Little Madman, Time to Fly!

In the end, Zhong Xuezhi scooped Mu Yi into the air with an arm around his waist from behind.

The moment they took off, Mu Yi burst into excited laughter.

"Hahaha-!"

"Awesome-!!"

Zhong Xuezhi secretly curled his lips, then quickly smoothed them out again. "Stop yelling. Do you want the Variants down there to use you for target practice?"

Only then did Mu Yi gradually quiet down. After a few seconds of silence, he turned his head and asked, "You really can't turn all the way into a Snow Leopard?"

Zhong Xuezhi rolled his eyes at him. "No. Give it up!"

With that, Zhong Xuezhi suddenly began descending, finally landing at the Creek Bank.

Mu Yi was puzzled. "What are we stopping here for?"

But the moment he finished speaking, Zhong Xuezhi darted away from behind him, leaving a barely audible reply on the gust of cold wind.

"Wait here a minute. I'll be right back."

Mu Yi stood where he was, somewhat baffled.

Needed to pee?

A few minutes later, Zhong Xuezhi reappeared, flashing back with the same trail of afterimages as when he had left.

Seeing that the Storage Bag at his waist had grown considerably bulkier, Mu Yi couldn't help getting curious. "What's in there?"

Zhong Xuezhi patted the Storage Bag and smiled. "Picked up some snacks."

Snacks?

What are you, a kid? Mu Yi thought.

But a moment later, he asked, "What kind of snacks?"

"You'll find out when we get back."

Keeping him in suspense, Zhong Xuezhi stepped forward and scooped him into the air again, speeding toward the Resting Place.

The two locations were far apart, but that was the winding distance they would have had to cover on foot around the terrain. Taking the direct "air route" cut the travel time considerably.

And so, roughly ten minutes later, the two returned safely, descending from the sky above the Resting Place.

Qiu Cai was the first to greet them, chattering away. "Captain! You took him flying but not me?!"

Zhong Xuezhi refused to answer that question and rewarded him with a kick instead. "Move."

"Ow-!" Qiu Cai yelped.

After kicking the loudmouth aside, Zhong Xuezhi walked straight over to where Wenren Jin lay.

"How is he doing?"

An Beize, who was sitting beside him keeping watch, looked helpless as he answered, "Jin exhausted himself and fell asleep not long after we got back. There's still no sign of him waking up."

Zhong Xuezhi nodded, untied several Storage Bags from his waist, and tossed them to him. "There are Spine Celery roots and stems in there. See if you can figure out how to use them."

An Beize caught them, then looked up to study Zhong Xuezhi's current appearance. "Captain, your mutation level..."

"It's fine," Zhong Xuezhi cut him off reassuringly. "I have Suppressant with me. I'll pop a few pills later."

Then he lowered his head and sniffed himself, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

After cutting down so many Giant Ants, his clothes had been splashed with quite a lot of their fluids. With his exceptionally keen sense of smell, he found it rather unbearable.

He immediately dug some clean clothes out of his bag and headed out.

Not far from the Resting Place was a Natural Hot Spring Pool, fed by flowing warm water and wonderfully clean and comfortable.

Watching him leave, Mu Yi badly wanted to follow and watch the big cat bathe, but there was a distinction between Alphas and Betas, after all. It wouldn't be appropriate.

Even though Zhong Xuezhi was a Beta who seemed... more like an Alpha than most Alphas Mu Yi had met.

To keep himself from suddenly giving in and becoming a creep who spied on a Beta bathing, Mu Yi found a spot against a tree, sat down, and took the crystal stones from his pocket to study them.

Ever since he had first come into contact with these colorful stones, he had felt a vague, indistinct resonance with them.

Now that he examined them closely, he felt even more strongly that a peculiar thread of electric current seemed to lie within their cores.

But how could a stone show signs of electricity?

After a moment's thought, Mu Yi suddenly let it go. Right, wasn't this world already full of strange things?

What was wrong with a little electricity in a stone?

