Chapter 407 - 404: Hostility Perception

Chapter 407: Chapter 404: Hostility Perception

Mo Ling instantly understood. The hostility came from the Pangolin before him.

The intense hostility, sharp as a needle, pierced Mo Ling’s tiny body. It was the crushing pressure of a superior species, the contempt of a creature higher up the food chain.

A chill spread through Mo Ling’s entire body. He was just a fly and shouldn’t have been able to feel anything, yet that chill pierced straight to his soul.

The scorching magma flowed endlessly, but the fly’s body grew stiff, chilled to the bone.

Mo Ling fought back his discomfort and fled backward.

But as he moved, the death countdown suddenly dropped by several seconds.

It had been nine seconds; in the blink of an eye, it was four!

’It’s getting shorter and shorter!’

The chill intensified. The red lizard’s cold eyes held the contempt of a superior being and the coldness reserved for prey.

Danger!

Just as the hostility warning reached its peak and the countdown hit zero, Mo Ling saw the lizard suddenly open its mouth. A red shadow shot toward him.

’That’s its tongue!’

He saw the tongue shoot out, but he couldn’t dodge. The fly’s speed was incredibly sluggish at that moment. He could only watch helplessly as the tongue wrapped completely around him.

A powerful gust of wind followed as the lizard rapidly retracted its tongue, intending to swallow Mo Ling whole.

The hostility radiating from the lizard overwhelmed the scorching wind, blanketing everything. A series of thunderous alarms echoed in Mo Ling’s mind:

"Someone is trying to kill me!"

"Someone is trying to kill me!"

"..."

The fly’s body struggled relentlessly, but it couldn’t escape the tongue’s grasp. He was about to be devoured.

But just as the hostility reached its absolute peak, drowning Mo Ling in countless warnings, he became perfectly calm.

’What am I afraid of?’

From the very beginning, this hostility had only served to make him panic.

While it alerted him to danger, the hostility also left him frazzled and panicked, causing him to flee without thinking. He even had a feeling:

’I’m being driven by this hostility.’

In that instant, Mo Ling had an epiphany.

’I should be the master of this hostility, not its puppet!’

This ability to sense hostility was the instinct of a sponge creature. A living being should command its instincts, not be commanded by them!

At this thought, the bone-chilling hostility instantly transformed into a cool spring, washing over Mo Ling’s mind.

In that same instant, Mo Ling thought of a way to counter it.

He felt the hot wind around him and watched the shadows flash by at high speed.

As the tongue moved at high speed, the surrounding scenery became a blur, leaving only the glow of the magma and the white silhouettes of steam...

But one thing was precise—hostility.

The closer he got to the lizard, the stronger the hostility became.

Although the hostility was already thunderous, there were different kinds of thunder. The gentle roll of a spring storm is different from the crash of a summer downpour.

’Zero seconds... zero seconds...’

Mo Ling abandoned his other senses, focusing solely on the overwhelming hostility.

He let the strong wind rush past him, his heart completely calm, and continued to meticulously sense the hostility around him, which was as pervasive as the air itself.

Finally, he broke through the limits of his perception and saw more precise information.

’Milliseconds...’

’Microseconds...’

The units of time Mo Ling perceived grew more and more precise, and the numbers on the countdown grew larger and larger. Within the torrent of hostility, he grasped the finest, most detailed thread.

Finally, the hostility was no longer clamoring, and the wind fell silent.

The moment Mo Ling issued a command to his body, the hostility vanished without a trace.

At the most critical moment, just as the lizard’s tongue was about to fully retract, the tiny, entangled fly suddenly swelled up. It transformed into a huge sponge that slammed into the lizard’s mouth, plugging its throat.

Before the lizard could even close its mouth, the relentlessly expanding sponge had already stretched it wide.

The lizard panicked. It began to roll on the ground, its mouth agape, but the sponge completely filled its oral cavity. It was impossible to spit out.

The timing of the sponge’s expansion was perfect. The lizard had no time to react or close its mouth before the soft sponge was wedged in the most awkward position—impossible to spit out, impossible to swallow.

As time passed, the sponge continued to grow larger.

The lizard felt its mouth go numb. The sponge was continuously absorbing the moisture from its body, and soon, its entire mouth lost all feeling.

Meanwhile, having absorbed so much moisture, the sponge continued to swell. The lizard’s eyeballs bulged from their sockets, completely bloodshot.

But soon, the color drained from its eyes. All the blood seemed to be drawn toward its mouth. The once-full eyeballs rapidly shriveled up like punctured water balloons, becoming as thin as grape skins in the blink of an eye.

The lizard’s consciousness faded. Utterly disoriented, it trembled and spun in place.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, the lizard collapsed. Its massive head flopped to the ground. Yellow sponge, smeared with a mixture of red and white fluids, was forcing its way out of the orifices on its head.

The sponge also burst from its empty eye sockets. Its mouth remained agape even in death. The entire head had become nutrients for the growing sponge, completely desiccated, leaving only the hard, scaly hide.

The scaly hide was stretched taut by the expanding sponge, twitching slightly, swollen to a terrifying degree.

After consuming the head, the sponge spread down toward the lizard’s stomach, finally devouring the creature’s body in its entirety.

A yellow, sponge-like lizard crawled out of the swollen, scaly hide as if shedding its skin. It twisted its new body and ran off into the distance.

This sponge-lizard was, of course, Mo Ling.

He was once again struck by how incredible this sponge creature was. In addition to its powerful hostility perception, its mimicry ability was also terrifying.

He could simulate the structure of any creature he absorbed, imitating it with lifelike precision.

If you ignored its porous, yellow skin, it looked exactly like a lizard.

Mo Ling recalled that the moment he began to execute his plan, the hostility had fallen completely silent. By the time he was inside the lizard’s mouth, the warnings had vanished entirely.

Dodging was one way to eliminate hostility. Fighting was another.

’Once the enemy is eliminated, the hostility is gone.’

What surprised him was that the hostility had somehow determined in advance that he could defeat the lizard, which was why it had stopped sending alerts.

’It seems to have some kind of precognitive ability.’

’During a battle, if I choose the right response, I can know the outcome in advance.’

’If the hostility disappears, it means my decision was the correct one.’

Thinking of this, Mo Ling suddenly realized he might have underestimated this ability.

’If I can predict the outcome of every battle, my success rate will skyrocket. And if I encounter an enemy I can’t beat, I’ll be able to escape in time.’

At this thought, Mo Ling was once again eager for a challenge.

Just then, a sharp spike of hostility hit him again.

Mo Ling turned his head. In the distance, a giant bird was staring at him coldly, a viscous fluid dripping from its terrifying beak...