I am the Clone of a Death Row Inmate

Chapter 128: Chapter 126: A Dung Eater

The process of absorbing the Gravity Demon Extract went smoothly, without any hitches.

Su Ze used his skill-selection ability again and, as expected, obtained the ”Gravity Dust Sand” skill.

Gravity Dust Sand: Transform evolutionary power into ”Gravity Dust Sand” and scatter it around you. You can control the gravity within the area covered by the sand. You can also condense all the Gravity Dust Sand into a Gravity Chain to pull distant targets toward you.

The Gravity Dust Sand skill essentially had two effects: one was to control gravity in a small area around him, and the other was to pull distant targets to him.

This pulling ability was a bit like the Q skill of a certain robot champion from a game Su Ze played in his past life, League of Legends. The only difference was that it dealt no damage, but it also required no prediction—it could be aimed directly at the target.

To dodge this skill, one would have to escape with a skill like Mr. Ya’s Earth Escape, or use something else to block the pull.

All in all, it was a very powerful skill, a hard counter to long-range opponents.

After absorbing the extract, Su Ze immediately felt a significant improvement in his physical constitution. All his attributes, including his Spiritual Power, were clearly enhanced.

But that wasn’t all. Because he had acquired a new skill, he once again triggered the strengthening effect of his ”Knowledge is Power” skill, reinforcing his body yet again.

Mr. Ya watched from the side, completely bewildered. ’Is this what a genius is like?’ he thought. ’Even absorbing an extract is different from everyone else.’

To him, the first part of Su Ze’s absorption process seemed far too easy. It was no exaggeration to say that an ordinary person absorbing an S-rank extract was taking a trip through the gates of hell. They could explode at any moment. Even a genius would have to struggle painfully.

But Su Ze? He succeeded with ease. The most difficult moment of the entire process was probably when the extract entered his mouth. It was as if he were drinking lemon juice, not an extract.

But in the second half, Su Ze was just too slow.

When others successfully absorbed an extract and randomly got a skill, the process was over. But after Su Ze finished, he sat with his eyes closed for a long time, then stood motionless for another long stretch, leaving Mr. Ya completely confused.

”How did it go? Did you get the Gravity Dust Sand skill?” Mr. Ya asked hurriedly as Su Ze opened his eyes.

Su Ze had to feign a look of pleasant surprise, nodding repeatedly. ”My luck was pretty good!”

”That’s great.” Mr. Ya smiled as well, getting up to collect the valuable materials from the Gravity Demon’s corpse.

After they finished, the two rested for a bit, planning to explore the Thousand Heroes Tomb on their way back to the surface.

In any case, they had obtained and absorbed the Gravity Demon Extract, completing their mission. Su Ze and Mr. Ya had nothing else to do, so they decided to just kill some time.

They also planned to hunt a couple of Tier 2 beasts along the way to complete their military training assignment.

Once they were rested, the two used their escape arts to travel up toward the Thousand Heroes Tomb. They ascended gradually from over three thousand meters underground, moving slowly this time and often stopping to see if they could find anything rare.

When they reached a depth of about one thousand meters, they encountered a Tier 3 beast.

A maggot... No, a Dung Eater!

Su Ze had never been interested in this thing. He was afraid of getting his hands dirty hunting it, and more importantly, it wasn’t worth much.

Dung Eaters were a very strange type of beast. From Tier 1 to Tier 3, they were all called Dung Eaters, and there wasn’t much difference in their appearance.

They fed on the feces of other beasts and had a chance of copying genetic fragments from the dung’s owner. These genetic fragments often represented a certain skill.

The Dung Eaters couldn’t use these skills; they merely stored them as reference points for their own evolution.

However, when human evolvers absorbed a Dung Eater extract, they had a chance to acquire these skills. But with dozens or even hundreds of skills to choose from, finding one that suited you really came down to a test of character—or pure luck.

That’s why Dung Eater extracts were often jokingly called the ”blind boxes” of the extract world.

A Dung Eater would only undergo a metamorphosis during its fourth evolution—when it became a Saint-rank lifeform. It would shed its maggot form and evolve into... a fly!

As for what kind of fly-beast it would become, what skills it would possess, and how strong it would be, that all depended on the foundation it had built up in its maggot form.

In short, the more varied, the better, and the more it ate, the stronger the resulting fly-beast would be.

Thus, the evolutionary paths for Dung Eaters were incredibly diverse, too numerous to count. It was possible that every single Dung Eater was a unique individual with a distinct diet.

As the blind boxes of extracts, the price of a Dung Eater extract, whether Tier 1 or Tier 3, was only equivalent to a C-rank extract of the same tier, sometimes even slightly lower. And their sales weren’t great.

This was because the people who bought them were all gambling. If someone was willing to settle for absorbing a low-quality extract, the money for a Dung Eater extract was almost enough to buy a C-rank one, which was a much safer bet.

Since they were willing to pay the price of a C-rank extract for a Dung Eater one, it meant they were trying to turn a small investment into a huge profit, aiming for the A-rank or even S-rank skills hidden within.

Actually, since Su Ze could freely choose his skills, Dung Eater extracts were very cost-effective for him. But he felt it was unnecessary.

’What if none of the skills in a Dung Eater extract are ones I want?’

