After obtaining the three treasure peaches, Jiang Ziliu performed a round of Probability Judgment and confirmed that these lightning-attribute treasure peaches could strengthen the Mutated Lightning Snake and could also serve as ingredients for its evolution potion.
Throughout the following day, Jiang Ziliu never left the basement where he was hiding.
His plan of action had been correct.
After he stole the treasure peaches, the enraged Thunder Sparrows circled the sky for an entire day, attacking every human and exotic beast within five kilometers.
It seemed that every creature here was a suspected treasure thief to them.
Because of Jiang Ziliu, the Thunder Sparrows attacked many nearby exotic beasts, forcing them to flee the area quickly.
There were no particularly powerful exotic beasts in the Thunder Sparrows' territory. They were the greatest overlords here.
Recently, only four human adventurers had been active in this area.
Two suffered severe electrical burns under the Thunder Sparrows' attacks, but successfully escaped.
They did not think much of it and simply moved far away. After all, any sort of abnormal situation could arise in the wilderness.
However, two other young beast tamers, one fat and one thin, chose to hide in the grass and observe.
These two were wilderness adventurers with a bandit streak!
They disliked adventuring in tightly controlled Dungeon Spaces and instead ventured exclusively into the wilderness.
The two were cousins, and their prey included both exotic beasts and lone human beast tamers.
They were the jackals of the wilderness, ordinarily well-behaved, but once they found an opportunity, they transformed into vicious, sinister demons.
And in the wilderness, many people made their living like this.
After all, most resources in the bases were controlled by the rich and powerful. Without talent, people like them had no opportunity to rise through ordinary means.
Thus, searching for opportunities to rise with the habits of wolves in the lawless wilderness became the best choice for people like them.
"Cousin, what's going on? Why have all the Thunder Sparrows gone mad?"
The thin man asked in confusion. He disliked using his brain, but he was ruthless and vicious, daring to fight and put his life on the line.
The small-eyed fat man lying beside him in the grass was his older cousin.
A cunning light of intelligence shone in the fat man's eyes as he said, "What's going on? If something has made the Thunder Sparrows this relentless, it's very likely that the treasure they were guarding was stolen. We never even suspected that this flock of Thunder Sparrows was guarding treasure. Now they've probably been driven frantic."
"No way. Could their young have been attacked?"
The thin younger cousin seemed unconvinced, but he knew that exotic beasts became extremely vicious when something happened to their offspring.
"Why not? Thunder Sparrows live in flocks. Their young or eggs getting harmed is very common. But have you ever seen Thunder Sparrows riot under those circumstances? No! The only thing that could make them react this violently and come out as a flock is a precious treasure they were guarding! A lightning-attribute treasure, at that!"
The fat man bit his lip, excitement flashing in his eyes.
"Judging by this situation, the one who stole their treasure was most likely an adventurer. Some special kind of tamed beast probably did it. And they most likely haven't gone far. They didn't intimidate the Thunder Sparrows and resorted to stealing the treasure covertly, which means they aren't particularly strong either. They're probably operating alone."
Hearing his fat cousin's words, the thin younger cousin grew excited too.
"Doesn't that mean we've got work again? Kill this fellow, and the treasure he obtained will be ours!"
Excitement and cruelty flashed in the thin man's eyes, brimming with greed and desire for the treasure.
Both cousins were initial-stage Bronze Rank beast tamers!
But their original talents were only C− grade, nowhere near enough to reach this level. Only by trading stolen resources and treasures for the resources they needed at a hidden black market near Base No. 12 had they raised themselves from an impossible position to initial-stage Bronze Rank.
Both had also successfully contracted their second tamed beasts, which they had already nurtured to Bronze Rank.
Greed, cunning, ruthlessness, and close cooperation between the cousins formed the foundation of their growth.
Thus, like greedy vultures, they never let any opportunity in the wilderness pass them by.
"Right. This time, I'll keep watch. I'll climb the tallest peak and have my Wind-Piercing Blue-Feathered Eagle scout from high above. My other tamed beast, the Shadow Cat, will also watch for movement at night."
