74: Chapter 74 Strange Monsters

After parting ways with Gu Qingfeng, he quietly arrived at the border between the Xiguang and Youying dynasties with a group of retainers alone.

A shred of doubt had always lingered in his heart.

To swallow half of the Xiguang Dynasty and annihilate a dynasty's national destiny in a mere month, forcing countless trial-takers to flee for their lives and huddle together for survival—just how terrifying was that monster army?

Hearing a thousand times is not as good as seeing it once. Su Ming intended to step into the fallen Xiguang Dynasty in person to catch a glimpse of the true faces of these monsters with his own eyes.

With a flash of his figure, he directly crossed the border and stepped into the Xiguang Dynasty, which was once prosperous and bustling, but had now devolved into a dead zone.

The entire land was eerily dead silent.

The mountains and rivers were dormant, the cities were dilapidated, and not a shred of living breath could be seen across a thousand miles of territory.

Every living creature that once survived here—humans, livestock, vegetation, birds, and beasts—had been completely devoured and assimilated, with not a single survivor.

This was no longer human territory, but a desolate wasteland of corpses entirely gnawed clean by the monster calamity.

Following the intelligence he had gathered earlier, Su Ming headed straight for a border town that once harbored a large number of monsters.

Within the town, countless monsters with twisted forms stood quietly like dead, motionless sculptures, plunged into a deep state of dormancy.

Su Ming looked down intently, a trace of puzzlement flashing through the depths of his eyes.

"Are these the monsters that annihilated the entire Xiguang Dynasty?"

He carefully perceived them; the strengths of the monsters below varied unevenly, mostly just at the initial Transcendent Realm, looking utterly unremarkable.

With merely such combat power, how could they destroy and swallow the Xiguang Dynasty in such a crushing manner?

"Wawan, catch one up here."

Su Ming said indifferently.

Before his voice fell, a seductive red ribbon swept through the air, instantly shuttling through the streets and alleys of the town to precisely entangle a monster and forcefully drag it in front of Su Ming.

Looking at the twisted and deformed body of this creature, Wawan's brows were filled with genuine disgust: "To think that such ugly and filthy creatures exist in this world."

The commotion outside finally awakened this dormant monster. It struggled and roared violently, baring its fangs with a ferocious glare, and a violent, feral aura rushed toward them.

Yet after all, it was merely an ordinary monster at the second stage of the Transcendent Realm. Under Wawan's binding power, all its struggles were futile, and it was utterly incapable of breaking free even in the slightest.

Su Ming stopped watching. With a slight movement of his fingertips, the pure and biting Netherworld power continuously poured into the monster's body, scouring the bizarre heterogeneous energy around it.

In a split second, the monster's frantic struggles abruptly ceased.

The pupils that were originally filled with ferocity, bloodlust, and madness completely faded of their hostility, leaving only absolute submission and reverence; it had already been converted into one of Su Ming's Undead Retainers.

"I see."

"These monsters are essentially corpses. What supports them in moving and fighting is a bizarre force. Their devouring of living creatures is essentially plundering flesh, blood, and Divine Soul to provide for their own alienation and evolution. But their essence remains that of the undead, which is why they can be converted into the undead by me."

Su Ming looked at the patches of monsters below, and his gaze changed instantly.

His previous doubts and vigilance completely dissipated, replaced by intense pleasant surprise.

"Right now, all of them have fallen into slumber with zero resistance. How is this a world-destroying calamity? Clearly, this is a treasure trove of ownerless military forces everywhere!"

Yet this pleasant surprise did not last long; Su Ming quickly noticed the drawback within it and slightly frowned.

"That's not right."

"They are completely different from the Undead Retainers I conventionally convert. The bizarre Origin within their bodies is constantly resisting the Netherworld power; if I want to control them for long, I must continuously consume Divine Power to suppress them."

"In this way, it's impossible to cultivate a monster army in large batches. The consumption is too huge, and the losses outweigh the gains."

Su Ming gently shook his head, unable to hide a trace of regret.

But he did not give up his exploration just like that.

"Wawan, catch two more up."

Although Wawan was filled with disgust, she still followed the order. The red ribbon fluttered, instantly capturing two monsters.

Before the two monsters could wake up and riot, Su Ming directly urged the Netherworld power to complete the conversion preemptively.

Then his gaze condensed, and he issued a tentative command: "You guys, devour and merge with each other."

He had long heard that this batch of monsters possessed the bizarre trait of devouring their own kind and iterative evolution; now he could just take this opportunity to verify it personally.

Receiving the order, the two monsters did not hesitate in the slightest, instantly pouncing on and killing each other as their bodies blended and their Origin united as one.

In just a few breaths of time, the two initial-stage monsters completely fused into one, transforming into a monster with a more condensed physique, and its overall strength was also slightly stronger.

Witnessing this scene with his own eyes, Su Ming couldn't help but be slightly startled.

"So smooth?"

He had originally thought that this kind of heterogeneous gene Fusion had extremely huge variables and a very high probability of failure, and might even directly collapse and perish; he hadn't expected the process to be so perfect.

"This heterogeneous energy is truly profound to the extreme."

Su Ming exclaimed from the bottom of his heart.

It was a pity he was not an expert in this field; otherwise, extracting or researching this kind of energy would definitely make a huge fortune.

He carefully investigated the state of the fused monster, and soon made new discoveries.

After the Fusion and evolution, the Divine Power required for him to maintain this monster did not increase with its skyrocketing strength; it was still equivalent to the consumption of maintaining an ordinary monster.

"The consumption is not judged by the strength threshold, but based on the number of individuals?"

A bright light flashed in Su Ming's eyes as he perceived the huge value within it.

To thoroughly verify his conjecture, he immediately began a whole day of repeated experiments.

Wawan continuously captured monsters for him, and Su Ming kept converting them, urging them to devour and fuse, recording data and verifying patterns time and time again.

After countless experiments, the conjecture was completely confirmed.

No matter how many monsters fused together, and no matter what level the final individual strength climbed to, as long as they merged into one, the Divine Power consumption required to maintain them remained constant at the standard of a single individual.

In other words—quantity infinitely stacked, combat power infinitely raised, and consumption remaining constantly unchanged.

Su Ming looked at the heterogeneous monster in front of him, which had ultimately transformed through the Fusion of over five thousand monsters, his eyes filled with intense satisfaction and anticipation.

"Five thousand mostly low-tier monsters directly fused into a monster at the fifth stage of the Transcendent Realm. I finally understand why the Xiguang Dynasty was annihilated; this ability is simply too terrifying."

"However, this ability must have a limit. I want to see just where the limit of this Fusion and evolution lies."

With his mind made up, Su Ming stopped lingering. Taking this newly refined monster, he turned around and left the dead-silent town, preparing to continue delving deeper for exploration.