’I have the means to buy an S-rank extract directly, so why would I gamble on a blind box?’

Most importantly, just the thought of it being an extract from a maggot made Su Ze’s stomach turn. Besides, people who had absorbed it said the taste of a Dung Eater extract would give you nightmares.

——Apparently, it tastes like crap!

”Let’s go,” Su Ze said, urging Mr. Ya to continue upward, only to find Mr. Ya’s eyes shining as he stared unblinkingly at the Dung Eater.

’What’s wrong with him?’

’Has the Luofan Racial Talent been awakened?’

Su Ze waved a hand in front of Mr. Ya’s face, snapping him back to his senses.

As if waking from a dream, Mr. Ya said in a slight panic, ”Right, let’s go up.”

The two continued their ascent, and it wasn’t long before they saw the black soil of the Thousand Heroes Tomb. This was the very bottom of the tomb, located about eight hundred meters underground.

”Quite a few people have been here before.”

Su Ze observed his surroundings and commented.

There were tunnels dug into the surrounding area, clearly the work of someone skilled in Earth Escape who had burrowed their way here.

However, the black soil directly in front of them didn’t show many signs of excavation... because the soil at the very bottom was too hard for an ordinary person to dig through.

Su Ze knocked on the black soil before him, then punched it forcefully. It didn’t budge an inch.

The hardness of this bottom-most black soil was beyond imagination.

Su Ze tried using his ”Ant Power” + ”Needle Strike” combo, but he could only chip out a hole the size of a finger. If he tried to dig for treasure like this, he’d work himself to death.

No wonder there were so few signs of digging in this black soil. Su Ze’s Needle Strike skill was enhanced by multiple boosts like ”Ant Power” and ”Knowledge is Power.” Its explosive force was definitely considered strong among those in the Cocoon Stage, and it also had a piercing characteristic, making it well-suited for puncturing hard objects.

Even he struggled this much to dig; an ordinary Butterfly Stage evolver would likely find it difficult to move this bottom-layer soil.

”Forget it, let’s just go up.” Su Ze gave up on the idea of treasure hunting at the bottom of the Thousand Heroes Tomb. It was too much effort.

Although the bottom layer wasn’t huge, relying on his ”one-finger technique” to mindlessly search for treasure was just not feasible.

Mr. Ya thought for a moment and said, ”Let me go in and see if there’s any treasure.”

”But you can’t phase through...” Su Ze paused. ”Are you planning to use *that* skill?”

He suddenly remembered how Mr. Ya had used a mysterious skill to escape from the stomach of the Mutated Giant Crocodile. To this day, he still hadn’t figured out what that skill was.

But he knew it was Mr. Ya’s greatest life-saving trump card.

Mr. Ya nodded. ”I’m at the Butterfly Stage now, so using that skill isn’t so taxing anymore.”

”Are you sure?”

Su Ze knew that the skill had an enormous cost and perhaps a long cooldown time.

Mr. Ya chuckled. ”Well, the Gravity Demon is dealt with, so I won’t need this skill anytime soon. Might as well go hunt for some treasure.”

Seeing Mr. Ya’s insistence, Su Ze didn’t say anything more.

This time, he witnessed Mr. Ya use that mysterious skill with his own eyes, but he still couldn’t quite understand it.

He saw Mr. Ya’s body instantly ”pixelate,” dissolving into countless tiny cubes before vanishing completely.

’Invisibility?’

’Phasing through walls?’

’Or something else entirely?’ Su Ze wasn’t sure.

But he knew that Mr. Ya must have entered the black soil at the bottom of the Thousand Heroes Tomb.

A moment later, countless particles reassembled into Mr. Ya’s body on the other side of the black soil.

Mr. Ya rushed over, waving frantically at Su Ze. His face was filled with uncontrollable joy as he whispered, ”Boss, come quick! I found a treasure!”

”What kind of treasure?”

”A wooden earring! It’s radiating high-level evolutionary power, but this black soil was blocking it. I only sensed it when I got close!”

”A wooden earring?”

Su Ze thought for a moment and guessed it might be a magical item derived from a Spiritual Plant.

Magical items were generally formed after an evolved lifeform died and its Evolutionary Material was not extracted. Over time, the remaining Evolutionary Material and evolutionary power would be absorbed by a specific part of the body, turning it into an item with special abilities.

This process took a very long time and had an extremely low probability, which was what made magical items so precious.

The special ability of a magical item was often one of the lifeform’s skills from when it was alive, or a combination of several skills.

Magical items produced from the remains of humans and beasts were almost always a piece of bone or an organ.

For example, of the two magical items Su Ze possessed, the Head of the Wailer was a skull, and the Traceless Walker was a phalanx bone. Both were magical items from beasts.

And the Tier 5 magical item Mrs. Yun had once used, the Eye of Dream Weaving, was said to have come from a human evolver—it was the eyeball of a Saint-rank supreme being!

A wooden magical item, on the other hand, could only come from a Spiritual Plant.

When a Spiritual Plant died, it was also possible for it to produce a magical item, which could be a branch, a leaf, a piece of rotten wood, a strip of bark, and so on.

Su Ze also thought of another possibility... he remembered that the Storage Ring Feng Bqing wore on his hand was also made of wood!