Chu Yi slipped out through the bedroom’s back door, bypassing everyone else in the inn.
This way, he avoided being seen by others, which would have carried the risk of being followed.
Even though he’d already displayed abilities far beyond ordinary human limits inside the inn — even openly “killing” a tier-five ability user in front of that many onlookers —
there was still no guarantee some people wouldn’t harbor secret ambitions, hoping to team up and strike against him.
If that happened, without the inn to back him up, Chu Yi would become nothing more than easy prey.
Once outside the inn, he immediately summoned the tier-one mutant he’d left hidden in a small grove of trees, having it lead the way ahead of him.
Tier-one mutants weren’t particularly intelligent — they operated purely on basic instinct, relying on scent to distinguish their own kind from humans.
Under Chu Yi’s command, it began searching the surrounding area for others of its kind.
Along the way, they came across quite a few tier-one mutants, but they weren’t Chu Yi’s target.
What he was looking for were tier-two mutants that carried abilities.
Still, crystal cores delivered right to his doorstep weren’t something to pass up.
Branding each mutant’s body with his mark, then detonating it, quickly netted Chu Yi 100 points.
After his ability had leveled up, not only had his mental power expanded several times over, but its recovery speed had increased as well.
If he simply branded the “Mark of Greed” directly onto flesh, the mental power expended would recover in mere seconds.
Chu Yi pressed forward.
He recalled seeing on the map the system had provided that a few hundred kilometers ahead, past the mangrove forest, lay a mutant nest.
Naturally, the further forward he went, the more mutants he encountered.
After killing off another dozen or so tier-one mutants and gathering 150 points, Chu Yi started feeling a bit worn out.
Not that his mental power had run dry — it was the repetitive motion of branding and detonating, over and over, that was starting to wear on his patience.
“Are tier-two mutants really this scarce? I’ve seen Xue Xiaobai and Zhu Bei hunt some down every day.” Chu Yi frowned. “Is it just bad luck on my part?”
But he’d never put any stock in the concept of luck to begin with.
As long as one had sufficient strength, luck was nothing but an illusion.
Suddenly.
A shadow flickered past him.
Within the surrounding forest, it moved so fast that only an afterimage could be seen.
Chu Yi’s body froze for an instant.
Whoosh.
A fierce gust of wind swept in from behind him.
“ROAR—”
Following close behind came a mutant’s furious howl, along with a massive raised claw!
BAM!
At that split-second, critical moment, the tier-one mutant under Chu Yi’s control rushed back on its own and blocked the blow!
The force of the strike was staggering — the tier-one mutant had no way to withstand it at all. A huge hole was torn open in its chest, its body shuddered once, and it collapsed to the ground!
At that instant, the mark branded onto its soul dissipated along with it.
Chu Yi seized the brief window this bought him and retreated several steps.
After leveling up to tier two, both his strength and speed had increased significantly.
Compared to the natives of this world, who could only ever access whatever single ability they’d awakened —
Chu Yi’s power was improving across the board, on every front.
Once he’d put some distance between them, he finally got a clear look at what had killed his one and only slave.
A massive mutant, standing over two meters tall.
This was — tier three!
No wonder there hadn’t been many low-tier mutants around here. This was its territory!
“ROOOAR!!!”
The tier-three mutant let out a thunderous roar, its small, beady eyes brimming with greed, its forked tongue lolling out and dripping with thick, viscous saliva.
It stared fixedly at Chu Yi, as though it had already claimed him as its next meal.
Chu Yi met its gaze head-on.
A moment later — he turned and ran!
The tier-three mutant didn’t hesitate for a single instant, lunging after him immediately!
It was incredibly fast — in what felt like the blink of an eye, it had closed the gap to just a few meters behind Chu Yi.
The wind around them surged violently, coalescing into razor-sharp blades that came flying at him.
Before any of these attacks could touch him, Chu Yi had already used his mental power to map out everything happening around him in advance.
Dodging left and right, he emerged completely unscathed!
This creature’s mental power wasn’t as strong as his own.
Weaving back and forth to evade the attacks, Chu Yi turned the thought over in his mind.
If he could just catch it off guard for a moment, branding the “Mark of Greed” directly onto its soul, he could seize total control of it.
Once that was done, he’d have access to a tier-three wind-type ability of his own, which he could then use to take on even more formidable enemies…
A look of firm resolve settled in Chu Yi’s eyes.
In an instant, he stopped running, spun around on the spot, and faced the mutant head-on.
The tier-three mutant, possessing a bit of intelligence, had been pursuing Chu Yi relentlessly — but when it suddenly saw him stop, it froze for a split second, caught off guard.
The very next moment!
BAM!
BAM, BAM!
From all around the forest, four or five tier-one mutants came charging out and hurled themselves at the tier-three creature!
And the instant they made contact with it — they exploded!
BOOM!!!
These low-tier mutants were ones Chu Yi had already captured earlier.
As a precaution, he hadn’t killed them all outright — instead, he’d let them wander the area as lookouts, useful as expendable fodder when the need arose.
And now was exactly the moment to use them.
The scene of the mutants exploding wasn’t a pretty sight.
Flesh and blood scattered in every direction, sparks bursting alongside it.
Fortunately, thanks to his prior experience, Chu Yi already had a rough sense of a tier-one mutant’s blast radius, and had put enough distance between himself and it beforehand.
That was what spared him from being caught in the blast spray again this time.
But the tier-three mutant, caught at the very center of the explosion, wasn’t nearly so fortunate.
