Chapter Summaries

Wen Jing killed the black snake by evolving Snake Venom Resistance and eating its heart, then gained Abnormal Status Immunity II by consuming the carcass. As she continued feeding, she discovered that scarlet mushrooms were spreading toward the snake and growing on its remains.

• Wen Jing used Wind Blades and a surprise strike to wound the black snake at its vital spot, then gnawed through its heart while enduring its venom and the pool’s poison.
• Wen Jing evolved Snake Venom Resistance, finished eating the snake’s heart, and watched the black snake die before dragging its carcass onto a tree root.
• Wen Jing ate the snake’s body and gallbladder, gaining Abnormal Status Immunity II and raising her health and strength.
• Wen Jing tested her immunity against a scarlet mushroom’s poisonous mist, lost health, and moved the snake carcass farther away from it.
• Wen Jing noticed scarlet mushrooms beside the snake’s head and realized they had followed her as spores covered the carcass and another mushroom grew.

Wen Jing ate the black snake’s head and gained Potent Poison Resistance I, then tasted the scarlet mushrooms and fell into a hallucination in which she devoured the giant tree and its inhabitants. She woke with mushroom mycelium draining her energy and began trying to evolve an ability that could use the panel as a mental anchor.

• Wen Jing cut the red mushroom from the black snake’s head, but the seemingly dead snake head spat venom at her before falling still again.
• Wen Jing ate the snake’s head and acquired Potent Poison Resistance I after consuming its venom glands.
• Wen Jing tasted the mushroom’s mycelium, hallucinated devouring the tree’s mushrooms, creatures, ant queen, emerald crystals, and a [Wood] character, then woke with a mushroom growing on her back.
• Wen Jing realized the mycelium had entered her body and was draining her energy, and she recognized that the mushrooms had induced her hallucination.
• Wen Jing reasoned that the panel could anchor her free will and proposed evolving an ability to make use of it.

Wen Jing used a new trait to overcome the crimson mushrooms’ hallucinations, then grew stronger by eating snake meat and mushrooms. After climbing the year-group leaderboard and earning an Empowerment Stone, she gained Giantification and tested her increased size in the Ancient Wilderness.

• Wen Jing spent skill points to evolve Directed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (Eating), which made her think of the panel while eating and helped her resist the crimson mushrooms’ hallucinations.
• Wen Jing feasted on snake meat and crimson mushrooms, raising her health, strength, and spirit, and decided to wait until her spirit advanced before challenging the ant queen.
• Wen Jing met two classmates returning to the plaza, then delivered black snake fangs to Xie Ming and received 10 credits.
• Wen Jing earned S-rank evaluations on every floor of the Trial Tower and rose from 97th to 31st on the year-group leaderboard, stirring speculation about the upcoming tournament and its new format.
• Dean Bai and Xie Ming encouraged Wen Jing to prepare for the tournament, and Wen Jing used her Empowerment Stone in the Ancient Wilderness, gaining five points in every stat and the Giantification trait.
• Wen Jing grew to the size of a washbasin and discovered that maintaining Giantification consumed energy and made her harder to keep invisible.

Wen Jing tested her enlarged form, then learned that Red Earth Academy’s year-group ranking tournament would use a virtual-reality free-for-all. After three days of debate and preparation, the freshman tournament began with all 11,741 students assembled.

• Wen Jing used her enlarged form to defeat a red-and-white bird, judged the form less effective than her normal state, and raised her speed to 45 before returning.
• Wen Jing read the new tournament rules: students would fight on a competition planet for three days, earning points for kills and being eliminated if killed.
• Wen Jing read forum discussions about the simplified rules, while Dean Bai and the academy’s instructors discussed the cost of adding restrictions and the leak of the new format.
• Wen Jing received offers from classmates and plutocratic students to avoid attacking them or to secure points, but she closed the messages without accepting.
• Three days later, all 11,741 first-year students gathered for the year-group ranking tournament.

Dean Bai announced that the freshman ranking competition’s first-place prize was a low-tier Wilderness Weapon, disrupting match-fixing deals before more than ten thousand students entered a battle royale. Wen Jing landed alone in a desert, saw her rank update as eliminations began, and spotted another participant who fled after recognizing her.

