Essence Devouring Art

The shanty town.

「Some time earlier.」

Under the black clouds, invisible shadowy figures swarmed like locusts. Drawn to the human-shaped furnaces, they plunged downward, burrowing into the bodies of the Mining Slaves one by one.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH—

A torrential downpour fell, the cold wind cutting like a knife.

A flash of lightning illuminated Wu Dao’s wild and towering, bear-like physique. He tilted his head to the sky, bathing in the deluge, his eyes narrowed as if searching for something.

After his Physique entered the Beast King Domain.

He now possessed senses as keen as an animal’s, his premonition of danger far surpassing that of an ordinary person. He could "see" things through changes in the environment that most people’s five senses couldn’t perceive.

The world was a cacophony in the torrential rain.

Amidst the din, Wu Dao’s keen senses detected something other than raindrops falling from the sky into the shanty town.

An eerie cold, whispers, chaos, madness...

Wraiths!

The familiar feeling reminded Wu Dao of his encounter in Mine No. 1.

More than one Wraith!

They swarmed and surged like maggots in a cesspool, eliciting an instinctual psychological and physiological revulsion!

CREAK!!

The sound of a heavy door shutting in the distance pulled Wu Dao back to his senses.

In a brief flash of lightning, his gaze spanned several hundred meters, and through a crack in a door, he saw Meng Qingshuang and the numerous shadowy figures behind her, poised for battle.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH—

Several gusts of eerie, cold wind howled past him.

Although Wu Dao couldn’t see them, he could "perceive" several "people" running by.

He was like a furnace in the cold night, causing these cold, shadowy figures to shy away from him in fear and choose other targets.

Wu Dao’s eyes narrowed.

He slowly turned his head.

In the darkness, several corpulent figures were no longer wandering aimlessly, wailing about their hunger.

The sleeping Mining Slaves shot upright, then shuddered violently. They lowered their heads, their bodies convulsing as if electrocuted.

A moment later, the convulsions stopped.

Amidst the incessant flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, they slowly raised their heads. Their faces were twisted into grotesque expressions, their eyes narrowed into crescents, and the corners of their mouths stretched nearly to their ears, revealing a set of black and yellow teeth.

They were smiling.

Smiling at each other, and smiling at Wu Dao.

And then, Wu Dao smiled, too.

The torrential rain poured down behind him with a ROAR as the fierce wind whipped through his thick black hair. He looked like a savanna lion before a hunt.

BANG BANG BANG!

The stout, grotesquely grinning figures charged out from the darkness, their hands forming grasping claws, their black teeth bared. They looked like life-reaping Evil Ghosts.

Five meters...

Four meters...

Three meters...

Closer and closer, the stench was unbearable!

The curve of Wu Dao’s lips widened, finally stretching to an exaggerated degree, revealing two rows of perfectly interlocking, triangular shark-like teeth.

WHOOSH~

A foul wind rushed at his face.

The grasping, filthy black claws were just centimeters from Wu Dao’s neck when they abruptly stopped.

In the flash of lightning, Wu Dao’s magnificent, towering physique blocked all light. His powerful right arm, muscles and veins bulging, shot out like a bolt of lightning, his palm, as large as a cattail fan, covering the attacker’s entire greasy face.

His five fingers were like a tiger’s claws. Three-to-four-centimeter-long, hooked nails, driven by immense power, pierced through skin and even bone as if crushing a tomato! 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

CRUNCH CRUNCH—

His middle, index, and ring fingers, clamped on the forehead, even punctured the skull and entered the brain, where he could feel something soft.

"""ROAR!"""

This move by Wu Dao was like the war drum in a gladiatorial arena, signaling the start of the duel.

Wraith-like roars shook the heavens in the shanty town, as if the gates of Purgatory had been thrown open.

After a brief moment of silence, the three hundred or so Mining Slaves erupted into a frenzied riot, their mouths agape as they ferociously attacked and tore at any living thing in sight.

The place where Wu Dao stood was no exception.

Aside from the stout Mining Slave he had restrained, the other dozen or so Mining Slaves in the room began a chaotic brawl.

Pouncing, tearing, roaring!

They began to slaughter each other in the most primitive way imaginable, using every part of their bodies.

The two mutated, towering Mining Slaves were the most ferocious of all. Like hawks swooping down on chicks, they killed several weaker Mining Slaves in moments. The stench of blood exploded into the air, thick and cloying.

At the doorway.

"Hhha... Hhha..."

Fierce gasps echoed.

Before the over-two-meter-tall Wu Dao, the stout, mutated Mining Slave seemed as small as a low water vat. Blood spurted from its face under his claws as it struggled and thrashed wildly.

Wu Dao remained unmoved, listening to the cacophonous symphony of Hell by his ear. The savage, beast-like smile remained on his face, his two rows of interlocking, saw-like fangs glinting coldly.

His five fingers tightened!

His right palm slowly closed!

CRUNCH CRUNCH—

The sounds of breaking bones and tearing muscles were incessant. Red and white matter spurted from his palm, and the stout Mining Slave’s struggles grew even more violent.

But no matter how it struggled, it was as helpless as a little white rabbit in an eagle’s talons.

GRUNT, GRUNT...

The sight of figures eating like wild boars caught Wu Dao’s attention.

In his peripheral vision, in just a few moments, only two mutated Mining Slaves were left in the shack. They were hunched over on the ground, revealing two hollow fangs like a viper’s steel nails. They aimed for the major arteries, gulping down mouthfuls.

As they fed, the Deceit Slaves on the ground shriveled up before his very eyes, becoming nothing but skin and bones in a matter of seconds.

