Evolution Begins with Elemental Domination

"I’m going ahead." Su Chen paid no mind to the others’ timid hesitation, only leaving them with the sight of his back.

The next second.

The stern figure in the gray windbreaker leaped from the cliff’s edge. With a faint rustle of fabric, he landed on the platform below.

Yan Ruoruo followed right after. Wreathed in a wisp of Wind Fluff, she landed weightlessly beside him.

Yan Ziqian, Pang Peng, and Cao Yutang moved out as well.

This string of decisive actions struck them like a boulder, crushing the wavering thoughts of retreat in the hearts of those who remained.

"We’re here, after all. We can’t just leave without seeing anything."

The band leader from the polytechnic university remarked casually, and his words resonated with his teammates.

Indeed.

’We’re already here.’

Immediately, they too fell into step.

Below the cliff, the deep cave entrance gaped like the maw of a giant beast. A cold, musty odor wafted out on the damp air.

The mouth of the cave was indeed massive.

Aside from them, another small team was checking their equipment on a pile of jagged rocks. Their eyes met, but they only exchanged nods, no words. The wariness between them was palpable.

Su Chen’s expression remained unchanged. Without breaking stride, he summoned Xiaoye and led his team straight ahead.

They descended into the cave along a straight, natural ramp.

The daylight from above faded quickly. After a little over thirty meters, they were almost completely swallowed by darkness, with only their flashlight beams piercing through the gloom.

Not long after.

The rocky passage ahead suddenly split three ways. Faint voices drifted from the right fork. The central path was a nearly vertical drop. The leftmost opening, however, was low and narrow, but the path inside was level—the very one Yan Ziqian’s party had explored the day before.

The moment he stepped through, Su Chen felt as if he had crossed some invisible threshold.

It was as though an invisible membrane hung in the air. The atmosphere suddenly felt heavier, and an indescribable, sinister chill crept up their spines.

For some unknown reason, the surrounding elemental fluctuations seemed to diminish.

Xiaoye bared its fangs, its dark, slitted pupils scanning the area. In this stuffy, enclosed space, even its advanced sense of smell was somewhat compromised.

"The battle site from yesterday is just ahead," Yan Ziqian reminded them.

In other words, his group had run into a fight not long after entering.

As their flashlights swept across the ground ahead, they revealed scattered fragments of broken weapons, several stains of long-dried black blood, and an assortment of ghastly white animal bones.

"Fuck, there’s a dead bear."

When the band leader from the polytechnic university shone his flashlight on a small mound in the darkness to their left, he was shocked to find it was the carcass of a giant bear.

Its chest cavity was ripped open, its organs and flesh completely scooped out. Only its hide and some blood-soaked fascia barely held the skeleton together. Nearby, two Forest Wolves lay in a grisly state, most of their fur dissolved by some sort of corrosive slime.

Their ribs were splayed open, the flesh and organs within also gone without a trace.

"Judging by the degree of rigor mortis, they’ve been dead for seven hours at most."

Yan Ruoruo stepped forward without the slightest hesitation, her gloved right hand reaching out to touch the corpse.

"Looks like some monsters wandered into the cave during yesterday’s beast tide," Pang Peng said, his voice low.

Judging by the piles of bones scattered throughout the cave, it wasn’t uncommon for monsters to wander in.

’Shit...’

The polytechnic team’s band leader was once again having second thoughts. ’A giant bear, something we’d struggle to defeat even if we gave it our all, is lying dead right in front of us. Doesn’t this just prove that these cave dwellers are far more powerful than we imagined?’

"That corpse is in the pit up ahead!" Cao Yutang couldn’t hide his excitement. In the beam of his modified headlamp, a humanoid corpse was clearly visible in a distant pit.

It was the prize they hadn’t been able to retrieve yesterday.

"Be careful," Yan Ziqian said, reining in the other’s excitement.

They had already entered the cave dwellers’ territory. They couldn’t afford a single mistake.

Su Chen remained at the front, advancing steadily. The path continued its gentle descent, and the cave ceiling grew progressively lower.

In addition to his flashlight, he silently extended his Telekinesis, mapping out every movement within a fifteen-meter radius in his mind.

Soon, as a flashlight beam swept past a distant stalactite, a black shadow flitted out of sight.

’It’s still here, as I thought...’

The thought had barely formed when the cave creature peeked its head out from a different crevice, just like a gecko. Its lower jaw split open to reveal a circular orifice, a living nozzle that immediately spat a stream of corrosive slime from an incredible distance.

It shot out with the speed and force of a high-pressure water jet.

Su Chen didn’t even try to block it. Forewarned by his Perception, his figure vanished without a sound.

HISS!!

The slime passed through his afterimage and splattered against the rock, releasing a thick plume of smoke. It was so corrosive that it ate through the stone in seconds, creating several basin-sized pits.

The cave dweller’s eye sockets were covered by nothing more than a thin, grayish-white membrane. Their vision had severely degenerated, leaving them completely blind, but in its place, they had developed an incredibly sensitive auditory system.

It could easily detect the faintest disturbance in the air, even the thrum of a heartbeat within a ten-meter radius.

That last attack hadn’t produced the sound it expected—the sound of dissolving flesh.

Its left eardrum twitched. Seven meters away, a piece of gravel shifted slightly. Something had stepped on it.

The next instant.

An ear-splitting sonic boom of air pressure overwhelmed its hearing, turning everything to white noise. An immense force, like an oncoming cannonball, slammed into it. The power of a Strong Thought Burst had detonated right beside its head.

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