• Wen Jing took her assigned place in the central section, where Dean Bai and the academy leaders watched her.
• Dean Bai announced a low-tier Wilderness Weapon as the first-place prize, causing students and people involved in match-fixing to reconsider their arrangements.
• More than ten thousand first-year students entered the virtual competition on a randomly generated rocky planet.
• Wen Jing landed in a desert, assessed the small planet and its restrictions, and saw her ranking update as participants began to be eliminated.
• Another competitor appeared over the horizon, recognized Wen Jing, and ran away.

Wen Jing explored the competition asteroid after earning one kill, avoiding further fights while mapping its terrain. After discovering the planet’s ten-meter-thick surface layer, she remained low-ranked as surviving competitors began assembling teams.

• Wen Jing chased down and killed Kevin, then headed toward the star instead of seeking more opponents.
• Students in a ruined city and others she encountered retreated when they recognized Wen Jing, while she continued surveying the planet.
• Wen Jing finished mapping the asteroid and dug into its lowest basin, discovering that terrain material extended only ten meters below the surface.
• Wen Jing checked her ranking at 6223 with two points as the field of competitors dwindled and groups began gathering.
• Children of plutocratic families from the spring and summer classes met in a ruined city with bodyguards and hired fighters.

Wen Jing cleared the contestants from a fifteen-kilometer circle, then expanded it to drive more competitors away and establish an artificial final circle. The remaining students began treating the expanding boundary like a poison circle and fled rather than risk entering it.

• Financial conglomerate scions negotiated over the wilderness artifact prize while Dean Bai criticized the academy conservatives’ narrow outlook.
• Wen Jing’s ranking surged as she carved a fifteen-kilometer circle through the arena with her Energy-Shaping Weapon.
• Wen Jing hunted down nearly everyone inside the circle, and Tan Wenshan escaped after hearing her warning that anyone crossing it would die.
• After clearing the circle, Wen Jing waited at its center, then expanded it by ten kilometers and eliminated contestants who failed to get away.
• Wen Jing’s actions showed that she would expand the circle every thirty minutes, prompting the remaining contestants to flee and avoid entering it.

Wen Jing’s expanding circle forced contestants into alliances, but the first coalition against her collapsed into infighting and friendly fire. After her circle narrowed the remaining safe zone to a tenth of the planet, a stronger Second Anti-Jing Alliance formed and launched a coordinated attack that Wen Jing welcomed.

• Wen Jing’s circle covered more than half the planet, prompting over twenty groups to form the First Anti-Jing Alliance against her.
• When the alliance attacked, Wen Jing dodged and countered while its ranged fighters struck their own allies and contestants fought over points.
• The First Anti-Jing Alliance disbanded after its members turned on one another, and Wen Jing reached 365 points as the contestant count fell by a third.
• Wen Jing continued expanding her circle until only a little over five hundred contestants remained in a safe zone covering one-tenth of the planet.
• Tan Wenshan’s older female cousin became leader of the Second Anti-Jing Alliance, whose members coordinated more effectively as they surrounded Wen Jing.

Wen Jing drove the remaining contestants into an anomalous energy zone, where they discovered she could not fly and concentrated their points among five airborne students. She revealed her Wind Blade could reach them, eliminated all five, and took first place.

• Wen Jing defeated the second alliance's assault and pursued its retreating members beyond the circle she had drawn.
• Wen Jing herded the contestants into the basin's anomalous energy radiation zone, where their combat techniques became far less effective than hers.
• The fleeing contestants realized Wen Jing could not fly and transferred their points to five students with bird Wilderness Bodies.
• The five airborne students gathered above the basin and believed Wen Jing could not reach them, while her score fell to third place.
• Wen Jing used Wind Blade to slice through all five students and rose to rank first with 5103 points.

Wen Jing won Red Earth Academy’s first-year ranking tournament and received a Wilderness Weapon, cementing her place at the top of the year rankings. Recordings of her victory reached the other academies, where students reacted to her dominance and some tried to imitate her tactics.

• Dean Bai announced Wen Jing as champion, and the audience celebrated her victory.
• Wen Jing received a Wilderness Weapon, linked it to her energy, and discovered she could store it in her consciousness and summon it again.
• Wen Jing’s prizes raised her credits to 596 and secured her first place in the year rankings, after which she agreed to celebrate with her winter class classmates.
• Students at Azure Jade and Mystic Radiance watched recordings of Wen Jing’s tournament and debated her strength and tactics.
• A student imitated Wen Jing’s circle-drawing strategy in another tournament, but the other contestants quickly eliminated them.
• An unnamed young master’s subordinate told him that their analyst team had received the tournament footage.

