The Ultimate Evolution

Sheyan could only stay in the place for the next few days after that. It might have seemed like a waste of time, but it was incorrect to say that these days amounted to absolutely nothing.

That’s because his fight with Shadow had spread among the Dark Templars. The Dark Templars were all powerful warriors, so those who had witnessed the encounter could all tell that Shadow was being fully overwhelmed in that fight.

So, the majority of the Protoss who came to him were those looking to maintain the pride of the Dark Templar. Sheyan accepted their challenges without exception. All the challengers ended up running to the maintenance room holding their beloved warp blades with mournful faces.

Because of that, the unending stream of Dark Templars who came asking for a duel soon voiced their protest.

“Your weapon is too strong.”

“Okay, then let’s fight without using weapons.”

Sheyan was obviously a kind man.

Dark Templars were creatures who wander in darkness. Their M.O. focused on high damage and killing with one blow. They were good in agility and stealth, but definitely not in direct confrontation…. To fight a duel with the strong and robust Sheyan without using any weapons was akin to a male secret agent challenging a female spy to see who could pee further. It seemed totally fair on paper, but was in fact extremely unfair!

The Dark Templars would surely suffer.

But as the saying goes, there are exceptions to every rule. Anything is possible in this world. There might be some Dark Templars who were good at frontal assault, but they would certainly be people of status like Blackedge. Those Dark Templars thought too highly of themselves to deign challenging the lowly Sheyan to a duel.

So Sheyan had been continuously fighting and winning for the past few days. To be honest, the Dark Templars presented no more challenge to him than punching bags. But he soon sensed that something was amiss. The Dark Templars who came to challenge him were few and far between at first, but they slowly came more and more frequently until finally, the challengers had to form a long queue at the doorway… Sheyan, who was initially quite passionate, quickly turned dispirited, because he suddenly found that his situation was quite similar to a prostitute that had booming business.

With Sheyan’s intelligence, he soon realised the reason why he was so popular among the Dark Templars. He found to his surprise that the fighting skills of a Dark Templar, who was “frequenting” him for the second time, had improved! The Dark Templar was obviously much better than the last time they fought!

So that was it. These Dark Templars had been isolated from the outside world for too long. No matter how good their training methods were, those training could not help someone improve like actual combat could. The Dark Templars could only look inwards and tap their own potential to grow stronger. At most, they would practice fighting among themselves. Such a limited training method would become useless once they reached a certain level.

Hence, many of the Dark Templars had actually reached a bottleneck. What they severely lacked was the stimulation from other combat styles. After fighting with Sheyan, they instantly comprehended a lot of things. Those who were stronger would learn how to deal with an opponent who was weaker but more nimble than themselves, while those who were weaker would find ways to make up for their shortcomings.

The first few Dark Templars Sheyan defeated initially felt extremely humiliated, but when they realised that they had learned some skills which enabled them to defeat the opponents they could not defeat before, their humiliation gradually faded, replaced by a strong desire to grow stronger. The Dark Templars came to Sheyan tirelessly like a flock of ducks scrambling madly for food.

More importantly, they were certain that Sheyan dared not hurt them too badly, so they could devote all their efforts into studying Sheyan’s fighting skills….

***

Ronnie finally left the trial ground.

But he did not give Sheyan a reason to boast to Blackedge or Shadow.

Because in the end, he failed to last for ten days or more.

To be exact, he lasted for eight days and twenty-one hours before he transported out. But what pleased Sheyan was that, when Ronnie walked out of the trial cave and fell to the ground unconscious, most of the Dark Templars had some rather unsightly expressions on their faces. To put it in a more visual term, they looked like they accidentally ate flies.

Although Sheyan’s confidence in Ronnie was somewhat overstated, Ronnie’s passing score had still broken a record. It was good enough to be one of the top three scores in the history of the Dark Templar trial ever since its inception. The original third place had lasted for eight days and eighteen hours, but that record had unfortunately been pushed to fourth place now.

This means that a lowly human was stepping on all but two of the Dark Templars in the 373 years of history of the Dark Templar trial!

This damn result! This disgraceful result!!

Ronnie stared wide-eyed the moment he saw Sheyan. His expression changed into one of relief, and he then immediately passed out. At the time, he was completely covered in mud, looking very much like a savage.

