[Cat-Claw Butcher Knife]

[Cat-Claw Butcher Knife]

[Sacrificial item ranking: 9633]

[Ability 1: A Butcher Knife fused with an Eerie Cat's blade. Increased sharpness, increased toughness, and increased damage against the Anomalies.]

[Ability 2: Intimidates pig-like and cat-like Anomalies, greatly increasing damage against both.]

"That's it?!" Looking at the two abilities the Cat-Claw Butcher Knife had gained from fusing with the Eerie Cat's blade, Chu Sheng didn't know whether to praise it or put it down.

Calling these two abilities useful felt like a stretch, but calling them useless wasn't quite right either.

Useful-ish.

Still, this could serve as an alternative to upgrading. After all, it was somewhat more powerful than an upgrade.

But before Chu Sheng could enjoy it for long, another notification appeared.

[Sacrificial items: supernatural objects. Every use comes at a price!]

[Cost of using the Cat-Claw Butcher Knife: Having fused with an Eerie Cat's blade, it has also inherited the Eerie Cat's habits. As a cat's blade, it must be sharpened every day before it can be used.]

[But if you are Chu Sheng, there is no cost!]

Chu Sheng's brow remained furrowed as he read the cost of using it, but the final notification eased his frown a little.

This Butcher Knife really does understand me.

All that effort upgrading it from a battered, rusty Butcher Knife into a sacrificial item wasn't wasted.

It was also thanks to the Butcher Knife that Chu Sheng learned sacrificial items actually came with a price.

Still, since they were called sacrificial items, it was only natural that using them required a price. Otherwise, why call them sacrificial?

The "sacrifice" referred to an offering, and the cost of using them was an offering too.

Though the Butcher Knife had become a sacrificial item, Chu Sheng had no intention of testing it. He slipped it back into the homemade sheath at his waist and turned his gaze to the remaining cat eyes.

A pair of scarlet cat eyes lay quietly inside the jar.

Chu Sheng stared at them for a long time, but couldn't think of a way to use them.

These cat eyes were undoubtedly supernatural materials, but he genuinely had no idea how to put them to use.

Surely I can't gouge out my own eyes, fuse them with the cat eyes, and stick them back in?

Eyeballs aren't plug-and-play.

"Forget it. I'll keep them for now. Maybe I'll figure out how to use them later."

Chu Sheng put the cat eyes away again. Although his ability could fuse supernatural materials with objects to create sacrificial items, he had a vague, instinctive feeling.

Supernatural materials needed to be paired with suitable objects. Otherwise, even if they became sacrificial items, their rankings would be very low.

His Butcher Knife was one example. The Cat-Claw Blade wasn't a particularly good match for it. While both shared the quality of sharpness, they weren't very compatible in other respects, so after becoming a sacrificial item, the Butcher Knife ranked 9633rd.

Chu Sheng didn't know whether that ranking was high or low, but he figured it was fairly low. After all, there were so many sacrificial items ahead of it.

After spending quite some time tinkering inside his tent, Chu Sheng finally came back out.

By then, most people had finished breakfast. When they saw Chu Sheng emerge from the tent with a head of silvery-white hair, every survivor's eyes filled with envy.

A Sequence transcendent!

A new Sequence transcendent had appeared right before their eyes.

Surviving the apocalypse was a very different experience for ordinary people and Sequence Adepts.

"Um... Chu Sheng." Three people worked up the courage to approach him.

Chu Sheng merely glanced at them without saying anything.

"Hello... My name is Zhou Dun," the man in front introduced himself.

Chu Sheng didn't even raise his eyes. He gave a nasal grunt. "Need something?"

Zhou Dun seemed to have already prepared himself for Chu Sheng's coldness. At his question, he asked somewhat awkwardly, "Could I ask how you awakened your Sequence?"

His words made everyone nearby prick up their ears.

There was a Sequence Adept right here. What if they could replicate his awakening process?

Chu Sheng looked at Zhou Dun and smiled, but there wasn't a trace of warmth in it. "What do I get for telling you?"

At that, Zhou Dun signaled to the two beside him, and all three took a few small objects out of their pockets.

Seeing this, Chu Sheng raised his eyes. As he stared at the objects in their hands, his expression finally changed a little.

Zhou Dun breathed a sigh of relief at his reaction, then said, "I know we can't expect information about your Sequence awakening for free. Here's a radio and some tapes we collected earlier."

"Yesterday, we saw you trading supplies by the campfire. You traded for a lot of objects, so I figured you'd want these."

Chu Sheng wasn't surprised that they knew he had traded for supplies.

After all, he had also been able to watch An Xi and the others dividing and trading supplies before.

The captain and the others hadn't tried to hide anything when distributing supplies yesterday.

"There's no fixed method for awakening a Sequence. Aren't you afraid this'll be a waste?" Chu Sheng asked in return.

Zhou Dun fell silent for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know whether it'll be a waste either. I know it probably won't help, but what if it does?"

"All right." Chu Sheng didn't stand on ceremony, taking the radio and tapes straight from their hands.

"While gathering supplies in Small Town, I ran into an Eerie Cat. I partially awakened while fighting back. After I killed it, I slept that night and woke up fully awakened this morning."

Chu Sheng himself didn't know how he had awakened. His Heavenly Craftsman Sequence had simply awakened after a night's sleep.

But he had demonstrated his upgrading ability during the day, so he could only attribute his awakening to the Eerie Cat.

As for whether they would imitate him and seek out the Anomalies in an attempt to awaken, Chu Sheng wasn't going to concern himself with that.

What does it matter to me whether these people live or die?

He wouldn't actively kill people, but that didn't mean he would save them.

After hearing Chu Sheng's explanation, Zhou Dun and the others' expressions darkened.

They didn't dare try his method of awakening.

It was one thing to encounter the Anomalies by accident, but deliberately approaching them? That was practically begging for death.

Chu Sheng paid no further attention to the three of them. Instead, he packed up his tent and tossed it into the motorcycle's sidecar along with the supplies he had obtained from An Xi yesterday.

Watching Chu Sheng walk farther away, the two beside Zhou Dun pressed their lips together. "Brother Zhou, what should we do?"

Zhou Dun was silent for a moment before shaking his head. "We can't try his method."

"Sequence awakenings really do seem to be beyond our control."

During their days with the convoy, Zhou Dun and the two women had traded supplies or food with several Sequence Adepts for information on how they had awakened.

But without exception, none of those methods could be replicated.

They had either awakened after a night's sleep or simply awakened out of nowhere. Even Zhu Qing had awakened by accident after encountering the Anomalies, just like Chu Sheng.

Although two of the five Sequence Adepts seemed to have awakened after encountering the Anomalies, Zhou Dun wasn't stupid enough to take that at face value.

Ignoring the base numbers is just twisting the facts!

If encountering the Anomalies and hovering between life and death really could trigger an awakening, the world wouldn't be in its current state. The number of people killed by the Anomalies could be counted in hundreds of millions.

"Ling, Qian, let's leave it at that for now. Let's stay alive first, then see whether we can awaken later."

Zhou Dun spoke to the two young women beside him.

"Okay, we'll listen to you." Li Qian nodded without objecting.

Li Ling nodded as well. "If it weren't for you, Brother Zhou, my sister and I would've died long ago."

Their words warmed Zhou Dun's heart a little. "Don't say that. We grew up together. You're like little sisters to me. As long as I'm alive, I won't let anything happen to you."