The Ultimate Evolution

Half an hour later, the contestants stopped to rest. In order to avoid the Buffalo Criminals’ pursuit, they had specifically waded through a river to mask their scent before choosing a campsite.

Their campsite was a karst cave enhanced by Pokan. The cave was originally only two to three meters deep, but it became quite complicated after being widened by Pokan. After entering the cave, they had to walk seven or eight meters first, then turn ninety degrees to the left, then continue to move forward, and then turn ninety degrees to the right. Only then did they reach the cave where they would stay.

Such an arrangement seemed redundant, but in fact it was very necessary. After the buffer of the passage, the light from the campfire would not penetrate to the outside. Wind would also not blow in from the outside, and yet there was no danger of suffocation. At night, the chances of them being found could be greatly reduced.

The two captured Buffalo Criminals were tied up like mummies and thrown aside. They did not have much of a stench now, because the stench was emitted only when they got excited in battle.

Try and put yourself in the shoes of these two unfortunate creatures – they were captured alive by a foreign species and had just witnessed the brutality of these humans, who did not even spare the corpses and had cut off the organs of their dead companions. Considering such circumstances, they must be frightened to death right now. There was no way they would produce any stench out of excitement.

After a short rest, Sheyan put on one of the predator’s masks. The mask had a lot of functions. Along the way, Sheyan left it with Cyborg No. 1 to study. Currently, he had managed to activate the translating function. After a series of analysis was performed on his voice, Sheyan finally began his communication with the two creatures.

“What’s your name?”

The two creatures exchanged glances, apparently surprised that Sheyan knew their language.

“I’m Blacktendril, and he’s Meatbeard.”

“Are you hungry? Want some grilled meat?” asked Sheyan with a kind expression. He cut two pieces of oily grilled meat and brought them in front of the captives. The grilled meat was prepared by the cyborgs according to the recipes of five-star hotels in their database. It was thick and juicy, and was flavoured with cumin, anise and other spices. The aroma it produced was an irresistible temptation to anyone.

Sheyan’s kindness caused the eyes of the Buffalo Criminals to open wide, as if they were on the verge of being moved to tears….then, a large amount of filth sprayed out from their mouths. They vomited violently like they had smelled the smelliest sh*t in the world.

Sheyan managed to dodge in time thanks to his impressive reflex, and the vomit landed on the face of Paul, who was chewing on his meat with relish on the opposite side….

Silence fell over the cave. Everyone turned towards this side quietly. Paul, who was the most bewildered, had a blank expression on his face. Obviously, he had yet to recover from the abrupt sensation of plunging from paradise to hell in a split second.

Cyborg No. 1 coughed dryly and said, “Master, the Buffalo Criminals are herbivores. Why did you give them grilled meat?”

Black lines appeared on Sheyan’s forehead. Paul leaped up like his butt was stabbed with a knife and screamed furiously, “AAAAARRG! I’M GONNA KILL THEM!!!”

The others immediately rushed over to hold Paul back. The two unfortunate Buffalo Criminals shivered with fear and begged for mercy.

After this incident, Sheyan’s interrogation went very smoothly.

These two creatures actually belonged to the largest Buffalo Criminal tribe in this area, the Black Fungi Clan. They numbered….it turned out the Buffalo Criminals were really bad in math. Blacktendril and Meatbeard went over their fingers and toes dozens of times as they counted; looking at how long it took, there must be hundreds or even thousands of Buffalo Criminals in their tribe.

As for the matter of Pi veins that the contestants were most concerned with, they actually received a very good news!

The reason the Black Fungi Clan was so prosperous and strong was in large part due to a Pi vein. Whenever a female clansmate was pregnant, the clan leader, the Buffalo Criminal Boss, would blindfold the pregnant clansmate and bring her to a “Holy Land”. After recuperating in the Holy Land, not only would the pregnant Buffalo Criminal have a high chance to have a safe labour, she would also give birth to more than one Buffalo Criminal babies.

Sheyan knew by now that Pi elements could increase HP and MP recovery rate, which meant that the leader, ie. the Buffalo Criminal Boss, probably knew the location of a high purity open-pit Pi vein!

Anyone with a little common sense knew that high-purity Pi mines were a huge fortune, and this one actually carried the important keyword of “open-pit”. It flamed the contestants’ excitement like a piece of burning charcoal, making them jump up!

