And in the Ancient Wilderness, the dark forest law prevailed.
Unless there was some special way to confirm identities, encounters always meant immediate attacks. If she approached creatures she met in the Ancient Wilderness thinking they might be awakened ones, even a hundred lives would not be enough to throw away.
As it turned out, she was so small that she had failed to draw the other's attention.
She had imagined the dangers she might encounter in the Ancient Wilderness at night, but she had not expected the first danger to appear and end like this.
Who said being a bug was bad? Being a bug was fantastic!
There was no time to waste. She would allocate her points immediately, then return.
What mattered most to her at this stage was building up her foundations, building them up, and building them up some more.
The attribute panel appeared in Wen Jing's consciousness again. Sure enough, the human body panel had turned gray and entered a [Read-only] state, while the insect body panel was white and could be modified.
[Please provide an evolutionary direction]
After she tried allocating points, the prompt appeared again.
Whether she wanted to add points to individual attributes or to her species level, the result was the same.
Faced with this situation, a flash of inspiration struck Wen Jing, and she suddenly had a theory: perhaps she had never actually uncovered the true use of her cheat.
Why could she actively add points to the attributes on the human panel, and why was there a limit to her species level?
Because "human," as a species, had a complete and singular standard.
In the past, she had been able to add attributes at first because her own physical qualities were insufficient. Later, when she raised every attribute to ten points, she had already reached the pinnacle of what human genes could achieve.
If she evolved any further, she would no longer be human.
But the "insect" of her current wilderness body had no such restriction, whether because it was a creature of the Ancient Wilderness or because of how its insect classification was defined.
Next, Wen Jing tried asking further about evolution. "Can I choose any evolutionary direction?"
She received no answer.
So she stopped wasting time and instead directly stated her most crucial and urgent needs:
"First, I need the ability to precisely anchor a safe landing point when returning from the Ancient Wilderness to the material universe."
"Second, I need the ability to withstand attacks when returning from the Ancient Wilderness to the material universe, so my return won't be interrupted."
"Third, I need the ability to carry matter exceeding my own volume when returning from the Ancient Wilderness to the material universe."
Of these three needs, only the last was for making money. The first two both revolved around staying alive during her return.
All any algorithm could produce was a range of spatial anchor points. However advanced the algorithm, it could only narrow that range, never achieve true precision.
Wen Jing had not forgotten that before entering the Ancient Wilderness, she had been aboard a spaceship under attack by raiders. With a bit of bad luck-if Tainuo had failed to defeat the enemy, if the fighting was still ongoing, if the enemy had moved the spaceship... any of these could send her plunging into space.
She had to be alive to have a future. She absolutely could not accept dying for a reason like that.
After speaking, she stared closely at the panel in her consciousness, unsure whether describing it this way would work.
[Evolutionary direction confirmed...]
She relaxed slightly. It seemed communication through consciousness left no room for failures to convey her meaning.
[Spending points to evolve...] [346 → 0]
Wait! Wasn't it supposed to tell me how many points I needed first, then ask for confirmation? This is a forced sale!
Watching the skill points she had painstakingly saved for eighteen years drop to zero in an instant, the little silver-gray bug was so angry that her mouthparts kept opening and closing, the feelers beside them trembling along.
Immediately afterward, her six legs and the jointed appendages on her abdomen began trembling too.
But this time, it was beyond her control.
The world peeled away before Wen Jing, layer by layer. When all that remained was the panel in her consciousness...
The panel blurred for a moment too.
The next instant, starting with the panel, everything grew clear again, layer by layer. She came back to herself in a daze, feeling that she had undergone some indescribable change. A special sense she did not know how to describe had appeared out of nowhere.
And the sensory organ for this special sense... was in her rear abdomen.
[Evolution complete] [Springtail → Gravity Silk Gland I] [Traits acquired: Gravity Silk, Gravity Silk Cocoon]
Chapter 8
Gravity... silk gland?
"So this strange sense is actually gravity?"
Reading the description in the newly added [Evolution log] on the panel, Wen Jing felt both awed and intrigued.
All human sensory perception of gravity was indirect; humans could only interpret it through its effects. Yet the sense she had now evolved allowed her to perceive gravity directly, as though sensing electromagnetic waves.
It was a very strange sensation. She could feel the minute curvature in the surrounding spacetime caused by her own existence.
The most immediate effect of this new sense was an overhaul of her "danger radar's" range and precision.
Meanwhile, her rear abdomen had undergone a tremendous change, transforming from a spindle shape that could curl up into an oval, much like a spider's abdomen.
