High Martial Arts: Slay enemies to become stronger, forge invincibility from billions of corpses.

Song Chen pulled the Thunderclap Blade from the snake's head, wiped it clean on the snake's skin, and put it back into the scabbard on his back.

He turned around and looked at the five people behind him.

Zhao Hu leaned against the tree trunk, panting heavily, the wound on his left leg still bleeding.

He looked at Song Chen, his lips moved, but he only managed to utter two words: "...monster."

Zhou Yuan sat on the ground, hastily bandaging the wound on his left arm with a strip of cloth.

He looked at the snake corpses scattered on the ground, then at Song Chen, his face turning deathly pale.

He suddenly realized that if he had harbored any inappropriate thoughts about this young man while they were outside the chemical plant, he shuddered and dared not continue thinking about it.

Liu west slumped to the ground, his whole body still trembling.

It wasn't because of the cold, but because of lingering fear; he remembered that his nickname was Song Chen, the hothead.

That young man, all alone with a knife, killed hundreds of strange beasts and even slaughtered a peak-level third-tier Azure Scale Viper.

Liu Dong stood beside his younger brother, his expression calm, but the hand holding the battle knife trembled slightly. It was a physiological reaction after the adrenaline subsided, and also a manifestation of some emotion deep within his heart.

Shen Yuan was the first person to approach Song Chen.

She stepped over the snake carcasses and pools of blood, walked up to Song Chen, and looked him up and down: "What kind of monster are you?"

Song Chen did not answer.

He walked to the culvert, took out the blue crystal from his backpack, and examined it in his hand.

The blue light on the surface of the crystal had dimmed considerably, but the densely packed text symbols were still clearly visible, flowing slowly in the dim light.

Song Chen stared at those symbols for a long time.

He suddenly had a gut feeling.

The inscription on this crystal is far more important than this snake, this battle, or all the strange beasts in this wilderness.

The first thing to do after the battle is to clean up the battlefield.

Zhao Hu, dragging his injured left leg, borrowed a short knife from Zhou Yuan and began cutting up the snake carcass on the ground.

His movements were practiced; the tip of his knife precisely pried open the scales behind the snake's head, revealing a pale green crystal the size of a fingernail—a life crystal core.

This is the most precious part of the beast's body.

Although Zhou Yuan's left arm was injured, his right hand was still functional.

He squatted on the ground and used a dagger to dig out the crystal cores one by one, his movements even faster than Zhao Hu's.

Liu Dong helped Liu west sit down to rest, while he began cleaning up the snake carcasses around them.

Liu Xi leaned against the tree trunk, his face still pale, but his breathing had become much more steady. He would occasionally steal a glance in Song Chen's direction, his eyes filled with complex emotions.

Shen Yuan did not participate in the cleaning. She leaned against a gray-white tree trunk, took out a bottle of water from her backpack, and slowly drank it, her amber eyes flickering in the dim light of the psionic particles.

Song Chen squatted down next to the corpse of the Azure Viper.

The Thunderclap Blade was already sheathed. He used a small knife to cut open the area behind the snake's head, where the life crystal core was located.

The blade probed in, piercing through a layer of tough fascia, and a dark green crystal core the size of a pigeon egg rolled into his palm.

The third-order life crystal core glowed with a deep green light under the dim light of the psionic particles, and the flowing energy patterns could be vaguely seen inside.

The value of this crystal core is at least several dozen times that of a second-order crystal core.

Song Chen put the crystal core into his pocket and then stood up.

"You can divide the rest of the snake's parts among yourselves."

Zhao Hu looked up, stunned for a moment: "You don't want it anymore?"

"No, I don't want it."

Zhao Hu glanced at him, but didn't ask any more questions. He then lowered his head and continued to dig for the crystal core.

Zhou Yuan paused for a moment, his gaze lingering on Song Chen's pocket for a second, but he didn't make any further moves and continued working with his head down.

The cleaning went very quickly.

There's not much time to waste in the wilderness; the smell of blood will attract even more strange beasts.

The six people collected the valuable crystal cores and materials in less than twenty minutes.

Zhao Hu roughly separated the snake skin and bones and stuffed them into his backpack.

Zhou Yuan collected venom glands and snake fangs, which could fetch a good price.

The Liu brothers, Liu Dong and Liu Xi, and Shen Yuan also received some materials, which, although not much, were still a windfall.

"Let's go." Zhao Hu slung his backpack over his shoulder and took the lead in walking out of the deadwood forest.

The six men crossed to the other end of the deadwood forest and found a relatively safe ruin about three kilometers to the southeast.

A partially collapsed residential building, with one intact room on the second floor. The windows could be boarded up, and there was only one entrance.

After Zhao Hu checked the surrounding environment and confirmed that there were no signs of any strange beast activity, the group entered the room one after another.

Song Chen chose the innermost corner of the room and sat down with her back against the wall.

He didn't participate in anyone's conversation, but simply took out his water bottle from his backpack, took a few sips of water, and then closed his eyes.

On the surface, he was resting.

In fact, his left hand, concealed by the backpack, quietly slipped into the interlayer, his fingertips touching the cool surface of the blue crystal.

The Eye of True Sight quietly opened beneath the eyelids, its golden light completely concealed by the eyelids and eyelashes, making it appear perfectly normal from the outside.

He "saw" the text symbols inside the crystal.

They were clearer than he could see in the culvert.

Each symbol is composed of multiple layers of lines, like layers of code stacked together.

The shape of the symbol is not that of any known writing system, not Chinese characters, not letters, and not any writing system that has ever appeared in human history.

However, they exhibit obvious patterns.

The arrangement of symbols is not random; there are fixed intervals and repetition patterns between each group of symbols.

Some symbols appear repeatedly, like common words in a certain grammatical structure; some symbols only appear in specific positions, like punctuation or separators.

This is a language.

A complete, mature, and logically structured language.

Song Chen's heart skipped a beat.

Fifty years ago, a meteorite fell into the Pacific Ocean, releasing psionic particles that changed the entire world.

Human genes are awakening, animals are mutating into alien beasts, and all scientific explanations point to one conclusion: psionic particles.

But no one has ever explained why psionic particles can awaken the genes of living organisms.

Why is its distribution pattern so regular? Why does it form a fixed flow path in the air?

It's like a meticulously designed system, rather than something that formed naturally.

There are countless theories about the origin of psionic particles.

Song Chen has been interested in this question since she was a child, and has read countless papers and posts online, but no one has given a definite answer.

Now, he holds a blue crystal engraved with unknown characters in his hand.

This is by no means a naturally formed crystal of psionic energy; it was manufactured, created by some intelligent being.

Song Chen opened her eyes, and the golden light slowly dissipated deep within her pupils.

He put the crystal back into the backpack compartment, zipped it up, and then leaned against the wall as if he were resting with his eyes closed.

But his brain was working at high speed.

If this crystal was indeed made by some kind of intelligent being, what does that mean?

This means that the meteorite fall fifty years ago may not have been an accident.

This means that psionic particles may not be a natural phenomenon.

This means that humans, alien beasts, superpowers, martial arts systems—all of these things that have been considered "natural evolution" over the past fifty years—may have a "person" behind them.

Or rather, something that exists.

Song Chen took a deep breath and temporarily suppressed these questions.

He realized that thinking about these things now was too far ahead.

He was only a second-tier martial artist with 35 points of Qi and Blood, far from being able to access the truth of the world.

But at least he held a key.