Chapter 165. Jurassic (19) Zombie Ji Li and His Undead Army

     Ye Mo said: “Watson, try to condense your water spirit power on your eyes.”

     Watson understood and circulated his spiritual power. Usually when he entered the dungeon, he circulated his spiritual power into his hands when casting spells, and after entering this dungeon, he mainly circulated his spiritual power into his hands, mouth, and joint areas.

     This was his first time covering his eyes with spiritual power. After a moment of coolness, his eyes turned a bright, deep blue, truly glowing like stars.

     At this moment, the world in Watson’s eyes had completely changed.

     In addition to the existing volcanic rocks, multiple transparent giant figures have emerged. These figures vary in color, size, and shape, and they are all volatile and easily angered.

     These transparent shadows not only attack inanimate objects but also each other. The losers become smaller and more transparent, with their color tending towards black or gray. They become formless or are consumed, much like the “dispersal of soul and spirit” described in ancient texts.

     The transparent ghostly figure that had just attacked Watson was a deep crimson Tyrannosaurus Rex, the one with the darkest color among them. It closely resembled many modern dinosaur illustrations of Tyrannosaurus Rex in height, and its deep color indicates strong soul power.

     Because the ghosts appeared suddenly, Watson, even though he was mentally prepared, reflexively took a defensive and offensive fighting posture and asked, “Are they ghosts?”

     “Yes.” Ye Mo kept her eyes on the dinosaur shadows. “The ghosts in the Jurassic period are more colorful than those in the real world. At least they can be seen as dinosaurs, and they have violent emotions and autonomous aggression.”

     But she didn’t know how many dinosaurs she killed and ate along the way, and a small number of other creatures, but she had never seen a ghost. Why would there be one here?

     This easily reminds people of a survivor.

     Watson has withdrawn all his spiritual power, and the world returned to normal in an instant. His face was pale. The spiritual eye ability just now consumed too much spiritual power and energy.

     He immediately replenished a small piece of spirit stone to recover, but still felt a little dizzy as if he were sick. However, the speed at which his body absorbed spiritual energy increased slightly, even more noticeably than after using water-based spells.

     “Unless absolutely necessary, even in a spiritual energy copy, when alone, use this ability sparingly, as it can easily lead to loss of combat effectiveness.”

     Ye Mo tossed more than ten bottles of mental recovery potions to Watson. If her guess was correct, using the spirit eye consumed more mental energy than spiritual energy. What Watson felt was mental fatigue, not just ordinary spiritual energy depletion.

     Watson drank two bottles of high-level mental recovery potions and indeed felt much better.

     …

     The two continued to proceed cautiously.

     The ground was scorching hot, while the air was filled with chilling winds, creating a veritable experience of extremes, like a double layer of ice and fire.

    This journey through the extremes ice and fire didn’t last too long. When the two emerged from the canyon, only pure high temperatures remained, with the average air temperature exceeding 65℃.

     Furthermore, similar to the fire spiritual energy, it was continuously rising.

     Watson’s consumption of water spiritual energy increased, and Ye Mo also required more of the gold, wood, water, and earth spiritual energies, in addition to water. The water, wood, and earth spiritual energies were supported by spiritual jade, while the gold element could only rely on the reserves in her space.

     Watson swallowed a water spirit stone and said, “Basically, only fire dinosaurs live in this volcanic rock, and there are not many of them. The number of metal dinosaurs has greatly decreased. Maria, how many are left in your space?”

     “Enough to stay until the end of the dungeon, but that’s not the problem now.” Ye Mo stopped moving. The reason she stopped moving was not because of the high temperature. “Watson, can you still see the way back?”

     “…”

     Watson turned back reflexively, and the canyon they just walked through was no longer visible. Behind him was a volcano that was not much different from volcanic rock.

     “Hallucination?”

     But the dinosaurs fighting each other not far away were too real. Watson didn’t think it was that simple. He walked back a few minutes from where he stood and no longer felt the chilling winds from before.

     Ye Mo affirmed, “It’s real.”

     “Space teleportation?” Watson guessed.