She could feel all the nutrients in her body being supplied to her abdomen as a priority. It was also her organ for sensing gravity.
With a thought, a strand of translucent fine silk emerged from her rear.
Wen Jing had initially wanted to move around like a spider spinning a web and weave whatever came to mind.
But she soon abandoned that idea.
An ability evolved at the cost of 346 skill points was extraordinary indeed. The fine thread she had produced-more accurately called Gravity Silk-did not become uncontrollable once it left her body the way spider silk did.
Although she could not exactly control it as naturally as her own limbs, Wen Jing could indeed control it.
And the way she controlled it was quite remarkable. It could sense gravitational fields and gravitational waves, and use them as paths along which to move.
In concrete terms, the short strand of silk she had just produced was now winding and twisting irregularly in midair as though guided by an invisible hand, moving sometimes fast and sometimes slow.
In other words, any target with mass could be chosen as a landing point for the Gravity Silk.
Even now, Wen Jing herself was affected by the ground's gravitational field, leaving her able only to stand on the ground rather than float in midair.
But the marvelous Gravity Silk had no such restriction. No matter how powerful a gravitational field was, to it, that field was merely one particularly broad path among many.
Wen Jing could choose to send it down a main road or a side road. The only difference was its speed.
Now, under her control, the Gravity Silk silently adhered to a somewhat larger stone nearby.
Then she instinctively contracted her abdomen and reeled in the Gravity Silk, sending her entire insect body shooting straight toward the stone.
The whole process was extremely fast. She discovered that during it, she was unaffected by any other surrounding gravity, experiencing only the gravity of the matter to which the Gravity Silk adhered.
And as long as she slowed the reeling speed before reaching her target, she would not crash into the stone from inertia.
Woohoo!
Wen Jing was so excited that all six legs rose into a tap dance in midair.
Wasn't this much faster than her old springtail, which could only unleash its speed in life-threatening situations? It also let her travel much farther!
She checked the changes to her attribute panel-
Health: 0.01 Strength: 0.01 Speed: 0.01 Spirit: 0.01 Traits: Gravity Silk, Gravity Silk Cocoon Species level (insect): 0.01/∞
"..."
Wen Jing's excitement over her new ability rapidly slid back toward heartache over her skill points.
So all her skill points had gone into evolving this trait, and not a single point had been added to her basic attributes!
She also noticed that even after spending so many points, this Gravity Silk Gland was still only level "I," which meant it could be upgraded further.
...She hardly dared imagine how many points an upgrade would cost.
After doing her best to console herself that this trait had great potential and safety mattered most, Wen Jing used the Gravity Silk to move to the safest spot nearby and began producing silk again.
This time, unlike when she had moved earlier, she produced more silk, and the target the Gravity Silk adhered to was herself.
After experiencing the Gravity Silk's ability, she instinctively knew how to use the second trait, "Gravity Silk Cocoon."
Wrapping herself in a Gravity Silk Cocoon would help her locate a spatial anchor point when returning to the material universe.
Compared with the chaotic gravity in the Ancient Wilderness, the gravity of the material universe surely qualified as "clearly ordered."
Especially since Wen Jing would use it in conjunction with an algorithm, she could easily lock onto the spaceship, the object with the greatest mass in that region, and would absolutely never end up with a final landing point in space.
Halfway through producing silk, Wen Jing suddenly thought of something and stopped.
Then she shifted slightly, approaching a small stone nearby that was twice as large as her own body.
She assessed it, ran some calculations, and continued producing silk.
This time, the silk she produced wound around both herself and the small stone.
Making a living isn't easy... Wen Jing sighed inwardly.
When she had provided her evolutionary directions earlier, the first two had been about survival, and only the third had been for making money.
But she had little choice. Treasures lay everywhere in the Ancient Wilderness, and awakened ones could bring the materials they found here back to the Federation, but on one condition: the matter they carried could not exceed the mass of their own wilderness bodies.
Small wilderness bodies were at a major disadvantage in this respect, and Wen Jing was small even among those with small bodies. It seemed she was the only one among this year's new students whose wilderness body was an insect.
After evolving, how much matter she could carry depended on how large an object her Gravity Silk could wrap around.
Now, the silk gland in Wen Jing's abdomen had flattened, and she had finally wrapped herself and her loot completely.
This stone she had picked up nearby certainly did not count as a treasure in the Ancient Wilderness, but even a mosquito was meat, however small. Having something was better than nothing.
The next instant, Wen Jing reached out to the "passage" in her consciousness.
Chaos unfolded before her, every region seemingly leading to an unknown destination.