Chapter 35: The Sea Folk and the Fire-Spitting Ant Nest

The direction of the Rotten Wolf Plains was not only different from the Rampaging Groundhog Grasslands, but the scenery along the way contrasted sharply with what Zhang Ran had seen before. About a kilometer from the Forward Base, he discovered a small lake by the roadside.

This body of water spanned more than a kilometer in diameter, its surface cloaked in a dense green, uncertain whether it was the lingering radiation from the era of cataclysm or the mutated algae that had appeared afterward.

Despite the harsh environment, the lake teemed with life. Peering through the water from a distance, Zhang Ran could see numerous underwater creatures, bearing bizarre organs, entangled and biting at one another. Among these mutated aquatic beasts, he even spotted a strange fish with three mouths.

Compared to the land, radiation in water was harder to dissipate, resulting in more severe mutations among aquatic creatures. Their strength and ferocity often surpassed the mutated beasts of the land, but fortunately, most underwater mutants, though altered, found it difficult to leave their watery domain for long, making them less dangerous to humans.

Aside from the mutated beasts in the water, Zhang Ran had also learned of another kind of aquatic mutant—the Sea Folk—during his time at the Black Hawk Youth Training Camp.

Just like Earth, the majority of this world was covered by seas. After the cataclysm, the oceans gave birth to highly intelligent mutated beings—the Sea Folk. They belonged to the category of exotic humans, possessing intelligence and appearance similar to humans, but were an entirely different species.

Though Zhang Ran was curious about the legends of the Sea Folk, his studies at the Black Hawk Youth Training Camp had made it clear that the Black Hawk Corporation was at least several thousand kilometers from the ocean, with the journey there fraught with wilds unpurged by evolved humans, dozens of times more dangerous than the vicinity of Black Hawk, inhabited by level-ten or even higher-level mutated beasts. It was not a path he could traverse.

Thus, Zhang Ran put aside thoughts of the Sea Folk, carefully keeping his distance from the small lake marked as an S-class danger zone, and continued following the guidance of his chip toward the Rotten Wolf Plains marked on his map.

The journey passed uneventfully. With Zhang Ran pushing forward at full speed, the small lake was soon left far behind. After some time, he arrived at the foot of a modest hill.

There were no roads across the hill, but for Zhang Ran, a quasi-evolver, this posed no obstacle. With a light step, he ascended rapidly, reaching the summit of the hill—less than a hundred meters tall—in under a minute.

From his vantage point, he saw a broad stretch of flat land before him. This area had once been a city, but the arrival of the cataclysm had shattered the skyscrapers, and with no one to tend to it, wild grasses and shrubs had overtaken the earth, presenting a scene of savage desolation.

Even so, traces of civilization could still be found on the wasteland. Through sparse patches of weeds, the cracked concrete ground clung stubbornly to the earth, and in some thickets, Zhang Ran spotted the rusted skeletons of cars, not fully decomposed but long abandoned.

He sighed at the scene, then continued searching for a path down the hill.

“Ding! Mutant beast: Fire Ant nest detected. Please be cautious, master!”

As Zhang Ran descended, the chip’s alert suddenly sounded in his ear.

“Oh, Fire Ants?”

Zhang Ran’s eyes lit up at the chip’s warning, and he looked toward the indicated direction.

On the slope, he saw a cave about the height of a person. The entrance was marked by countless tracks, and the chip had deduced from these footprints that the cave was a Fire Ant nest.

Compared to the most common mutated beasts of the wild—such as Rotten Wolves, Rampaging Groundhogs, Army Ants, and Poison Rats—Fire Ants were relatively rare, usually found only in mountainous terrain and not in great numbers.

Fire Ants possessed a unique ability: their mouthparts could spray a special substance that would ignite upon contact with air, producing high-temperature flames with formidable destructive power. That was the origin of their name.

As for the materials harvested from Fire Ants, there were three main types.

First was the foreleg. The Fire Ant’s forelegs were as sharp as level-one alloys, perfect for crafting knives, and fetched a price slightly higher than Rotten Wolf claws.

Second was a piece of Fire Ant meat from the abdomen, containing a certain amount of evolution energy. Unlike the zombie’s brain core, consuming this meat allowed the human body to directly absorb its evolution energy.

Third was the gland in the Fire Ant’s mouth, storing the remaining flammable substance. It was used to make high-ignition weapons and was the most valuable part of the Fire Ant, often sold for hundreds of Black Hawk coins.

Recalling the information about Fire Ants, Zhang Ran strode toward the nest, drawing his AM41 automatic rifle.

Though Fire Ants, in terms of strength, constitution, and agility, weren’t necessarily superior to Rotten Wolves, their flames could reach temperatures of several hundred, even a thousand degrees. For a quasi-evolver like Zhang Ran, this was deadly—especially in the confined space of a cave, where the fire’s power would be more concentrated and harder to evade. He had no intention of engaging them up close.

Prepared, Zhang Ran stepped into the Fire Ant nest. Following the narrow mountain wall for ten meters, he soon spotted three Fire Ants in the distance.

They resembled ordinary ants, but their bodies stretched a full meter in length, their shells a vivid red, their heads lined with sharp mandibles, and their six forelegs were pointed and razor-sharp.

“Chip, scan the Fire Ants’ attributes.”

With a thought, an attribute window appeared before Zhang Ran, displaying the Fire Ants’ stats.

“Enemy Name: Fire Ant
Type: Mutated Beast
Hunting Level: 0.7
Special Ability: Close-range flame attack
Strength: 1.9
Constitution: 2.1
Agility: 1.8
Spirit: 0.7”

The first Fire Ant’s attributes were comparable to those of the Rotten Wolf, and the other two were similar. After reviewing their stats, Zhang Ran paused, silently raised his AM41 automatic rifle, aimed at the head of the Fire Ant to the right, and squeezed the trigger.