127: Chapter 127 Imitation and Adjustment

In the volcanic region, heatwaves rolled, and Chieftain Balin, the dwarf patriarch, was so excited that his beard trembled.

"This temperature, this fire source! Too perfect! This is simply the mountain of my dreams! Thank the God, now let me show you the romance of our race!" Chieftain Balin shouted loudly, immediately ordering the dwarves under his command to transport the rare metals given by Gu Han.

It seemed that their previous time in the snowfield had made them suffer greatly. Gu Han had subdued these dwarves without much effort.

It was mainly those Crystal Armors and the rare metals from the Cyst Demon's divine kingdom that held too great an attraction for the dwarves.

Gu Han instructed from mid-air, "I will prepare forging equipment for your race to craft a batch of high-quality crossbows."

Chieftain Balin led the dwarves, placing one hand over his chest and bowing.

"By your command, my God!"

After settling the Dwarf Race, Gu Han let out a long sigh of relief. As for the other races, no trouble had arisen for the time being, so he would leave them be for now; official business came first.

He directed his consciousness straight to the core zone, looking at the three Candle-Demon Dragon Lizards that had been shaved down to lizard stumps.

He planned to select a batch of strong Ant-men to crossbreed with these three giant lizards, creating a new unit capable of fighting in high-temperature environments.

Huh? Something was wrong.

He stared at a batch of newly matured, new-generation Ant-men; their appearances were uneven, each having its own differences.

On some Shield-Armored Ant-Men, the originally smooth shield-armor on their arms had grown a full circle thicker. On some, rough patterns resembling dragon lizard scales even emerged on the shield's surface. On others, their legs had become much thicker, and their grip on the ground was clearly stronger.

The Black-Armored Ant-men had changed even more. Their lower limbs and legs had become exceptionally thick, and the tips of their originally flexible upper limbs showed a faint tendency to evolve into scorpion claws, looking extremely destructive.

Holy crap?!

Gu Han quickly looked at the Ant-fist Shrimp-men. The signature pair of twin hammers on the chests of some had shrunk by a circle, and their tips had become somewhat sharp. Not only that, but the contours of the heads and torsos of some actually showed a trace of the dragon lizard.

Even the Hidden-Armor Ant-Man had undergone changes. Their four arms had become narrower, longer, and sharper, looking exactly like two sets of awls.

A bolt of lightning flashed through Gu Han's mind.

Second Transcendent Trait: Dissatisfied with Status Quo!

It turned out that this thing wasn't an active trait, but a passive evolution.

After experiencing that meat-grinder battle with heavy casualties, the Ant-man Race had felt their own inadequacies and the strength of their enemies. Thus, during hatching, the new generation autonomously made adjustments on a genetic level.

Some chose to imitate the dragon lizard's scales, while others chose to thicken their original shields. They were absorbing their opponents' strengths while desperately making up for their own shortcomings.

What was even more terrifying was that this evolution was not uniform across the entire race.

Gu Han scanned around. Not all individuals in the new generation had mutated. Only about one-tenth showed this change, and the degree of mutation was uneven.

It possessed an instability of strength and weakness.

Gu Han's heart rate accelerated. If it were a uniform mutation, then if the evolutionary direction went off track, the entire race would be ruined.

But this unstable, random mutation was simply the most perfect selection pool.

He could completely weed out those defective products that had gone off track, keeping only the most perfectly evolved individuals for breeding. He could even retain a portion of the original form as a backup foundation.

Gu Han was still not certain. He planned to test this Transcendent Trait again.

He immediately opened the trading platform, entered keywords, and spent eight million credit points to buy a Catastrophe-grade "Giant Scythe Mantis".

Gu Han gave the Black-Armored Ant-men the order to fight unarmed.

Without carrying any equipment, they rushed toward the scythe mantis.

"Swish, swish, swish—"

The ten-meter-tall giant mantis brandished two sharp bone blades, instantly slicing over a dozen Black-Armored Ant-men in mid-air in half. Green bodily fluids splashed all over the ground, and severed limbs flew everywhere.

The Ant-men did not retreat at all. They bit with their mandibles and tore with their claws, throwing themselves onto the mantis one after another in waves.

This battle lasted for half an hour, and the scythe mantis was literally overwhelmed and killed by the sea of Ant-men.

Gu Han did not feel distressed over the combat losses. He immediately headed to the hatching room of the Black-Armored Ant-men.

Not long after, a new batch of Black-Armored Ant-men broke out of their pupae.

Gu Han stepped forward to inspect them closely.

Sure enough, it was just as he had expected.

A batch of Black-Armored Ant-men in the new generation had undergone changes. The tips of the upper limbs of some had grown embryonic blade-legs similar to a mantis, while the limbs of another portion had become thicker.

The changes were very subtle, but they indeed existed.

"Imitative Evolution and Adjustive Evolution." Gu Han categorized these two types of mutations.

He seemed to have grasped the pattern of this trait. As long as the Ant-men were given enough pressure and powerful opponents, they could self-correct based on their shortcomings during battle.

This Transcendent Trait was simply invincible.

However, Gu Han quickly calmed down. He picked out the Shield-Armored Ant-Men that had previously grown scale patterns and the Shield-Armored Ant-Men that had simply thickened their bone shields.

He had the Level 4 Sapiens, Qu Nimade, come over to test them with a couple of punches.

The result was unexpected. The Shield-Armored Ant-Man with scale patterns retreated five or six steps, and a crack appeared on its bone shield. Meanwhile, the Ant-man that had simply thickened its bone shield only retreated two steps, and the surface of its shield was completely undamaged.

Gu Han raised an eyebrow. These two new-generation individuals hadn't consumed many Precious Medicines yet, so their defensive power shouldn't have been able to block a single blow from Qu Nimade.

Through actual testing, the hardness of the scales grown from imitating the opponent had not increased much, and it was even a bit of a clumsy imitation. On the contrary, those "Adjustive Evolution Types" that thickened their shield-armor based on their own foundation had even more astonishing defensive power.

To some extent, the Imitative Evolution Type was inferior to the Adjustive Evolution Type. Relying solely on "Dissatisfied with Status Quo" to imitate characteristics across species would greatly reduce the effectiveness.

But what if this was combined with Forced Breeding?

Gu Han's breathing grew heavy.

Although the Imitative Evolution Types had poor direct effects, their bodies had already generated a genetic tendency to align with the target species.

What would happen if this kind of Shield-Armored Ant-Man with a "dragon lizard tendency" was directly crossbred with a real Candle-Demon Dragon Lizard?

The Ant-men already had an physical tendency, so the result of further crossbreeding would highly likely yield the ideal type that Gu Han wanted.

This way, the Ant-man Race could occupy an absolute dominant advantage in all future crossbreeding experiments, no longer needing to open blind boxes in large quantities like before.

No matter how many ideas one had, they were never as fast as practice.

Gu Han hesitated no longer, directly subjecting the "imitative type" Shield-Armored Ant-Men with scale patterns and the Candle-Demon Dragon Lizards to Forced Breeding.