Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
An enormous mushroom cloud rose on the horizon before Gao Peng.
His heart was now pounding hard against his chest. He couldn’t believe that he had just witnessed a nuclear bomb detonate with his own eyes.
Before the Cataclysm, the nuclear bomb had been mankind’s deadliest weapon.
This knowledge had been deeply ingrained inside humanity’s subconscious since the weapon’s conception. Nothing could compare to the sheer horror of one watching a nuclear bomb blowing up in front of him or her.
A white pillar of light pierced through the sky as a monstrous mushroom cloud slowly rose into the air.
The white light then gradually subsided, giving way to a murky shade of red, which made Gao Peng think of boiling lava.
White-gold rings of light spread out in the air from the center of the explosion.
The murky shade of red gradually dissolved inside the gray cloud.
Countless sand particles were swept up into the air, making the mushroom cloud in the air seem even thicker and heavier than before.
A few hundred miles away, in the Dark Ember Forest, a gorilla woke up with a start from its sleep on a tree branch and looked towards the Dali Desert, panicked.
Its jaw fell at the sight of the mushroom cloud in the distance.
“Ook, ook.” It thumped its chest with its fists and dropped from the tree branch to the ground. After grabbing a bamboo shoot from the ground and stuffing it inside its mouth, the gorilla quickly left the place.
Three minutes earlier, the Desert Ruler had seen a mysterious object falling from the sky. Instinctively, it waved a hand at it and sent a jet of sand hurtling towards the object.
In the next instant, an incredible explosion of heat and energy engulfed the Desert Ruler completely. The explosion lasted for a full minute.
When it finally subsided, a huge crater could be seen in the middle of the desert through the swirl of sand in the air.
All that was left of the Desert Ruler were strange crystalline fragments that were a result of subjecting the sand to extreme heat.
A deathly silence had fallen over the area. There was no sign of life for miles. The explosion had turned the area into a literal dead zone.
A breeze blew past the explosion site, sweeping the glittering crystalline fragments up into the air.
Suddenly, the sand in the crater stirred. A mysterious glow could be seen emanating from it…
Like they always say, if you haven’t been through hell, you get nothing, thought Gao Peng.
As the nuclear bomb had detonated far away from him, there had been no risk of him being exposed to the blast wave of the explosion or any lingering radiation in the area.
A nuclear bomb might have been able to seriously injure a Lord-tier monster, but that didn’t mean that it would be able to kill it.
While a Lord-tier monster would instantly evaporate at the center of a nuclear explosion, it would still be sturdy enough to survive the blast at its periphery.
There were, in fact, people who had considered the possibility of mutating their familiars via nuclear radiation.
However, after much experimentation, it had been found out that such a process was extremely difficult. As it turned out, the higher a familiar’s level was, the more resistant its cells would be to radiation.
On the other hand, while one might be able to mutate low-level monsters via radiation, their potential for further growth would be severely affected as a result.
Consequently, radiation was no longer considered a viable agent to mutate one’s familiars.
“Not only is the Desert Ruler a Lord-tier monster, it’s also an extremely hardy creature. There’s just no way it would be killed so easily in its own domain,” Gao Peng explained to Dumby as they headed towards the explosion site.
Da Zi simply said, “That mushroom doesn’t look edible.”
A huge empty crater slowly came into view before them. As Gao Peng approached it, all the damage he could have received from the radiation in the air was absorbed by Dumby, who didn’t seem to mind this at all.
Squinting at the crater, Gao Peng saw a set of footprints walking away from the crater’s edge and towards a sand dune in the distance.
At the base of the sand dune was a gaping hole.
Gao Peng ran his hand across the sand around the hole. It was still a bit warm. It was like touching a smooth glass surface.
“Chirp!” squeaked the Treasure Sniffing Rodent inside Dumby’s skeleton. “Treasure!!” It poked its strangely misshapen head out of Dumby’s bones, its eyes almost popping out of its sockets. Its claws thrashed about madly in the air.
“Oh, everything is treasure to you,” said Gao Peng, rolling his eyes.
Even though he didn’t believe that the Treasure Sniffing Rodent had detected any real treasure in the area, since they had already come this far, he decided to indulge the rodent for a few minutes.
An hour passed.
“Are you sure there’s anything beneath the sand?” asked Gao Peng, wiping sweat off his forehead.
They had been shoveling sand out of the hole for a full hour. So far, they had found nothing more than sand in it.
The Treasure Sniffing Rodent’s eyes were still fixed on the hole, its tail wagging excitedly behind it.
“Almost there, almost there,” it squeaked.
“Dumby, let’s keep digging,” said Gao Peng, who was now endowed with a portion of Stripey’s power, making him even stronger than Dumby.
The hole in the ground grew wider and deeper as the two continued digging it.
Suddenly, there was a dull thud in the air. Gao Peng had struck something hard in the sand.
He quickly swept away a layer of loose sand to reveal what appeared to be a block of white jade embedded in the ground. Gao Peng quickly cleared away the sand around it.
Finally, the block of white jade was dug out of the sand. It was approximately 10 feet long and somewhat jagged around its edges. Intricate markings covered its surface.
While it was mostly white, there were strange red spots scattered at its cross sections.
As Gao Peng touched the red spots, a sharp pang of pain pricked his fingers. Ever since mastering the Shifting Constellations technique, he had almost forgotten what it was like to feel pain.
Beside him, Dumby’s bone fingers suddenly turned crimson and began issuing a greenish smoke.
Gao Peng hurriedly pulled his hand away from the white jade and looked at it strangely.
For some reason, he thought that the object resembled a huge piece of bone.
“Chirp!” The Treasure Sniffing Rodent leapt towards the piece of white jade as soon as it was unearthed from the sand.
Gao Peng immediately grabbed it by the tail and pulled it away before it could reach its prize. It seemed that the white jade was what the rodent had detected.
Gao Peng took Silly off of his head and gave it the white jade.
Silly easily slid the piece of white jade into its portable space, which had grown as big as a small room.
“Let’s go home,” said Gao Peng.
The Treasure Sniffing Rodent had certainly served him well this time.
