7: Chapter 7 The Pursuit! Amazing Resilience

Pursuit!!!

However, the moment the navigation map popped open...

"I'm such an idiot!"

Li Yuan slapped his forehead, making a crisp sound.

Those hair-raising footsteps, the dripping, the scratching, and that eerie movement through the walls from earlier had scared his soul—one that hailed from a peaceful era—half to death.

His head had been filled with monsters and ghosts from Earth's horror movies. But thinking back now, those sounds were clearly made by that damn Zantar Cockroach!

Where were there any formless, intangible ghosts?

Where was there any supernatural phenomenon?

In the face of the Zerg, a race built on biological technology, this was merely the imagination of a 21st-century novel-addicted victim under a combination of many strange abilities.

"If I had just opened the system's navigation map to take a look earlier, wouldn't everything have been clear? I scared myself so much I nearly lost my wits!" Li Yuan muttered in annoyance.

His face felt a bit hot. Fear truly was the greatest enemy of human reason; once dominated by fear, one would forget even the simplest and most direct solutions.

"Damn it, you offended your Grandpa Li Yuan, hit me with a combo, and wasted so much of my energy!! And now you want to play dead and run away? There's no such cheap deal in this world!"

He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva (he'd bitten his lip when he fell earlier), his gaze becoming sharp. That was loot containing a massive amount of life essence.

When Heaven offers a gift and you do not take it, you will surely suffer the consequences!!

There was no reason not to finish off a low-health target delivered right to his doorstep. This was the obsession of a Master-tier kill-stealer from LOL.

"Chase!" With his mind made up, action began immediately.

However, pursuing a Zantar Cockroach with burrowing abilities was far more difficult than he had imagined.

The Zerg's "burrowing" was by no means as simple as a groundhog digging a hole and crawling inside.

It was an ability that combined highly evolved bio-engineering with unique energy application. While digging tunnels, they could secrete a special biological slime which, mixed with the excavated soil, backfilled the tunnel behind them with extreme efficiency.

This backfilling wasn't a simple piling of dirt; it formed a solid structure similar to "bio-cement," making the excavated path look almost identical to the surrounding environment in a short time, making it difficult to track.

Normally, to track a Zerg in a burrowed state, one had to rely on sophisticated seismic wave detectors, life energy scanners, or microscopic analysis of soil composition. It was nearly impossible to discover with the naked eye and experience alone.

Fortunately, Li Yuan possessed a "cheat" that surpassed the technological understanding of this era—the system's life essence navigation map.

In his vision, that dark green light representing the Zantar Cockroach—much brighter and deeper than a Drone—was moving at a steady speed deep underground as marked on the map, leaving a crystal-clear "trail."

"Having a map is just cheating!" Li Yuan's spirits lifted. Although the excavated tunnel had been filled, he could still give chase from the surface.

He ordered the Light Guardian to scout ahead to prevent any sudden incidents while he followed slowly, alternating his gaze between the map and the terrain.

As it turned out, the tracking process was still filled with disproportionate difficulty.

The Zantar Cockroach was underground and could ignore any physical obstacles to travel in a straight line. Li Yuan, on the surface, had to deal with the complex terrain of the underground command post.

Bang! Li Yuan punched an isolation wall cast from high-strength alloy in frustration. The map showed that the damn Roach was less than twenty meters behind this wall; its movement speed had even slowed down significantly due to heavy injuries or some other reason.

But this wall was like a natural chasm, stubbornly blocking his path.

He tried to find a path around it, but the map showed that the nearest passage required a detour of several hundred meters, and the path was complex, filled with various collapses and obstacles.

By the time he circled around, that Roach would likely have disappeared without a trace.

"Damn it, this burrowing ability is too unfair!" Li Yuan gnashed his teeth in hatred. He finally understood deeply why the Zantar Cockroach was listed as a main Zerg ground unit.

It wasn't just its frontline combat power that even well-equipped mobile infantry couldn't contend with.

