Chapter 505: Empty Star City
Inner Provinces, Empty Star Province
The Dao density had shot up again. Jack, Brock, and Starhair felt even more restricted, like swimming in a mire. The very air itself was made of Dao.
Lush greenery spread below them. Forests teeming with life, beautiful lakes, snow-capped mountains. Nature spread all around, vitalized by the extreme Dao energies in the atmosphere. Of course, not everything was pleasant. The beasts inhabiting this place were hellish, with horns and dark flames and all sorts of dark signs on their bodies. Jack had tried to feed a squirrel only for it to unhinge its jaw like a snake and try to eat his hand. Brock had befriended the critter anyway.
Besides hellish, everything here was strong as well—a direct product of the high Dao density. Even the snake-squirrel thing possessed power at the D-Grade, with the various wild animals reaching up to the B-Grade, if rarely. They killed each other at all times as well. The forest floor was strewn with low-level space monster cores, which one could gather if they only had the courage to wade into hellish beast territory. If left untouched for a bit, worm-like creatures emerged from the ground to consume these cores, using their power to transform into stronger monsters. Jack saw a worm absorb a D-Grade core, then grow into an early D-Grade, hippo-like creature.
His biologist sense was tingling. These things were not, of course, animals. The most plausible scenario was that space monsters were basically bundles of energy, with their bodies being only an instinctive coating of that energy. Kind of like clothes were to humans. As space monsters consumed the cores of others, their own power increased, and they chose more powerful bodies to reflect that. Even the trees were monsters.
It was a unique ecosystem. One that worked despite being in constant violence.
These were the inner provinces.
Jack took a deep breath, letting the ambient Dao purify his lungs. “I like this place,” he said.
“It gives me the creeps,” Starhair replied from the side. The two still wore their double devil disguises, which made Starhair’s response seem out-of-place.