Wang Cheng tilted his head slightly and widened his eyes upon hearing his father's words. "I have no such plans. I'm not lingering here to collect materials. If I can adapt to an environment like this, it'll definitely help stabilize my mental state when I train in the wild later."
Seeing his son standing on the battlefield without even wearing a respirator, Wang Hao didn't discourage him. Instead, he encouraged him earnestly:
"That's true. As long as you get used to this kind of bloody and slaughter-filled battlefield, even if you face an even bloodier scene in the future, you probably won't feel mentally uncomfortable. That'll definitely benefit you when hunting monsters."
Wang Cheng chuckled. "Alright, you and Mom can collect materials here slowly. I'm going to stroll around the other parts of the battlefield."
With that, he walked deeper into the battlefield. As he moved, he stepped on the head of a still-twitching mid-tier apprentice-level monster, crushing it effortlessly. He casually made his way toward the spot where the pangolin beast had died.
Looking at the crushed monster's head, Wang Cheng pondered to himself:
"Seems like after more than ten hours of enhancement, my physical strength likely reached around the seventh tier of the apprentice level. Most of the monster corpses in my internal space have already been consumed, leaving fewer than a thousand mid-tier apprentice-level corpses. If each of those low-tier monsters added only ten kilograms of strength, the nearly 9,000 I consumed would be enough to push me close to the eighth tier."
When he arrived at the place where the pangolin beast had fallen, many people were already there—it was the site where a planetary-level monster had died, after all.
Of course, there was nothing left of the pangolin beast here. Its body had already been taken away to the top of the fortress by Wei Wuji.
Wang Cheng didn't approach the crowd. Instead, he followed the path where the pangolin beast had fallen from the sky, searching step by step.
With some effort, and although the beast's blood had already mixed into the muddy battlefield, he still managed to find some fragmented internal organs buried within the gore.
Using his psychic power, Wang Cheng quietly collected the pangolin's blood-mixed mud and the bits of flesh into his internal world.
After gathering most of the usable remains, he split part of his consciousness to process them in his internal space—separating the mud from the blood and meat.
In the end, he obtained a vat-sized lump of blood and a basin-sized pile of organ fragments.
Though it wasn't a large haul, Wang Cheng was thrilled—these were materials from a planetary-level monster.
If not for this beast tide, there would've been no chance to get such stuff. Though he didn't know what kind of effects the materials would have, he didn't plan to test them just yet.
Unfortunately, he was still wearing a wristwatch, and surveillance drones were flying overhead.
He couldn't collect large amounts of monster material in such conditions—his secret was more important than these resources.
Though he couldn't harvest entire monster bodies, he could still quietly collect the blood and flesh mud from the battlefield.
Taking small amounts wouldn't draw much attention.
Especially since Wang Cheng had remembered the death locations of several high-tier apprentice-level monsters. By the time he finished roaming the battlefield in front of the fortress...
His internal space now contained a blood pool with a 100-meter diameter and a 100-meter-tall mountain of meat.
If his psychic power hadn't improved along with his physical strength to about the seventh tier, it wouldn't have been easy to secretly stash all that meat and blood.
Countless warriors worked to collect materials, and they quickly cleared out all usable parts.
Even low-tier apprentice warriors could collect materials and earn a bit of compensation.
One could say that after this beast tide, everyone got their fair share of spoils.
But cleaning the entire battlefield of flesh and blood would take a long time. For now, they only cleared a path to the wilderness.
The battlefield remains couldn't be eaten. Many monsters had toxic flesh, and the poisonous blood often contaminated nearby remains.
So aside from a few intact mid-tier and high-tier apprentice monster corpses, the rest were crushed and processed into non-toxic feed for raising tamed beasts.
The stronger a monster, the harder its meat is to eat. High-tier apprentice monster flesh could be as tough as steel—cooking it was a massive hassle.
In terms of edibility, monster meat was inferior to farm-raised beast meat—especially beasts that had just evolved into monsters.
At that early stage, they still had high energy levels but softer, less mutated flesh.
Wang Cheng, Wang Hao, and Leng Yan didn't linger on the battlefield. After processing the materials from the monsters they killed, they returned home to recover.
Wang Hao and Leng Yan had already been exhausted after escaping from deep in the wilderness and fighting through the beast tide.
After a shower and a big meal, they both went to their rooms to rest.
But Wang Cheng didn't feel tired at all. Once in his room, he put his wristwatch in the drawer, lay on the bed, pulled up the blanket—and vanished.
Only a perfectly-shaped crystal, a few millimeters in diameter, remained under the covers.
Once inside his internal world, he activated the testing device and punched it with full force.
Beep beep!
"100982!"
"Nice! Looks like my physical strength really is close to eighth-tier apprentice level. With my fourfold power output, I'm effectively a ninth-tier apprentice in combat. Unfortunately, my body's toughness is still lacking, so I'd be at a disadvantage in a head-on clash with a ninth-tier monster. But I'm not that dumb. Let's test my psychic power now."
A dark beam flashed, striking the tester just as powerfully as before.
Whoosh!
Bang!
Beep beep!
"113462!"
"Too bad. I'm still a few thousand short of reaching eighth-tier in psychic power. If my talent got exposed, they'd probably implant a new slave chip in my brain right away—then I'd either be sold off for a good price or forced to serve as a bodyguard for some slave master."
Though he had speculated about his power growth, the sense of leaping strength still made Wang Cheng inwardly pleased.
Still, he didn't linger in his internal world for long. The smell here wasn't great—even though the monster corpses didn't rot, the strong stench of blood was overwhelming.
He quickly exited his inner world.
(End of Chapter)