The rusted short sword glowed an eerie dark red, and faint, strange whispers seemed to come from it, trying to control Feng Buzhi's arm and make him stab a living creature to soak the blade in blood.
"You want to drink blood?"
At Feng Buzhi's words, the rusty short sword trembled slightly, as if agreeing with him.
Feng Buzhi stabbed the nearby Fallen Demon corpse a few times.
Some blood smeared onto the short sword, then was absorbed and disappeared.
"It seems this short sword must be the weapon the shadow mentioned, one that contains a strange power."
"In the Abyss, I can obtain anything I want. So, if I want to bring this short sword back to reality, what should I do?"
Feng Buzhi examined the eerie short sword, flicking it with his finger to check its material, then bending it by hand to test its flexibility.
After that, he broke the short sword in two.
Yes, he broke it.
Just because a weapon contained something strange didn't mean it was well made.
Still, Feng Buzhi had gained something. As the short sword shattered, the strangeness inside it escaped.
Feng Buzhi took the opportunity to absorb most of it, while the rest dissipated into the air.
This strangeness was several times more violent than that in the rotten corpse, but it contained more than ten times as much energy.
In just a few breaths, Feng Buzhi felt the strangeness in his skin begin to feel as if it had eaten too much. At the same time, the mutation of his skin began to accelerate.
His skin itched all over. Feng Buzhi rubbed it unconsciously and soon noticed patches of dead skin appearing on its surface.
His skin was undergoing some kind of change.
"Is this what they call organ mutation?"
Feng Buzhi murmured softly, then suddenly realized that his skin had undergone a special change—or, more precisely, that he had acquired a special ability.
Unlike the scorching power that gathered in his fist when he broke through his limits, this ability felt more natural to use and cost less energy.
It was rather like using his own limbs to raise a hand or blink. This ability had become part of his body.
Feng Buzhi stretched out his right arm. A layer of keratin soon rose around his fist, and before long, it took on a metallic sheen like steel.
The name of the ability naturally appeared in his mind: [Steel-Hardened Keratin].
With his body as it was now, he could form [Steel-Hardened Keratin] over an area about the size of his palm. It could appear anywhere on his skin, cost very little energy, and seemed capable of lasting for a long time.
If his mutation continued, the area covered by [Steel-Hardened Keratin] would grow larger and larger.
Feng Buzhi tapped his metallic-looking right fist with the fingers of his left hand. It rang like metal.
The skin on his right fist had become like metal, but his movement was unaffected. He could smoothly clench and open his fist. The only difference was that it had become heavier.
Without continuing to examine the [Steel-Hardened Keratin] on his fist, Feng Buzhi suddenly closed his eyes and focused on the strangeness in his skin.
After devouring the strangeness inside the short sword, the strangeness in his skin had grown stronger, but it had also become increasingly violent and somewhat difficult to control.
That, however, was not the main issue. The main issue was that he seemed to be suffering from indigestion.
The strangeness in the short sword had mostly been devoured by the strangeness in his skin, but what he had consumed was merely a jumble of things. The remaining strangeness was becoming purer and purer.
This was a kind of strangeness connected to blood, and the strangeness in his skin could no longer devour it.
What's more, this blood-related strangeness was trying to merge with the strangeness in his skin.
Now he had to make a choice.
The first option was to let things take their course and allow the blood-related strangeness to merge with the strangeness in his skin. That would cause some unknown changes in the strangeness within him.
The second option was to expel the blood-related strangeness from his body.
Feng Buzhi didn't hesitate. He decisively chose to expel it.
He knew little about strange powers and wasn't about to merge them with his own recklessly. Even if he did want to merge them, he wouldn't choose some weak strangeness he had picked up at random.
The next moment, Feng Buzhi broke through his body's limits.
A crimson path of light soon appeared on the surface of his skin. Guiding the strangeness within him, he quickly spat out a plume of eerie, blood-red smoke.
He had successfully expelled the blood-related strangeness.
Whoosh!
Feng Buzhi leaned slightly to the side, and an arrow grazed his cheek.
He turned to look at the gray-skinned humanoid a hundred meters away. It looked very much like a Dark Elf.
The Dark Elf was surprised that Feng Buzhi had suddenly dodged her deadly arrow, but she didn't stop. She fired arrow after arrow, sealing off every escape route around him.
Just as she thought victory was assured, the human suddenly vanished from her sight...
A few breaths later.
Bang!
Feng Buzhi smashed the Dark Elf's skull with a punch. With [Steel-Hardened Keratin] covering his fist, it was like he'd turned it into a hammer.
But when it came to killing efficiently, his axe was still more useful.
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Feng Buzhi glanced up at the information in the sky, then followed the sonar's feedback toward the seven o'clock direction. Three foreign creatures were waiting there to be hunted.
Soon, another three foreign creatures were dead. A simple backpack now hung from Feng Buzhi's back, woven from tree bark.
Feng Buzhi had formed this backpack using his soul. Since Pei Chao had made a similar one in reality, he was familiar with it, so it hadn't cost him much.
The backpack now held the corpse of a rotten Fallen Demon. Feng Buzhi decided to absorb the strangeness in the corpse while hunting any foreign creatures that appeared nearby.
After all, these foreign creatures put far too little pressure on him—not even half as much as hunting a group of Goblins at night.
The slaughter continued.
As the Corrosion Swamp spread, foreign creatures grew increasingly crowded around its edges, and Feng Buzhi's killing grew faster and faster. Many creatures in the blood mist had no idea what had happened before their vision went black. They died without knowing why.
After about two hours, Feng Buzhi had killed more than 450 foreign creatures.
He had also encountered two humans while hunting.
Perhaps it was because the shadow had nagged him for so long, or perhaps it was Damo's compassion. Feng Buzhi didn't kill the two humans, who were on the verge of death, to earn kill points.
Yes, the two humans soon died anyway.
As time passed, the Corrosion Swamp spread faster and faster. By the end, its rate of expansion was more than twice what it had been at the start.
Countless foreign creatures were swallowed by the Corrosion Swamp.
When the number of surviving creatures fell to around 500,000, the Corrosion Swamp reached its maximum speed of expansion, and the number of survivors began to plummet.
400,000, 250,000, 100,000, 50,000, 30,000...
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"Less than ten thousand left already? Looks like I'll have to get serious too."
Feng Buzhi tossed aside the backpack holding the rotten Fallen Demon corpse. For one thing, he had absorbed all the strangeness in the corpse. For another, carrying the backpack was slowing down his killing.
As the number of remaining foreign creatures dwindled, those that remained were clearly growing stronger, and they seemed to be starting to band together...
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