The fat man thought as he laid out his plan.
"You wait at the exit from this area. Your first tamed beast, the Wind-Thunder Leopard, is good at ambush attacks, and the Earth Savage Bull can pursue prey for a long time. We'll stay in touch by walkie-talkie as usual. Once I identify the target, you can attack, and I'll quickly launch an attack from behind them."
As a very experienced wilderness hunter, the fat older cousin's tactical arrangements were quite good.
His thin younger cousin was vicious and dared to risk his life in battle, making him an excellent blade.
Every time he arranged their tactics, he discreetly left himself an escape route while leaving the dangerous work of engaging the enemy up close to his younger cousin.
Both were dangerous men in the wilderness, whether to exotic beasts or human beast tamers, but the fat man was clearly more skillful.
The thin younger cousin had no objection to this arrangement. They had always done things this way, and their success rate was high.
Elsewhere, Jiang Ziliu had no idea that someone already had their eyes on him.
He stayed in the underground space, paying no attention to the Thunder Sparrows' furious search overhead, and took out a treasure peach for the Mutated Lightning Snake to swallow directly.
He wanted to strengthen the Mutated Lightning Snake, which was already seven-star Black Iron Grade, and raise it to nine-star Black Iron Grade.
The energy contained in this single treasure peach was enough to give it an enormous boost.
The instant the Mutated Lightning Snake saw the peach, it conveyed a powerful desire to eat it to Jiang Ziliu, showing just how attractive this thing was to it.
After swallowing the treasure peach, the Mutated Lightning Snake fell into a deep sleep.
Jiang Ziliu returned it to his Beast-Taming Space and waited quietly in the temporary underground space.
He took out a blank notebook and wrote and sketched, thinking over the electromagnetism-related knowledge he had learned and devising applications for his SSS+ grade Electromagnetic Manipulation.
He had already come up with relevant plans, and now he could analyze them further and perform calculations.
Jiang Ziliu had already organized several possible directions for its use.
Then he began experimenting with his first application skill for Electromagnetic Manipulation.
The first skill he designed took inspiration from Magneto's metal control.
However, Magneto's control was instinctive, whereas he had to calculate and research the precise distribution and magnitude of the forces he used.
Magnetism could attract metal, but it could also produce a special repulsive effect.
Jiang Ziliu carefully distributed his power, using Electromagnetic Manipulation to convert Dark Energy into a corresponding electromagnetic field. He then familiarized himself with its strength and variations before finally applying the force to his short blade.
Trembling, the short blade rose into the air, but its trajectory was difficult to control. Jiang Ziliu had to keep changing the strength and direction of the electromagnetic force to control the metal.
At first, a moment of carelessness nearly sent the blade flying over to slice him.
But he was, after all, a Black Iron Grade life-form, and his soul strength had long since exceeded 100, giving him the soul power of a Bronze Rank beast tamer.
This allowed him to learn extremely quickly.
After just half a day of practice, he had proficiently mastered the ability to wield and control a flying blade through electromagnetic force.
Now he could control not only flying blades, but other metals as well.
However, for now he practiced only controlling the flying blade. He spent another half day practicing until he was thoroughly proficient.
After all, a rough grasp of ten skills was no match for mastery of one.
The next day, the Mutated Lightning Snake still had not finished strengthening, so he began practicing a new application of Electromagnetic Manipulation.
Previously, he had used electromagnetism to control metal. This time, he used it for microwave heating.
This was an application of the principle behind microwave ovens. After all, microwaves were also a specific branch of electromagnetic forces.
This was much easier to learn than controlling metal with electromagnetism.
Soon, he successfully converted Dark Energy into microwaves and emitted them directionally, cooking his specially prepared dried-meat rations.
Microwave heating could affect flesh-and-blood life-forms such as exotic beasts and beast tamers, making it an effective means of attacking them.
But Jiang Ziliu discovered that this attack needed some time to take effect. After all, his Dark Energy was still insufficient, preventing him from generating large amounts of heat instantly.
