Rest and Preparation

[Stop sleeping. Get up and get to work!]

Little White, who had been dozing, was startled awake by the voice. It got to its feet warily and looked around.

[What are you looking at? I'm talking to you.]

"Awwoo?"

Little White focused intently, but it had no way of telling where the voice was coming from. It looked at Bai Yi.

"What's wrong?" Bai Yi asked in confusion.

[No one else can hear it. Give up.]

This time, Little White knew where the voice had come from—it had appeared directly in its mind.

It let out a loud howl to warn Bai Yi, telling him that something was coming.

Bai Yi fought back a laugh and cooperatively put on a grave expression. "Little White, what happened?"

Little White barked anxiously.

[Hehehe, I'm inside your body. I'm going to eat you from the inside out!]

"Awwooo—"

Hearing that, Little White became even more frantic. It kept circling Bai Yi, its mouth practically about to form words.

Suddenly, its gaze sharpened, and it charged out of the shelter.

Unable to find the attacker, it wanted to lure the danger away from Bai Yi. That way, even if it died, Bai Yi would be safe.

Watching Little White sprint wildly outside, Bai Yi finally couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing.

At the same time, the voice in Little White's mind was laughing too:

[Hahahaha...]

As the two voices gradually overlapped, Little White finally realized that the familiar voice belonged to Bai Yi.

It stopped, turned to face Bai Yi, and its eyes became extremely dangerous!

"Awwooooo—" (It was cursing viciously!)

"Alright, alright, Little White. Come have a steak. Don't be mad anymore!"

Beside the dining table, a white wolf lay on the floor, wolfing down its food.

Hearing Bai Yi's words, it snorted angrily twice, then turned its head away and continued wolfing down the food.

After coaxing it for quite a while, Bai Yi finally managed to calm Little White down.

It was already 19:58:01.

Just now, Bai Yi had gone to draw from the Wishing Well again.

For this, he had prepared five Rotting Corpse corpses, five each of the ordinary vegetables and fruits planted by Wang Ziyi, along with all the miscellaneous junk he had saved up, and used them all for the draw.

In the end, his warehouse gained 60 units of wood and 30 clumps of weeds, angering Bai Yi so much that he nearly filled in the Wishing Well!

There were still two minutes before the forum and marketplace opened. Bai Yi sat on the sofa indignantly, holding his log as he waited. He swore he would not touch the Wishing Well again for an entire month.

The equipment he had made earlier had all been bought by his squad members, so Bai Yi did not continue crafting equipment for sale.

On one hand, he needed sufficient reserves to withstand the abnormal status [Dark Erosion]. On the other hand, he had no urgent need for money at the moment. (Fresh flesh in the marketplace could be used as food, and it was overpriced.)

So, Bai Yi merely wanted to see whether the forum would update with any valuable featured posts.

Earlier, Bai Yi had shared his general experience in the group chat. At the same time, he had reiterated the terror of [Autism], telling them to avoid triggering it as much as possible, and had also sent the information on Star-Color to the group.

The two minutes passed in the blink of an eye. The forum, marketplace, and world channel opened for a limited time.

A flood of information poured into the forum, most of it meaningless posts.

For example, help requests, rescue pleas, begging posts, and so on. They were filled with wonderful fantasies, asking people to help them for free while also expecting others to provide temporary teleportation scrolls—and preferably bring them some supplies as well.

Those posts made Bai Yi laugh. Were they making wishes here? So the forum was the real Wishing Well!

Because there was too much meaningless information, Bai Yi skimmed through it and stopped paying attention, intending instead to wait for the squad members to share information in the group chat.

That was right. Every day, the squad members shared information, posting anything they found useful in the group chat for everyone's reference.

As for the trading marketplace, it was packed with a dazzling variety of goods, with new items constantly appearing.

Moreover, equipment quality had generally risen to Good quality, with Fine-quality equipment appearing from time to time. Ordinary-quality equipment was becoming increasingly rare.

On top of that, the four logistics members of the squad—Wang Ziyi, Zhang Zhen, Li Zihua, and Wei Fen—were practically swimming in money, making a fortune through the trading market every day.

Whenever Bai Yi, Tang Zheng, and Xie Xu had something, they simply tossed it into the group chat. The others would buy it directly without even looking at the quality, making Bai Yi feel like robbing them.

Shaking his head, Bai Yi took one last look at the world channel. It was still a gathering place for people just looking for entertainment. He put down the log and began getting down to business.

He brought Little White to the modification room. Bai Yi had not started modifying himself after upgrading the shelter earlier, so this time, he could modify Little White along with himself. (Modification did not distinguish between species.)

Two operating tables stood side by side, with Bai Yi and Little White lying on one each.

[Basic Physical Modification about to begin (Bai Yi, Little White)

This modification will last 6 (Bai Yi) hours and 16 (Little White) hours respectively

[Begin?]

"Yes!"

[This modification consumed a total of 3883 flesh and 1936 bones]

[Current Flesh: 174122/10000, Bones: 72144/10000]

As the prompt sounded, Bai Yi made the preparations with practiced ease. Little White followed suit.

After his body fell asleep, Bai Yi continued learning the next Flesh Alchemy spell in his mind with the shelter's assistance.

[Clear Weather

Location: Misty Land

Time: 02:00 AM

Temperature: 18–20°C]

Bai Yi's modification was complete.

The instant the mask opened, Bai Yi sensed a piercing rhythm, as grating as fingernails scratching glass.

The rhythm sounded like a whisper, yet also like a wail!

Bai Yi covered his ears, and the rhythm immediately weakened somewhat. He could barely sense the other rhythms around him.

He opened his information panel and saw [Wail of the Dead] faintly flashing in the abnormal status column.

[Wail of the Dead]: From 22:00 every day until 6:00 the following day, deducts [(10 - Mental Attribute) × 2] Sanity every hour. (No Sanity will be deducted if Mental Attribute exceeds 10.) ```

What Bai Yi had sensed was precisely the rhythm of this abnormal status. However, since his Mental Attribute had already exceeded 10, no Sanity was deducted.

"Strange. Why wasn't any Sanity deducted before, when my Mental Attribute hadn't reached 10?"

Bai Yi remembered that he had also spent the previous night in the modification room, yet he had received no notification of Sanity loss during that time.

"Could it be because of the surgery?"

After thinking it over, Bai Yi controlled the mask to lower again. He wanted to figure out exactly why.

As the tentacles flowed in, Bai Yi did not immediately sever the connection between his brain and body. Instead, he began some preliminary testing.

He soon discovered that when the tentacles completely blocked his ear canals, the rhythm weakened once more. This piqued Bai Yi's curiosity greatly.

Because in his previous tests, blocking his ears had not reduced his perception of rhythms.

And that was indeed the case. In his mind, the rhythms of the surrounding things had not diminished in the slightest just because his ears were blocked.

"Could [Wail of the Dead] be related to sound? A sound that can't be heard? Ultrasound? Infrasound?"

Bai Yi suddenly thought of an organ in the shelter: the mouth (mutant rotting corpse). This organ had already been put to flexible use throughout the shelter.

During modification, the mask emitted infrasound through this organ to assist with the process.

With an idea in mind, Bai Yi began controlling the mask to emit infrasound.

As he continuously adjusted the infrasound frequency, Bai Yi noticed that [Wail of the Dead] on the panel grew fainter and fainter. When it reached a certain frequency, the abnormal status vanished completely!

"Just as I thought!" Bai Yi felt exhilarated.

Though he was already immune to this abnormal status, others were not!

Not everyone had reached the limits of humanity.

A money-making idea surfaced in his mind!