Sights on Mars

A spatial ability user ought to act as freely as they pleased—roaming the Northern Sea at dawn and Cangwu by dusk. Ever since Yu Xian experienced what true freedom was, his conduct had grown increasingly uninhibited, traveling wherever his whim took him. After school. The Solar System, Mars. A dust storm raged across the barren surface, the gale whipping up grit and stones with kinetic force comparable to bullets, packed with immense lethality. Yu Xian sat perched on a boulder, contemplating life. Countless pebbles and grains of sand pelted him, but every last one was deflected by dragon scales, clinking and clattering in a crisp cadence. Looking at an excavation pit not far off that was clearly man-made, he let out a long sigh. Sure enough, he had still been too naive. At least within the Solar System, the easily discoverable gold and silver deposits had long since been stripped clean by other Transcendents. Contemporary spatial Transcendents were rare indeed, but if one counted every spatial Transcendent who had existed throughout history, their total numbers were actually not so small. A conservative estimate would place them at three to four thousand. Perhaps starting hundreds of years ago, Transcendents had already ventured to neighboring planets one after another to unearth gold and silver. Across generations, by the time it was Yu Xian's turn, all that remained on these celestial bodies were pitted, desolate quarry shafts. Perhaps in some forgotten corner of the planet, a few veins had slipped through the net. Yet, like searching for a needle in the ocean, locating deposits buried deep underground was destined to consume vast amounts of time. If Yu Xian were truly strapped for cash, he might have gritted his teeth and pressed on. The problem was that he wasn't short on money at all; this whole venture had purely been a half-baked whim cooked up on the spur of the moment. It was merely a fleeting three-minute fever; once the initial impulse subsided, his interest waned. Therefore, he certainly wasn't going to squander his time on a tedious, boring search. Just then, what was unmistakably a human bone was swept over by the wind, shattering into powder against his dragon scales. While countless Transcendents were still holed up on Earth, none of them could likely imagine that people had once fought deadly clashes on distant Mars, with the corpses of the fallen remaining behind forever on this planet. In truth, quite a few such skeletal remains existed. Their flesh and blood had long eroded and dissolved in the scouring wind and sand, but the bones of certain physical-enhancement Transcendents were harder than diamond, allowing them to endure and gradually scatter across Mars with the planet's storms. "Forget it, heading home!" Yu Xian scooped up a handful of Martian soil, then rose to his feet and muttered to himself. Suddenly, an odd sound drifted up from the excavation pit nearby. It was drawn-out and melodious, somewhat resembling a musical instrument, yet also sounding like a vocalization produced by some creature with an exceptionally long throat. The spatial bubble expanding at Yu Xian's fingertip halted. He peered toward the dark, bottomless shaft, abruptly gripped by intense curiosity. Could there actually be living creatures inside the pit? He had already encountered Abyssal demons and otherworld zombies, but he had genuinely never laid eyes on an extraterrestrial creature. Although strictly speaking, Abyssal demons and otherworld zombies were alien life-forms, those were ultimately entities from beyond this reality, whereas whatever was lurking within this pit was very likely a native extraterrestrial life-form! As the saying went, great skill breeds great boldness. Just how daring a person was depended entirely on how formidable their combat power stood. Yu Xian was no longer the cowardly weakling who feared death as in the beginning. With the dual protection of the Dragon Shield and the Mantle of Falsehood, his nerve was brazenly stout. Otherwise, he wouldn't have ventured alone to Mars to play prospector in the first place. A red glow cloaked his body, and in the next instant, he appeared right at the rim of the pit. This excavation was peculiar, appearing as though a colossal drill had bored straight down from the surface, creating a vertical shaft plunging into bottomless depths. Yu Xian tilted his ear to listen. The strange noises drifted up intermittently from the shaft, but after a moment they ceased altogether, leaving behind only the howling of the gale. On Mars, Super Smell was entirely useless, so an eyeball quickly sprouted on a bubble at the tip of his finger before swiftly descending into the pit under his control. Myriad Eyes inherently possessed night vision and could see through the vast majority of illusions. Images of the shaft rapidly surfaced in Yu