Chapter 38: First Try at Combinatorial Cloning

  The wagon raced along the road, covering the twenty-minute journey in a mere ten minutes. As soon as it pulled up at the stable, the hut’s urgent voice echoed in Lan Chi’s mind. “Hurry, hurry, bring them in! I want to eat!”

  “Alright, open a door for us.” Lan Chi and Kaelen stood up, walked to the carriage, and pushed the four cages through a crack the hut had split open in its wall.

  Once the last cage was inside, Lan Chi pointed at the creatures within. “There, you can eat now.”

  “Yay!” The hut shot out its tentacles, excitedly coiling one cage up and lifting it to its mouth.

  The young beasts in the cages instantly sensed the deadly chill. Their fur stood on end, and they screamed in terror, scurrying madly about. Two of them began to mutate on the spot.

  The shoe-sized Gold-Digging Worm was the first to change. Its whole body trembled violently, as if something inside was writhing madly to break free. Its bones twisted and dislocated beneath its exoskeleton.

  Its entire carapace split open from the inside out, peeling back inch by inch from its spine to reveal raw, blood-red flesh beneath. Slick tentacles burst forth from the cracks, wriggling wildly outward.

  At the same time, the Stinging Lizard in another cage began to mutate too. A watermelon-sized bulge swelled abruptly on its belly, squirming wildly under its skin—slamming from its abdomen to its chest, then darting up its neck. The lizard threw its mouth open and let out a shrill, agonized hiss.

  Pop!

  A soft sound rang out. The lizard’s eyeball was blasted out from the inside by an immense force. A tail covered in fine barbs slowly slithered out from the bloodied eye socket.

  Fortunately, the two mutated monsters were still trapped in their cages. Lan Chi reacted in an instant, spinning around to grab two spears from a shelf and tossing one to Kaelen.

  “Stab them!”

  The pair raised their spears and drove them into the cages at the mutating beasts. The spear tips pierced flesh with a wet squelch. The monsters inside convulsed violently, their tentacles slamming against the cage bars, but there was nowhere to run.

  The hut finally snapped to its senses, coiling a short spear off the wall and stabbing wildly into the cage, mimicking Lan Chi and Kaelen’s movements. Its aim was poor—it missed the first time, but the second thrust sank deep into the writhing mass of flesh.

  After a dozen heartbeats of thrashing, the two mutated monsters and the other two pets grew weak. Their strained bodies went limp, slumping to the bottom of the cages like puppets with their strings cut, motionless.

  “Are they dead?” the hut asked cautiously.

  Lan Chi prodded them with his spear tip; none of the creatures moved. “Looks like it.”

  “Yay!” The hut cheered excitedly, dropping the short spear in a hurry. It coiled the cages up, opened its mouth, and tipped the monsters inside, swallowing them whole without a single chew.

  Moments after eating, the hut cried out, “Lan Chi! I need Phosphorus Crystals! Digesting that food made me even hungrier! I need lots and lots of them! My head’s flooded with new things, and I don’t have the strength to think!”

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  “Alright, open the storage and help yourself.” Lan Chi replied.

  The hut unlocked the warehouse where the Phosphorus Crystals were kept and gorged itself. In the blink of an eye, it had devoured over eight thousand crystals. Lan Chi stared at the empty warehouse, then poured all the remaining Phosphorus Crystals from his Spatial Wristband onto the floor. He watched as the hut swallowed them all and asked, “Still hungry?”

  “Barely full.” The hut glanced at the empty warehouse, sounding sheepish. “Lan Chi, should we sell some cloned meat?”

  Lan Chi shook his head. “No, it’s not worth it.” Meat prices had plummeted lately—one Phosphorus Crystal could buy two pieces now.

  He opened the system log, and sure enough, the hut’s stats had changed again:

  【Mutated Shelter/Writhing Wooden Hut】: Tier 2, Growth Progress 17%.

  A seven percent jump—its growth was moving at a decent pace now.

