"It's really lucky that a survivor managed to escape back," Ye Feng glanced at the photo, noticing that it was one of the security guards.
In the picture, he was wrapped in several bandages, and according to his description, he had broken a rib while being chased by a wild boar.
After successfully escaping, he encountered other mutated beings and fled all the way.
He was fortunate enough to run into a large supply convoy on the road, which allowed him to return alive; otherwise, he would have faced certain death.
"The wilderness is getting more and more dangerous!" Ye Feng's expression was a bit solemn.
Not to mention others, just the mutated bats that he had just hunted were quite dangerous for humans to encounter in the wild. If they encountered a flock, even armed, they would die.
Of course, he only glanced at the report twice before closing it and started checking other information.
For him, there was still one thing to confirm.
That was whether the school or research institutions would send out search parties to look for their bodies.
If they really came searching, it would definitely be a troublesome matter for him.
But perhaps the news brought back by the rescued survivor was too horrifying, deterring other teams from taking on the high-risk task of searching for bodies, so he saw no such information.
"It's best if they don't come looking; it would also give me an excuse to return later."
While muttering to himself, Ye Feng opened up the international news section.
This was something he used to do every day.
Compared to domestic areas, some places had mutated animals evolving even more rapidly.
Like the Amazon Jungle.
The mutated beings there are often considered first-tier entities.
He had just opened the international news section and glanced at the top news when he almost lost grip on his phone.
#The 1st City Overrun by Mutated Creatures#
Ye Feng hastily clicked to read this news, finding out that the city which had been wiped out was a small one in Ah San Country.
Of course, even if that city was small, it still had more than 200,000 inhabitants, and the worldwide sensation caused by such news could be well imagined.
Below this news was an attached video.
Ye Feng clicked to watch it, and at the beginning, it was intense gunfire.
From the video, that appeared to be a local militia organization, engaged in heavy combat with the mutated beings.
And among the mutated creatures, what stood out the most were mutated buffalos the size of small trucks.
As everyone knows, in Ah San Country, cows are sacred animals. The people don't eat beef, and there were even cases of wild buffalo overpopulation.
Because of the large number, the mutated wild buffalos in Ah San Country were especially abundant, with more than a dozen charging together in the video.
They were like a dozen tanks smashing everything in their path, houses collapsing one after another.
They even withstood the firepower of automatic rifles, chasing down the humans who fought against them.
Bullets hitting their body, although creating visible wounds, could penetrate only four or five centimeters at most before being stopped by their sturdy muscles, inflicting no fatal damage.
It was not until a rocket shell was fired that one of the mutated wild buffalos was finally killed.
But killing a single buffalo had no critical effect on the outcome of the battle.
Moreover, the biggest harm to the militia was not from these mutated buffalos, but from the large and agile mutated mice.
They nimbly maneuvered through the gunfire, quickly approaching the militia members before launching into a biting frenzy.
Even if the armed members rapidly dispatched the mice with military knives, they were already torn and bleeding heavily in the process.
Killing a few mutated mice was futile; just the ones captured by the camera numbered in the hundreds.
If one were to count the entire city, the number would be unfathomably high.
Although the mutated buffalos and mice were the main forces of this war, they were not the ones causing most harm to civilians.
The most damage was caused by ubiquitous mutated mosquitoes.
The latter half of the video was from a high-definition camera at the entrance of a bank.
You could see people running frantically, pursued by a dense swarm of mutated mosquitoes behind them.
They swarmed like dark clouds, even obscuring the sky.
These mutated mosquitoes, the size of common cockroaches, could overwhelm and drown a normal adult in seconds.
After a short ten seconds, as the mutated mosquitoes flew away, only a desiccated corpse remained.
But it wasn't over yet. What followed was a large swarm of mutated flies and cockroaches quickly devouring the bodies on the ground.
Even Ye Feng felt uneasy watching this scene, and the comments below the video were already exploding.
"Watching this, I'm shaking with fear, just went to check my home's mosquito netting again."