But the seemingly wet mud was actually full of chapped marks, like it had been burned by fire; a lot of debris would fall off when it was touched. A closer look at Ronnie would show that his skin had large patches of weird-looking papules on it, some of which had burst open. The tip of the papules had black spots on them.

Sheyan carefully observed the papules for a while, then searched around the place for a pair of forceps. With the forceps, he pinched the black spot on the tip of a papule and slowly pulled it out.

It turned out to be a horrifying parasite that was close to twenty centimeters long. It was about as thick as the wire of an earphone and was as tough as a steel wire. Even with Sheyan’s abnormally high Strength, he had to use about 50-60% of his strength to snap it in two!

Seeing the papules all over Ronnie’s body, Shedan’s scalp went numb. How many worms were there in him right now? Sheyan could somewhat deduce the predicament Ronnie was previously in. He must have been chased by a creature or creatures that had infrared vision or an extremely sensitive sense of smell, so he had to jump into a river and cover his body in mud.

But the mud must have contained a large number of parasites which would quickly burrow into the skin to reproduce after coming into contact with a living body. Forced by the circumstances, Ronnie must have lit a fire or found a high temperature area, such as those near a volcano, to try and burn these parasites to death. However, something had occurred which forced him to return from the trial ground.

These diseases and parasites attached to Ronnie’s body obviously worked on a contestant’s digitised body and immune system. While Sheyan was still contemplating on how he should heal Ronnie, Shadow came to him and said, coldly, “I’m sorry, Brigadier General, but the trialist must leave our Holy Land at once. There’s no room for discussion in this matter.”

Sheyan was utterly shocked.

“What did you say? But he’s completely defenceless right now. Where can he go? ”

“He has a bookmarked coordinate on the Lost Temple planet. That’s where he initiated the trial, and that’s where we will be sending him back,” replied Shadow flatly.

“But there’s a bunch of people hunting him down out there! And if that coordinate happens to be in the death zone, the harsh natural environment will be enough to kill him!” protested Sheyan in anger.

“That’s none of our business.” Shadow was unmoved.

“Okay, but at least let me heal him first,” Sheyan refused to give up.

Shadow shook his head. “Unfortunately, rules are rules. The weakest aspect of you humans is that you don’t respect the rules. That’s why you will never grasp the power in the laws of the universe!”

“So what if the Protoss possess the power of the laws? You’re still driven away by the Zerg like beaten dogs!” Sheyan immediately retorted.

“You!… Brigadier General, this is my last warning to you. The trialist must leave the Holy Land at once, or we will resort to violent means.”

Sheyan nodded, then suddenly grinned and asked the Dark Templar, “Can I ask you something, Mr. Shadow?”

This was the first time that Sheyan had added an honorific title before Shadow’s name, so Shadow instantly had an ominous premonition, but he could only ask, “What?”

“Have the noble Protoss race ever deserted their comrades on the battlefield?” asked Sheyan calmly, but with a heavy tone. Before Shadow could reply, the other Dark Templars already shouted in fury.

“Of course not!”

“Never!”

“…”

Sheyan turned to Shadow again. “Nobility has nothing to do with race; nobility comes from the soul. The Protoss will never abandon their comrades, but neither will the humans! Please send me out together with him.

Shadow instantly fell into a dilemma. But in the end, his sense of honour triumphed over other distracting emotions that he had.

“Okay. Bring him with you and follow me,” he told Sheyan.

Sheyan grabbed Ronnie and easily lifted him up. He was sure that there were still living parasites on Ronnie. Those parasites looked extremely powerful, so Sheyan did not want to risk being infected by carrying Ronnie on his back. Led by Shadow, they came to a structure which looked very much like a teleport array. It was, in fact, a teleport array. Sheyan brought Ronnie to the centre of the structure.

Shadow stared at Sheyan with his pale green eyes for a while before he suddenly sent Sheyan a message with his mind.

“Good luck.”

After that, he pressed his long, thin finger on the metal wall beside him.

There was initially nothing on the wall, but as soon as Shadow pressed it, the spot he pressed instantly glowed with a dark green light. Then, a power bar started charging up next to it.

3%…7%…15%…