Humans

The Paoxiao leader didn't let the opportunity slip. It brought its paw down again and again, venting its pent-up fury.

The underling took seven or eight blows straight, its bones snapping inch by inch until, still conscious, it breathed its last.

Before the Paoxiao leader could catch its breath, Tu Ran charged in with her blade raised.

What she wanted most right now was a superpower that gave her limitless strength.

Then she could punch straight through its spine and shatter every bone in its body.

Even if it had an invulnerable body, what would that matter?

Too bad that was just wishful thinking for now.

She kept her aim on its weak spots.

The real eye and the fake one.

Though the eyes were already gone, the wounds where they'd been left her plenty of room to work with.

The armor-piercing round from before had lodged in its eye socket and scorched half its skull to a crisp, its nape hair gone in a wisp of smoke.

But in that short time, its entire head had been visibly regenerating—the bleeding stopped, the wound scabbed over, the scar faded...

Even the fur on the back of its head was growing back.

This recovery ability was even stronger than soaking in a nutrient pod.

Tu Ran's craving for the Adamantine Body power grew even fiercer.

She leaped, silently drawing level with the Paoxiao's head, gripped the hilt with both hands, and—before it sensed the danger—drove the seventy-centimeter blade deep into its still-healing eye socket.

The pain, piercing straight to its soul, sent tremors through the Paoxiao's entire frame.

It towered twice her height, and now her whole body dangled at its forehead.

The Paoxiao opened its maw and roared in agony.

That was exactly the opening Tu Ran was waiting for.

Since she couldn't kill it from the outside, she'd dismantle it from within.

She pulled out a bomb she'd prepared in advance, bit open the fuse, and tossed it straight into its cavernous mouth.

The bomb rolled unobstructed down its thick throat and into its stomach.

The blade was stuck in its skull, and Tu Ran couldn't pull it free.

She had no choice but to abandon the sword for now, drop down, and dart behind a tree to hide.

The next second, the bomb detonated inside the Paoxiao's body. Chunks of flesh and blood pattered to the ground, painting the whole green forest crimson.

Tu Ran stepped out from cover and spotted the gleaming pearl at once.

Right by the Paoxiao's skull.

Her sword was still embedded in that skull.

She walked over, picked up the inner core from the ground, wiped it clean, and pocketed it. Then she climbed onto the Paoxiao's skull and, with considerable effort, wrenched the blade free.

The blade was coated in blood—sticky, rank, and foul.

Wiping it clean was out of the question, so Tu Ran decided to find a river to wash it.

Clutching the hilt, she looked up at Fatty perched on a branch.

"Come down, quick—we need to get out of here."

Fatty glanced at the height beneath its feet and trembled. "Too high. Fatty can't get down."

"You're a bird!"

"Fatty's a bird that can only eat, not fly. Boss, come save Fatty!"

Tu Ran: What kind of karma did she have to end up with a lackey like this?

"Jump down. I'll catch you," she called from below.

"No way. Fatty thinks Fatty'll crush you to death."

It had a pretty good sense of its own weight.

"Oh, don't worry. Just stop dawdling—if the stench of blood draws more alien beasts here, I'm not sticking around for you." Tu Ran threatened.

Fatty was on the verge of tears.

What else could it do? It had to follow the boss's orders.

It steeled itself, squeezed its eyes shut, hardened its heart, spread its wings, and dropped from the branch.

It flapped its wings furiously, hoping to slow its descent so it wouldn't hit the ground too fast.

If it flattened the boss into a meat pancake, there'd be no one to pick fruit for it anymore.

Still, it was a bird after all—clumsy as its body was, its natural talent showed, and it landed lightly on its feet.

"Now that's more like a bird," Tu Ran praised.

Fatty was embarrassed but also amazed it could pull that off.

"There's water nearby. Lead the way."

"This way." Fatty looked around, quickly found its bearings, and led Tu Ran off.

Shortly after the one person and one ball left, four feet appeared at the blood-soaked battlefield.

Two humans.

They surveyed the scene.

"Looks like the explosion came from here," a man said.

A woman crouched down and picked up a piece of bomb shrapnel from the ground. "It's a Pioneer Team blast bomb. Our people."

Her voice was a little choked up.

"Seems like our people took on three Paoxiao."

Two relatively intact Paoxiao corpses and one skull remained at the scene.

It wasn't hard to deduce three Paoxiao.

"Three? One person couldn't possibly handle that," the woman said, standing up and scanning the battlefield. "Paoxiao are no joke. I'd guess three or four people, probably ran into each other here like us and teamed up."

The man slowly shook his head. "No. Just one."

"What?" The woman frowned. "How could one person take down three Paoxiao?"

"Just one." The man was certain. His eyes were fixed on the ground, where a trail of footprints stretched off into the distance.

Alongside the human prints ran a set of bird tracks.

The man followed the footprints across the site, reconstructing the scene.

"He tossed a blast bomb into the Paoxiao's stomach, then hid behind this tree."

He pointed to the giant tree where Fatty had perched and continued, "After the blast, he went back to the Paoxiao's skull."

He noticed a deep hole in the eye socket area, like something sharp had been driven in, and judged, "There was a weapon left in the skull. He retrieved it, returned to this tree, and then left."

One thing puzzled him: why did the other person go back to the base of this tree at all?

The woman followed his lead and circled around, equally baffled. "These bird claw marks appeared after the explosion, right in the blast radius—no other tracks anywhere else. Could it have been hiding in this tree the whole time?"

"Very likely," the man nodded, continuing his deduction. "The pioneer came back to this tree because he spotted an avian alien beast hiding up there."

"Judging from the tracks, the bird left the same direction as the pioneer. A pioneer would never let an alien beast tag along, so the most likely answer is he assessed the bird up in the tree as harmless, ignored it, and left. The bird only dropped down and flew away once it saw the coast was clear."

The woman agreed with his reasoning. "You've been in this dense forest a long time. What kind of avian alien leaves tracks like that?"

"I've only seen one kind—a pheasant-type alien. Its prints look similar, but as far as I know, those pheasant-types only live on the outskirts, and they're way too heavy to fly up into trees this tall."