     Ye Mo could see, or rather sense with her mental power, that every few seconds, minutes, or even tens of minutes, the surrounding environment would undergo irregular changes.

     Hawk Eye’s vision was even more dazzling and confusing, like being carsick. Its field of view was actually disrupting its sight, forcing it to jump off Ye Mo and onto the space belt.

     “Instead of calling it space teleportation, it’s more like—this land is alive.”

     When entering a maze, the most important thing to remember is not to panic. The two stopped and began to investigate the patterns on the spot.

     The two of them, one large and one small, stood not far apart.

     A spatial shift caused the ground beneath their feet to undulate and shake. Seeing Watson about to disappear before her eyes, Ye Mo used her hind legs to exert force, and her massive figure leaped through the air.

     At the same time, her body felt an incredibly powerful spatial energy tearing at it, to the point where her tail was injured, and blood spurted out, with much of it vanishing into the air.

     Rumbling—

     The large and small dinosaurs landed almost simultaneously, the heavyweight Tyrannosaurus Rex shaking the ground when it hit.

     “…”

     Watson and Ye Mo spoke almost in unison: “Not good!”

     Behind them, the temperature continued to rise, and the magma buried deep underground was ascending through the passage from the magma source region to near the Earth’s surface.

     After taking a mouthful of water spirit jade, the thirty-plus-meter-long Tyrannosaurus Rex picked up the ten-plus-meter-long Stegosaurus in its mouth and ran wildly. Before long, scorching red magma flowed out from the cracks where they had just stood.

     “…”

     With his weak point exposed in the Tyrannosaurus Rex’s mouth, Watson felt his life as a Stegosaurus was not in vain.

     To make it easier for his companion, the Stegosaurus initially remained motionless, acting as a large toy, and then used water-based spiritual energy to make himself lighter.

     And Ye Mo only had one word in her eyes—run!

     Escape was extremely difficult. It wasn’t that she wasn’t fast enough, but rather that the movement patterns of this land were incredibly chaotic. Even with Hawk Eye, she couldn’t avoid occasionally crashing into erupting volcanoes, forcing her to find alternative routes.

     Not to mention escaping altogether.

     This volcanic rock land was alive, and plans couldn’t keep up with the changes. Hawk Eye’s vision turned into a mirage. They had no luck, and after trying to escape in many different directions, they repeatedly encountered volcanic eruptions or imminent volcanic eruptions.

     “…”

     The two seemed to be trapped in a giant maze. Although they were temporarily out of mortal danger, continuing to run wasn’t a solution. Moreover, several times they found themselves surrounded by active volcanoes in a short period.

     In the end, it was the fire-avoiding grass and spirit-seeking wood from the Jurassic period that saved them from certain death.

     The fire-avoiding grass truly had a miraculous effect. No matter how high the temperature, as long as it was held in the mouth or grasped in the hand, the whole person felt like drinking an ice-cold beverage on a sweltering day, a comfort from the depths of the heart, completely different from a chilling sensation.

     What even amazed Ye Mo was that the fire-avoiding grass not only shielded against high temperatures but could even resist the heat of magma at thousands of degrees Celsius, having a miraculous life-saving effect.

     However, the effect of the fire-avoiding grass was limited. The longer its growth cycle, the longer its fire-avoiding duration. The effect of a ten-thousand-year-old fire-avoiding grass was dozens of times that of a thousand-year-old one.

     The spirit-seeking wood was similar.

     The spirit-seeking wood could not only allow one to see the spiritual energy particles clearly but also display their distribution, thereby avoiding dangerous areas of volcanic eruptions.

     However, their vision was constantly restricted, and the map explored by the spirit-seeking wood was limited. To escape the volcanic rock area would be difficult. Firstly, time was limited, and secondly, the spiritual plants were limited, and they didn’t know how large this volcanic rock area was.

      Watson, being carried around by the Tyrannosaurus Rex, said, “Fire-avoiding grass is also found in the volcanic rock, and spirit-seeking wood grows around the volcanic rock. Is this the legendary mutual generation and mutual overcoming?”

