Chapter 88: The Choice of the Gene Seed

It had been two days since he returned to Battlefield City.

Fang Mu changed back into camouflage attire. The black outfit was only for times when he needed to conceal his identity; ordinarily, there was no need to wear it.

And one thing was worth mentioning: the hair and eyebrows that had once been burned away by the flames had now grown back. His hair was still short, but his brows had already returned to the state they had been in before the fire. Fang Mu lifted a small mirror to inspect himself, and yes, he had at last regained that handsome, sharp-browed, bright-eyed look, which pleased him greatly.

Battlefield City was as lively and noisy as ever. Fang Mu stepped inside while already pondering the matters he needed to handle next.

The first thing was certainly to deal with the sawtooth hyena corpses. Over the past month, Fang Mu had slain more than four hundred of them, and their bodies had long since filled his spatial gear to the brim.

At first he had not paid it much mind, but once he finally noticed, it had shocked him badly.

A complete sawtooth hyena corpse was worth around two hundred thousand. However, the sawtooth hyenas Fang Mu had hunted had all been scorched by blazing fire, so their value would surely have to be discounted.

But even if each one were only worth one hundred thousand, four hundred or more of them was still an astonishing sum.

That was over forty million. If things went well, it might even reach fifty or sixty million.

So, in one month, he had made six million?

That realization had left Fang Mu a little dazed when he took stock of the contents of his spatial gear.

And then he could only sigh inwardly.

Spatial gear really was indispensable.

Otherwise, he simply could never have accomplished something like this in a single month.

Even if he could kill them, how was he supposed to bring them back?

Without sleep or rest, he would have been lucky to haul back one every five days.

After all, there were no loading tools in a one-star battlefield.

"Still, I need to think carefully about how to handle them..."

Fang Mu mused silently.

A vast Battlefield City would have no trouble absorbing more than four hundred bronze-tier sawtooth hyenas. The real problem was how to process them without exposing his spatial gear.

That was something he had to think through carefully.

Fang Mu did not want to end up being targeted over something like this.

But on further thought, it was not too much of a problem. Worst case, he could change identities and spend a bit more time doing it, bringing out one or two corpses at a time.

He was already beginning to form some ideas.

And once the money came in, he could go buy gene serum again...

"Maybe I can reach silver tier very soon?"

That thought made Fang Mu's heart stir.

Once he reached silver tier, he would count as one of the strong in the one-star battlefield.

Especially since he was a gunfighter.

As far as he knew, there did not seem to have been a single gold-tier gunfighter in the one-star battlefield yet.

But thinking of how difficult advancement was, Fang Mu let out a slow breath and temporarily suppressed the anticipation in his heart.

Beyond the sawtooth hyena corpses and the serum, he had now reached bronze tier and could fuse a second gene seed.

Gene seeds were an astonishingly strange and mysterious thing, the pinnacle of human genetic science. Why, after passing through a gene seed, could ordinary genetic primal energy be transformed into such different kinds of miraculous power?

At least Fang Mu did not know.

But one thing was clear: an iron-tier evolver could fuse one gene seed; bronze tier, two; silver tier, three; and gold tier, four.

The gene seed for a cultivation art was somewhat special, because it could be fused before one had even evolved. The other gene seeds required evolution first.

As for what the cultivation-art gene seed actually manifested as once fused, and how it operated, Fang Mu did not know either. After all, he himself had never fused a cultivation-art gene seed.

So if one were to count it properly and include the cultivation-art gene seed as well, then the number of gene seeds one could fuse at each tier would increase by one.

In other words... perhaps Fang Mu could still fuse two kinds right now?

That was Fang Mu's private guess.

At first he had been short on money, so he had only bought one Blazing Fire gene seed. By the time he had money again, he had decided that the Blazing Fire gene seed was enough for now, and that he would wait until he had advanced to bronze tier before considering anything else.

Now that he was already bronze tier, he intended to see whether he could fuse one more gene seed.

One gene seed meant one gun combat technique. The more techniques he had, the more safety he would have as he walked the battlefield.

As for the gene seed he wanted to fuse next, Fang Mu already had some ideas.

"Armor Piercing is definitely a must."

Armor Piercing was the gun combat technique Fang Mu had wanted from the very beginning, and it was one that every gunfighter longed to obtain.

It could greatly increase a gunfighter's destructive power.

For example, even though Fang Mu could kill sawtooth hyenas with Blazing Fire, when using a pistol, his bullets could not actually punch through a sawtooth hyena's hide. He could only kill them by burning them with flames.

But with Armor Piercing, even a pistol bullet could easily pierce a sawtooth hyena's hide and bones.

And Armor Piercing was not merely about penetration; it could also suppress genetic primal energy and gene vitality.

The reason battlefield creatures were so tenaciously alive was that their gene vitality was too strong.

Blazing Fire could kill bronze-tier beings, but against silver-tier ones it would likely be far less effective. The gene vitality of creatures above silver tier was too formidable; Blazing Fire's damage was simply not enough to be fatal. At most, it would make them feel pain.

Take the day he had used Blazing Fire on Lin Chuanyin to warn her. It had clearly hit, yet it had been extinguished before it even burned a single strand of her hair.

Of course, part of that was because he had only been iron tier at the time. But it still showed that although Blazing Fire was powerful, it was power that worked downward. If the opponent was weak, Blazing Fire was strong; if the opponent was strong, then the technique's effect would be extremely limited.

Armor Piercing, by contrast, was a power that worked upward, meaning it could even kill across tiers.

Naturally, it was precious.

However, the competition for Armor Piercing would not involve gunfighters alone, so if Fang Mu wanted to obtain it, he would have to search carefully.

As for the other gun combat technique he might fuse besides Armor Piercing, Fang Mu had not yet decided.

The options for an elementary gun combat technique were actually not many. The techniques that were widely obtainable were things like Blazing Fire, Armor Piercing, Poison Arrow, and the like.

As for techniques such as Hallucination, Thunder, and Shapeshifting, those were all extremely rare.

They were not common in a one-star battlefield.

"Thinking about all this now is useless. I should deal with that batch of sawtooth hyenas first."

After some thought, Fang Mu finally reached that conclusion. He let out a soft breath and quickened his pace toward the hovercar station.

Soon he boarded a carriage. It was crowded, nearly all the seats were taken, and Fang Mu had no intention of sitting. He simply found a spot, grasped a handrail, and steadied himself.

There was a floating screen in the carriage broadcasting a program.

Fang Mu was still thinking about how to handle the sawtooth hyenas, so he had not paid the screen any mind, but the discussion of several passengers beside him made him pause and draw his attention.

"Chen Ting was at least a notable figure. I never expected him to end up like that..."

Chen Ting?

A handsome, composed face instantly surfaced in Fang Mu's mind.

The one he had seen in the battlefield hospital?

The captain of Greedy Wolf?

What had happened to him?

He unconsciously looked toward the speakers, and the group was indeed staring at the screen, pointing and commenting.