Chapter 5

After leaving the area around the drop-off point, Zhou Wanli chose to explore westward.

The journey went fairly smoothly. She even ran into several extraordinary creatures in succession.

There was the Mudstone Turtle that liked to eat soil, the lazily sunning Hundred-Eyed Snake, and the Azure Wind Silkworm gnawing madly at bark.

These were all the lowest-ranked F-class extraordinary creatures, and as long as one was careful, they generally would not cause injury.

Zhou Wanli also came to understand that although the secret realm held all kinds of dangers, they had been deliberately kept within a reasonable range, unfolding in a gradual progression.

For example, the place where the candidates had first been dropped was actually on the outer edge of the forest, only impossible to tell because the trees were so towering.

And something like her encounter with the withering-grass bee before she had even obtained supplies was probably just an accident.

This was the conclusion Zhou Wanli reached after spending more than three hours nearly exhausting her exploration of the surrounding area.

It seemed the outer regions of the secret realm had been divided by the Federation into small zones, which was also why, even after nearly finishing her exploration, she still had not seen a single other person.

This secret realm was frighteningly vast.

Zhou Wanli roughly estimated that in three hours, she had explored less than one-thousandth of the forest’s outer area.

The Blue Star of this world really had a startling disregard for her survival.

Half an hour later.

A dirt-smudged girl with a green backpack stopped before a pitch-black narrow path that looked wrong at a glance.

By now, Zhou Wanli had no semblance of elegance left. Her once neat and tidy ponytail stood in a disheveled mess at the back of her head, as though it had been blown apart.

Her fair skin was smeared black and gray in patches, and her clothes were in even worse shape. Anyone who did not know better would think she had crawled out of the gutter.

Yet Zhou Wanli felt nothing amiss at all. On the contrary, she was brimming with energy.

Because not long ago, she had unexpectedly discovered that a certain value in her cerebral domain would increase when her neural tendrils came into contact with extraordinary creatures.

Name: Zhou Wanli

Cerebral domain development: 10, barren

Neural tendrils: 3, fragile and easily broken

Mental power: 115 to 120

Heart sea: not yet formed, psychic field not matched with any extraordinary creature

Her mental power had risen by a full five points.

One had to know that cerebral domain development was the very foundation of a beastmaster, but if one compared the developed region of the cerebral domain to a honeycomb, then mental power was like the diligent worker bees laboring inside it.

It could both nourish the neural tendrils and help the beastmaster develop and expand the cerebral domain.

Its usefulness hardly needed saying.

But for ordinary beastmasters, increasing mental power was extremely difficult. Generally speaking, only after contracting a beast and receiving its feedback would there be a noticeable improvement.

The rest of the time, one could only wait for mental power to grow naturally, and even then a beastmaster often would not gain ten points in a month.

This alone had saved Zhou Wanli half a month of grueling work. If mental power could keep increasing in this way...

Her lips were already curling upward uncontrollably.

Luck, at times, really depended entirely on luck.

That is you I am talking to, my lovely golden finger.

Half an hour earlier.

As she grew more familiar with the secret realm and the rhythm of the examination, Zhou Wanli’s thoughts kept changing, and she tried to consider everything as fully as possible.

The two-day exam was not only a test of survival, but also time the Federation had set aside for candidates like her to search for and contract extraordinary creatures.

Two days, forty-eight hours, sounded rather long. But anyone who had actually spent time in a secret realm knew just how difficult it was for them, at this stage without a contracted beast, to subdue a promising extraordinary creature.

And extraordinary creatures with a decent growth ceiling generally reached E-class or above; their strength was also several times greater than that of F-class creatures.

Moreover, the Alliance seemed to have limited the number of E-class extraordinary creatures in order to protect candidates like them. At least so far, Zhou Wanli had not seen a second E-class extraordinary creature in the outer region besides the withering-grass bee she had found at the drop-off point.

She had encountered plenty of F-class extraordinary creatures, but they were all things with little combat ability and little room for growth.

In truth, she had considered whether she should simply turn back and contract that withering-grass bee. After thinking it over, though, she gave up.

The withering-grass bee was indeed an E-class extraordinary creature, and it possessed both flight and poison attributes, making it formidable enough on paper.

But for a beastmaster, the most important thing in contracting a beast was its growth ceiling; one could not be bound only by the present.

The withering-grass bee was currently known to have two evolutionary routes: one was the C-class Radiant Light Butterfly after two-stage evolution, and the other was the B-class Soul-Chasing Bee Queen after three-stage advancement.

Its potential was mediocre.

On top of that, for Zhou Wanli, who was not yet a beastmaster, the poison and flight attributes were too troublesome and dangerous to handle. Taking everything into account, the withering-grass bee was not a suitable contracting target.

She still needed to explore and search the central region of the secret realm.

The Federation’s education department must have designed this open-ended exam format to encourage students to do exactly that.

To prove her guess, the girl stepped forward with firm resolve.

The farther inward she went, the thicker the fog became.

The towering straight trees seen in the outer forest vanished here, replaced by ancient banyans so massive that three people could barely encircle each one. Countless branches, like the white beard of an old man, hung down to the ground.

Suddenly, the rustling of leaves intensified, and the surrounding banyan branches swayed and rocked in the wind. It even gave her the eerie impression that these trees had come alive.

Woo-ooh... woo...

Hearing a strange howl, the girl abruptly looked up and saw, to her horror, an ugly monkey with a small body, jet-black fur, and enormous eyes, clinging to a vine as it lunged toward her.

It was actually an E-class extraordinary creature, the Provocation Monkey.

After seeing who it was, Zhou Wanli did not dodge in the slightest, acting entirely out of character. Her expression was tense, yet carried a trace of calm.