Half of one of its arms had been blown clean off, and even its powerful legs had been battered into a cratered, uneven mess, leaving it with no strength left to run.
Left with no other option, it could only sink to a half-kneeling position on the ground, howling furiously in Chu Yi’s direction.
Chu Yi didn’t approach.
Or rather, until he had 100% certainty of the outcome, he wasn’t about to make any move without a guaranteed result.
Standing a short distance away, he began extending his mental power to probe the creature.
Piercing through its formidably defended body, he could make out a soul within — thin, faint, watered-down.
Even a mutated creature that humans regarded as a terrifying monster still carried a soul inside it — genuinely fascinating.
Chu Yi recalled that the very first mutants had all originally been transformed humans.
After that transformation, could the soul still be considered the same person’s soul?
From a highly intelligent human being, transformed into a primitive, blood-drinking tier-one mutant — once they leveled up further, could they still recall anything from their time as a human?
“Tell me… are there still scientists left out in the wasteland these days?” Chu Yi suddenly spoke up.
“A hundred years have passed, and human technology has regressed drastically since then — is anyone still researching the mysteries behind mutants and humans?”
[…Host, there are.] The system chimed in at this point. [Not many, but scientists do still exist.]
Chu Yi let out an “oh.”
Then he extended his mental power, invading and burrowing into the tier-three mutant’s body.
The process went smoothly.
Even though it had already leveled up to tier three, this creature’s mental power was quite feeble, with no strength at all to resist another’s mental intrusion.
Its body thrashed and struggled, but to no effect whatsoever.
With ease, Chu Yi branded the “Mark of Greed” onto its soul.
It couldn’t even put up a fight.
After a brief spasm, the look in its eyes turned utterly docile.
Chu Yi tried treating the ability within its body as an object, storing it within the mark, and then transferring it into his own body.
Before long, he could wield that particular power fluently.
Under his control, the surrounding wind coalesced into a small vortex, sweeping fallen leaves forward as it went, catching several charging tier-one mutants within it and slicing them apart into pieces.
Points +50.
Once it was all done, he curved his lips into a smile and said, “I suppose I’ll need to be careful, then — scientists in a place like this tend to be the most unhinged sort. Wouldn’t want to end up as their next dissection subject.”
[…Host.] The system spoke up meekly, and this time, for once, it didn’t argue. [You could always just stay inside the inn, you know. It’s dangerous out here.]
“So, ‘getting caught by a deranged scientist and dissected’ is a genuine possibility, is it?” Chu Yi shot back.
[…As long as you stay within the inn, you’re invincible.]
“I’m well aware of that. But does that mean I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life cooped up in one cramped little room, just watching everyone else stand outside, basking in the sunlight?”
As he spoke, Chu Yi pulled out, from within his coat, a full set of a certain brand’s digital camera equipment he’d specifically purchased from the shop.
Back on the planet where he used to live — Blue Star — a camera set like this would have cost around 450,000 yuan.
It was also widely recognized within the industry as having the best resolution and the strongest performance of any camera available.
The kind used to photograph museum pieces and luxury goods.
He’d calculated the exchange rate between points and yuan before.
Roughly around 1:500.
However, the shop and the system were products of a far higher dimension — twenty-first-century human technology on Earth wasn’t even worth mentioning to them.
Which meant that a high-end camera priced at around 450,000 yuan came at half price in this shop.
What would have originally cost roughly 900 points now only cost 450 to acquire.
As for equipment even better than this — things that surpassed Blue Star’s technology entirely — Chu Yi couldn’t afford those yet. He’d need to spend at least 100,000 points before those higher-tier options would even unlock.
In other words, he’d just genuinely spent 450 points to acquire something that offered absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the inn’s development.
It was only thanks to the resilient heart the system had built up over these past few days — plus the built-in rule that an assistant could never scold its host — that it managed to hold its tongue.
If it had been Chu Yi’s father, it would’ve had no choice but to call him a spoiled brat squandering money.
Chu Yi couldn’t care less what anyone else thought.
He’d learned how to use a camera like this back on Blue Star.
But due to his health, he’d never been able to expose himself to poor outdoor air quality for long stretches, so he’d only ever managed to photograph hospital courtyards and his own home’s garden.
But now.
Chu Yi raised the camera, aiming it at the mangrove forest he currently stood in.
Click.
He was thoroughly pleased with the shot.
“ROAR…”
But this leisurely moment didn’t last long.
More mutant howls rang out from all around.
They’d caught the scent of their own kind’s blood, and were now rushing toward this spot at full speed.
The stench of blood here was overwhelmingly strong — so much so that by the time they arrived and caught the smell of their fallen comrades’ corpses, some of them lost control of their instincts entirely, charging in to feast without hesitation.
The scene that followed was hard to watch.
Chu Yi stood a short distance away and raised his hand.
In an instant, a blade of wind condensed in his palm.
He swung his hand.
Whoosh!
The wind blade shot forward along one straight line, slicing clean through the heads of three mutants in a row, before finally dissipating as it reached the fourth.
After that display.
The mutants, who had been frantically feeding moments earlier, finally turned their attention elsewhere, noses twitching wildly as they caught the scent of human flesh drifting beneath the thick smell of blood.
At once, they abandoned their comrades’ corpses and turned instead toward the far more appetizing prey standing before them.
“Not a single brain cell among the lot of you,” Chu Yi remarked, feeling the wind-type ability still brimming with power within him. He opened his palm, and a raging gale condensed within it.
“Well then. Offer up your pitiful little lives.”