Xian's mind. The pit truly was purely vertical, yet at a depth of roughly two thousand meters, numerous tunnels about two meters in diameter branched out along the surrounding rock walls. He guided the eyeball bubble into one of the tunnels. Suddenly, the bubble came under attack by an unknown creature. In his mind's eye, he caught only a flash of a black silhouette before the feed went dark. *There really is something down there, though it doesn't seem like an ordinary creature,* Yu Xian thought with utter certainty, recalling that final glimpse. The silhouette had been razor-thin, and its strike traced a sharp Z-pattern, possessing an aesthetic characteristic of artificial constructs. He suspected it was likely a magical construct left behind by some Transcendent who had visited Mars in the past, or perhaps an alchemical creation. Since its master had perished, it had been marooned on Mars for eternity. Although it was somewhat disappointing that the entity wasn't a genuine native alien life-form, Yu Xian still decided to investigate and see just what kind of thing was lurking inside. If it was interesting or powerful enough, subduing it with Final Origin Blood would also be a solid choice. It was worth mentioning that the two perfect creatures that had accompanied him were both dead. The dragon-shaped perfect creature had been slain by the giant serpent, and back then, in his rush to flee with Zhang Shou, he had merely given Xiao Jiuzi, who trailed behind, an order for random evacuation. Yet when the dust finally settled, Xiao Jiuzi never returned. Later on, Yu Xian had attempted to reach Xiao Jiuzi through the Seven-Apertures Exquisite Heart and failed to establish any link, leading him to deduce with high probability that it was already dead. "One, two, three—down we go!" Yu Xian leapt straight into the shaft, plummeting rapidly into the depths. Eyeball bubbles coalesced around him one after another, granting him omnidirectional vision. Honestly, at that moment a thought suddenly crossed his mind: how great would it be if he could awaken the giant serpent's Venomous Fire of Sinan in the future? If he awakened the Venomous Fire of Sinan, his eyeball bubbles would be able to project the kind of green beam the giant serpent had unleashed. That power was truly terrifying; the dragon-shaped perfect creature's defenses were by no means weak, yet it had still been cleanly split in two by the Venomous Fire of Sinan. Unfortunately, the giant serpent's skill tree required not only energy but also emotions, making awakening its skills exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, the serpent's skill tree was entirely shrouded in question marks. What skill awakened was completely random rather than up to his personal choice, making the difficulty of acquiring the Venomous Fire of Sinan even greater than awakening the Pangu Herculean Divine Ability. At present, his focus was still on unlocking the full series of foundational abilities belonging to a perfect creature. Only after unlocking all those fundamental capabilities would he consider what to illuminate next. "A sound!" Descending to roughly five hundred meters, Yu Xian heard strange noises rising from below once more. He immediately enveloped himself in a spatial bubble and surged downward in a burst of acceleration. Moments later, he spotted a swarm of beetles resembling black melon seeds mobbing an eyeless snake whose hide was covered in a hard shell. The serpent opened its mouth, snapping frantically at the beetles, but they crawled all over its body. Its furious roars availed it nothing; at last, its carapace was torn open, and in the blink of an eye, its flesh was hollowed out by the beetles. *Native Martian creatures?* Yu Xian watched as the beetles burrowed into one of the smaller openings and vanished, thinking to himself in surprise. Pausing before the hollow carapace left behind by the serpent, he used a palm-shaped bubble to scoop it up for a look. Then he pulled out his phone, snapped a photo, and messaged Bat: "I found a life-form on Mars. Shocker, right?" "Qilin's internal nature magazine recorded reports on that long ago—it was published around ninety years ago, if I recall. That's a mutated version of a ding-eating ore serpent, a species likely brought to Mars over six hundred years ago by ancients and left to reproduce," Bat replied swiftly. After reading Bat's response, Yu Xian closed Bat's chat window directly. He then opened Zhang Shou's chat, forwarded the photo to him, and asked: "I found a life-form on Mars. Shocker, right?" "Holy crap, you ran all the way to Mars? Take me with you!" Zhang Shou messaged back instantly. Looking at Zhang Shou's reply, a faint smile finally touched Yu Xian's face. Sure enough, his best buddy provided far better emotional value; it was best not to contact that guy Bat unless absolutely necessary.