To Go, or Not to Go?

"Landslide."

The wristband didn't react.

"Landslide. Landslide. Landslide..."

The temperature of the wristband climbed rapidly.

Tu Ran's palm began to burn.

If not for the enhancement of her "Adamantine Body" ability, she suspected her hand would already be riddled with holes.

The wristband, meanwhile, remained utterly unchanged, lying quietly in her palm.

What was going on?

Tu Ran frowned and kept chanting the incantation without pause.

The temperature of the wristband kept rising, and Tu Ran could feel the heat radiating off it on her face.

Her "Adamantine Body" finally couldn't withstand such scorching heat. The searing warmth seeped into her palm, and she quickly flung the wristband away.

A ring of black, charred marks was left in her palm.

The wristband landed on the damp soil with a sizzling sound.

Tu Ran's palm throbbed with agony.

The regenerative function of "Adamantine Body" kicked in.

The burned flesh healed at a visible rate.

The pain receded just as quickly.

Tu Ran let out a long sigh of relief. The "Adamantine Body" ability was exactly as described on the panel.

It could only resist attacks up to "a certain" degree.

Beyond that threshold, the damage would fall on the user in full, and the pain was just as real.

Still, she couldn't figure out why the wristband remained perfectly intact.

She pressed her palm flat against the ground and activated the ability at the same time.

After silently reciting "Landslide" once, the ground beneath her palm split apart with a loud crack.

Centered on Tu Ran's palm, dry cracks raced outward in every direction.

In a mere instant, the formerly damp soil turned as parched as if it had been baked under the sun for three years, cracked and fragmented.

Two meters away, Fatty jolted awake and blurted out groggily, "Boss, run! Earthquake!"

Tu Ran quickly withdrew her hand and soothed it, "It's not an earthquake. Go back to sleep."

"Huh? Oh." Seeing that nothing else was happening, Fatty lay back down and immediately fell asleep.

It truly trusted Tu Ran, and it never showed the slightest curiosity about what she did.

It ate when it was time to eat, slept when it was time to sleep, and never asked about anything it wasn't supposed to ask. It was very mindful of its boundaries.

Watching it snore away, Tu Ran glanced at the time. It was eight o'clock Federal Time.

Still too early to sleep.

To avoid disturbing Fatty again, she left the cave.

She pushed her way out through the dense underbrush and did a quick patrol of the surrounding area before stopping before a towering tree not far from the cave.

She pressed her hand against the rough, brown bark of the trunk.

"Landslide."

*Boom!*

The brown bark burst apart in an instant.

Fortunately, Tu Ran was wearing her helmet.

A thick, rough slab of bark slammed into her helmet, knocking her head back. She had to take a step backward to keep from stumbling.

Shreds of bark flew everywhere, clattering onto the ground.

Looking at the tree, which had once been rough and imposing, all its bark had been stripped away, leaving behind a smooth, delicate core.

A brute had instantly turned into a clean-cut pretty boy.

The "Landslide" ability was flawless overall.

It only affected the outermost surface of an object. Like with the tree, it merely cracked off the outer bark without harming anything beneath.

Though it consumed energy, it spread so quickly that Tu Ran could strip a tree in just one or two seconds of contact, and the energy consumed in that span was negligible to her.

Against the vast majority of alien species, this ability combined with "Instant Shift" made her untouchable.

The problem now was that the holographic recording wristbands made by the Federal Government were too sturdy.

"Landslide" simply couldn't destroy them.

Tu Ran had no idea what material these wristbands were made of, but they were incredibly tough.

Frowning deeply, she slid down to sit against the tree trunk.

What should she do next?

She had already been in the Threshold for eight or nine days.

The Threshold's average opening window was half a month.

In the coming days, the gate could open at any moment.

If she couldn't get the wristbands off in time, even if the exit right in front of her, she couldn't step through it.

Once she walked out wearing the wristband, the moment it connected to the network, the stored footage would upload to the Research Institute instantly.

Just the act of covering the camera lens with cloth was a violation of the Federation's new laws. And she had also killed two Pioneers—she would absolutely be sentenced to death.

If she tried to run, the Federal Government would put a heavy bounty on her head, and no matter where she fled, there would be endless people coming after her.

She knew she wasn't yet at a level where she could contend with the Federal Government.

What if she just stayed in the Threshold?

Tu Ran thought about it, and it didn't seem to be without advantages.

First, she had the Danghu's inner core, so she wouldn't go hungry. And with Fatty by her side, she wouldn't be lonely either.

Second, staying in the Threshold meant she could keep acquiring inner cores.

Though every inner core came with its own risks, she was already capable of keeping those risks within acceptable limits.

Staying inside the Threshold would be a process of accumulation. All she needed was one goal: find alien species with inner cores and take them for herself.

But if she returned to the Federation, everything she faced would be unknown.

If the Federal Government learned of the existence of inner cores, what measures would they take?

Would they readily call off the Pioneer Teams' entry into the Threshold?

The Federal Government had put a great deal of effort into this team.

If it was shut down abruptly, the Federal Government would suffer heavy losses.

And it would be an even greater blow to the various departments that had sprung up around the Pioneer Teams.

But if they didn't stop, many inner cores inside the Threshold would end up in the Pioneers' hands. Even if the Federal Government explicitly forbade hoarding inner cores or offered hefty sums to buy them, there would inevitably be some that Pioneers kept for themselves and swallowed.

After all, whether or not someone had eaten an inner core couldn't be discerned from their appearance.

Unless, of course, someone had an ability like "Ability Recognition."

The financial tycoons behind the Federal Government wouldn't tolerate inner cores falling into other hands. What they would do, Tu Ran couldn't guess.

The path before them was hard to choose.

If they didn't make the existence of abilities public, the vast majority of Pioneers would never know, and the Federation wouldn't be able to obtain inner cores through them.

If they did make it public, it would spark a frenzy over inner cores. In the end, perhaps only half would be collected by the Federal Government, with the rest flowing into the hands of all sorts of people.

And her fate was directly tied to the Federation's choice.

If the Federation chose to keep it secret, she would hold an absolute advantage.

If the Federation chose to reveal it, there would surely be many competing with her, and her chances of obtaining inner cores would shrink.

She let out a long sigh and pushed all those tangled thoughts out of her mind.

She would just take it one step at a time.