Chapter 719: Do You Have to Be So Direct?
Unlike Black Silk, Jellyfish’s shrinking wasn’t accompanied by a change in appearance.
It had a reduction in size overall, becoming two-thirds smaller than before.
Such a size could easily fit into a pocket without anyone noticing.
Apart from that, the biggest change in Jellyfish was its skin color.
Previously colorless and transparent, it now had an alluring blood-red hue, as if a gentle squeeze could draw blood from within.
“It seems it hasn’t fully absorbed it yet…”
Given its size, it’s indeed difficult for it to digest so much blood.
After some observation, Ling Mo also judged that Jellyfish didn’t have a separate set of digestive organs. Whether it was absorbing blood or mental energy, it relied on itself entirely.
Ling Mo could understand the absorption of blood, but what use was mental energy to Jellyfish?
“Never mind, let’s just feed you… huh?”
Just as Jellyfish had started to swallow a bit of blood-colored psychic tentacle, Ling Mo witnessed an unexpected scene.
Jellyfish’s body began to emit a red glimmer, making its blood-red exterior appear magnificently radiant.
What truly surprised Ling Mo, however, was its rapidly expanding size…
It was like a balloon, looking small normally but expanding to accommodate a lot of hydrogen when inflated.
“This is quite interesting. Is this a trait evolved specifically to become a glutton? So, it has been evolving this way ever since it started following me…” Ling Mo pondered and then extended another psychic tentacle without hesitation.
As long as the psychic light cl.u.s.ter was not harmed, the used mental energy could be replenished. Ling Mo wasn’t too concerned.
This is similar to superhumans with Enhancement abilities; as long as they aren’t injured, they can recover from exhaustion.
Jellyfish had already absorbed a significant amount of mental energy after swallowing two tentacles, making it look like a glowing light bulb.
Its body also resembled a fully inflated balloon, round and bulging, but still much smaller than its original size.
However, its absorption rate was evidently inadequate, with most of the mental energy merely being confined within its body.
What surprised Ling Mo, though, was Jellyfish’s ability to compress this mental energy.
After expanding, it slowly began to shrink again, but the mental energy remained inside it, becoming increasingly brighter. By the end, it resembled a red fireball.
However, this was only visible to superhumans with mental abilities. To others, it probably just looked like a balloon.
Ling Mo initially thought that if Jellyfish couldn’t absorb any more mental energy, it would soon start to dissipate. But to his surprise, even after waiting for ten minutes, the mental energy was still within it.
“It didn’t overflow… I thought only the psychic light cl.u.s.ter could contain psychic power, like how physical strength can only exist within the body… But its evolved form can function like an artificial psychic light cl.u.s.ter. Absorbing blood and the virus must be for this purpose…” The more Ling Mo observed, the more interesting he found it. After pondering for a moment, he suddenly reached out and poked Jellyfish.
“Pop!”
Some mental energy immediately oozed out and dissipated quickly.
“It can really be released…” Ling Mo, now intrigued, squeezed Jellyfish to release all the mental energy it had stored.
“Of the mental energy it ingested, it could absorb less than one-tenth of it. Even if this one-tenth were magnified to one hundred units, it could only instantaneously absorb one unit…”
Ling Mo’s eyes grew brighter. This little thing… it’s a perfect mental power storage unit!
The only question was how much psychic power it could store in its current form!
Without mental power potions, Ling Mo had been feeling quite inconvenienced.
Had it not been for this inconvenience, he wouldn’t have faced consecutive crises in Xinlan Town and Cuihu City.
For superhumans, the greatest danger is continuous combat. Yet, in a city rife with crises, it is almost unavoidable.
Humans, in terms of consumption and recovery speed during combat fatigue, are far inferior to Zombies and mutation beasts.
No matter how strong an individual is, once their physical or mental energy is depleted, they become even less capable than ordinary people.
Although Ling Mo had the a.s.sistance of female Zombies and had continuously enhanced his own physical capabilities, significantly making up for this crucial weakness, it still wasn’t enough.
