Third Kind Encounter: A Dragon Feast Carnival for the Slimes!

Li Wei woke from the Inheritance Mark, still feeling oddly unsatisfied, only to discover that he was not in the limestone cave. He had returned to the Soul Space filled with glowing Inheritance Mark orbs!

Is it because I haven't woken up from hunger yet? Does this mean I can choose another one? The thought immediately lifted Li Wei's spirits, though he soon grew doubtful again.

By all logic, he had thought his food intake would not even be enough to "watch" through the Silver Dragon Miss's first day of survival. Yet in the end, it was his own mind that had become too shocked and overstimulated by her endless outrageous stunts to keep the dream going.

Li Wei glanced at the inheritance orb still floating quietly before him. He memorized its appearance deeply, but did not choose to enter it again.

In his view, since Sylvie had successfully infiltrated the Red Dragons by taking over someone else's nest and had even found a legendary Tool Dragon to provide her with blood food, there was probably nothing useful to learn from her in the short term.

Besides, the Silver Dragon Miss's various outrageous stunts were far too unlike anything a normal dragon would do. He was afraid he could not learn them.

Rather than that, he might as well find a Spell Ability that was easy to learn and practical. When he had more time next time, he could come back and unlock new moves with the Silver Dragon Miss.

Just as Li Wei chose his next target and used fart power to scoot himself in front of it, preparing to enter the mark, the light orb before him suddenly burst with a splat, turning into countless streams of data made up of zeros and ones!

"What is going on?!" Li Wei was dumbfounded by the scene before him.

He abruptly looked up and saw that it was not just the orb in front of him. Every inheritance orb within his field of vision, including Sylvie's, burst as if a chain reaction had been triggered, turning into frenzied streams of silver light that swept outward.

At the same time, cracks began appearing in the formerly stable Soul Space, as though countless unfamiliar streams of data were invading it!

Li Wei was merely brushed by a thread of silver data, yet an incalculable number of chaotic image fragments flashed before his eyes. There were simply too many for his mind to keep up with.

It was like stuffing dozens of gigabytes of compressed files into a 486 processor, nearly causing it to crash on the spot!

Then, a line of text filled with interference ripples suddenly appeared in his consciousness, as if it were being encoded and entered in real time:

[Emergency situation encountered. According to relevant conduct protocols, a data connection is hereby requested. Temporary requisition of the Current Organism: carbon-based life-form. Yes? OR No?]

Li Wei was instantly alarmed! He swore that the text that had suddenly appeared before him was neither Chinese nor any language he had seen in dragon inheritance.

Moreover, the textual data was clearly suffering enormous interference, continuously producing garbled characters as though it might cut off at any moment.

Yet when he saw the text, it was as if a simultaneous interpreter had allowed him to understand the meaning of those characters.

Before he could process the enormous amount of information in that message, lines upon lines of characters rapidly refreshed before his eyes again like an avalanche:

[Rejected. This request violates Article 113, Case 4. Current Organism detected to have suffered Level 6 contamination. Physical destruction recommended. Execute?]

[Execution refused. This request violates Article 6, Case 1.]

An inexplicable crackling noise suddenly rang out.

[ΓΔΘΞΠΣΥΦΨΩαβγδεζηθικλμνξπρστυφψωЁБГДЕЖЗИ]

After a lengthy stretch of garbled text, it transformed into characters he could understand again.

[Command executing. District G Storage Unit No. 46 military enemy-elimination drone swarm starting. Start failed. Searching for cause of failure. Search failed. Executing backup plan.]

[Backup plan sequence elevated. Command executing. War Apostle activating. Activation failed. Searching for cause of failure. Search failed. Executing backup plan.]

[Backup plan sequence elevated. Command executing. Stellar Core Gravitational Collapse Generator activating. Activation failed. Searching for cause of failure. Search failed. Executing backup plan.]

[Backup plan sequence elevated. Command executing. Ultron Psionic Primordial Laser Cannon mainframe starting. Start failed. Searching for cause of failure. Search failed. Executing backup plan.]

[Backup plan cannot be executed. Unknown interference encountered during data upload. Upload failed. Executing backup plan.]

