Chapter 017: [Accumulated Lifespan: 1,343 Years]

A slightly hoarse voice sounded, causing Tang Mubai to pause and turn to look at the young man lying on the ground, gasping for breath.

“Is there something you need?” Tang Mubai asked calmly.

“Th-thank you…” the young man stammered, “Thank you… for earlier. My name is Yang Kai. C-could I… join your… team?”

After forcing out the sentence, Yang Kai’s face flushed red. He turned his head away, not daring to meet Tang Mubai’s eyes.

The others nearby had heard the exchange and now fixed Tang Mubai with fervent gazes. His earlier display had won their utter admiration. If they could join forces with Tang Mubai, wouldn’t hunting the eight-legged sandworms be a simple task?

Tang Mubai chuckled softly. “Sorry, but I prefer to work alone.”

He spoke the truth. For Tang Mubai, hunting sandworms posed no difficulty. If it had been earlier, he might not have minded teaming up with Yang Kai to see what kind of person he was. But now, Tang Mubai had more pressing matters.

One eight-legged sandworm had just extended his lifespan by three and a half years! What about ten? Twenty? Thirty? A hundred? How much more could he gain? With hundreds of years of life up for grabs, Tang Mubai had no interest in forming teams.

Yang Kai stiffened at the blunt refusal, then forced a smile and fell silent, sighing inwardly. He couldn’t blame Tang Mubai—after all, they were strangers. Why should Tang Mubai take him along? Saving him earlier had already been an act of kindness above and beyond. Yang Kai knew that without Tang Mubai’s intervention, he would have been eliminated and told to descend the mountain. Calling for help during the assessment amounted to forfeiting it altogether. For that alone, he owed Tang Mubai a great debt.

The conversation had caused a stir among the others, but no one spoke up. Silence reigned.

Seeing this, Tang Mubai considered for a moment and said, “Actually, hunting eight-legged sandworms isn’t hard. Don’t be fooled by their speed or size—their danger is limited. If you keep calm and stay alert, you can kill them easily enough!”

With those words, Tang Mubai turned and strode away.

The encouragement he offered might have seemed empty, little more than a perfunctory cheer, but it was the truth. The sandworms, though frightening in appearance, were not especially lethal. Their gaping maws harbored neither venom nor teeth. Even their stomach acids had only average corrosive properties. Even if someone were carelessly swallowed, they would not die instantly; as long as they escaped before suffocating, they could survive.

All one hundred or so candidates climbing the mountain had passed physical trials—each could throw a punch over three hundred kilograms, sprint a hundred meters in under nine seconds, and boasted reaction times beyond the norm. If they took the task seriously, the sandworms didn’t stand a chance.

Tang Mubai’s remarks were both a kind reminder and a means of facilitating the recovery of the life force that would dissipate from slain sandworms. What Yang Kai and the others chose to do after hearing him was no longer his concern.

With a light touch to the sand, he unleashed his Qinggong technique, "Soaring Over Grass." His body seemed to float as he leapt and swept away into the distance. In just a few moments, Tang Mubai vanished from Yang Kai and the others’ sight, reappearing at a bend in the trail.

Here, a team was besieging a sandworm. Three men and two women, working in concert, wielded weapons to drive the creature in circles as filthy blood gushed onto the ground. The sandworm was fast, but the five were no slouches. The leader, a middle-aged man, seemed experienced in animal combat, barking orders as they fought.

Suddenly—

[Detected dissipating life force. Recover now?]

“Yes.”

[Life force +41]

A message flashed through Tang Mubai’s mind. Focusing his gaze, he saw that the four-meter-long sandworm at the team’s center was already dead, thick streams of foul blood pouring from a severed wound, mixing with sand and soaking the creature’s head.

“Does the recovered life force depend on the sandworm’s length?” Tang Mubai mused. A sandworm over three meters yielded a life force in the thirties; a sandworm over four meters, in the forties. Was there a pattern?

After pondering for a moment, Tang Mubai shook his head and laughed. “What does it matter? I’m making a fortune either way!”

With that, he turned and happily circled around the group.

After a short walk—

[Detected dissipating life force. Recover now?]

“Yes.”

[Life force +38]

[Life force +42]

[Life force +31]

Three messages flashed through his mind in quick succession. Delighted, Tang Mubai looked up to see a short-haired, coldly beautiful woman ahead, brandishing a longsword as she fought three sandworms at once. Nearby, three sandworm corpses already lay in pools of blood.

Her movements were swift, fierce, and ruthless. She used no formal sword techniques, yet the sandworms fell one by one before her.

Soon, Tang Mubai’s lifespan had increased by another ten and a half years. Impressive! He sent a mental note of approval and, smiling, turned to leave.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a sandworm burrowing out of the ground right by the woman’s feet. She was panting, oblivious to the danger, and had yet to react. The sandworm’s jaws gaped to swallow her—

A sharp whistle split the air. An arrow shot through, striking the sandworm in the neck and pinning it at an angle to the ground, where it struggled briefly before dying.

[Detected dissipating life force. Recover now?]

“Yes.”

[Life force +49]

In a flash, Tang Mubai, who had loosed the arrow, allowed the corners of his mouth to lift in a faint smile.

“Who’s there?” The short-haired woman, startled, leapt to her right. Warily, she turned to Tang Mubai. As he approached, her expression shifted, about to speak, but then her eyes fell on the arrow embedded in the sandworm’s neck, and she froze in surprise.

“This is…”

Before she could finish, Tang Mubai reached her, produced a second rope, secured the sandworm, and dragged its corpse a short distance away to distinguish it from the ones she had slain. He gave her a brief nod of greeting, then turned to leave.

Though the woman was attractive, she was not to his taste. More importantly, the joy of recovering life force from fallen sandworms far outweighed any interest he might have had in her.

From then on, Tang Mubai began circling the mountainside, wandering across the barren hills in search of opportunity.

[Life force +34] [Life force +40] [Life force +32] [Life force +47] …

Prompts continued to flash through his mind, seconds or minutes apart without pause. As the recovered life force accumulated, Tang Mubai noted that, on average, each sandworm added about four years to his lifespan.

By the time he had recovered the life force from a hundred sandworms, his accumulated years surpassed five centuries.

When the assessment was nearly over, Tang Mubai finally killed his third sandworm. Dragging the bodies of three giant worms, he descended the barren mountain.

At this point, his total lifespan had exceeded a thousand years.

An astonishing one thousand three hundred and forty-three years!