For instance, when the female Zombies needed protection during their advancement, his individual combat ability became extremely important.
Or, like in Cuihu City, if he had been able to quickly restore his psychic power, he wouldn’t have had to devise elaborate plans to escape from Bighead.
Ling Mo gradually realized that as the degree of Zombie evolution increased, the hostility among Senior Zombies was also intensifying.
Ordinary Gel could no longer satisfy their evolution needs, so they began to hunt at higher levels.
Although this behavior reduced the number of Senior Zombies, it continuously gave rise to new ones within the lower-tier Zombie groups.
Compared to when the Cataclysm first erupted, the total number of Zombies had indeed decreased significantly, but the surviving human population had also sharply declined and continued to do so.
As a result, for humans, Zombies remained a prevalent threat…
Moreover, increasingly advanced Zombies were continually emerging.
The fierce compet.i.tion within Zombie groups spurred the creation of more variation zombies and Senior Zombies…
For a human like Ling Mo, this situation was far from favorable, and for Ye Lian and the others, it was even worse.
Unless they always concealed their aura, exposing their ident.i.ty as Senior Zombies in a city could attract Wild Zombie hunters.
Cuihu City was an exception, but it couldn’t be a.s.sumed that other places were devoid of King level or even stronger Zombies.
Mutated creatures like “Wig” might exist elsewhere, too!
“The situation is dire, and a Jellyfish that can store psychic power could prove lifesaving at critical moments. The one unit of absorbed psychic power can be considered a management fee. Forming even the thinnest psychic tentacle requires more than five times that amount of psychic power, so it’s still a fair trade…” Ling Mo thought with satisfaction.
The consumption of psychic tentacles is much less than that of Materialization tentacles. The amount of psychic power Ling Mo had injected into Jellyfish earlier was not even enough to condense a single Materialization tentacle. However, even if Jellyfish’s current storage capacity was insufficient, it didn’t matter much. With evolution, its storage capacity would gradually expand, although the consumption would also increase along with it.
If new recovery Potions were introduced, Ling Mo’s sustainable combat ability would increase exponentially.
The more Ling Mo thought about it, the more excited he became. So, he extended more tentacles for Jellyfish to devour.
He wanted to see the limits of Jellyfish, and the stored mental energy could become one of his trump cards for infiltrating Niepan’s headquarters.
Additionally, given Jellyfish’s ability to devour the psychic power of other creatures, it could be considered a small, sustainably usable bomb in itself.
“With this, even if the inside of Niepan is full of danger, I’ll have a strong means of self-protection. Once we get in, Niepan headquarters will definitely send people to Dongming City immediately… The worst-case scenario is that they’ve already dispatched someone, making the time we have even shorter,” Ling Mo thought as he continuously condensed new tentacles.
…
“Um… are you really okay with letting him and Mu Chen go in together?” Xu Shuhan carefully approached Ye Lian and the three girls. She addressed Xia Na but hid behind Ye Lian while speaking.
Although she had witnessed Ye Lian’s b.l.o.o.d.y combat without using guns in the mall, she couldn’t help but think that, despite Ye Lian potentially being the strongest of the three, her somewhat bewildered expression and vacant stare gave Xu Shuhan the illusion that she was just a normal human girl-one who appeared exceptionally friendly, no less.
But Xia Na and Li Yalin were different; they made her feel nervous all the time…
Especially Xia Na-just thinking about the things she said made Xu Shuhan’s scalp tingle.
Even though she knew Xia Na’s statements were true, did they have to be so blunt…
“Isn’t Niepan headquarters known for conducting experiments? If we go in, it will only make Ling-Ge hesitant, constantly worried about us revealing our ident.i.ties…”
Xia Na blinked, and Xu Shuhan felt a sudden blur in front of her eyes. In an instant, the Zombie girl was less than ten centimeters away from her.
“Hey, do you like Ling-Ge?”