After witnessing Xu Fan's savagery, some of the Nugel Worms turned on their own kind, opened their gaping jaws, and bit down hard.
They began devouring them on the spot.
In just a few breaths, they had eaten an entire Nugel Worm clean.
Then the Nugel Worms raised their heads toward the sky and spat out white silk, wrapping it around their bodies to form brown cocoons.
The scene was both bloody and cruel.
But Xu Fan didn't care. He strode forward, swinging his long blade and putting his swordsmanship on full display.
Nugel Worms fell in droves beneath Xu Fan's blade.
Even the Female Snow Wolf following him looked dumbfounded.
It simply couldn't understand.
Why was Xu Fan's combat strength so terrifying?
It struggled just to deal with a dozen or so Nugel Worms.
Against dozens, it was utterly helpless.
But Xu Fan...
With a single slash, he cut at least several Nugel Worms in half.
The insect corpses piled higher and higher.
There were too many to count, and no way to know how many Xu Fan had killed.
In the Female Snow Wolf's eyes,
not even the Snow Wolf King, who was stronger than it, could compare.
Even the entire pack, attacking together, couldn't kill Nugel Worms nearly as fast as Xu Fan could alone.
And besides...
The Female Snow Wolf didn't think the strength of the pack could rival these Nugel Worms at all.
There were simply too many of them!
And yet, before Xu Fan, the swarms were like fields of wheat ready for harvest.
His blade swept through, and swaths of them fell.
The Live Stream Room's viewers stared wide-eyed, their jaws nearly hitting the floor in shock.
Was Xu Fan just too strong?
Or had they overestimated the Nugel Worms' combat strength?
Perhaps...
The beasts in the Forbidden Land were only large in size.
Maybe they weren't actually very dangerous?
How else could they explain what they were seeing?
Xu Fan was practically a god of war!
But then again,
every one of these Nugel Worms was an E+ rank beast.
No matter how weak they were, how weak could they really be?
If Xu Fan hadn't stepped in, the Female Snow Wolf would probably have been torn to pieces by now.
The Live Stream Room fell into silence.
Host Xiao Ying and the guests who had been invited onto the show
were all staring at the screen, dumbfounded.
What they were seeing went far beyond anything they could comprehend.
In theory, they'd been invited to reassure the public or liven up the atmosphere.
Staying silent for too long
was obviously not an option.
And yet...
Even Xiao Ying, a host with outstanding professional skills, had no idea what to say.
She even felt that the scene before her wasn't a Forbidden Land livestream at all.
It looked more like a video game with impossibly realistic graphics.
Xu Fan was a pay-to-win player who'd activated a special ability and was mowing down his enemies!
Who knew...
what the contestants from other countries would think when they saw Xu Fan's performance?
They'd probably protest vehemently.
They'd accuse Xu Fan of cheating.
No matter how they looked at it, the scene was baffling.
Impossible to believe.
Like something straight out of a wild fantasy.
In the end, it was Writer Yuanyuan who broke the silence.
"Can a human really do this?"
"Even if Xu Fan got Wrist Strength Enhancement and is several times stronger than an ordinary person, this is still way too outrageous, isn't it?"
In Yuan Yuan's view,
no matter how much humans developed their physical strength,
there would always be limits.
It was like a strongman weighing over two hundred pounds: no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't lift a ship.
But Yuan Yuan couldn't see any sign of those human limits in Xu Fan.
First, he had trekked dozens of kilometers.
Then came the catastrophe that had shaken the earth and split the mountains.
And still he had plenty of stamina left to slaughter the insect swarm.
This guy...
was he really not a robot?
Like the T-800 from a science-fiction movie,
or some kind of Gene Warrior?
Perhaps...
Yan Kingdom had been secretly developing weapons for years.
And at last, they had a chance to use them in the Forbidden Land.
For a moment, Yuan Yuan's imagination ran wild.
And yet...
It wasn't just Yuan Yuan.
Every guest and host present, the program staff, and the hundreds of millions of viewers
all had the same suspicion.
Their contestant Xu Fan might very well...
not be human!
"I think it's very possible. Think back carefully: Xu Fan is the only contestant who set out with no extra gear."
"In the freezing cold, with temperatures dozens of degrees below zero, he hasn't suffered frostbite or shown any signs of fatigue."
"He stays calm in the face of Forbidden Land beasts and earthquakes alike, and his knowledge of the wilderness is like that of a walking encyclopedia."
"Now he's shown off swordsmanship this terrifying."
"Against the Forbidden Land's insect swarm, he cuts through them as if they were vegetables."
"Is Xu Fan really not some kind of robot?"
The Live Stream Room's comments began laying out their arguments, one by one.
They were so convincing that it was hard to find any holes in them.
Thinking about it carefully, from the moment Xu Fan entered the Forbidden Land until now,
he hadn't once shown signs of illness, exhaustion, or bleeding.
And Yan Kingdom was the second most powerful country on Blue Star.
Could it really be so hard to believe that they possessed some kind of fantastic technology?
Because the scene before them was so shocking,
the viewers were more willing to believe that Xu Fan was a robot or a super-soldier.
Meanwhile, viewers overseas who didn't know the truth
began condemning Yan Kingdom online.
How could a great power like Yan Kingdom resort to cheating?
They'd sent a robot to take part in the Forbidden Land expedition!
At the same time...
Inside the Forbidden Land.
Xu Fan had no idea what was happening in the real world.
He also didn't know that, in other people's eyes, his actions had already placed him outside the bounds of humanity and earned him the label of robot.
He focused entirely on swinging his blade,
unleashing a brutal massacre against the Nugel Worms.
At first, there had been only a few, then a dozen or so, but now...
In less than half an hour, there were hundreds, maybe even over a thousand.
Shredded flesh and green fluid covered the ground. Not a single patch remained untouched.
A foul stench mixed with the smell of blood.
This could hardly be called a battle.
Before Xu Fan, the swarm of E+ rank insects had no ability to fight back.
Xu Fan had nearly wiped out the entire swarm.
The Female Snow Wolf standing beside him was rooted to the spot.
As it stared at the scene before it,
its mind was utterly shaken.
This strange creature, without fangs or claws,
was ridiculously strong!
It was even a little glad that it hadn't been stupid enough to attack Xu Fan back then.
Otherwise...
it would be keeping Xu Fan company now as a piece of cured meat!
But...
Just as Xu Fan was muttering about how there didn't seem to be any lord among them,
the Nugel Worms that had devoured their companions and wrapped themselves in cocoons burst out of them one after another.
Their bodies had changed beyond recognition.
Each one was several meters long. Their eyes had completely atrophied, and their bodies had grown thick skin like a rhinoceros's, covered in reddish-brown spikes.
The strangest thing was...
They had only a single mouth where their faces should have been. Their faces and mouths were crammed with densely packed fangs the size of human arms.
But among them was one with black skin, twice as large as the other Nugel Worms.
[Yan Kingdom contestant Xu Fan has discovered a Forbidden Land creature!] [Name: Nugel Worm King] [Danger Level: D+ rank. A giant hermaphroditic insect that can live for hundreds of years. Even without food, it can survive by absorbing nutrients from the soil. It lays its eggs inside other creatures.]
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