A new day, a new hope.
Xiao Hao glanced at his information screen. His maximum stamina had dwindled to 45.
He still had a little time to farm monsters.
The chat had warned him that the Deep-Sea Ghost was somewhere in its teens, and every ten levels marked a major power gap.
To the Deep-Sea Ghost, a level 1 monster and a level 10 monster were practically the same. A single basic attack could finish either off.
Even the Peacock Mantis Shrimp could only withstand a few more basic attacks at most.
An ultimate would still kill it in one hit.
That was why Xiao Hao had focused his leveling efforts on the seahorse.
He had bonded with the mantis shrimp only because of its role as a tank. If Xiao Hao's position was exposed, at least it could take a few extra hits for him.
What Xiao Hao hadn't expected was the mantis shrimp's surprise bonus: [Undying body].
It also allowed Xiao Hao to maintain Shadow Transformation for longer, greatly improving his chances of survival.
Still, no matter how thoroughly he planned the fight, he had no confidence against the Deep-Sea Ghost.
The level gap was simply too large. A difference of more than ten levels was effectively an entire major tier.
If he could avoid facing the Ghost, he would.
The chat had mentioned that the one remaining miniboss was called the Primordial Snailfish.
But Xiao Hao had to gather Soul-Replenishing Grass that afternoon, so he had no intention of fighting it during his morning farming session.
There was a huge difference between ordinary monsters and minibosses. Most ordinary monsters were only level 1 or 2, and the weakest were level 0, which didn't even drop Spirit Pearls.
Xiao Hao farmed a few ordinary monsters and collected only 50 Spirit Pearls in total, just enough to raise the mantis shrimp to level 5.
Once the mantis shrimp reached level 5, Xiao Hao stopped farming and returned to his room to recover.
After calming himself, Xiao Hao finally opened the door.
Following the directions from the chat, Xiao Hao rode the Peacock Mantis Shrimp forward.
After traveling nearly a thousand meters, the chat messages grew more frequent.
[Keep going straight for another three or four hundred meters, and you'll reach the area where the Ghost often prowls.]
[Hope the streamer doesn't take a wrong turn.]
[He can do it. He seems to have perception far beyond an ordinary person's.]
Xiao Hao continued forward for a while, and the distant Ghost suddenly let out an excited shriek.
He had been spotted.
Xiao Hao wasn't surprised. He immediately recalled the mantis shrimp, activated Shadow Transformation, and fled toward the Coral Shell Room.
Using the terrain as cover, Xiao Hao soon vanished from sight, but the Deep-Sea Ghost kept pursuing him in that direction.
After chasing him for a while, the Ghost lost its bearings. Its skull swayed from side to side as it searched for traces of Xiao Hao, the flesh stuck to its face drifting through the seawater with every movement.
Before long, a light several hundred meters ahead caught its attention.
The Ghost angrily resumed its pursuit. It refused to believe he could escape back to the Coral Shell Room from this far away!
His lucky escape last time had already filled its chest with rage.
No one had ever toyed with it like this!
After chasing him for quite a while, it grew puzzled.
Why could this human keep using his skill for so long?
Soon, the light ahead went out again.
The Ghost chased a little farther, then realized he would surely hide in the Coral Shell Room. It headed straight there instead, intending to cut off his retreat!
It would make this human experience what it felt like to be utterly outsmarted!
Soon, the Ghost reached the room. The room's shell light was off.
Knowing its prey couldn't get back into the Coral Shell Room, the Ghost grew so excited that a gap opened between its two rows of teeth. Scraps of flesh connected the roots of its upper and lower back molars, stretching as its mouth opened.
He wasn't back yet!
Imagining how it would disembowel him, the Ghost planned to rip open his chest, then swallow his heart while it was still beating!
The more it thought about it, the more excited it became. The gap between its teeth widened, pulling the flesh on its cheeks taut. Its jaw strained downward until its enormous mouth was grotesquely distorted, wide enough to fit a football!
Before long, the Ghost spotted a mass of shadow creeping toward it from ahead!
The Ghost shrieked excitedly and immediately lunged toward the shadow. It even drove all ten scythe fingers into the ground and pushed backward to propel itself faster.
Sensing the surging current ahead, the shadow immediately fled into an area of complicated terrain.
Aquatic plants grew thickly there, and the ground was uneven.
How could finding a shadow in that area be easy?
