Chapter 15: Trust Has Always Been Limited
Also, no matter whose stomach is filled with many nanobots, their appetite will decrease.
To regain a normal appetite, Yun Ce tried to drink a large amount of blue juice to induce vomiting. As a result, he vomited out much of the food he had eaten. This food was deliberately eaten beforehand to protect his stomach. In the end, the food came out, but the mercury-like nanobots did not.
He persevered in his experiments, vomiting while lying down, while sitting up, and even upside down, exhausting himself. However, the nanobots in his stomach remained unmoved. When weak, Yun Ce could even feel hard lumps in his stomach, knowing the nanobots and the Dragon Pearl were there, but he couldn’t get them out.
Yun Ce’s vomiting sounds were completely drowned out by the pig squeals and bear roars from outside.
Tonight, the bright moon hangs in the sky, casting a pale white light over the ground, a perfect time for battle.
The pig squeals from afar grew more and more mournful, and the bear roars became even more intimidating.
Yun Ce, vomiting while inverted, supported himself with one hand and used the other to punch his stomach heavily twice. Along with a forceful surge of acidic stomach acid, a Dragon Pearl, which looked incredibly beautiful in the moonlight, slid out of his stomach.
The Dragon Pearl shimmered under the moonlight, its pale yellow light pulsing irregularly, hovering about a foot and a half in front of Yun Ce, neither too close nor too far.
The Dragon Pearl was Yun Ce’s reliance for survival here, at least, he believed so. Without this magical Dragon Pearl, Yun Ce felt that his skills, honed on Earth, were insufficient to establish himself on this planet.
Although he was retching with tears and snot streaming down his face, the presence of the Dragon Pearl proved that he still had untapped potential.
Just as Yun Ce could only bring up clear stomach fluid and felt as if his body had been hollowed out, he suddenly felt a coolness in his throat. Then, he saw a long string of white liquid metal queue out of his mouth. The last of the white liquid metal was still in his mouth, while the initial metal liquid had already come into contact with the Dragon Pearl.
This time, the Dragon Pearl did not simply absorb the metallic liquid into its small space. Instead, it allowed the metallic liquid to envelop it.
To say it enveloped it is not entirely accurate. It would be better to say that the silver liquid was moving in and out of the Dragon Pearl. It was neither being consumed by the Dragon Pearl nor did it seem to have its own consciousness. It was simply exchanging something, though Yun Ce couldn’t understand what was being exchanged. He only knew that they had developed some kind of connection.
The metallic liquid continued to move in and out of the Dragon Pearl under the moonlight. Yun Ce’s urge to vomit had largely subsided, so he sat in the moonlight watching the Dragon Pearl interact with the liquid metal.
After watching for a while and noticing their endless interaction, he poked the Dragon Pearl with a finger. The moment his finger touched it, the silver liquid metal seemed to come alive and climbed up his finger.
The liquid metal tightly wrapped around his finger, exerting considerable force. Yun Ce noticed his index finger gradually thinning, as if the liquid metal was consuming his flesh and blood.
Yun Ce reached out and stripped the silver metallic liquid from his finger, tossing it back to the Dragon Pearl. Then, he saw his own finger, gaunt and bony.
He moved his finger back and forth, finding it still flexible, just lacking flesh and blood.
This was a minor issue. By morning, everything would return to normal.
After the metallic liquid was absorbed by the Dragon Pearl, its color faded significantly, no longer as vibrantly red.
Judging by his own slender, bony finger, both the Dragon Pearl and the silver-white liquid, which could no longer be called nanobots, seemed capable of stripping away flesh and blood.
This made Yun Ce hesitant to store these things in his stomach again. If these two entities began absorbing usable material in his stomach, he felt he would absolutely turn into a dried husk, as the substance had been absorbed so greedily when it clung to his finger earlier.
The orange-red Dragon Pearl was right in front of Yun Ce, only a foot away, half a foot closer than before. The silver metal on it appeared peaceful, but occasional spikes would emerge from the silver metal mass, always pointing in the direction closest to Yun Ce’s forehead.
These metals seemed sentient. Whenever Yun Ce’s gaze fell upon the greedy spikes, they would quickly retract and transform back into a mass of liquid metal, appearing quite docile.
Yun Ce slowly retreated two feet, and the Dragon Pearl moved two feet closer. Yun Ce used a wooden spike to push the Dragon Pearl away, but before he could retract the spike, it moved closer again. He pushed it away again, and it approached again. Each time he pushed it away, it came closer and closer to Yun Ce.
At this point, Yun Ce was very satisfied with the two treasures he had obtained, fused together.
He never expected to receive good things for free.
In his life experience, the only two good things he had received were his father and mother.
Only these two would treat him well unconditionally and without principle. As for the rest, like his great-grandfather Yun Linchuan’s kindness towards him, it always came with conditions.