[Restated: Emergency situation encountered. According to relevant conduct protocols, computational logic and behavioral methods are hereby altered. A data connection is requested. Temporary requisition of the Current Organism: carbon-based life-form. Yes? OR No?]

In the span of only a few thoughts, the strings before his eyes had refreshed at least ten thousand times like a waterfall! They had even crazily fallen into some kind of logical infinite loop.

Only then did Li Wei realize something was wrong. At first, he had found it somewhat amusing. Could this be the cheat ability every transmigrator gets finally coming online? But now that he looked at it, what cheat ability was this? It was clearly a death warrant!

Seeing that the text was increasingly showing signs of losing even basic logic, while the data-font grew larger and larger as though it were about to slap him across the forehead, and his Soul Space was on the verge of collapse, Li Wei decisively spoke in his mind the instant that requisition request looped around again:

"I refuse!"

The moment his words rang out, all the characters before him came to an abrupt stop.

Like a mutt lifting its hind leg and happily pissing a river, only to suddenly be shouted at—its sphincter clamped shut, though a single drop still leaked out:

[Warning. Current life-form vital signs detected to be in critical condition. Whether—]

Li Wei was horrified at the sight of that text. Before it could finish appearing, he suddenly opened his eyes!

Let us turn back time to the moment Li Wei fell asleep.

Inside the mottled, damp limestone cave, a dog-sized Silver Dragon had buried his upper body in a dirt pit and fallen into a deep sleep. Thick saliva continuously dripped from his jaw, only for him to lick it back up.

Each sweep of his tongue also brought back quite a few stones and clumps of dirt. He smacked his lips as if they tasted pretty good.

However, Li Wei's physical condition was far from optimistic. During his fight and escape from the Kobold Tribe, he had suffered many puncture wounds. The tender scales in some places had curled back, exposing red-and-green blood vessels, fascia, and even stark white bone beneath.

The wound at the bone membrane of his Right Wing in particular had been pierced through by a Stone Spear dangerously close to a vein. Dark red blood kept flowing out, gathering into a small puddle beneath him in only a short time.

On top of that, he had eaten far too little before falling asleep. The nutrients and energy in his body were not even enough to sustain sleep and growth, so his wounds were healing extremely slowly.

Outside the cave, the little creature Li Wei had once said looked rather distinctive poked half its head out from behind the entrance. Seeing that Li Wei was continuously snoring without moving at all, it slowly revealed itself from behind the cave wall.

It was an Azure Slime.

It looked somewhat like an enlarged onion bulb, its entire body made of translucent mucus. Within it, one could vaguely see paramecium-like digestive organs, along with undigested seaweed and fish bones. Its two small black eyes held a hint of liveliness, as pure as those of a newborn child.

But what it did next was not nearly so pure. The round Slime swayed cautiously toward Li Wei like a sneaky little thief. It curiously studied the silver creature that had, for some reason, buried its head in a pit. Seeing that he still had not noticed anything, it turned all its attention to the puddle of blood that was gradually beginning to congeal.

The Slime could sense that the blood held a fatal attraction for it, so it eagerly bent down and took a tiny sip from the puddle.

Its entire body took on a faint crimson tint as though it were drunk. Squinting its eyes, it let out a satisfied moan:

"Mui~"

The sound was not loud, but shortly after it rang out, hundreds or even thousands of equally azure Slimes emerged along the previously calm riverbank. They all cried, "Mui, mui," and impatiently bounced toward the cave where Li Wei lay, as though being one step late would make them miss this great dragon-blood feast.

At first, these Slimes seemed worried that making too much noise would wake their prey, so they only dared to eat from the puddle of blood on the ground.

But as time passed, the first brave Slime took a huge slurp from the wound in the bone membrane of Li Wei's Right Wing and failed to wake the Silver Dragon. The remaining Slimes instantly fell into revelry.

In only a few breaths, Li Wei's body was wrapped in what looked like a layer of azure water film. Slimes that had caught wind of the news continued arriving from the river to join the feast.

If it had been any other animal, even if it woke up, it would likely have suffocated from an obstructed airway.

But the respiratory structure of dragons, naturally different from that of other creatures, came into play at this moment. Let alone underwater, Metal Dragons often buried themselves in sand for months at a time. Some rumors even claimed that Red Dragons could sleep in magma.