The Ghost's excitement faded, and some reason returned. Instead of venting its rage on the terrain, it went back to the Coral Shell Room to continue lying in wait for Xiao Hao!
The palms attached to its scythe fingers were sticky and mottled with corpse spots. Its skeletal chest rose and fell slightly, a sign that it was already growing impatient.
The shadow hadn't expected the Ghost to have much patience. Before long, it slowly crept over again.
The Ghost's skull suddenly turned 180 degrees backward, its eye sockets fixed on the shadow. Its neck twisted like a wrung towel, squeezing its blue-purple veins into view. The muscles around its windpipe strained to their limit, as though they might snap at any moment.
The Ghost's body slowly turned after its head, bringing its ten sinister scythe fingers around. The fingers swept backward, and its body instantly shot forward!
The shadow seemed startled and immediately retreated into the complicated terrain.
After an hour of this back-and-forth, the Ghost finally ran out of patience.
Maybe that human had already gone to gather Soul-Replenishing Grass!
The Ghost abruptly headed back toward its lair, but after it had traveled several hundred meters, the Coral Shell Room behind it lit up.
As long as he hadn't gone there, he wouldn't survive tomorrow even if he hid inside the Coral Shell Room!
This time, it would stay right outside the door and watch him die!
The Ghost rushed back to the Coral Shell Room's floor-to-ceiling window, only to find a black-and-gold Shadow Seahorse floating inside. Its little conical snout was pressed against the room's light switch.
The Ghost trembled with rage.
It had been fooled again!
Completely and utterly played!
With an angry shriek, the Ghost hurried back, hoping that human hadn't found the Soul-Replenishing Grass!
Elsewhere, Xiao Hao pulled up the last stalk of Soul-Replenishing Grass, which glowed pale blue, and slowly exhaled.
Looking at the corpses covering the landscape, Xiao Hao sighed.
Searching several Corpse Mountains for Soul-Replenishing Grass would have taken him forever without the chat's guidance!
Holding the Soul-Replenishing Grass, he hadn't expected it to come from somewhere like this.
[Soul-Replenishing Grass needs plenty of souls to absorb before it can grow, of course.]
[Collecting Spirit Pearls isn't the only way ghost-type monsters increase their strength.]
The subsequent messages stopped discussing the subject because the chat had gone off-topic again.
But Xiao Hao easily figured it out.
Since Soul-Replenishing Grass could strengthen ghost-type monsters, the monster corpses scattered across these mountains were probably the Deep-Sea Ghost's handiwork.
Xiao Hao suddenly remembered that level 0 wild monsters didn't drop Spirit Pearls.
Yet the Ghost still had another way to squeeze value out of them.
As he put the Soul-Replenishing Grass into his space slot, an alarmed feeling suddenly reached him from the Shadow Seahorse. Xiao Hao knew his diversion had been exposed.
But that didn't matter. He had already finished gathering the Soul-Replenishing Grass.
At the Deep-Sea Ghost's speed, it would take roughly a minute and a half to get here from the Coral Shell Room.
Xiao Hao didn't dare delay. He immediately activated Shadow Transformation and took a different route back.
Undying body could extend the duration and frequency of Xiao Hao's skills, but it couldn't let him use them indefinitely.
Fortunately, he had already used some Soul-Replenishing Grass, restoring his maximum stamina to 100.
With a small mound of corpses on the outskirts of the Corpse Mountain between them, Xiao Hao and the Ghost passed each other.
From far away, Xiao Hao heard the Ghost's furious shriek.
The shriek brimmed with brutality and madness. Xiao Hao could understand why.
After all, wherever he went, not a blade of grass remained.
An entire Corpse Mountain had nurtured only that small patch of Soul-Replenishing Grass, and Xiao Hao had swept through it like a swarm of locusts.
All that painstakingly cultivated Soul-Replenishing Grass had been taken in one go. How could it not be furious...
Not only that, Xiao Hao had taken everything else too, useful or otherwise...
After using his skill continuously for two minutes, Xiao Hao had to return to human form and rest for a while.
He mounted the mantis shrimp and continued hurrying back.
He wasn't sure whether the Ghost would be angry enough to return straight to the Coral Shell Room.
"Aah-!"
A female ghost's scream rang out behind him, covering Xiao Hao in goosebumps.
The Ghost was coming after him!
