Chapter 106 — The Bug's First Battle

Hadn't his cousin hinted that the opponent was a pushover??? The beast sent out was indeed a pushover by race, but that kind of power made no damn sense!!!

Buzz-cut Cousin was stunned as well. What was with this Green Silk Worm? He could not make heads or tails of it at all!

As for the waiter, his mouth hung slightly open the whole time; he too could not comprehend what this Green Silk Worm had just done.

"Wood Shield!"

By now, seeing the insect threads closing on the Treant like a noose, Zhao Rui's veins bulged at his temples. Wood-attributed natural ripples surged from his body, stirring up a gust of wind around him.

At the same time, the energy within the Treant swelled violently. Boosted by its beastmaster's wood-enhancement talent, its fighting strength soared; it retreated a step while a row of wooden pillars bent into a half-arch before it, shielding it completely—

Swish!

This time, the threads merely left white streaks on the wooden shield and failed to break through.

Zhao Rui's face lit with joy. That's it?

Unfortunately, he barely had time to relax before his expression collapsed again, and the mask of agony came back on.

The threads leaving only white marks on the shield did not mean the shield's defense was high. It was because the Green Silk Worm's threads were not yet at full power!

Not only had it failed to activate the full spatial properties of its threads, it currently had only a small number of them—and it had not even used virtual-real phantoms to manifest the stronger self from its dreams!

"Chirp!"

At that moment, faced with a stronger opponent, the bug swiftly retracted its threads, then spat dozens of near-transparent filaments from its mouth, twining them together into a thick cord like a wooden whip.

The tip of the cord was wrapped into a spear point, and under the Green Silk Worm's control it shot out at high speed, like a bullet fired from a gun!

The threads' peculiar nature meant no one could see them clearly, but the sudden whistle through the air, combined with the worm's spitting motion, changed everyone's expression at once.

This time the threads' destructive power was such that with a "bang" they punched straight through the wooden shield in one blow. The shield shattered, and the cord pierced the Treant. An instant later, the Treant's body caved slightly under the immense impact, its pupils contracting, and its massive two-meter frame was flipped over entirely, skidding three or four meters along the ground before it stopped!

"Chirp!" With its full combat strength unleashed in its normal state, the bug had crushed the enemy's defense with absolute ruthlessness.

The two cousins' expressions froze into blankness, utterly shattered, convinced they were dreaming!

"You lose. The insect thread has already pierced into the Treant's body. With a single thought, it can begin destroying it from the inside."

Shi Jin spoke up at the same time. Since his opponent had held back at the start, he had let the bug hold back a little too—there was an assessment coming up in a few days, and it would not do to injure the Treant too severely.

They were only here for a meal. Why not keep things amiable?

"Aah—" At this, exactly as Shi Jin said, the fallen Treant did not dare move an inch. Though it still had strength to fight, it could clearly feel a lethal weapon flowing inside its body.

A fully leveled insect thread had another trait: even detached from the Green Silk Worm's body, it could still be controlled by the worm for a long while. These transparent little threads now wriggled like tiny worms inside the Treant, waiting for their master's order to attack.

This move was very hard to defend against. Once any part of one's body was pierced by the Green Silk Worm's threads, it was as good as a death sentence from Shi Jin.

Their transparent nature combined with this move, and calling the bug the strongest killer of the transcendent race would not be far off the mark.

"I..." Zhao Rui's expression was one of refusal to accept it, because he had received feedback from the Treant and knew Shi Jin was not lying!

Precisely because of that, his worldview was in tatters, and he could not understand it at all.

A Green Silk Worm... a Green Silk Worm was pinning down a transcendent-rank Treant with nothing but its threads???

Was this what his cousin meant by "this one's in the bag"?

In the bag, my ass! Swindler! Refund!

But clearly, even Big Cousin had not anticipated this turn of events.

Neither had the waiter. All three were reeling. At last, Zhao Rui's throat nearly dry, he said in a trembling voice: "A transcendent-rank Green Silk Worm, with masterwork-rank insect threads?"

"You know your stuff." Shi Jin nodded. "Not bad."

What the hell! Not bad?! This makes no sense!

Shi Jin's confirmation gave Zhao Rui and the others no satisfaction of having their doubts resolved. Instead, it only felt more outrageous!!!

Someone actually raised a Green Silk Worm to transcendent rank?? And trained its threads to masterwork rank??

There's something wrong with you people—

The three were shocked beyond measure. Fortunately no one here had noticed; otherwise, the commotion would have been far greater. Never mind whether a Green Silk Worm can reach transcendent rank—the mere fact that it had mastered masterwork-rank threads was enough to tell that this worm, once evolved, would have the potential of a monarch race!!

And that had already been proven!

The two cousins were dumbfounded, utterly unable to understand why such an examinee had shown up. This kind of beast, this kind of move-proficiency—it was completely incomprehensible!

"Aah!!!" The Treant urged its beastmaster to stop dawdling and surrender quickly—it felt so itchy and painful inside.

It swore it would never fight a bug again—this time it had been hard-countered.

"I..." Zhao Rui was utterly thrown into disarray. One could well imagine that he, too, was a genius in some corner of the world, a man of renown, hardly inferior to the crowd who had once vied with Shi Jin for the Fountain of Evolution. And yet a genius like him, before he had even taken the professional examination, had already been shown the wickedness of the world.

In this vast world, there were beastmasters of every stripe and pet beasts of every kind.

Zhao Rui was forced to concede, for the life and death of the tree spirit now truly lay in Shi Jin's hands.

The moment he spoke, a sick lurch seized the heart of the buzz-cut cousin.

Cousin, you really can't blame me for this, you must understand... it was plainly that pair of beastmaster and pet beast who were the problem!

"Heh heh..." Shi Yan chuckled. The opponent had been weak, so Buggy surely hadn't gotten to fight to its heart's content, but so long as the bill was waived, all was well...

"Chirp..."

By now Buggy was indeed a little dissatisfied. It swept a glance over the slack-jawed crowd, then silently turned away. Not a single one worth fighting—it hadn't even been forced into its dream form. How boring. If the opponents in the professional examination were only this level, it rather felt that there was no need for Leader to take the field—it alone could probably slaughter them all.