover, a chicken whose blood I've sucked dry is no different from one that was slaughtered and bled normally." Zhang Chen ate the entire chicken, his eyes shining brightly.

After finishing the chicken, Zhang Chen felt the blood throughout his body surge and boil. He seemed particularly strong today, and even the cold in the air felt weaker. Then, without another word, Zhang Chen picked up the pickaxe and began digging, repeatedly using a chisel to break apart the frozen soil.

Only after venting for quite some time did Zhang Chen finally stop. Once the blood flowing through his body gradually returned to normal, he tossed aside the pickaxe, left the underground cave, and basked in the sun to drive away the chill from his body.

"This third skill is no simple thing. If I can level it up in the future, its prospects will be boundless. I can't waste the third skill. Once I finish upgrading my first skill, I'll upgrade the third and second skills. The third skill is a godly life-saving skill." Zhang Chen looked at the Golden Finger Interface, but the next moment he froze in place. An astonished expression appeared on his face as he dragged out his cry, "Ten thousand Experience Points?"

Name: Zhang Chen

Skill 1 (Second Tier): Light of the Righteous God (0/5000)

Skill 2 (Unranked): Dragon Qi (0/2000)

Skill 3 (Unranked): Bloodsucking (0/10000)

Points: 4600

Zhang Chen carefully examined the stone tablet before him, disbelief flashing in his eyes. Only after looking it over again did he confirm that he had not misread it. For the third skill to go from unranked to ranked, it actually required ten thousand points. This skill was even more outrageous than the second skill.

"This means the third skill has far greater potential than the second. Getting the third skill ranked would be enough to upgrade both my second and first skills together. I already have the power to suck blood. I wonder what unimaginable means it will possess once it becomes ranked."

Zhang Chen studied it for a while, then finally shifted his gaze away from the third skill and onto his points.

Those ten thousand Experience Points were enough to make Zhang Chen stop in his tracks. It was simply beyond anything he could imagine—at least, beyond anything he could imagine right now.

"Points increase too slowly. The stone tablet only drops one Experience Point each time now. The consumption and returns are completely out of balance." Zhang Chen looked at his points, then recalled his own speculation. "Continuously attacking the stone tablet causes it to suffer heavy damage, after which it drops points. If I completely wipe out the stone tablet, will it be like killing a boss in a game and drop some kind of 'big surprise'?"

Zhang Chen pondered for a moment, then looked at his points. Four thousand six hundred points seemed to have become a bottleneck. The threshold of five thousand was clearly right before his eyes, yet he could not break through it.

"I'll kill the stone tablet first. I want to see what happens after killing one of these strange things." With that thought, Zhang Chen stood up. He no longer hurried to excavate the ancient tomb, instead focusing his attention on the stone tablet and repeatedly using Light of the Righteous God to provoke it.

Experience Points +1

Experience Points +1

Experience Points +1

Experience Points +1

Experience Points +1

Zhang Chen's golden light continuously struck the stone tablet, forcing it to keep dropping points. Yet after fifty attacks from Zhang Chen, blood no longer flowed from the stone tablet. Even the +1 Experience Points had disappeared.

Name: Zhang Chen

Skill 1 (Second Tier): Light of the Righteous God (0/5000)

Skill 2 (Unranked): Dragon Qi (0/2000)

Skill 3 (Unranked): Bloodsucking (0/10000)

Points: 4650

After Zhang Chen's Experience Points rose to four thousand six hundred and fifty, the stone tablet no longer dropped any points at all. If not for the crimson threads within the stone tablet still writhing madly, he might have mistaken the stone tablet before him for an ordinary one.

At this moment, Zhang Chen had no intention of continuing to raise the strange stone tablet. These strange things possessed unfathomable methods; if he accidentally raised a tiger that would one day devour him and ended up hurting himself, that would be disastrous.

For him, the proper path was to upgrade Light of the Righteous God, search for more strange things, and learn more about them.

Raising strange things was not the righteous path. Zhang Chen feared being devoured by the backlash.

Yet after Zhang Chen struck it for an entire day, the stone tablet showed no reaction. The crimson threads inside it continued writhing, showing no sign of diminishing. Seeing the sky gradually darken and feeling the underground grow increasingly cold, Zhang Chen had no choice but to leave the pit of the tomb.

Zhang Chen went to the stream to bathe. However, when he saw that the stream's waterline had dropped by another great stretch, he could not help frowning. But there was nothing he could do to stop such power of heaven and earth. He could only let nature take its course and allow the waterline to fall.

After washing up, Zhang Chen went to the beehive, chopped up a drumstick he had saved from noon, and began feeding his hornets.

Once he had finished feeding the hornets, Zhang Chen began considering how to catch birds. Birds were not easy to catch, but that was no difficulty for Zhang Chen. So long as he could get within a hundred meters, he could catch even an eagle for you to see.

"What kind of bird should I catch?" Zhang Chen pondered inwardly.

Since he was going to catch a bird, Zhang Chen naturally did not want an ordinary one. He wanted to catch a more formidable bird of prey, one he could take into the mountains for hunting.

Zhang Chen wandered aimlessly through the mountains with a basket on his back. Suddenly, a cold, piercing cry rang out from the sky. It seemed to split the heavens apart, startling the birds in the mountains into scattering in all directions. Like a herd of deer encountering a fierce tiger, they panicked and plunged into the woods.

Zhang Chen followed the sound and looked up into the sky. His pupils contracted as he saw a black speck streak across the air, followed by a wild goose tumbling from the heavens.

"Peregrine falcon!"

In his previous life, Zhang Chen had often followed his second granduncle into the mountains to hunt. At a glance, he recognized the origin of that black speck in the sky. Such a fierce and powerful cry was highly distinctive.