Only when the Provocation Monkey had already reached her did she suddenly raise her hand and, with lightning speed, savage its eyes.

The Provocation Monkey could never have imagined that the seemingly delicate girl before it would strike so ruthlessly. Taken completely by surprise, it reflexively shut its eyes.

The instant it lost all awareness of the outside world, Zhou Wanli’s neural tendrils materialized directly, turning into knotted cords that bound it tight.

Provocation Monkey: ...?

Zhou Wanli said with a smile, “Wondering how I know your weakness? Because your kind is the only extraordinary species that has been stripped bare by people for liking to bully and provoke humans.”

“Provocation Monkey, you really did not waste the name humans gave you. What a disobedient, beat-loving little fool of a monkey.”

Provocation Monkey: Squeak! You are the fool! Damn human!!

“Squeak, squeak, squeak!” Let me go, or do you think I won’t call my little brothers to beat you up?!

“Oh? You have little brothers?” Zhou Wanli curled her lip. “Then call them over. Let me see who is courting death first.”

Seeing the Provocation Monkey’s defiant look, she was about to taunt it a few more times when she suddenly realized something was wrong.

Wait. How could she understand what the Provocation Monkey was saying?

Wasn’t it written in the books that neural tendrils could only specifically sense the thoughts and emotions of extraordinary creatures whose psychic fields resonated at the same frequency as the beastmaster’s, and only after direct contact?

Zhou Wanli’s pupils shook violently. No, surely not. It could not really be what she was thinking, could it?

Her face gradually turned faintly green, and she hurried to confirm it by looking into her cerebral domain.

Name: Zhou Wanli

Cerebral domain development: 10, barren

Neural tendrils: 3, fragile and easily broken

Mental power: 115 to 116

Heart sea: not yet formed, psychic field compatibility with Provocation Monkey: 45 percent, status: not contracted

Her psychic field actually matched the Provocation Monkey by forty-five percent?

Zhou Wanli suddenly felt insulted.

It was true that this was also an E-class extraordinary creature, but she could not be blamed for failing to show it due respect; in truth, the Provocation Monkey’s entire species was rather impossible to evaluate.

Just as its name suggested, the Provocation Monkey delighted in pestering every living creature within its line of sight.

As a dual-type creature of mental power and perception, the Provocation Monkey was indeed troublesome for beings unfamiliar with it. Add to that its short stature and agile movements, and after provoking a stronger creature it could flee swiftly. It was practically a cancer in the world of extraordinary creatures.

This rampant arrogance continued until they encountered humans.

The world where extraordinary creatures once lived was called the First World. More than two hundred years ago, for reasons unknown, the First World shattered, becoming countless spatial fragments that drifted near Blue Star and gradually fused with it.

It was from that time onward that the Provocation Monkeys, having never seen humans before, seemed to have found a new toy and began a new round of provocation: ambushes, attacks, destroying homes, stealing food...

They were unbearably annoying. Only after years of suffering did humans finally find their weakness.

The Provocation Monkey’s mental power and perception were strong, but they had to be unleashed through its pair of enormous eyes. Once the eyes were attacked, they would involuntarily shut.

During that period, the monkey would briefly fall into darkness and lose all awareness of the outside world for one or two seconds.

With that weakness properly exploited, even an ordinary person with no strength to speak of could seize the right moment and turn the tables on an E-class Provocation Monkey.

So Zhou Wanli, who understood the Provocation Monkey’s traits perfectly, had never even considered contracting one. Its weakness was written into textbooks already; what dignity was left for it?

“Sigh!”

The girl sighed. It was hard enough to come across a second E-class extraordinary creature, and it had to be this sort of thing. Truly vexing.

Sensing the wave of displeasure, the neural tendrils instinctively tightened. In the next second, the bound Provocation Monkey let out a miserable scream.

Mental power: 116 to 117

The cerebral-domain value floating before her suddenly jumped.

Zhou Wanli froze. Before she could even make sense of it, the neural tendrils repeated the action, and the Provocation Monkey screamed again.

Mental power: 117 to 118

This time Zhou Wanli reacted.

Her mental power had actually risen? But this method of increase... Zhou Wanli’s expression turned strange. Wasn’t this a little indecent?

Thinking this, the Provocation Monkey, which had taken pleasure in tormenting others, finally experienced what it meant to suffer one’s own medicine.

The three neural tendrils trembled, flexed themselves after loosening up, and then began a new round of unspeakable actions against the Provocation Monkey.

Binding, throttling, whipping... all the while interspersed with the beast’s terrified whimpers.

Mental power: 118 to 119

Mental power: 119 to 120

Only when no matter how the method changed her mental power no longer increased did the girl finally, reluctantly, stop controlling the neural tendrils.

By then the Provocation Monkey had collapsed completely on the ground, all four limbs twitching as it gave up resisting, its eyes filled with indignation, every inch of it radiating utter despair.

In stark contrast, the girl wore an incomparably brilliant smile.

After a series of indescribable experiments, Zhou Wanli finally confirmed that as long as her neural tendrils made "intense contact" with an extraordinary creature whose field matched hers, the resulting emotional fluctuations could raise her mental power.

Of course, each round of "contact" produced only a threshold amount of emotional fluctuation, so there was an upper limit to how much her mental power could be increased.

Still, after this bout of "contact," Zhou Wanli’s mental power had risen by five full points, which was already quite impressive.

Happy as she was, she could not shake the feeling that the stat panel had corrupted her. No matter how one looked at it, this behavior resembled the cancer of the extraordinary creature world, the Provocation Monkey.

Forced into the role of a sadist, Zhou Wanli brazenly thought to herself: from this day on, she would no longer be the same pure and kind-hearted girl she once was...