Chapter 188: Hunting Efficiency

Translator: Ash Editor: Artythekid

With a slight shake of his wrist, the slightly curved blade vibrated at high-frequency as the stinking snake blood disappeared immediately.

Li Yao sheathed the saber. He was very satisfied with this blade.

In order to display the maximum might of the "Desert Storm Saber Technique" and apply the shortest and most direct attack to subdue his foes, Li Yao had optimized the Windcutter by reforging it, reducing its weight, and slightly curving its blade. It now appeared to be a combination of straight saber and scimitar.

He was most satisfied with the eight grooves on either side of the blade. They were the fruit of countless air propulsion tests, accurate calculations, and forgings carried out by him. These grooves would guide the wind to the flat side of the blade, which would create a propulsion force and push the blade from behind, thereby improving the speed of the saber when attacking by a notch.

Today was its first trial in the real combat. Sure enough, the results were pretty good. While still ensuring lethality, the attack speed had increased to a whole new level, allowing him to unleash the essence of the "Desert Storm Saber Technique" most vividly.

Li Yao's raised the corner of his lips and a sliver of smile appeared on his face as he walked towards the corpse of the Three-Horned Lancehead.

Squatting down, just as he was about to extend his arm to pick it up, his smile suddenly froze.

With wide-open eyes, as Li Yao carefully inspected it using his scabbard to turn the snakehead over and over again, his smile grew stiffer and his complexion grew uglier. Finally, he could not help but ruthlessly curse.

He was fooled!

This demon beast was not the Three-Horned Lancehead at all, but its close relative called the Hump-Nosed Viper.

The two had a striking similarity, however, the former's forehead had three very sharp little horns, while the latter's forehead had three pointed sarcomas.

At ten to twenty meters away, amid the flying sand, even a cultivator with keen vision would be easily confused.

Because Li Yao didn't want to scare the snake away, he had only used his peripheral vision to scan the prey. He simply dared not gaze at it directly. Only at this moment did he discover that he was mistaken.

Although the two were close relatives, the Hump-Nosed Viper was just a low-level Demon Soldier whose venom was quite ordinary and could be synthesized.

Comparing it to the Three-Horned Lancehead was like comparing clouds and mud; it could not even be converted into a few credits.

Remembering himself laying prone on the ground for an entire four hours in this scorching desert, where he was not far away from turning into a dehydrated mummy, only to ambush such waste... Li Yao had no way to vent his anger; he could only blame his bad luck.

The Zenith Province was the paradise of the Wasteland, both predators and prey lurked and hid in the darkness.

Just this short fight had already garnered the attention of many. Furthermore, the faint smell of the Hump-Nosed Viper’s blood was also permeating into the air, which had been perceived by many powerful hunters.

"Crash!"

Suddenly, some movement could be seen at three nearby places amid the stones as three chubby heads emerged.

Three very cute small animals with fleshy and stout heads drilled out from the ground.

They looked like overly obese marmots which were carefully sniffing the bloody air as they awkwardly wriggled on the ground, twisting their obese asses while slowly crawling towards Li Yao.

"What is this?"

Although at first glance they didn't look dangerous, it was imperative to never lower one's vigilance in the Wasteland.

Clutching the hilt of the saber, Li Yao bent his waist as he slowly retreated, quickly searching his brain for any info as to what kind of beast they were.

After three seconds, a name suddenly popped out from the depths of his brain as Li Yao suddenly turned pale.

"Barbed Rock Pig, a high-rank Demon Soldier, specialized in long-range attack!"

"Little Black!"

Li Yao screamed.

Three high-rank Demon Soldiers who specialized in long-range attacks was not something he could deal with.

The moment Li Yao screamed, the three Barbed Rock Pigs also tore their disguises as their bodies, just like filling a ball, expanded to ten times their previous size. Their cute faces turned incomparably hideous, their soft and supple hair stood erect, appearing as though they were acupuncture needles. Under the sunlight, they sparkled with a strange blue gloss.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

The moment the bodies of Barbed Rock Pigs swelled to the extreme, they immediately shrunk as a few dozen poisonous thorns headed towards Li Yao like bullets.

