After instructing Chen Yaoguang to manage the factory properly, Su Jie carried ten thousand scorpions back to his rented room in the urban village.
Ten thousand scorpions sounded like a lot, but their actual weight was only thirty or forty kilograms.
Su Jie's physical fitness was far beyond that of an ordinary person. It was nothing special in the Tianyuan World, but carrying this amount of stuff was still easy for him.
After entering the rental room, Su Jie released the Thousand-Hand Centipede, which had long been waiting impatiently.
"Go on. These are all your food."
Sizzle!
The Thousand-Hand Centipede reared upright and excitedly burrowed into the box.
In an instant, the scorpions lying quietly inside seemed to have encountered a natural enemy. They frantically scurried in all directions, desperately trying to escape.
The Thousand-Hand Centipede inside the box excitedly shook its antennae, as if it had arrived in heaven, releasing pheromones filled with extreme excitement.
Like someone eating potato chips, it grabbed a scorpion and bit down with a crisp crackle. After just two or three bites, it crushed and swallowed it, then pounced on the next one.
Some scorpions were enraged and raised their tails toward the Thousand-Hand Centipede. Their fate was obvious.
Although the Thousand-Hand Centipede was also an unranked Gu worm, it had ultimately come from the Tianyuan World.
After half a year of cultivation by Su Jie, whether in strength, agility, defense, or venom, it was far beyond what these scorpions could harm.
The scorpions that dared attack merely became delicious morsels in the Thousand-Hand Centipede's mouth even faster, chewed up and swallowed with crisp crunches.
Perhaps Su Jie had starved the Thousand-Hand Centipede too harshly in the past. Now that it saw so much delicious food, it was like a mouse entering a rice jar, hunting madly without stopping its mouth for even a moment.
In just over ten minutes, several hundred scorpions had been devoured by the Thousand-Hand Centipede.
Su Jie noticed that the luster of the Thousand-Hand Centipede's chitinous shell had begun to change, gradually turning from a deep color to translucent.
"It's about to shed its skin and enter the ranks."
Su Jie's eyes lit up. As his natal Gu worm, the Thousand-Hand Centipede's current condition was something he could sense.
It was a signal of accumulated strength finally bursting forth, of vigorous life striving to transform.
Another hour passed. The Thousand-Hand Centipede had eaten at least a thousand scorpions, turning them into nutrients for its bodily growth.
Having eaten too much, its movements changed from their previous ferocity. It lay languidly in place without moving.
In the end, it even curled into a ball. Its outer skin hardened into a shell, while its body struggled and twisted outward bit by bit.
"It's beginning its transformation into the ranks. It seems my idea was right. Quantity can make up for the resources the Thousand-Hand Centipede needs."
Su Jie was overjoyed. What he saw was not merely the Thousand-Hand Centipede advancing and transforming, but also hope for its future growth.
The poisonous creatures on Blue Star were far inferior to those in the Tianyuan World. However, in the Tianyuan World, people cultivated Gu worms by capturing insects in the wild and raising them. There was no modern large-scale cultivation.
Su Jie, on the other hand, could make up the difference for the Thousand-Hand Centipede through overwhelming numbers.
When quality falls short, quantity makes up for it. The abundant productive power of modern society was something the Tianyuan World lacked.
The Thousand-Hand Centipede's evolution took several hours, and Su Jie stayed beside it the entire time.
Finally, after three hours, the Thousand-Hand Centipede, having completed its transformation, crawled out of its old skin. Its tender new skin was faintly red, and its body length had grown from fifty centimeters to roughly 1.2 meters.
Looking closely, its shell was pitch-black and glossy, while its head bore sinister, savage mandibles, exuding a fierce and baleful air.
In addition, the Thousand-Hand Centipede was called Thousand-Hand in name, but it actually had only forty-four pale human hands beneath its abdomen.
Now that number had doubled, reaching a full eighty-eight pale human hands.
"Haha, it's entered the ranks! I have a low-grade Gu worm now too."
Su Jie foolishly laughed as he hugged the newborn Thousand-Hand Centipede, carefully examining it again and again. No matter how long he looked, he could not get enough.
Gu worms were divided into high, middle, and low grades. Among the outer disciples, not many possessed low-grade Gu worms; most controlled unranked Gu worms.
Once a Gu worm entered the ranks, even if it was only low-grade, its ability and strength would increase tremendously.
"Wait, that's not right. It isn't merely low-grade. Has it completed one Spirit Refinement?"
Suddenly, Su Jie seemed to notice something. His voice filled with surprise as he looked at the Thousand-Hand Centipede's forehead.
A ring of markings resembling concentric tree rings had appeared on its forehead.
Between high-, middle-, and low-grade Gu worms, each grade also had a special advancement branch known as Spirit Refinement.
Spirit Refinement was a special form of metamorphic development in Gu worms, like a tadpole transforming into a frog or a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly.
Ranked Gu worms could undergo metamorphic development to further increase their strength, and they would often gain new special abilities as well.
Each grade could undergo Spirit Refinement at most three times, hence the saying of three grades and nine refinements.
The strongest Gu worms were high-grade, nine-refinement Gu worms.
Spirit Refinement was extremely difficult. It required the coordination of resources, luck, environment, and various other factors, making it something that could only be encountered by chance.
Few outer disciples even had low-grade Gu worms, much less ones that had undergone Spirit Refinement. Even a single refinement was extraordinary.
Su Jie had never expected that the Thousand-Hand Centipede would not only enter the ranks but also complete one Spirit Refinement along the way. It was now a low-grade, First Refinement Gu worm.
This starting point already surpassed that of most outer disciples.
The Thousand-Hand Centipede had no idea how excited Su Jie was. Having just evolved, it was extremely hungry, all its nutrition having been consumed by the evolution. It immediately rolled into the scorpion box and began devouring scorpions in great mouthfuls once more.
The Thousand-Hand Centipede's pale hands beneath its abdomen pressed down, and large numbers of scorpions turned blue across their bodies. Once the venom entered them, they were poisoned to death on the spot.
This was an ability the Thousand-Hand Centipede had possessed from the beginning. After entering the ranks, both the venom's potency and its speed of onset had increased greatly.
Whoosh!
Several of the eighty-eight pale hands beneath the Thousand-Hand Centipede's abdomen suddenly broke off at the roots. As if they possessed lives of their own, they swiftly pounced out to hunt, grabbed scorpions, and delivered them to the Thousand-Hand Centipede's mouth.
The arms then burrowed back into the broken openings beneath its abdomen, quickly bonding and healing. The sight was eerie and terrifying.
Su Jie knew that this was the new ability the Thousand-Hand Centipede had acquired: its arms could detach from its body and move independently.
The several thousand scorpions in the box were just enough to make one satisfying meal for the Thousand-Hand Centipede, whose needs had greatly increased after entering the ranks.
Half an hour later, all the scorpions in the box had been devoured.
Su Jie lifted the Thousand-Hand Centipede, now a whole circle fatter, and placed it on his body before circulating the Hundred Poisons Gu Refining True Scripture.
The Thousand-Hand Centipede clung tightly to Su Jie's waist and abdomen. Su Jie could feel its cold touch gradually spreading throughout his body before entering his meridians and flesh.
Gradually, the spiritual power within Su Jie's body became more active.
It was like a river scouring a dried-up riverbed. His spiritual power, body, and mind all felt refreshed, and everything fell into place as his strength broke through to the third layer of Spirit Infusion.
He had originally needed another year of painstaking cultivation to advance, but with the assistance of the feedback from the low-grade, First Refinement Thousand-Hand Centipede, that year of painstaking effort was effortlessly saved.
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