After testing her new Wilderness Weapon, Wen Jing discovered it could make the material it struck crumble, though the weapon itself lost a little material in the process. At midnight, she learned she had ranked first in her grade and received a villa in Fenghua Residential Complex, where she arrived carrying the damaged desk.

• Wen Jing accidentally cut the dorm desk with her Wilderness Weapon and found that its blue-green traces made the desk crumble while wearing away a small patch of the weapon.
• The dorm supervisor inspected the damage, billed Wen Jing for a replacement, and arranged for a new desk to be delivered.
• Wen Jing received the first-place grade ranking and residency rights to Villa 4 in Zone A of Fenghua Residential Complex.
• Wen Jing decided to move immediately, carried the broken desk out of her dorm, and dazzled nearby students with her brightness.
• Wen Jing followed the navigation to Fenghua Residential Complex and arrived half an hour later.

Wen Jing moved into her top-ranked villa and brought the verdigris-corroded table to the research institute to investigate the Wilderness Weapon. Testing revealed that it transformed synthetic solids into ordinary tin-copper alloy while losing material, and Wen Jing proposed that the effect depended on how far removed the target materials were from the weapon’s era.

• Wen Jing arrived at Zone A No. 4, explored the villa, and chose to keep its robot butler in its default appearance.
• Wen Jing rejected offers to sell her Wilderness Weapon and took the corroded table to the research institute for testing.
• Xie Ming and Dean Bai found that the bronze piece did not alter natural materials, but changed glass, steel, and plastic into verdigris-stained tin-copper alloy while wearing away slightly.
• Wen Jing suggested that the differing effects on synthetic materials were based on the gap between their eras, and Xie Ming and Dean Bai recognized the explanation as plausible.

Wen Jing learned that her bronze Wilderness Weapon could destroy materials from more advanced eras, then used it to automate harvesting in the Ancient Wilderness. After her mind stat passed 50, her perception expanded to include terrain, plants, and food, and she headed toward the upper reaches of the giant tree.

• Xie Ming and Dean Bai studied Wen Jing’s bronze fragment, confirmed its ability to alter matter, and agreed to erase their records of it.
• Dean Bai tested her brick-phone Wilderness Weapon, which received strange messages in the Ancient Wilderness, but found it could not alter advanced materials like Wen Jing’s fragment.
• Wen Jing suggested Dean Bai’s luck might explain why the phone sometimes revealed useful information, inspiring the dean.
• Wen Jing entered the Ancient Wilderness and used Gravity Silk to ride the bronze fragment, collecting nectar and killing creatures as she harvested.
• Wen Jing ate poison frogs and crimson mushrooms, raising her mind stat above 50 and gaining a clearer perception of her surroundings.
• After harvesting the nearby crimson mushrooms, Wen Jing flew toward the upper reaches of the giant tree.

Wen Jing charged the bronze Wilderness Weapon with lightning and discovered it was a fragment of a bronze chime bell that revealed a mysterious palace space before vanishing. After gaining the palace’s coordinates, she returned to the ant nest with a crimson mushroom and headed toward the ant queen.

• Wen Jing used lightning from red-and-white birds to charge the bronze shard, which began playing music and revealed itself as a fragment of a bronze chime bell.
• The fragment connected to a mysterious palace space, then vanished despite Wen Jing’s attempt to hold it with Gravity Silk, leaving her with the palace’s coordinates.
• Wen Jing reasoned that the palace was a newly discovered historical space and decided not to explore it recklessly at night.
• Wen Jing checked her stats, entered the ant nest carrying a crimson mushroom, ate emerald crystal grains, and headed toward the ant queen.

Wen Jing resisted the ant queen’s mental control long enough to disrupt its nest and then bought a ranged combat technique to prepare for fighting in confined spaces. She agreed to join Song Zhi’s team exploration of Stone-tier civilization ruins in seven days, planning to use the time beforehand to challenge the ant queen.

• Wen Jing crossed the ant queen’s control boundary and discovered that her increased mental attribute let her resist the broadcast, though she could not attack the queen in the cramped nest.
• Wen Jing intercepted worker ants, took some of their emerald crystal rice, and attached shredded crimson mushroom mycelium to a grain headed for the nest’s storehouse.
• Wen Jing returned to reality empty-handed and realized that she had lost the Wilderness Weapon, then searched the points shop for ways to fight the ant queen.
• Wen Jing spent 65 points on [Beginner Energy Pulse], a ranged technique that could work in varied environments and penetrate different media.
• Song Zhi invited Wen Jing to join a Student Council team exploring Stone-tier civilization ruins, and Wen Jing agreed to go in seven days.

