Bomb Caterpillars

"Blue forest!"

Without a doubt, this subverted Du Ke's expectations. For a long time, the concept of green plants had been deeply ingrained, as if photosynthesis had to be completed by chlorophyll.

Fortunately, despite his shock, Du Ke quickly came to terms with it. The New World didn't have chlorophyll; it wasn't unreasonable for it to use blue pigment instead.

However, when he looked up at the sky, he was startled again. There were two suns in the sky. The sun on the left was slightly smaller, and the sun on the right was slightly larger. This was clearly a "solar system" in a binary star system.

"Good thing there aren't three suns, or I'd suspect I'd transmigrated to The Three-Body Problem."

Two suns in the sky, mountains in the distance, and the forest before him were all blue. The fallen leaves on the ground were gray-black, and a colorful caterpillar was crawling.

After confirming there was no danger, Du Ke took a deep breath and stepped into this New World.

One step away, and it was already billions of light-years apart. As he arrived in the New World, enveloped by his Mind Armor, crossing the dimensions of space and time, all his senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—instantly flooded him. Chirping bird calls and insect noises filled the entire Great Blue Forest.

He didn't rush to wander through the Great Blue Forest. Instead, he squatted down and picked up a colorful caterpillar crawling on a fallen leaf, wanting to discern the differences between the creatures of the New World and those of Earth.

But as his fingers just touched the colorful caterpillar.

Suddenly, as if sensing him, the caterpillar arched its body, and its hairs shot out like rain, hitting Du Ke's Nano Armor gloves and quickly exploding.

Pop, pop, pop!

The explosions weren't intense, but Du Ke's titanium alloy nano gloves were corroding at a visible rate under the impact of the explosions.

"What the hell!"

Du Ke, startled, immediately dispersed the nano gloves, shook off the corrosive substance produced by the explosions, and quickly materialized new nano gloves.

"It's just a caterpillar, does it have to be this fierce!"

Swallowing his saliva, he materialized a glass shield in front of him, then materialized a pair of ceramic tweezers, attempting to grab the caterpillar with them. But the caterpillar arched its body again, and a batch of hairs flew out, hitting the glass shield and exploding with a pop, shattering the glass.

Du Ke was forced to continuously change the materials, trying to see what could block the caterpillar's hair bombs. However, even after the caterpillar had shot out all its hairs, no material could block these hair bombs.

"Terrifying, truly terrifying. Fortunately, I made thorough preparations, or I wouldn't even know how I died here!" Still shaken, Du Ke's eyes flashed. He used tweezers to pinch the colorful caterpillar, which had no more hair bombs to shoot—no, it was now a white-skinned caterpillar.

Without its colorful hairs, the caterpillar revealed its white skin.

It was about a finger long and somewhat stout. After pinching it, he took out a test tube, put the caterpillar inside, capped it, and then placed it in a temporary storage box on his Nano Armor's arm.

"This thing is definitely valuable. I can take it back to study slowly... it's just that its long hairs are gone. I wonder if they can grow back."

In his opinion, the greatest value of this colorful caterpillar lay in its hair bombs that could explode at any time.

"Let's call you a Bomb Caterpillar." While researching the colorful caterpillar, Du Ke had already taken photos and recorded videos, storing the data on a solid-state drive.

He planned to record the entire journey to the New World, documenting every detail.

He stood up and walked. Encountering just one caterpillar had been so dangerous, he walked cautiously, afraid of accidentally stepping on a fallen leaf and causing it to explode. He first approached a large tree. The leaves and branches of the tree canopy were blue, a slightly aged blue.

The trunk was blue-gray, with deep, cracked ravines.

Suddenly.

He spotted another Bomb Caterpillar on a part of the trunk higher up, and his scalp tingled. This Bomb Caterpillar seemed to be coming down. Du Ke hesitated, wanting to run—he really didn't want to be blasted again. After all, the materials consumed for his armor were Mind Power.

But he was reluctant to leave. He wanted the hair bombs from the Bomb Caterpillar.

"These hair bombs only explode when they are launched. So, if I kill the Bomb Caterpillar directly, will it not shoot them out and explode?"

With this thought, he waited for the Bomb Caterpillar to crawl down step by step. When it reached a suitable position close to him.

He quickly drew his dagger and, aiming at the Bomb Caterpillar, slashed it. With a clang, he chopped the unsuspecting Bomb Caterpillar onto the tree trunk. This method was indeed effective. Perhaps because it was stuck on the tree trunk, the Bomb Caterpillar couldn't arch its body to shoot out its hairs.

So this time, none of its hairs exploded.

After waiting for more than ten seconds, the Bomb Caterpillar died. Du Ke then carefully picked up the Bomb Caterpillar's corpse, put it into another test tube. He also pulled off a few hairs and then tried to cut them with a knife or smash them with a stone, to see how the hair bombs could be activated to explode.

The result was that neither cutting with a knife nor smashing with a stone caused the hair bombs to explode. It seemed these were just ordinary caterpillar hairs.

However, when he poked the hairs into the tree trunk with the tweezers, the hair bombs suddenly exploded.

"So that's how it is. The tips of these hair bombs have a trigger mechanism. As long as the tips collide, they will explode immediately. Otherwise, they won't."

A very interesting triggering principle.

He searched several blue trees nearby and in a short while found dozens of Bomb Caterpillars. This extinguished his idea of climbing the trees. He didn't want to encounter Bomb Caterpillars and be subjected to a barrage of hair bombs. This area of trees seemed to be occupied by Bomb Caterpillars, with no other creatures.

Du Ke walked a few quick steps, wanting to get out of the Bomb Caterpillars' territory.

Suddenly, a small black bird flew over and perched on a branch. It watched Du Ke, who was encased in Nano Armor, for a moment. Then, ignoring him, it quickly flew up and snatched a Bomb Caterpillar from the tree trunk. Pop, pop, pop, explosions sounded near the bird's beak.

But a bright light flashed on the bird's beak and head, blocking these explosions completely. They didn't harm it at all.

Gulp, gulp.

The black bird swallowed the Bomb Caterpillar whole.

"What is this flash?" Du Ke stared, stunned. Bomb Caterpillars were novel enough, but now there was a bird that could flash and block explosions, "Is this magic?" The concept of magic suddenly appeared in his mind. That flash that blocked the explosions really looked like a magic shield.

Thinking this.

Du Ke raised his right hand. On the arm of his Nano Armor, a very large caliber gun barrel quickly extended. He aimed at the black bird and fired directly.

Bang!

What shot out wasn't a bullet, but a net of silk threads. This was Du Ke's improved net gun. Inspired by the net guns used by the police to apprehend criminals, it was modified by him to shoot farther and faster. He designed it to capture small animals alive in the New World, and catching birds was no problem.

The black bird had never seen such luxurious equipment. In its moment of surprise, it was caught in the silk net.

It reacted immediately, trying to break free from the silk net. But the edges of the silk net had weighted warheads. Under the pressure of gravity, the silk net firmly trapped it. A faint light kept flashing around the black bird's body, like a layer of light hovering on its surface, but it was useless against the silk net.