It could work against stationary targets, but striking moving targets was not so easy.
The best benefit of this move was that it could cook food. Eating cooked meals in the wilderness would be no problem at all.
Before this, throughout this adventure, he had been getting by on cold, dry rations.
Because it generated heat relatively slowly, the current use Jiang Ziliu thought of was heating the water inside a target's body to interfere with its bodily functions.
If the opponent was alert enough to dodge or hide behind an obstacle, his microwave heating move might have no effect!
Jiang Liu had another direction for applying electromagnetic heating: using the principle of electromagnetic induction with alternating current.
Induction cookers in his previous life had operated on this principle.
This principle could heat metal, whereas microwaves could not.
This application of electromagnetic heating could be used against metal-attribute exotic beasts or beast tamers' metal weapons.
Jiang Ziliu practiced this ability as well.
After nearly half a day of effort, he proficiently mastered this ability to generate high temperatures directionally, successfully heating an iron bead from ten meters away and turning it into a drop of molten iron within three minutes.
He had to admit that for this ability to be effective, a beast tamer needed an enormous quantity of Dark Energy and had to release it instantaneously.
At present, taking three minutes to melt iron was still very slow and difficult to apply in actual combat.
But it could still produce a very good disruptive effect.
There was another direction for applying Electromagnetic Manipulation: an energy shield.
However, Jiang Ziliu needed time to research how to form one. For now, he could not create an effective electromagnetic shield.
This world's technology was fairly advanced, but it still had shortcomings. Some things required Jiang Ziliu to research, analyze, and calculate himself.
By the time he became proficient in both microwave heating and electromagnetic induction heating, the Mutated Lightning Snake had completed its advancement.
When Jiang Ziliu summoned it, it was already a nine-star Black Iron Grade life-form!
And this round of tamed-beast feedback pushed him to three-star Black Iron Grade.
At this point, Jiang Ziliu had achieved all his basic goals!
As for evolving the Mutated Lightning Snake, he decided to deal with that after returning to the base. At present, he lacked the other medicinal ingredients needed to prepare its evolution potion.
That night, Jiang Ziliu set out for the base under cover of darkness.
Now he had the evolved Azurite Rock Man and the nine-star Black Iron Grade Mutated Lightning Snake, making travel at night possible.
But his intuition gave him a bad feeling, and Jiang Ziliu instinctively performed Probability Judgment.
What is the probability that I'll encounter danger on my way back this time?
100%!
What is the probability that I'll encounter danger on my way back tomorrow during the day?
100%!
What is the probability that I'll encounter danger from beast tamers on my way back this time?
100%!
Through Probability Judgment, Jiang Ziliu confirmed that he would definitely encounter an ambush by beast tamers on his way back. This meant that beast tamers already had their eyes on him.
It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the Thunder Sparrows' relentless, furious searching over the past two days had allowed some clever beast tamers to deduce that he had obtained treasure from them.
Humans were intelligent beings, after all. Some were always clever enough to analyze the key points!
What is the probability that I'll kill them?
81.6%!
Jiang Ziliu understood. As long as he was a little careful, those ambushing him would be no match for him with his combat strength fully unleashed.
What is the probability that they'll escape my counterattack?
31.5%!
A nearly one-in-three chance. This indicated that the ambushers were cautious too, and there might be more than one.
What is the probability that there are two of them?
100%!
What is the probability that they'll attack from the front and rear?
100%!
Seeing the result of this Probability Judgment, Jiang Ziliu smiled. He had never fought a life-and-death battle against beast tamers before. This seemed like a good opportunity to train too.
Upon coming to this world, he had already prepared himself to fight both beasts and humans.
He had experienced actual combat against beasts, but not against humans yet. With such a high chance of victory, this seemed suitable as a special trial too!
The fat and thin cousins had never imagined that before Jiang Ziliu even set out, he would already know crucial details of their ambush.
Jiang Ziliu performed some more Probability Judgments, analyzing and assessing the circumstances of the two fellows ambushing him.
Only then did he set off on the return journey without hesitation, waiting for the two ambushers to appear.