Wen Jing trained in Energy Pulse and tested the technique in her Wilderness Body during an Ancient Wilderness exploration. At the ant nest, she found the queen ant abandoned by her workers, devoured her, and gained Basic Hive Mind.

• Wen Jing mastered Energy Pulse, practiced releasing it from different body parts, and considered how to improve its strength and control.
• Wen Jing entered the Ancient Wilderness, killed and ate a green mantis, then ate the newly ripened blue-purple fruit.
• Wen Jing visited the ant nest and found fewer worker ants in the Emerald Crystal Mine than before.
• Wen Jing discovered that the queen ant's mental control had weakened and that the workers were raising a new queen instead of feeding her.
• Wen Jing devoured the helpless queen ant and acquired the Basic Hive Mind trait.

Wen Jing gained precise control over the ant nest’s communication network but rejected the hive mind’s erasure of individual will, then raided the storehouse before setting her sights on the giant tree. The next day, she joined a student council expedition team, met her four temporary teammates, and prepared to discuss their mission plan.

• Wen Jing sensed the ant nest’s mental network, briefly controlled its workers, and decided she would not evolve toward becoming part of a hive mind.
• Wen Jing devoured the rare food in the ants’ storehouse, left the potential new queen alive, and chose the giant tree as her next target.
• Senior Jiang encouraged Ji Shuang before Ji Shuang and two other Operations Department students trained for their mission with Wen Jing.
• Song Zhi personally welcomed Wen Jing to the student council and brought her to meet Ji Shuang, Eve, He Pingyun, and Brown.
• Wen Jing introduced herself as an insect with Wind Blade, and Song Zhi asked the group to explain the mission and discuss their tactics.

Wen Jing joined the Operations Department’s planned Ancient Wilderness expedition, learned the Mental Link technique almost instantly, and traveled with the group using a Locator Stone. The five arrived in a bloody-smelling wilderness, with their exact location still unknown.

• Ji Shuang explained the expedition’s ten-zone terrain plan, and Wen Jing asked how the group would communicate in the Ancient Wilderness.
• Song Zhi realized Wen Jing did not know Mental Link, apologized, and bought the technique for her.
• Wen Jing announced she had already learned Mental Link and demonstrated it to everyone, astonishing the group with how quickly she mastered it.
• Wen Jing asked whether Mental Link could attract Wilderness Beasts, and Song Zhi described the risks and stronger versions of the technique.
• The group finished discussing tactics, traveled to the registration center, and used a Locator Stone to enter the Ancient Wilderness.
• Wen Jing arrived with the others in dry air that carried a bloody smell.

Wen Jing’s powerful Mental Link overwhelmed her teammates as they arrived in the Ancient Wilderness, forcing Ji Shuang to find her and get her to stop broadcasting. Four members of the team regrouped in Zone Three, but Brown remained missing and unresponsive, so the others prepared to enact contingency plan C.

• Wen Jing arrived in Zone Three, surveyed the safe wasteland, and broadcast her location through Mental Link, accidentally hitting her teammates with an overwhelming mental signal.
• Wen Jing broadcast again when no one replied, further disorienting the others and prompting them to head toward Zone Three.
• Ji Shuang reached Wen Jing and told her through Mental Link to stop talking; Wen Jing realized her Basic Hive Mind trait had changed how her signal affected others.
• Eve and He Yunping arrived in Zone Three, leaving the team with four assembled members and Brown still missing.
• The Operations Department teammates called for Brown to respond and warned that they would execute contingency plan C if he remained silent.

Wen Jing traced Brown’s faint mental signal to Zone Seven and led the others to rescue him from a vulture and a hyena. After Brown collapsed from hearing her speak, Wen Jing turned her attention to the hyena as Ji Shuang joined the fight.

• Wen Jing detected Brown’s faint mental signal and wrote that he was in Zone Seven, then flew ahead to find him.
• Brown fled a vulture and then a hyena, whose jaws shattered his shield as he tried to escape.
• Wen Jing pulled Brown clear and pierced the hyena’s jaws with a flying sword, while her teammates caught the unconscious lizard.
• Ji Shuang flew in to support Wen Jing, who fired an Energy Pulse through the wounded hyena.