Still, he remained curious. His pheromones had electrical properties, making him especially sensitive to electricity.

He was certain that the current inside the crystal stones seemed to be affected by some kind of magnetic force, deflecting the paths of the charges into a regular spiral motion.

Interesting.

His interest thoroughly piqued, Mu Yi pulled out all the shard crystals stuffed into his pockets.

Back at the Spine Celery base, Zhong Xuezhi had opened his Identity Bracelet several times, and Mu Yi had been lucky enough to sneak a peek at some information about the crystal stones.

If he remembered correctly, they called these crystal stones "shard crystals," and divided them into different grades and colors.

There were eight grades in total, ranked in descending order: SS-S-A-B-C-D-E-F.

Their corresponding colors, also in descending order, were purple-orange-yellow-green-blue-red-brown-gray.

Mu Yi examined what he currently held: blue C-grade, red D-grade, brown E-grade, and gray F-grade crystals.

He lined the shard crystals up in order and probed the current inside each one.

A short while later, he discovered that these shard crystals were like batteries. The higher the grade, the more electrical charge they stored.

He also discovered that, aside from the current, the shard crystals contained impurity ions that interfered with the movement of electrons.

However, the higher the shard crystal's grade, the fewer impurity ions it contained.

And the fewer impurity ions there were, the more uniformly the electrons moved, producing a greater effective current.

In short, higher-grade shard crystals had greater electrical capacity, fewer impurity ions, and more electrical power.

At that thought, Mu Yi turned to look at the others replenishing their energy nearby.

Qiu Cai was clutching a handful of brown crystal stones, grumbling under his breath.

"Man, it's been ages since I had energy this low-grade. There's so much junk in here. I've been forcing it in forever, and my Energy Slot has only gone up two bars."

Beside him, Du Jing found them just as unappealing, but still said, "Be glad we have anything at all."

With that, he opened his hand. The crystal stones he had been holding suddenly dissolved into countless motes of colored light, which dispersed on the breeze.

Looking dispirited, Du Jing reached for another handful of crystal stones.

Suddenly, with a soft thud, An Beize tossed them a bulging Storage Bag from where he sat some distance away on the other side.

"Use these. It'll be faster."

Both Qiu Cai's and Du Jing's eyes lit up. They hurriedly pulled the bag open and leaned in to look.

After a moment, Qiu Cai raised his head. "So many C-grade and D-grade shard crystals. Did the captain just give you these?"

"That's right." An Beize nodded.

Du Jing clenched his fist. "That's our captain! Even with his energy depleted, he still slaughtered those giant ants!"

Mu Yi let out a scoff at that, but didn't expose the fact that their captain had spent the whole time slacking off with a scythe to conserve energy.

Besides, their share of the spoils amounted to less than half of what Mu Yi had in his pockets.

As he watched, the four kept taking crystal stones into their hands, where they dissolved into light and vanished.

Presumably, that was what happened once the energy inside a shard crystal had been completely drained.

Mu Yi narrowed his eyes as a conjecture he was almost certain of surfaced in his mind.

Perhaps the unusual movement of the charges inside the shard crystals caused their current to undergo some sort of qualitative change, turning it into, for example, the energy these people absorbed.

In that case, he could slightly rework his earlier conclusion.

Namely, the higher a shard crystal's grade, the more energy it stored. The fewer impurities it contained, the more concentrated that energy became, and the greater the benefit Mutants could gain from absorbing it.

Having reached his final conclusion, Mu Yi smiled silently. Nice. Solving problems with formulas really is quick.

Many things in this world seemed even more interesting than he had imagined, thoroughly stirring his desire to get to the bottom of them.

He was still caught up in his excitement when a sudden surge of swelling pain in his right arm jolted him out of his thoughts.

The cold stored in the Ice Band seemed almost exhausted, and its pain-relieving effect was gradually fading.

He frowned and shook his arm, craning his neck to look outside as he muttered unhappily, "How long does one bath take?"

If Zhong Xuezhi didn't come back soon, he would have to go looking for him.