chsdbacks Chapter 332 - 325: Three Feasible Plans for the Hunt
Chapter 332 - 325: Three Feasible Plans for the Hunt
On his way out of the Extreme North Ice Eye, Shi Ming began to synthesize all the information he knew and started to form a plan.
The Active Wormhole’s weakness was its stomach.
This stomach contained the remnants of food and various unstable substances it had devoured over countless eons, granting it the unstable skill "All-Encompassing Stomach." But for that very reason, it had also become its weakness.
To kill the Active Wormhole, besides simply overpowering and crushing it, there was a shortcut: destroy its stomach. This would cause all the unstable energy within to go haywire, erupt, and create a backlash! It was much like the "Ten Thousand Souls Banner" from the cultivation novels Shi Ming had read in his past life, where the wielder was ultimately killed by the very souls the banner contained.
But Shi Ming wasn’t sure if this weakness would still exist after it advanced to the next tier.
’I need to prepare for multiple scenarios!’
’A saturation hunt.’
"Ah Jian, do you have any impression of the Active Wormhole named Quintetra?"
"Or, information on other Nirvana-Tier creatures would also be helpful."
Shi Ming asked Ah Jian, who was perched in his hair.
The Active Wormhole had already taken half a step into the Nirvana Tier and had insidiously killed an unknown number of other fierce beasts. Its intelligence could not be underestimated. It was nothing like the beasts or sea beasts that acted purely on instinct.
The more intelligence he could gather, the better.
If he could find recorded memories of its battles within Ah Jian’s mind, Shi Ming might be able to mitigate the risks and devise a more suitable strategy. Even if that wasn’t possible, finding information on other creatures that had reached the Nirvana Tier would allow for a cross-comparison, giving him a rough benchmark for the enemy’s strength.
WHIRR~
In the cold air, more than thirty insects materialized, spreading out one by one into a staggered, orderly formation.
Ah Jian used its Infinite Mother-body and activated its "multi-core processor" search mode.
"Master, I’ll take a look."
"Mm."
Shi Ming felt more certain than ever that recruiting Ah Jian had been the right decision. Able to shrink at will, Ah Jian could serve as his eyes, a detector, and a living encyclopedia capable of retrieving "visual intelligence" that even the Eye of the World couldn’t provide. It was common knowledge that while textual information’s strength was its precision, visual information’s strength was its intuitive clarity. They complemented each other perfectly.
He flew on at a steady pace.
Ah Jian was also searching its memories.
A moment later, one of them responded to Shi Ming.
"Information on Nirvana-Tier creatures is buried in the deepest parts of my memory. It’s extremely blurry and currently cannot be retrieved."
"However, I found information related to the Active Wormhole when it was weaker. Back then, it was just an ordinary S-rank fierce beast."
Shi Ming’s eyes lit up.
’Excellent.’
’You can extrapolate the big picture from the small details.’
For some fierce beasts, their most powerful abilities are innate, carried with them as they advance tier by tier. Information from its past would still be of immense value.
The intelligence was transmitted from the Spiritual Power of one of Ah Jian’s bodies directly into Shi Ming’s consciousness. Then, the dozens of spawned sub-bodies voluntarily dissipated to avoid memory contamination. As for the original mother body, it hadn’t moved at all, aside from spawning a few sub-bodies with deliberately independent, non-communicating minds.
Shi Ming reviewed the visual intelligence.
’A three-meter-long Shadow Insect Body. Its signature skill is transforming into a shadowy worm to gnaw open a breach... This is quite similar to the Eye of the World’s description of the Carrion Sanctuary.’
’In essence, it looks like a worm, but it isn’t.’
An S-rank Active Wormhole could only gnaw through space and matter.
After advancing to the Holy Hall Tier, this skill underwent a massive upgrade, allowing it to gnaw through abstract concepts like civilization and thought.
’Once it reaches the Nirvana Tier, the amplification will be even more unimaginable!’
’I have to increase my strength!’
’At the very least, I need to lower the "Danger Index: Five Stars" that the Eye of the World warned me about down to four, or even three stars! Only then can I be confident of success!’ Shi Ming already had a complete plan to increase his own power.
Three paths.
One: "borrow" the power of other Holy Hall-level Sea Beasts.
In practical terms, this meant killing the Abyss Lord, acquiring the powers of the Extremely Evil Sanctuary and the Three-Eyed Golden Crow, evolving the Eye of the World, and then patrolling the Endless Sea Region to find and eliminate any other killable Holy Hall-level Sea Beasts one by one.
These sea beasts were entrenched in the Endless Ocean, like hidden time bombs.
Even without an external enemy invasion, Shi Ming’s original plan was to eliminate them one by one anyway.
Two: make the most of his time and study the Civilization Secret Scriptures on the great stone stele: the *Hundred-Floor Celestial Tower* and *Soul-Burning Poem*.
The tier of these two Civilization Secret Scriptures was extremely high.
The former would make his Spiritual Power unassailable, effectively granting him immunity to the Active Wormhole’s ability to corrode thoughts and willpower. The latter would allow him to drastically increase his Attack Power at a critical moment—a desperate, all-or-nothing move that would serve as another trump card.
Three: nurture another Contract Core and push it past its limits.
A Contract Core could control sea beasts or fierce beasts.
Before its breakthrough, a Contract Core could already control S-rank sea beasts. After a breakthrough, it should theoretically be able to control a Holy Hall-level being! ’If that’s really possible,’ Shi Ming thought, ’I could embed a Contract Core into the Holy Hall Tier Active Wormhole. Then, even if it successfully advances to the Nirvana Tier, it won’t be able to escape my control.’
At that point, whether to kill it or seize its power would be entirely up to him.
However, the feasibility of this plan had not been verified.
For now, it was purely theoretical.
First of all, it wasn’t certain if a Contract Core that had undergone a breakthrough could even control a Holy Hall Tier entity. Furthermore, actually embedding the core into the Active Wormhole would be a major problem. It wasn’t like Ah Jian, who had been cornered and was easily coaxed. Even if he beat the wormhole to the brink of death and tried to forcibly implant the core, it would likely choose death over being controlled by a human.
In the end, power was the foundation of everything.
Cunning tactics could only be supplementary. If they worked, great. If not, he needed to have other backup plans.
...
...
...
「Africa’s Sea of Boiling.」
This region of high-temperature sea was now utterly silent. After two great purges, the heat-loving sea beasts from other regions no longer dared to approach.
Inside the Three-Eyed Golden Crow’s nest, the Golden Crow’s eyes darted about as it pondered a way out of its predicament.
In the future it had glimpsed, the Abyss Lord would perish amidst a sea of red flowers. Its eyeballs would disintegrate, its wicked tentacles would be severed, and the Sea of Boiling would transform into a chaotic, bizarre landmass. But as it analyzed the prophecy frame by frame, it discovered there was no mention of its own death.
The final frame of the prophecy showed a massive black dragon aiming its eighteen eyes right at it!
The dragon was only aiming; it hadn’t attacked. This didn’t necessarily mean it was fated to die!
This gave rise to a sliver of wishful hope.
’Perhaps that vile dragon is only after the Abyss Lord! If I can just figure something out, I can avoid being caught in the crossfire. There’s still a chance I can survive!’
’I have to come up with a plan!’
It already had a rough plan.