The existence of a high purity open-pit Pi vein meant that their crushing extractors would have no lack of processing materials! They could crush and extract to their heart’s content as long as they stopped before the Predators found them! The contestants’ eyes instantly lit up with greed.

Of course, they could not prove the existence of a high purity open-pit Pi vein to the higher ups with just words. They must either bring the cyborgs there to make a recording, or they must bring back enough Pi elements to be persuasive!

But there was still a huge problem. Time was obviously tight for them, so it was impossible to search through the whole complicated terrain. The only way left was to obtain the location of the Pi vein straight from the mouth of the Buffalo Criminal Boss!

However, we’re talking about the leader of a thousand-strong clan here! With the ability of the team of contestants, they could easily deal with dozens or so Buffalo Criminals. A hundred or so and it would probably take a whole lot of effort by the team. Two hundred, and the only option left was to turn around and run!

When the team raided the territory of the Violent Beasts + Xenomorph previously, they were only able to do so successfully by utilising the geographical terrain and with the help of the curly paulownia seeds. Against the Buffalo Criminals who were experts at digging holes and breaking walls, even with the information collected by the spaceship, it was still far from enough.

Sheyan interrogated Meatbeard and Blacktendril more carefully, but in the end, he still could not find anything he could take advantage of. He actually ended up feeling more pressured because he found out from the interrogation that there were some Buffalo Criminals who were stronger than others in a Buffalo Criminal tribe. The Kurut minerals the Buffalo Criminals stored away when they mined was to be offered to the high-ranking clansmates.

The Buffalo Criminals who were stronger than normal Buffalo Criminals were known as Buffalo Criminal Raiders, and their biggest characteristic was that they could use two pickaxes at the same time (dual-wield mastery)! They were also faster than normal Buffalo Criminals.

The mere existence of the Buffalo Criminal Raiders denied them the possibility of employing a kiting strategy.

On top of the Buffalo Criminal Raiders were the even more powerful Buffalo Criminal Warbeasts. These guys had ingested too much of the Kurut minerals and ended up mutating into monsters that had completely lost their minds. Only a select few Buffalo Criminal Elders could communicate with them.

The Buffalo Criminal Elders were mages who fought using totems.

***

The more Sheyan heard, the more pressured he felt.

However, he suddenly realised something that did not feel quite right. He instantly questioned Blacktendril and Meatbeard.

“Since you’re herbivores that are disgusted at the sight of grilled meat, why did you guys rush towards us as soon as you saw us, like you haven’t eaten for days?”

Blacktendril and Meatbeard did not know whether to laugh or cry. After they explained themselves, Sheyan instantly understood the truth of the matter.

It turned out that the Buffalo Criminals were indeed herbivores. Besides plants, their staple food included the secretion from a kind of mushrooms called the black liver mushroom, which needed a large number of decaying animal carcasses to be able to thrive. Cyborg No. 1 instantly checked his offline database for information on the black liver mushroom.

The so-called black liver mushroom was a kind of rare carrion fungus. It was about half a meter high and its cap could reach up to two square meters in size. It would secrete a liquid by devouring flesh and blood.

The mycelium of this fungus was usually hidden under the cap ( http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mycelium ). When a creature passed by, the mycelium would spread out like a jellyfish up to an area of 20 square meters. The stem that the Buffalo Criminals stabbed into their shoulder as children was the dried stem of a black liver mushroom, so they could travel through the black liver mushroom area without being devoured by the fungus.

The Buffalo Criminal’s diet mainly consisted of the secretion from black liver mushroom, Kurut minerals, and the commonly seen sacsaoul plant. The first two items were only required in small quantities, but they must be ingested, or the Buffalo Criminals would die in a few days.

The reason the Buffalo Criminals were so excited to see the humans previously was because the black liver mushrooms in their tribe had not had any fresh blood for several days, so after the high-ranking Buffalo Criminals had their fill of the liquid secreted by the mushrooms, there were not enough left for all the ordinary Buffalo Criminals. The half-full Buffalo Criminals were naturally very excited when they saw fresh prey.

“Well…” Sheyan listened intently to the story told by the Buffalo Criminal duo and fell into deep contemplation. He felt that this story had great potential. The black liver mushrooms were obviously a weakness of the Buffalo Criminals; perhaps the key to solve their problem lay hither.