     Ye Mo couldn’t answer him for the moment.

    Another half an hour passed, and the two finally reached a relatively safe place within the volcanic rock area—atop an active volcano that wasn’t about to erupt for the time being.

     Because they both quickly figured out that the volcanic rock was active, but the volcanoes wouldn’t be cut off from it. The only danger on a non-erupting volcano was being engulfed by the scorching magma flowing from other erupting volcanoes. Fortunately, they had the fire-avoiding grass to save their lives, allowing them to carve out a bloody path if necessary.

     After Ye Mo stepped onto the active volcano, she released her grip, and the Stegosaurus’s body free-fell.

     Then, she kicked her hind legs, successfully flinging the Stegosaurus onto her back. Only then did she take out wood, fire, and earth spiritual jade, along with a large amount of the three-element spiritual stones from her space.

     She also distributed a large pile of water spiritual jade, spiritual stones, and plants to Watson, filling his space to the brim.

     The large and small dinosaurs began to replenish their energy.

     Ye Mo wasn’t afraid that these spiritual jades would attract other dinosaurs, because she needed to obtain metal-element prey from them.

     When fighting other prey, Watson made sure to stay on the Tyrannosaurus Rex’s body.

     At the same time, by constantly using the fire-avoiding grass, spirit-seeking wood, and water spiritual techniques to help the Tyrannosaurus Rex reduce the disadvantages of the fire-element environment, he also had the opportunity to personally experience the Tyrannosaurus Rex’s rampage.

     So far, only one-fiftieth of the metal-element energy had been obtained from killing 15 dinosaurs. Ye Mo, in this pure fire-energy zone, was barely improving.

     After eating another stored metal-element dinosaur, just as Watson and Ye Mo were discussing whether to venture to another location, a huge dark shadow suddenly appeared in the sky.

     This dark shadow was a dark purple pterosaur. Its wings, when extended, were two or three times its body length, and with its wings spread, its body definitely exceeded 10 meters.

     They had seen many dinosaurs exceeding 10 meters in the volcanic rock area, but non-fire-element dinosaurs were basically extinct.

     Ye Mo gazed at the army of dozens of ghostly dinosaur figures in the sky, “Eagle Eye, Quetzalcoatlus.”

     Watson immediately understood her meaning. The third-ranked creature in the Jurassic copy was the Quetzalcoatlus. By using the water spiritual technique to cover his eyes for a second, he indeed saw many dinosaur souls, far more than they had encountered before.

     The colorful Tyrannosaurus Rex looked up and roared at the sky, “Li, long time no see.”

     “Long time no see, Maria.”

     After the Quetzalcoatlus responded, it fell straight down. When it landed, it not only folded its huge wings, but also turned into a person, and there were wisps of cool breeze in the hot air.

     Yes, a human, a person as tiny as an ant, or perhaps not even a complete person.

     They had encountered a survivor who could transform between two forms before, Pushkin, but these two were clearly different.

     Using her mental power, Ye Mo scanned the person at her feet, who was even smaller than the grass. He didn’t seem like a living person. His posture was stiff, and his skin had a dull, dark color. The dark energy on his body was even more abundant than that of the dinosaurs.

     She also roughly understood why he had transformed into a different form upon landing.

     Wood and fire were Yang, metal and water were Yin, and earth was balanced.

     Li was a dark-element dinosaur. His dinosaur body required the consumption of Yin-element energy like metal and water to grow. There wasn’t much of this type of energy in the volcanic rock area, making survival difficult.

     However, in his undead state, although he was also dark-element, he fed on Yang. He had a talent or cultivation technique for absorbing Yang, which was naturally incompatible with Yang.

     The pterosaur form consumed much more energy on the ground than in the sky. The undead form might not, and might even have benefits.

     Even so, in the extremely dangerous and resource-scarce volcanic rock area, it wasn’t easy to grow into a carnivorous dinosaur over 10 meters long.

     The Quetzalcoatlus, no, the now-zombified Ji Li, nodded to the Stegosaurus on the Tyrannosaurus Rex’s back, and said stiffly, “Hello, Watson.”