Not only that, Wu Dao could also ’see’ blurry, pitch-black wraith-like shadows being sucked into the gaping maws of the two mutated Mining Slaves.

’Raising Gu?’

Seeing this scene, Wu Dao had a vague idea of what the Four Seas Gang was trying to do. He understood the process, but not the final outcome.

But it didn’t matter.

CRUNCH!

His right palm closed completely. The struggling stopped.

THUD!

The heavy sound of something hitting the ground echoed.

CRACKLE~

Illuminated by a flash of lightning, the stout Mining Slave on the ground now had its entire face caved in, completely gone. The five finger marks were clearly visible around the edges of the crater.

He kneaded the bits of flesh and bone in his palm for a moment.

Wu Dao casually tossed them aside, got his bearings, and prepared to leave from another direction.

From his earlier fleeting glance, he had seen that the members of the Four Seas Gang were all gathered outside the shanty town’s only main gate.

They must have assumed that all the Mining Slaves inside were in a crazed state, fighting and devouring each other like Gu worms, and that no one would be thinking of escape.

Not to mention, the seven-to-eight-meter-high vertical walls were impossible to climb.

But that didn’t apply to Wu Dao.

With his Physique in the Beast King Domain, he possessed the power of a tiger and bear, the speed of a leopard and antelope, and the agility of an ape and civet. His hands and feet were like hooked claws. Wielding this power with human intelligence was far more than a simple sum of its parts.

Never mind seven or eight meters; even ten meters was like walking on flat ground for him.

Hm?

However, just as Wu Dao was about to move, his attention was captured by a strange, dense, and fatally alluring aroma. He twitched his nose and quickly located its source.

He whipped his head around!

To his surprise, he found that the stout, mutated monster lying on the ground had shrunk several sizes, as if deflated. It was now just skin and bones, completely desiccated,

except for...

Wu Dao’s gaze shifted to its abdomen.

It was squirming and swelling, as if the body’s entire Essence, Qi, and Spirit had been concentrated there, nurturing something within.

The moment he saw this, all the questions in Wu Dao’s mind were answered.

Abnormalities!

Since he could feed on abnormalities to increase his Teleportation Points, it stood to reason that the Extraordinaries of this World also had ways of using them as a resource.

He hadn’t considered it before.

For one, his own knowledge of the Extraordinary was limited. For another, the Four Seas Gang’s methods were simply too outrageous.

Using living people to cultivate abnormalities!

He had originally thought the Four Seas Gang was forcibly enhancing the physiques of forty-nine Mining Slaves and implanting them with abnormalities to create a Demon Army for conquest.

After all, since his first day in this World, he had heard that the outside world of Dali was in turmoil, with various powers vying for supremacy.

He never expected, however, that the Four Seas Gang could be so ruthless.

All their scheming was actually just to ’raise pigs for slaughter!’

But, the one thing they didn’t count on was raising a true beast like Wu Dao!

’The "seeds" were worth 0.05 each. So after they mature...’

Wu Dao greedily inhaled the alluring aroma mixed with the earthy smell of rain-soaked soil. He thought about the Teleportation Points that had been added to his attribute panel after eating that bowl of meat ten days ago.

He weighed his options.

A few seconds later, he licked his wet lips and turned back into the dark room.

Compared to a pathetic, tail-between-his-legs escape, he much preferred to slaughter his way out openly. The foul resentment that had been festering in his chest for three months might soon be vented.

RUMBLE!

"ROAR! ROAR! ROAR!"

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. Roars echoed in the darkness, but a moment later, they fell silent amidst a series of teeth-grinding, bone-shattering cracks.

「Two minutes later.」

Wu Dao’s tall, blood-soaked figure reappeared in the rainy night. He flicked the bits of flesh from his nails, then opened his broad right palm.

In his palm lay a faint, cyan glow.

There were three translucent, cyan orbs of flesh. Two were dark and one was light, each about the size of a pigeon’s egg, but they generally resembled Snake Eggs.

This was because he could clearly see three snake-like embryos, each as thick as a chopstick and bearing a grotesque human face, gestating inside. They seemed to possess life, causing the three eggs to beat like hearts.

The two darker ones were the products of the Gu-like battle.

The smaller one came from the ’monster’ Wu Dao had just killed.

"Tsk, that smells incredible!"

Wu Dao casually rinsed the three "Snake Eggs" in the rain and impatiently tossed one into his mouth.

CRUNCH CRUNCH~

His serrated steel teeth bit through the Snake Egg, its juices splashing out. A chilling, sour cold made Wu Dao shiver; the familiar iciness reminded him of Mine No. 1.

The Wraith was devoured by the egg after its host died.

’Did two abnormalities combine?’

Wu Dao toyed with the two remaining Snake Eggs in his hand, looking at the ghoulish things with human faces and snake bodies inside. His mind raced, and he immediately guessed their origin.

He figured that to ensure the Wraiths from Mine No. 1 could accurately possess the Mining Slaves, the Four Seas Gang must have tampered with the food the three hundred slaves ate every day.

But it didn’t matter.

’In the end, I’m the one who benefits.’

Wu Dao’s two rows of shark teeth opened and closed, focusing on the food in his mouth.

The small, human-faced snake embryo gestating inside the egg had an incredibly resilient Life Force. It was tougher than jerky, thrashing about in Wu Dao’s mouth, trying to escape.

But it was useless.

CRUNCH!

With a flick of his tongue and a snap of his steel jaws, the small, jade-green snake was bitten in two. After some more chewing, it was reduced to minced meat and swallowed in one gulp.

"Crunchy, and tastes like chicken~"

Wu Dao savored the aftertaste, giving his fair assessment with a look that said he wanted more.