Thus, when his mouth and nose were first blocked in his sleep, Li Wei merely sneezed a few times. The surging blasts of air directly blew the poor Slimes apart, and then he gradually adapted to the feeling of [Underwater Breathing], even unconsciously chewing and swallowing the Slimes that crawled into his mouth.

But clearly, the grand feast before them had already completely washed away the Slimes' fear of death. Even though companions constantly left behind final cries of "Mui" before dying, it could not stop their desire for food and evolution.

That was right. High-quality food gave them a chance to evolve into higher-tier Slimes and even a tiny chance of awakening some Spell Abilities.

But clearly, dragon blood was not so easy to consume.

As magical creatures, dragons had turbulent magical elements constantly coursing through their blood. Such energy could even affect dragons themselves and tug at their minds, thereby inducing certain Mental Illnesses.

If even dragons suffered from that, how could fragile Slimes fare any better?

One Slime that had drunk its fill of dragon blood let out a satisfied sigh:

"Mui~ Splat."

The poor Slime directly exploded into a puddle of thick liquid mixed with dragon blood.

And that was only the beginning.

More and more Slimes that drank dragon blood exploded into clumps of bloody pulp, yet this only snowballed into attracting even more Slimes to feed.

Amid the frenzied dragon-feast carnival, Li Wei's body was gradually submerged beneath the rising pool of blood formed by their accumulating remains. It resembled a Blood Color hell, filled with a strange, tranquil beauty.

Most Slimes retained creatures they had failed to digest in time within their bodies. Some starving adventurers often used them as a final food source, though they tasted utterly disgusting. After all, it was not much different from eating carrion.

Well, it was not exactly the same. These things had at least been partially digested by Slimes first.

And now, all of those Slime corpses benefited Li Wei.

With more than half his body submerged in the thick crimson fluid, he opened his jaws under the urging of hunger and swallowed continuously. A dragon's powerful digestive ability could digest food equivalent to its own mass in just over ten minutes.

The enormous influx of nutrients not only caused Li Wei's grievous wounds to scab over and heal, but also made his body visibly grow as though it were an inflating balloon! If this continued, Li Wei might become the first dragon in the Young Dragon stage to be stuffed to death alive.

As more and more Slimes consumed the mucus of their companions mixed with dragon blood, violent and uncontrollable magic power surged wildly through their bodies, causing visible sparks to flash inside them!

Not only them—even the Slimes in the river that had not managed to catch up to the celebration yet began glowing with electricity inside their bodies, as though they were faintly beginning to resonate.

Slimes were a very peculiar species. Since individual Slimes were too weak and their bodily structures were relatively simple, they found it difficult to carry out overly complex thought.

Thus, through long evolution, they developed a method of using bioelectric resonance within their bodies to resonate magical power and link the entire group together. As long as there were enough of them within a short range, they could engage in simple thought.

It was somewhat similar to the Mind Flayers, whose Elder Brain dictated every consciousness, yet it followed an entirely different path toward collective consciousness.

If the first Slime had not sent a signal through this thought network, it would not have drawn such a vast number of Slimes here.

But clearly, because the number of Slimes undergoing bioelectric resonance was now far too great, and because the magic power in dragon blood acted as a catalyst, they seemed to have resonated with the electrical signal of some hidden existence they had once contacted but had never been able to communicate with intelligently.

However, the resonance did not last long.

"Roar!!!"

As a Dragon Roar suddenly rang out, all the resonating Slimes cried, "Mui," and exploded into puddles of thick liquid.

The Silver Dragon, whose entire body had been twitching incessantly, suddenly opened his eyes.

Looking at the unrecognizable limestone cave, Li Wei's gaze turned vacant. He had already been left with a lingering sense of dizziness, and then he involuntarily let out a long, full belch.

Only after quite a while did he realize that the final text had seemed to be warning him that if he did not wake up soon, he would be stuffed to death by the feeding army.

Before him, only the first—and last—Slime remained, trembling under his Dragon Might.

"Mui~" The Slime, faintly glimmering with silver light, curled its tiny body into a ball and weakly let out a plea for mercy.