  “Want to test out your new Combinatorial Cloning ability?” Lan Chi asked, curious.

  “Sure! What kind of creature do you want?” the hut asked cheerfully.

  Lan Chi thought for a moment. “Something strong, something that can work. There’s too much to do in the plantation. I want a humanoid creature to help with the farm work.”

  Right now, Lan Chi and Kaelen did almost all the work in the plantation themselves. The two tool monsters and five Scorpion-Tailed Bees weren’t very intelligent—they could only help pick fruits and transport goods, leaving all the rest of the work to him.

  “Got it, let me design a combination.” The hut said. A bulge two meters tall rose up on its wall, covered in writhing blood vessels, with a beating heart pulsing inside.

  “The normal growth cycle is five hours, but I can speed it up to one hour. It’ll just take a lot of energy. Do you want to speed it up?”

  Lan Chi hesitated, then shook his head. “No need. We don’t have enough energy right now. Take it easy. Kaelen and I are going to brew wine—we’ll come back to check on the result later.”

  “Okay!”

  Time passed quickly. By the time Lan Chi and Kaelen finished their wine-making for the day, the bulge in the living room had swelled to an enormous size— the fleshy mass was easily big enough to engulf a full-grown adult.

  Pop!

  A crack split open on the surface of the egg-like mass, and thick, sticky liquid dripped down the wall. The crack widened, and a furry arm stretched out, gripping the edge and pushing hard.

  The entire mass split in two down the middle, and a brown, half-human-tall creature tumbled onto the wooden floor. It was covered in a slimy film, its body shaped like an ape’s, with thick, powerful limbs and broad hands with distinct knuckles—clearly built for grasping tools.

  The creature lay on the floor gasping for a few seconds, then wobbled to its feet and stared blankly at Lan Chi.

  “Is this… a success?” Lan Chi squatted down to examine it.

  “I think so.” The hut’s voice sounded unsure. “It’s my first design—I have no idea if it’s any good. Want to test it with some work?”

  Lan Chi opened his system panel and activated the Scanning ability on the creature:

  【Unknown Creature】: Unknown.

  “Can’t even scan it. Hey, monkey—can you hear me?” Lan Chi waved his hand in front of the ape-like creature, which only stared straight ahead. “Looks like it can’t understand human speech.”

  “It failed?” The hut drew near, its voice filled with disappointment.

  “It’s fine. Failure’s normal for the first try.” Lan Chi said nonchalantly. “We’ll get it right with more attempts.”

  “Alright.” The hut was still a little upset—its first creation was a bust. “What do we do with it?”

  Lan Chi thought for a moment. “I’ll try to mutate it. No sense wasting something we made.”

  He placed his hand on the slimy monkey’s head and unleashed his mental power. His powerful psychic energy flowed smoothly into the creature’s body.

  The monkey’s eyes suddenly flickered. Its mouth slowly stretched open, wider and wider, its lips pulling back almost to its ears. Two rows of sharp fangs sprouted from its gums, and thick slime dripped from between its teeth.

  Its body began to twitch, its skin stretching thin and transparent, revealing something writhing beneath.

  Pop!

  Several vine-like appendages, as thick as an adult’s arm, burst forth from its flesh, covered in sharp thorns. The vines twisted and lashed about in the air like venomous snakes, and their tips split open to reveal circular mouths lined with fine teeth.

  The ape-like creature’s torso shriveled up completely, leaving nothing but a monkey’s skin draped over a mass of writhing vines.

  “Well…” Lan Chi pulled his hand back, staring at the transformed creature, utterly speechless. His mutation ability was truly random. He could roughly control its direction, but whether he got the creature he wanted was purely a matter of luck.

  “What do we do with this now?” Kaelen asked, pointing at the writhing vines.

  Lan Chi scratched his head, feeling a faint mental connection to the vines. “Let’s leave it for now. We’ll see what it can do tomorrow.”