"Upstairs, if mosquitoes keep mutating like this, mosquito netting won't be able to stop them, let alone the cockroaches, mice, and the like! I've decided, I'll join the city's pest control team as a volunteer tomorrow."
"Does no one notice the huge size of those mutated mice in the video? Not counting their tails, they're 30 centimeters long. Does this mean the mutated mice in our country will also be this big in the future? [Terrified]"
Watching the heated discussions online, Ye Feng grew solemn.
This incident could be seen as a signpost, Although mutated animals varied in the extent of their mutations across the world, it was only a matter of time.
The occurrences in Ah San Country were likely to happen in other countries, Hua Country included.
"I'm still not strong enough. I have to become so powerful that, when faced with a crisis, I can protect my family and even the entire region," Ye Feng thought to himself.
He glanced at the news again and noticed his phone's battery was down to 51%, so he immediately chose to turn it off.
Now this phone was his only means of getting information from the outside world, and he couldn't afford to waste even a bit of battery.
Next, Ye Feng returned to his harvesting work.
As insect activity increased in the morning, the speed of his Spiritual Energy earnings also picked up considerably.
The Mutated Mosquitoes in the sky also caught his attention, While they were not as terrifying as those in the video, they were still significantly large.
Each Mutated Mosquito was at least the size of a fingertip.
Given the current situation, evolving to the size of a normal cockroach probably wouldn't take more than a month.
So within his capabilities, he planned to conduct a sweep of these Mutated Mosquitoes.
But as he actually set to work, he found it was not so easy; the mosquitoes had become much quicker in both reflexes and flight speed after mutating.
Squashing them was harder than smashing a fly.
His roots weren't that nimble.
To hunt these Mutated Mosquitoes, he could only rely on his web of roots, but even so, he could catch at most two or three Mutated Mosquitoes at a time.
And they only provided 0.1 Spirit Points each.
It was time-consuming, strenuous, and the rewards were scant, Ye Feng chose to give it up.
For now, it was more important to capture other insects and enhance himself first.
After adjusting his strategy, it took only an hour and a half for his roots to reach a length of 100 meters.
At the same time, his Evolution Points accumulated to 10, allowing him another chance to evolve.
"The speed of these breakthroughs is getting faster and faster," Ye Feng couldn't help but remark.
"Ding! Please choose a direction to strengthen."
Facing the system prompt that popped up once again, Ye Feng frowned in deep thought.
This time, he chose to enhance the toughness of his roots.
When he was hunting the Mutated Bats, his roots couldn't withstand their sharp claws and teeth at all. It was only because he moved fast that they barely avoided being cut. If he had hesitated for a few more seconds, his roots might have been severed.
The toughness of the roots was equivalent to strengthening the defensive power, which was quite necessary.
Otherwise, hunting larger beasts in the future would be no fun if his roots snapped at the slightest tug.
After selecting the direction to strengthen, Ye Feng entered into the state of evolution. In just five minutes, he underwent another earth-shattering transformation.
Host: Ye Feng (World Tree)
Tree Body Height: 25 meters
Trunk Width: 1.25 meters
Root Length: 110 meters
Realm: First Order Peak
Evolution Points: 0/10 points
Special Ability: Devour
Spiritual Energy Value: 0/200 points
Bioenergy: 30/200 points
Looking at his system panel, Ye Feng was quite satisfied.
All aspects had seen a great improvement, especially the roots, which were enhanced in strength, flexibility, and toughness.
He felt like he could rightly claim to be unrivaled in this valley.
Of course, there were aspects he was not satisfied with, The 25-meter height of his Tree Body after another breakthrough made him quite conspicuous in this valley.
Now there were no more than 20 trees taller than him.
"I'm afraid after a few more evolutions, I'll stick out like a sore thumb," Ye Feng muttered to himself.
But the current him couldn't afford to stop; he could only hope to be discovered later rather than sooner.
As his roots grew longer and his territory further expanded, Ye Feng could now gather a formidable 35 Spirit Points per hour.
So, by the time noon arrived,
he was ready to evolve again.
And by now, he was at the First Order Peak.
Next up was the breakthrough of a Big Realm.