With a shout, Li Yao heavily stamped on the ground, splashing countless stones around and creating a thin barrier before him as he flew a dozen meters back. While he flew, his arm stroked his waist.

A shiny ebony pistol appeared in his hand.

"BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!"

Even without looking, Li Yao, fired six shots as six beams of blood-red light shot out from the muzzle almost simultaneously. With ear-piercing howls, the bullets headed towards the three Barbed Rock Pigs.

Blood bullets!

They were the special bullets baptized with Li Yao's blood using the secret technique of Hundred Smelting Clan!

Not only were they tremendously powerful, they even had a mysterious contact with his soul; as a result, after they were shot, they could be controlled with his mind. Their strike rate was 100%.

"Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!"

The three Barbed Rock Pigs once again fired multitudes of poisonous thorns that directly struck his six blood bullets.

The six blood bullets exploded into six bloody veils of mist in the air.

Li Yao didn't even look back. In one breath, he had retreated by fifty meters. Thereafter, he once again exerted his legs as he rose into the sky just like a firecracker. Not so far away from him, a black beam of light quickly arrived in front of him and was grabbed tightly in his embrace.

How could the Barbed Rock Pigs willingly watch their cooked duck fly away? After the three furiously roared, their bodies swelled, reaching almost two meters in diameter, while their gray-brown skin turned completely red. In one go, they had fired hundreds of poisonous thorns which were even faster than bullets!

"Swish!"

The Black Wing Sword's speed soared to the limit. The hilt seemed to have eyes; it continuously rotated and changed direction as it weaved through the dense screen of poisonous thorns, displaying fantastic dodging maneuvers.

As the speed of the thorns and the Black Wing Sword was almost the same, Li Yao helplessly watched countless blue poisonous thorns gradually fly past him. As he watched some of the many poisonous thorns nearly pierce his skin, only to be dodged by a hair’s breadth at the last moment, Li Yao felt cold sweat dripping down his forehead.

After hovering at death's door for a second, the Black Wing Sword carrying Li Yao soared out of the rainstorm-like cluster of poisonous thorns!

The three Barbed Rock Pigs let out furious howls, all of which were ignored by Li Yao. Li Yao, lying atop the Black Wing Sword, flew over fifty kilometers away in one breath.

Only when they arrived near the military base did Li Yao dare to slow down.

First, Li Yao spread his spirit threads as far as he could to determine that there were no powerful demon beasts around.

Only then did he vigilantly jump off the Black Wing Sword. Li Yao slumped down on the ground with his back against a giant rock. He sighed with relief while his heart remained throbbing with fear.

"Little Black, you have saved me once again!"

Li Yao's chest still heaved up and down when he recalled the soul-stirring scene from a moment ago.

In the crisis-ridden Wasteland, who was the predator and who was the prey could change in the blink of an eye. Even a powerful hunter could very likely become prey in a second.

If he did not have Little Black, this ace in the hole, Li Yao simply didn't dare to come here alone to hunt.

"These demon beasts are truly cunning!"

Li Yao had wasted half a day over nothing and had even nearly died to the poisonous thorns of the Barbed Rock Pigs. Being unable to vent the fiery anger in his heart, Li Yao slammed his fist on the rock, cracking the giant rock in four to five places.

Demon beasts were originally extremely clever, especially the demon beasts of the Wasteland.

Nature is all about survival of the fittest. All the demon beasts who were not intelligent enough to survive had already vanished in a puff of smoke under the repeated cleansing of powerful human experts and crystal battleships. They had died a graveless death.

On the other hand, the demon beasts who could survive under the nose of human civilization were all sly and crafty.

These demon beasts were completely opposite of the demon beasts who had just arrived from the Blood Demon Sector that were quite impatient to charge towards the human cities. The demon beasts who had survived in the Wasteland for a few decades or over a century might not be tyrannically strong, but they had all kinds of strange life-saving means.