This ability to appear and disappear unpredictably—to just Burrow and run if it couldn't win—was a tactical finishing move in complex terrain.

He was forced to change routes time and again, flanking and circling, climbing and vaulting over various obstacles. His stamina was depleting rapidly, and his breathing became heavy.

Finally, after nearly half an hour of stop-and-go pursuit, the dark green light on the navigation map moved into a hall nearly a hectare in size—appearing to be a large underground training ground—and came to a complete stop.

"It stopped?" Li Yuan's heart tightened. He immediately signaled the Light Guardian to halt while he hid behind a concrete bunker formed by a collapse, cautiously observing the area ahead.

This was an extremely vast underground space, estimated to be nearly a hectare in area. The ceiling was very high, supported by thick metal struts, many of which were damaged, revealing the pitch-black rock layers behind them.

The ground was littered with a large number of discarded metal crates, wreckage of transport vehicles, and industrial equipment whose original forms were unrecognizable. There were also dozens of small offices along the sides of the hall, which also contained quite a bit of equipment.

The entire hall was dimly lit, with only a few emergency lights flickering with weak light, while the further reaches were completely swallowed by deep darkness.

And that Zantar Cockroach was currently lurking silently beneath the central area of this vast hall, motionless.

"Is it so badly injured it's finally about to kick the bucket? Or... did it stop on purpose, preparing to ambush me?" Li Yuan's brow furrowed deeply, his heart filled with conflict.

Reason told him the latter was highly likely. According to the laws of 'smoke but no damage,' 'falling into water means survival,' and 'failing to kill on the spot means a sequel,' this Roach was definitely going for another round.

Who's to say its recovery power isn't amazing, and it's already recovered by now!!!

But... the temptation of that crystal which might contain life essence was simply too great! Since this monster was so hard to kill, its crystal would definitely be larger than a Drone's!

That was something concerning his very life! Moreover, the 4 points of energy invested earlier, as well as the stamina and effort spent tracking it all this way, couldn't just be wasted for nothing.

"Fortune favors the bold! The brave feast while the timid starve!" Greed eventually overrode caution. He gritted his teeth and decided to keep approaching.

He focused with 120% of his attention, his movements becoming even more cautious. He almost tiptoed, using various covers to creep bit by bit toward that stationary light in the center of the hall. He ordered the Light Guardian to stay close by his side, ready to support at any moment.

Just as Li Yuan was nearly fifty meters from the lurking point—a distance he considered relatively safe—

The Jinx Law took effect.

A loud boom echoed.

The ground not far ahead of Li Yuan suddenly exploded, with dirt and gravel flying in all directions like a rainstorm! The massive body of the Zantar Cockroach, carrying a violent and fierce aura, burst out of the ground!

Squelch!

A familiar jet of sickly green corrosive venom, like a long-dormant venomous snake, suddenly shot out from ahead!

Alarm bells rang in Li Yuan's mind, and he lunged into a desperate roll to the left!

But he was too slow! He still couldn't dodge it.

Sizzle—!

Once again, it was the Light Guardian; with a flash of white light, it blocked the path in front of Li Yuan.

Fine! Dodging was still useful; at least this time the Light Guardian didn't use its butt to knock its clumsy master flying. This time Li Yuan relied on himself to dodge the splash zone of the venom. Not bad, that's progress...

Li Yuan looked up, shaken, at the monster that had reappeared. Damn that Jinx Law.

With the help of the dim light in the hall and the glow emitted by the Light Guardian, he could clearly see that the Zantar Cockroach's condition had mostly recovered!

The terrifying hole blasted into its thorax and abdomen had disappeared, filled by newly grown, slightly pinkish, hard chitinous biological tissue. Those four blasted-off hind limbs had actually regrown; although the new limbs looked thinner than the originals and were lighter in color—forming a sharp, slightly comical contrast with the dark brown shell of the rest of its body.

But this undoubtedly showed that this bug truly had terrifying recovery abilities!

Its injuries were basically fully healed!