Therefore, Yun Ce was very tolerant of the Dragon Pearl and liquid metal wanting to absorb his flesh and blood to strengthen themselves.
However, he still shifted his body slightly to the left, to make way for the owner of the pair of eyes behind him to come forward and seize the Dragon Pearl and liquid metal.
That beautiful little sow, though a pig, possessed a pair of captivating eyes. She seemed curious about everything, especially Yun Ce’s actions. She enjoyed snatching the food he found and liked him to help her prepare it.
The food Yun Ce found was often tastier than what they found themselves, and the food he prepared seemed to become even more delicious.
When Yun Ce started vomiting, she would lie by her nest and watch him.
When Yun Ce vomited out an egg and a chain from his mouth, her curiosity reached its peak.
Although she didn’t understand why the egg and chain had fused together, she instinctively felt it was something good.
When Yun Ce clearly avoided the egg, the little wild boar’s instinct for good things could no longer be suppressed. With a pounce, she snatched the Dragon Pearl with her mouth.
The Dragon Pearl offered no resistance, allowing the little wild boar to swallow it into her stomach.
The little wild boar that landed turned its head and let out a sharp squeal towards Yun Ce, its two unstained eyes filled with ferocity.
Yun Ce slowly retreated, stopping when he was four meters away from the little wild boar. He extended his hand towards the little wild boar, and a saber sliced through the pig’s belly, its hilt spinning as it fell into his palm.
The little wild boar stood there blankly. After a moment, it forcefully pawed the ground with its front hooves and collapsed, its internal organs spilling out of the ruptured wound.
The moonlight was too bright, falling on the freshly spilled blood of the little wild boar, casting a layer of light on the dark blood, giving the pool of pig blood a jewel-like sheen.
Its heart also flowed out, encased within two lobes of lung. It twitched a couple of times, pushing aside the pink lung lobes, and then ceased to move, like a prisoner who had been confined for a long time and could finally stretch their legs in the moonlight and rest properly.
Yun Ce watched the light in the little pig’s eyes slowly extinguish. There was no hatred, only an unsolvable bewilderment.
He had grown fond of this intelligent little wild boar, always believing that by following such a spirit, he could slowly familiarize himself with this new world.
Alas – it had eaten people.
Although he didn’t know whose skulls they belonged to, or what kind of humans, Yun Ce firmly classified himself in the human category. A wild boar that had eaten human flesh should not live in this world.
Of course, with the bright moon overhead, it was a good time for barbecue. Yun Ce did not skewer the little wild boar and place it over a fire. Instead, he dug a pit on the spot and buried it.
The experiment ultimately failed. The Dragon Pearl and liquid metal gained nothing from the little wild boar. The moment the little wild boar died, they flew out and remained suspended above Yun Ce’s head.
Yun Ce no longer had any intention of storing them in his stomach, especially after expending so much effort to vomit them out. Furthermore, these two entities did not seem entirely harmless, so a little extra caution was necessary.
Glancing at the large moon on the horizon, Yun Ce took out a prepared little wild boar from the Dragon Pearl, dug a pit in the ground, and began to roast pork.
The war on the other side of the mountain seemed to be in full swing. The mournful cries of wild boars mingled with another sound resembling bear roars, carrying far into the wilderness.
Only the shell of the little wild boar remained. When propped open with branches, its own fat would render and sizzle on the fire.
With the addition of chili peppers and salt, the taste was excellent.
This dish must be eaten while it’s roasting. By the time Yun Ce finished eating the meat from the sides of its belly, the four legs and back would also be mostly roasted.
With no Dragon Pearl or liquid metal in his stomach, Yun Ce ate the entire seven or eight jin (approximately 3.5-4 kg) roast piglet shell, and his stomach still seemed to have room.
He decided not to eat any more. He crawled into his makeshift grass nest, wrapped himself in a blanket, and prepared to sleep.
The Dragon Pearl hovered above his head. The liquid metal, seemingly aware it was unwelcome, had already burrowed into the Dragon Pearl.
Looking at the Dragon Pearl hesitantly suspended above his head, Yun Ce finally reached out again to touch it. The Dragon Pearl obediently nestled into Yun Ce’s palm, like a well-behaved child.
The Dragon Pearl had a pleasant texture, soft and overall resembling an egg without a shell. Yun Ce squeezed it firmly, and it did not break. Instead, it oozed out from between his fingers like a lump of clay.
Seeing that the Dragon Pearl offered no resistance, Yun Ce molded it into various shapes until he finally rolled it out into a thin sheet. He then wrapped it around his wrist, much like a bracer.
This was the greatest trust Yun Ce could place in the Dragon Pearl and liquid metal; he was willing to lose a hand for them.