Hunting these demon beasts was rather difficult compared to annihilating a large beast tide.

"It can't go on like this. My hunting efficiency is too low. If this goes on, I simply will not be able to reach 40,000 credits in the next two months."

"What to do? How can I increase my hunting efficiency?"

Supporting his cheeks, Li Yao devoted his mind to finding a solution.

Having analyzed the hunt over these few days, Li Yao discovered that his low efficiency could be mainly attributed to two reasons.

First, playing the tiger to scare the pig.

Second, playing the pig to eat the tiger.

The so-called "playing the tiger to scare the pig" refers to the ordinary demon beasts and low-level Demon Soldiers, who, in order to survive, have gone through a slow and long evolution, and gradually looked more and more like powerful demon beasts.

This was a natural and special camouflage.

For instance, the Hump-Nosed Viper from a while ago. Originally it was just a low-level Demon Soldier, however, after slowly evolving, it developed a striking similarity to the Three-Horned Lancehead, which allowed it to disguise itself as an intermediate-rank Demon Soldier.

The world of demon beasts follows the law of the jungle. Many middle-rank Demon Soldiers, when seeing the Hump-Nosed Viper from afar, may not dare to attack it.

In nature, this is a very common phenomenon.

Many butterflies' wings are bright-colored, extremely gorgeous, and can simulate the textures of ferocious beasts so that other carnivorous insects dared not approach them.

On the other hand, the so-called "play the pig to eat the tiger" was exactly like the Barbed Rock Pigs. Obviously, they were very powerful high-rank Demon Soldiers, yet they camouflaged themselves as low-level Demon Soldiers. Some even camouflaged themselves as far as developing the appearance of ordinary demon beasts, which in turn made their prey relax their vigilance and allowed them to kill with one strike!

Often during the hunt, Li Yao encountered these two cases, which gave him a great deal of trouble.

In the final analysis, it was all because he was not familiar with the different species of demon beasts. In other words, he was unable to identify the species, values, and characteristics of the demon beasts.

He was finding it very difficult to solve this problem.

After going through millenniums of evolution, the number of species of demon beasts far surpassed ten million. Just the number of most common demon beasts found in the Heaven Origin Sector numbered in millions, where each demon beast had a certain probability to mutate.

A few million species of demon beasts, where each demon beast had completely different characteristics. Some might even have very subtle differences in their appearances, making them hard to recognize.

Even a cultivator who had extremely strong computation ability would find it impossible to remember everything.

The memory is a very strange thing. Even if one could remember, he might not remember quick enough in the crisis-ridden battlefield.

Take the Barbed Rock Pig for instance; Li Yao had obviously seen the details of this demon beast in the database along with the details of over ten thousand demon beasts, the information on which was sealed in the depths of his brain.

However, when he saw it for the first time, he had taken three seconds, a whole three seconds before the details of the Barbed Rock Pig popped out from the depths of his sea-like memory.

During a fight between a cultivator and a demon beast, life and death could be determined in a fraction of a second; three seconds was way too long.

"What to do? The details of demon beasts are too complex, I am simply unable to remember in a short period of time. And even if I could remember it somehow, who's to say that I could remember it at the most crucial moment?"

"Mini-crystal processors could store the details of many demon beasts, but it would be too idiotic to lower my head to look at the crystal processor at the moment when life and death could be decided."

"Furthermore, even if there is a huge database, without the name of the demon beast, it would still be very difficult to find the specific details of the demon beast."

"And if I used the ‘general search' function, information on a few dozen similar demon beasts would be shown, how could I actually determine which one is correct?"

"Is there a magical equipment which could accurately display the information on demon beasts with one scan, and is also convenient to look at so that it would not affect the fight?"

Li Yao quietly pondered. If there was such a magical equipment that could identify the species, value, and danger-level of demon beast with one scan, it would greatly improve his efficiency and would also ensure his safety for sure!

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