Within an hour after the king cobra broke through, sparrows, bats, and black crows also broke through one after another.
They had reached the Late Stage First Order, their sizes had increased by a circle, and their strength had seen a significant growth.
However, the mouse with the highest realm did not break through to the Second Stage as Ye Feng had hoped.
It seemed to have reached a critical point, getting stuck there, and even the spiritual energy it absorbed per hour had reduced from 3 points to only 0.3 points per hour.
Such a low rate of spiritual energy absorption was simply not enough to help the other party continue to enhance their strength.
"Could this be the legendary bottleneck?" Ye Feng felt somewhat troubled.
He had never experienced this himself because as long as he had Evolution Points, he could break through.
"It should break through sooner or later, it's just unclear how much time it will need," Ye Feng recalled the mice from Ah San Country, clearly, this was not the limit of the mutated mice.
"But fortunately, it's only the Big Realm's bottleneck that's stuck, the Minor Boundary can still be broken through," Ye Feng muttered to himself again.
If these mutated beings couldn't quickly break through even the Minor Boundary, then he would truly have a headache.
After that, Ye Feng stopped worrying about these mutated beings and began to immerse himself in adding points.
When the time reached the wee hours of the morning, he had accumulated 40 Evolution Points again and was able to break through.
"Ding! Please choose a direction to strengthen."
Looking at the system panel, Ye Feng didn't hesitate and chose flexibility.
10 minutes later, the breakthrough was successfully completed.
Host: Ye Feng (World Tree)
Tree Body Height: 55 meters
Tree Trunk Width: 2.75 meters
Tree Root Length: 270 meters
Realm: Late-stage Second Order
Evolution Points: 0/40 points
Special Ability: Devour, Capture
Spirit Point: 0/550 points
Bioenergy: 200/550 points
"It's been less than two days, and I didn't expect that I would become the tallest tree in this valley," Ye Feng felt somewhat emotional, but was more concerned.
Because now, he had become the most conspicuous existence in this valley.
And one could imagine, as his strength increased, he would become even more conspicuous.
"Forget it, let's not think too much about that for now. I should focus more on those things that are worth being happy about."
Ye Feng soon shifted his focus to the tree roots.
With another enhancement in flexibility, Ye Feng found that the agility of his tree roots had once again significantly improved, now on par with human fingers.
He could now manipulate the tree roots to perform various actions exactly as he wished, and could even skillfully use all sorts of tools and weapons.
Of course, aside from these, another more direct improvement was that the tree roots moved and attacked even faster.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
In response to Ye Feng's thought, hundreds of tree roots burst forth from the ground, attacking the mosquitoes flying in the air.
It wasn't so easy to strike these mosquitoes before.
A single tree root would definitely be avoided, they could only use the tree net, but that was too inefficient.
But now, as tree roots lashed out, 90% of the mosquitoes had no time to react and were struck dead instantly.
Even if they could react, dodging the first tree root's strike, there would immediately be a second and a third tree root lashing out.
In this moment, within a range of 270 meters around Ye Feng, mutated mosquitoes fell like rain.
From now on, the territory of Ye Feng would become a forbidden zone for these mutated mosquitoes.
In the process, Ye Feng had originally wanted to deal with those mutated flies as well.
Unfortunately, flies were already agile before mutation, and after mutating, they became even more terrifyingly nimble. Ye Feng's roots couldn't whip fast enough to keep up, and after trying twice, he gave up.
He wasn't in a hurry about this, for with his current speed of evolution, he estimated it would take less than two days to deal with them.
At the same time, as his roots grew longer, the territory under his control expanded further.
Ye Feng roughly estimated that he could harvest about 100 Spirit Points per hour with the spiritual energy he was reaping now.
"At this rate, wouldn't I be able to break through again in another 4 hours?" Ye Feng felt somewhat excited.
This gave him the illusion that the stronger he became, the faster he would break through.
But soon, he discovered that things were not as he thought.
It wasn't that there was a problem.
Rather, he had forgotten to factor in the consumption of nurturing his Mutated Animals.
During the day, they could hunt on their own, not only "feeding" themselves but also producing excess spiritual energy.
But at night, with fewer prey and increased difficulty in hunting, plus the need for the Mutated Beings to rest, they were essentially being sustained by Ye Feng.
Now, the seven Mutated Animals under him together consumed a full 40 Spirit Points per hour.
Even without the Mutated Mouse that was at a bottleneck, he needed to provide at least 37 Spirit Points per hour.
Thus, the spiritual energy left for Ye Feng was only about 63 points.
Of course, this was still a lot, but it just wasn't enough for him to achieve a breakthrough in 4 hours.
...
At 6 am, as the sun rose, Ye Feng woke up from his brief slumber.
He looked at the Mutated Animals below the tree, waking up one by one, all bright and spirited, and his lips curved into a smile.
Although he hadn't broken through in the latter half of the night, these Mutated Beings had successively made their breakthroughs with his continual feeding of spiritual energy.
The sparrow, the black crow, and the bat had once again made breakthroughs.
They had all reached the First Order Peak.
It could be said that now, apart from the Mutated Buffalo that he had captured last night, all the other creatures had reached the First Order Peak.
Even the Mutated Buffalo, which had been at Early Stage First Order, had now broken through to Mid Stage First Order and was not far from Late Stage First Order.
The rapid breakthroughs of these Mutated Animals made Ye Feng realize that with enough spiritual energy, these animals could mutate much faster than humans could imagine.
Luckily, the rest of the Mutated Animals did not possess his abnormal Devouring Ability.
They could only rely on breathing to absorb the spiritual energy from Heaven and Earth, so the speed at which they accumulated spiritual energy was very slow.
As for why some Mutated Beings evolved especially fast, he could only attribute it to biological variance.
Meanwhile, with his observations and record-keeping, he discovered another thing.
Just like him, all the other Mutated Animals had a maximum limit of spiritual energy they could absorb for each Realm, and once it was reached, they could break through.
For instance, the sparrow needed to absorb 10 Spirit Points to break through a Minor Boundary.
The mouse needed 15 Spirit Points to break through.
The black crow and the bat needed to absorb 20 Spirit Points to break through.
And the King Cobra required 50 Spirit Points for a breakthrough.
As for the largest, the Mutated Buffalo, it needed as much as 60 Spirit Points.
From the current situation, the larger the creature, the more spiritual energy it needed to absorb to break through.
Of course, the amount of spiritual energy absorbed is not judged solely by size.
After all, the Mutated Sparrow requires only 10 Spirit Points to break through, while the Mutated Buffalo needs 60 points.
But the difference in their size is not a factor of six—the Mutated Sparrow is hundreds of times smaller.
So Ye Feng concluded that the amount of spiritual energy absorbed, apart from their size, must also be related to their Realm.
But undeniably, within the same Realm, those that absorbed more spiritual energy appeared to be stronger in combat.
"If I go by this, needing to absorb 100 Spirit Points to break through at First Order, I should be among the strongest tier," Ye Feng surmised.