Hunting the Golden Electric Eel

Zhang Ming had no idea that people on Earth were trying to rescue those trapped in the Mysterious Zone.

Even if he had known, he might only have grown more irritated.

Because the rescue efforts had absolutely nothing to do with him!!

The dull, tedious days passed one after another. Dark clouds blanketed the entire sky, and a fine rain fell incessantly, as though every day were exactly the same.

Before he knew it, it was his ninety-first day on the deserted island. The fourth month had begun.

Honestly, if the fancy watch he had scavenged hadn't still displayed the month and date, he would have lost track of the calendar altogether.

His hair was long and tangled, and a full beard had grown in. Unwilling to wear out his good clothes, he left his upper body bare and casually draped a leaf over himself. He looked no different from a wild man.

The radio announced, "Fusang has attacked Australia without warning. The secretary-general of the International United Organization has condemned Fusang's war crimes in the strongest possible terms!"

The situation in the world was changing faster than anyone could have imagined.

The leashes had come loose, and the dogs had started fighting each other.

But why were the dogs fighting? Where had Fusang's oceangoing fleet come from, and where had it gotten its weapons? Surely it couldn't have built up much military strength in a mere three months.

The whole affair gave off an unsettling whiff of conspiracy.

"Small-scale exchanges of fire have broken out along the Balkans border..."

"Tensions are rising in the Palestine-Israel region..."

Was a world war really about to break out?

Listening to the news on the radio and the upheaval in the outside world, Zhang Ming only found them noisy.

When yesterday's memories were almost identical to today's, the brain gradually lost its sense of time. This caused neural functions to deteriorate, slowly making a person duller, less motivated, and depressed.

This was also the physiological reason humans couldn't perform repetitive work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Old Zhang gazed at the gray sky and felt he had already attained Buddhahood.

"Your old uncle here is going to spend the rest of his life trapped in this godforsaken place."

"Those bastards are so busy fighting wars, they might just forget about me."

He was using the wreckage of the plane to make a metal cage.

The clanging and hammering had continued for over a month, and the work was finally nearing completion.

At first, the intelligent turtles had come over curiously to watch, wondering why this fellow was hammering things here.

Later, they had lost interest entirely. Only the clever Little White Turtle occasionally came over to see what Old Zhang was tinkering with.

"Awuu, awuu, awuu?" the turtle asked, opening its mouth.

Are you making a really big pot?

"This isn't a pot. It's a Faraday Cage, a device that can effectively protect against a million volts. It's for fighting the Golden Electric Eel." Zhang Ming explained cheerfully, spouting principles and theories with spit flying everywhere.

He was desperate for social interaction.

But the food-loving turtle could, at best, understand the food-related term "electric eel."

Whatever this Faraday Cage principle was, could you eat it?

"Awuu, awuu."

Zhang Ming didn't really understand what Little White Turtle was saying. Perhaps the turtle meant that the electric eel was powerful and shouldn't be provoked.

Over these two months, he had grown even stronger. All sorts of bird eggs, along with mushrooms, had brought him a full 292 attribute points!

His current attribute panel read:

[Physique: 148/160] (You are as strong as a mighty bear.)

What kind of species was a "mighty bear"?!

[Perception: 130/134] (You are more sensitive than a super lynx.)

[Mental strength: 62/110] (Your mind has grown more resolute, but emptiness and loneliness linger in your heart, making you go a little crazy now and then.)

[Lifespan: 24/60] (At last, it is your lifespan's turn to increase. Rejoice-you have escaped an early death.)

[Total attributes: 464] (You look a little ordinary now.)

[Superpowers: Strength Burst (activated), Toxin Resistance (activated), Extraordinary Vision (activated)]

[Eagle Eye (not activated), Rot Enthusiast (not activated), Dynamic Eye (not activated)]

Even a maximum mental strength of 110 points still couldn't overcome emptiness and loneliness.

The two superpowers he had yet to activate had been extracted from different kinds of bird eggs.

Eagle Eye, Dynamic Vision, and Extraordinary Vision belonged to the same category and required 10 attribute points.

Zhang Ming felt his current Extraordinary Vision was more or less sufficient, so he hadn't spent any attribute points activating the others.

As for Rot Enthusiast, it allowed him to digest certain rotten substances, but activating it actually required 22 attribute points.

He wouldn't need to eat rotten food anytime soon, so he left it alone for now.

After a month of eating bird eggs and mushrooms, it wasn't that he was sick of them. Rather, the attribute points they provided were dwindling.

Besides, there were only so many birds of all sizes in the area, and he had raided almost every nest.

For the sake of sustainability, Zhang Ming didn't eat eggs in which embryos had already developed.

Meanwhile, the spirit provided by the Parasitic Mushrooms was also slowly decreasing...

These mushrooms provided far more attribute points than bird eggs.

But the deadly problem was that being parasitized by the mushrooms deducted lifespan.

If the attribute points the mushrooms provided fell below the lifespan they deducted, the trade-off would no longer be worth it.

"The Faraday Cage is complete. Next target: the Golden Eel!"

Zhang Ming patted the iron cage beside him and gazed at the gray sky. "I'll wait for a sunny day and fight for my real future!"

He waited anxiously until the tenth day of the fourth month, while he was struggling with Advanced Mathematics.

Zhang Ming suddenly raised his head. A rift had abruptly opened in the heavy black clouds, revealing the clear blue sky behind them. Sunlight spilled down like gold leaf.

Had the rainy season ended?

Perhaps it had, perhaps it hadn't. Maybe this was merely an unexpected turn in nature.

"I'm leaving. I have to leave."

A group of turtles stared at him in bewilderment.

Leaving? Going where?

"I'm leaving to challenge a stronger monster." Zhang Ming straightened his wild-man outfit and shouldered a basket of crab spears. "I know the Mysterious Zone is terrifyingly vast. The country launched a satellite and still couldn't find me. I also know the Mysterious Zone is incredibly dangerous, with monsters stronger than me everywhere..."

"But the more that's true, the more it means no rescue

team is going to come here."

"I have to rely on myself! I'm already on the verge of going crazy. I need a victory. I need something to stimulate my mind!"

"I need to... swim back myself!"

Zhang Ming hoisted the enormous iron cage, which weighed over three hundred jin, and headed toward the mangroves.

He had made extensive preparations for this hunt. He was no longer the greenhorn he had once been.

Little White Turtle said, "Awuu, awuu."

The turtles had never seen Zhang Ming so serious before. At a loss, they followed him one by one.

Besides the Faraday Cage, he also had a thick insulating outfit that covered him from head to toe. He had cut up roughly eight high-end women's garments and spent four days painstakingly refashioning them. It contained absolutely no metal whatsoever and guaranteed one hundred percent insulation from the opposite sex.

As for the method of hunting the Golden Electric Eel, it was simple.

Traps and... venom!