Xiao Hao had already picked out hiding places, but he discovered that no matter which direction he fled, the Ghost quickly adjusted its course and charged straight toward him.
What was going on?!
How was it finding him?!
Alarm bells blared in Xiao Hao's mind. He summoned the mantis shrimp again and urged it to flee as fast as it could.
By his rough estimate, he was about four hundred meters from the Coral Shell Room, and the Ghost was the same distance from him.
The Ghost would reach his current position in roughly thirty seconds, and the Coral Shell Room in one minute.
In other words, the Ghost's speed exceeded 13.3 m/s, so his own speed couldn't fall below 6.6 m/s...
The figures flashed through his mind. The mantis shrimp wasn't built for speed. The seahorse's Aurora Shadow could definitely exceed 6.6 m/s, but that was the seahorse's speed-it didn't mean he could reach it too!
Xiao Hao's Shadow Transformation was slightly faster than the mantis shrimp, so he simply recalled it and fled on his own! He could sustain Shadow Transformation for a few dozen seconds.
Unfortunately, being able to sustain it didn't mean he could run fast enough.
Chat messages kept appearing, warning Xiao Hao that the Ghost was getting closer while the Coral Shell Room remained far ahead.
He was done for!
At this speed, Xiao Hao couldn't possibly outrun the Ghost!
Xiao Hao forced himself to calm down. They were using the same Shadow Transformation skill. There was no reason the seahorse's version should be so much stronger than his.
Even if their physical attributes had originally differed, Xiao Hao now had [undying body], which the seahorse lacked!
What exactly was different?!
Aurora Shadow...
Aurora...
Shadow Ribbon...
Floating...
That was it!
Floating!
Xiao Hao's Shadow Transformation clung to the ground, whereas the seahorses could float straight ahead while transformed!
Xiao Hao tried to make himself float, but found it difficult to control.
Once he floated, Xiao Hao felt weightless and struggled to keep his balance.
He had no time to learn how to balance gradually.
His situation was like riding a bicycle for the first time while having to race at top speed!
The risks were obvious!
An Aurora Shadow shot forward, while the Ghost behind it screamed incessantly with rage.
It had noticed that the shadow was moving faster!
It wasn't that it couldn't keep up, but that he could enter the Coral Shell Room before it reached him!
A closer look revealed that the Aurora Shadow was rather bizarre, jerking one way and then the other as though having a seizure.
The Coral Shell Room's door slowly opened. The seahorse inside had opened it.
The Aurora Shadow burst through the wall of water and slammed on the brakes!
But he still crashed headfirst into the coral wall. Blood trickled down his forehead, and Xiao Hao grimaced in pain.
Through the thin layer of water, Xiao Hao could clearly see the furious Ghost.
Blue-purple veins bulged all over its body. Its two rows of yellow teeth, visible all the way to its back molars, were clenched tight. Low, hoarse growls kept escaping it, making its fury plain.
The door was wide open, yet it still didn't dare enter.
It truly deserved the game's designation of a "safe zone." Even with the door wide open, wild monsters didn't dare intrude.
Enraged beyond restraint, the Ghost leaned forward, actually preparing to try entering the Coral Shell Room!
Xiao Hao was horrified. If wild monsters really could enter the Coral Shell Room, it wouldn't have merely grabbed his pajamas the first time!
The Ghost's upper body broke through the wall of water, and the Coral Shell Room's lights suddenly blazed brighter!
Flames abruptly engulfed the Ghost's withered, branchlike arms. Its ten scythe fingers glowed red-hot, as though about to melt into molten iron, and its burning arms ignited the rags covering its body.
The Ghost let out an agonized shriek and immediately retreated into the water. Like a red-hot iron block plunged into water, its entire body released clouds of bubbles with a sizzling hiss.
After a little while, the cold seawater finally eased the Ghost's pain. It stared at the Coral Shell Room but didn't dare cross the boundary again.
Both could sense the other's hostility. Xiao Hao watched with a gloating sneer as the Ghost retreated in disgrace.
This was now a serious blood feud.
Neither would rest until the other was dead.
Some wild monsters lacked intelligence, while others possessed considerable cunning. The Ghost was clearly one of the latter.
From the beginning, it had hounded him like a rabid dog.
Xiao Hao wasn't a saint. He had a temper too, and the Soul-Replenishing Grass was merely the interest!
One day, he would make the Ghost pay with its life!
Before you continue