Free Web NovelChapter 231: Chapter 231: Starry Sky Academy, Guo Jia
Although Lan Xin’s Spiritual Power Level had increased, his Bloodline Energy and physical constitution hadn’t caught up yet. After holding out for over ten minutes, the water screen began to waver.
The Red Fruit Ning Xuan had thrown into the crowd was kicked back, ricocheting off the water screen. It bounced back again and splattered right onto one of the men’s faces.
After bouncing back and forth, the bright red fruit split in two.
The man who was hit had his face covering knocked off, revealing a somewhat dazed expression. It seemed some of the sweet juice had splashed into his mouth.
Then, he let out a sudden roar. Thick fur sprouted from his square face, his eyes turned bloodshot, and his limbs abruptly swelled to several times their normal size. In the blink of an eye, the man had transformed into a three-meter-tall, long-haired giant ape.
"Quick, kill him!" the young man from the opposing side shouted in panic, pointing at his suddenly mutated subordinate. At the same time, he unleashed a bolt of lightning at the long-haired giant ape.
But it was too late. The fruit had already been trampled into a pulp on the ground. Lured by the scent, the people nearby scrambled to grab the filthy mash and stuff it into their mouths.
The lightning bolt struck the giant ape, making it howl at the sky. It stomped a foot forward and lunged toward the young man, forcing him to abandon the chaotic scene and face the attack head-on. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
Just a moment later, a cacophony of cracking bones erupted from the crowd. The people who had just been fighting over the Red Fruit were all beginning to transform.
The first to mutate was a warrior standing next to the giant ape. After swallowing the flesh of the Red Fruit, he had a moment of clarity and realized what was happening. He clawed at his throat, trying to vomit up the fruit, but his fingernails suddenly shot out, becoming long, sharp talons that carved bloody, bone-deep gashes into his neck.
"Agh, my eyes... They’re burning!" someone shrieked, but the end of their cry twisted into a wolf’s howl as their irises began to glow with a faint green light.
His combat uniform tore apart inch by inch as grayish-brown wolf fur, matted with beads of blood, bristled outward. With fangs and sharp claws, the man had completely transformed into a two-meter-long gray wolf.
Near the outer edge of the group, a man with a thick beard suddenly collapsed, curling into a ball. The moment his combat uniform was stretched to its breaking point, dark golden scales erupted madly from beneath his skin.
His spine elongated segment by segment, and his tailbone pierced through his flesh to form a scorpion’s tail. The venomous stinger at its tip dripped a viscous fluid that corroded the rock below, releasing puffs of acrid smoke. When a slit opened on his scale-covered face, the half-man, half-scorpion monster—still possessing a human visage—pounced on the nearest companion.
"Help me... GURGLE..." The companion, caught by surprise, had his cry for help cut short as the monster bit through his neck. His last moments were spent staring in horror at his unrecognizable comrade, his eyes wide in death.
Lan Xin had already lowered the water screen. He watched the transformations of the men who had eaten the Red Fruit, his face a mask of shock and lingering fear. ’My thought to bite it and test for poison probably wasn’t out of carelessness,’ he realized. ’It must have been because I smelled the juice and was bewitched by it. That’s why I couldn’t resist taking a bite.’
’Thank goodness the Master was right here, and that the Master’s talent is so great. Otherwise, I would have already lost my mind and turned into a beast.’
The first to mutate, the long-haired giant ape, had already begun indiscriminately attacking its own companions. In an instant, the once-orderly team was thrown into disarray.
The ones at the front had been the strongest fighters in the group. Their sudden mutation and attack on their own side inflicted heavy losses on their unprepared comrades.
However, the young leader reacted quickly, ordering the others to work together and exterminate the dozen or so companions who had mutated and lost their minds.
Since only a minority had suddenly mutated, the young man quickly eliminated the Mutants and brought the situation under control.
But how could Ning Xuan just stand by and watch them get free? She immediately threw two more Red Fruits into their ranks, not only splitting them open but also giving them a hard squeeze first.
She had figured it out. Though the enemy was numerous, their Spiritual Power Levels were generally low. Their Mutated Values, on the other hand, were quite high, making them highly susceptible to the effects of the Red Fruit.
Di Youlin and Lin Mo flanked Ning Xuan, protecting her from the left and right. Lan Xin and Qinghe stood to one side in front of her, blocking all incoming attacks from the enemy.
The leading young man’s eyes were red with fury at Ning Xuan’s actions. In the blink of an eye, he had lost dozens of men, all of them killed by their own comrades.
The team’s morale had taken a massive blow.
"Stop! Please, miss! How can you waste such treasures as Prajna Fruits like this?" the young man shouted. "We’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding. Why don’t we stop and talk?" Under the pressure of Ning Xuan’s attacks, he had led his team in a continuous retreat until they were a good forty or fifty meters away before finally stopping.
From this position, even if Ning Xuan threw a Red Fruit, he was confident he could knock it aside.
"Misunderstanding? You ambushed us, then tried to use your numbers to force us to surrender. Hmph. Now that you realize you can’t win, you call it a misunderstanding," Lin Mo said coldly.
"I was just testing your strength. Who knew you’d have such a strong reaction?" the young man said in a sincere tone. "Look, we have no prior history, no grudges between us. There’s no need for this to be a life-or-death struggle, is there?"
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Guo Jia, from the Starry Sky Academy," the man, now identifying himself as Guo Jia, said with a grin. "And, uh, as the saying goes, ’adversaries can become allies.’ How about we become friends?"
Hearing Guo Jia’s introduction, both Di Youlin and Lin Mo frowned.
"You just lost that many men, which should make us mortal enemies, yet you’re talking about making friends?" Lin Mo stared at him with a strange look.
"How does that make us enemies? After all, I was the one who ambushed you first. I can’t blame you for the losses I suffered. So, let’s just call it even," Guo Jia said with surprising frankness.
"Is that how it works?" Chen Nan turned to look at Ning Xuan, somewhat baffled by the other man’s logic.
"If you say we’re even, then we’re even. But let’s forget about being friends. Mr. Guo, if you have no further business with us, perhaps we should part ways here," Ning Xuan said. She remembered Ying Yaoshi mentioning the Starry Sky Academy before; it was apparently one of the five great Extraordinary Influences.
"No, wait! I do have business, I do!" Guo Jia insisted. "Miss, I saw how you were willing to use those Prajna Fruits as weapons, so the tree behind you must have borne quite a lot of fruit, right? That kind of fruit is of great use to my Starry Sky Academy. I was wondering if you might be willing to sell some to me?" Guo Jia looked at the bare fruit tree behind Ning Xuan, realizing they had already picked it clean.
Guo Jia was fuming internally.
’Judging by the size and lushness of this tree, it must have produced a huge number of fruits,’ he thought. ’What a shame. I was just a moment too late, and this young lady beat me to the punch.’
