A sleepless night passed.
Their first patrol had gone without a hitch.
Still, it was only their first time. Walk along the riverbank long enough and your shoes were bound to get wet; once the patrols piled up, there was no telling what might happen.
Zhang Shou parked the car in a lot near the school and headed off to grab breakfast. Yu Xian had no need for breakfast, so he went on to school ahead of him.
"Salty Fish, you're early today!"
Chen Ling was looking at gossip on her phone in the classroom. When she saw Yu Xian walk in, she let out an exclamation of surprise.
"Good morning. You're early too," Yu Xian replied with a faint smile as he took his seat.
He placed his hands inside his desk drawer. With a shift of thought, silver threads quickly materialized, weaving into a pair of gloves in the blink of an eye.
Compared to knitting sweaters out of wool yarn, the silver thread produced by Silver Blood was far easier to control. As long as he mastered the proper weaving methods, he could weave whatever protective gear he wanted with a single thought.
He practiced like this again and again. Silver gloves continually formed over both hands, vanishing and reappearing faster and faster.
Once he managed to weave a glove in just a tenth of a second, he began extending their length.
"Hey, Salty Fish, did you hear?"
Chen Ling suddenly turned around. But the moment the words left her mouth, she blinked, staring at Yu Xian with curiosity.
When Yu Xian walked in just moments ago, he had clearly been wearing their school uniform, which was blue. Yet now, he was wearing a silver trench coat, and beneath it was a silver vest.
"You didn't just change your clothes behind my back, did you?" Chen Ling asked, dumbfounded.
The instant Chen Ling blinked, Yu Xian recalled every last strand of silver thread. Her vision merely blurred, and when she looked again, Yu Xian was back in his school uniform.
"Did I not get enough sleep last night?" Chen Ling muttered to herself.
Yu Xian smiled and asked, "What were you going to say?"
"Oh right! Did you hear? The Dragon King of the East Sea announced that he's entering the civilian protective gear market. In the future, he plans to produce equipment for ordinary people to withstand attacks from Transcendents." Chen Ling gave Yu Xian's clothes a suspicious glance, but she couldn't resist gossiping.
"Dragon King of the East Sea" was actually just a moniker.
The man's real name was Li Donghai, a direct descendant of the Dragon Ancestor and a fabulously wealthy tycoon.
The renowned East Sea Dragon Palace Group was Li Donghai's enterprise. In the past, he had dealt exclusively with Transcendents, but now it seemed he intended to pocket ordinary people's money as well.
"He's probably shooting off his mouth again," Yu Xian remarked.
The Dragon King of the East Sea was notoriously loudmouthed. Netizens jokingly called him the Big-Mouth Dragon because he latched onto every trending topic.
Without a doubt, floating this claim was purely an attempt to ride the wave of Silver City's viral attention.
"So it's fake," Chen Ling said, deflated.
She had genuinely wanted to buy some useful gear. Her parents had bought her pepper spray, bear spray, and a stun gun.
While those were fine against ordinary humans, they were practically useless against Transcendents. If there were equipment on the market that could defend against attacks from Transcendent creatures, she would gladly buy it.
"Transcendent gear is bound to be expensive. Even if they cut costs to the bone, it would probably still run into the millions."
"The cost of materials is right there. What do you think?"
Yu Xian knew full well how precious Transcendent materials were. Even Transcendents didn't all possess a piece of equipment, let alone making it available to every ordinary citizen.
"Fine, I was naive. I shouldn't have believed Big-Mouth Dragon."
After hearing Yu Xian's reasoning, Chen Ling gave up all hope. She grumbled while tapping away on her phone, clearly preparing to flame Li Donghai in the comments under his account.
Yu Xian smiled faintly at the sight. Pulling out his phone, he continued practicing his weaving technique with one hand while opening the Qilin app to see if there was any real major news.
[A flying zombie has been sighted on West Gemini Mountain. A search-and-capture operation is currently underway. Members below Eagle rank, please do not approach West Gemini Mountain.]
[The internal ranking assessment will begin on the first of next month. Members confident in raising their rank, please register as soon as possible.]
[The Qilin Research Department has discovered a detection method for the aberrant worm variant—the brain-hugging neural worm. A nationwide screening will commence in three days.]
When Yu Xian saw the third trending announcement, his eyes instantly lit up.
About two days ago, he had seen related reports. By that time, Qilin's scientists had already thoroughly analyzed this new form of aberrant worm and dubbed it the "brain-hugging neural worm."
This variant could alter its body into a structure strikingly similar to human cranial nerves, then slip into the target's brain to replace their neural network, wrapping tightly around the brain like a mass of clinging tentacles.
At that stage, the host's brain was not dead, but every piece of information received was filtered through the brain-hugging neural worm. Put simply, the host saw whatever the worm wanted them to see, and heard whatever the worm wanted them to hear.
They were turned into complete puppets of the worm, without the slightest room for resistance.
Furthermore, once a brain-hugging neural worm successfully established its parasitic hold, even though the person was technically alive, there was effectively no difference from being dead. With the vast majority of current methods, there was no way to extract the worm while ensuring the host's survival.
After all, the worm had devoured the host's cranial nerves. Without that part of the nervous system, a person naturally could not survive.
Yu Xian's feelings were mixed. On one hand, he was glad the authorities finally had a way to guard against the infiltration of aberrant worms and brain-hugging neural worms.
On the other, he worried about how many families this upcoming screening would leave torn apart.
***
Doghead Gold Mountain.
The mountain had earned its name years ago when someone discovered a massive natural gold nugget there.
However, as Transcendent creatures grew increasingly common, the humans living near Doghead Gold Mountain had long since relocated into the cities. Now, it had become a paradise for wild beasts.
Inside a man-made cave halfway up the mountain, an assortment of creatures gathered together—wolves, bears, tigers, and even numerous humans.
Clearly, this was not normal; such beings could never coexist in harmony under ordinary circumstances.
Suddenly, the ground trembled and the mountain shook.
A three-meter-tall giant white ape dropped from the summit onto the flat clearing on the mountainside. Turning around, it ripped away one of the cave's walls and grinned at the creatures inside. "This body packs a serious punch! Feels freaking amazing."
"Old Three, don't go breaking that body. That's an important tool for us," Zhou Tai said, sitting on a boulder with his legs dangling.
A tiger nodded. "He's right. It wasn't easy to get our hands on a Transcendent creature. If you ruin it, you're dead."
Transcendent creatures were far more perceptive; any foreign intrusion into their bodies would be detected instantly, making it exceptionally difficult for aberrant worms to parasitize them.
However, after the crushing defeat in Silver City, Zhou Tai knew full well that relying solely on parasitizing ordinary humans would never allow the aberrant worms to truly thrive.
Thus, upon discovering that this giant ape lived alone without a troop, he had sacrificed a massive number of aberrant worms to run it ragged until it collapsed from sheer exhaustion, only then succeeding in parasitizing it and seizing its body.
Once aberrant worms gained human intelligence, they also acquired a fear of death, making them notoriously hard to unite.
With Zhou Tai as their leader, however, they were able to act in concert. Even if they feared dying, they were forced to charge forward—and they had finally achieved a breakthrough from zero to one.
Once they parasitized even more Transcendent creatures, they might be able to surround the cities from the wild, ultimately achieving dominion over the world.
Chapter 25