Chapter Ninety-Six: The Civilization Battleship (Part Two)

"What? Impossible!" Seeing the idol pierced by the arrow, Ussara's figure turned to light and was teleported away.

Sun Meng let out a breath of relief. Had it not been for the special nature of the Hou Yi Bow, he would not even have been able to drive an arrow close to Ussara's idol. A domain ability was no joke, much less in a place already saturated with countless tendrils she had laid down.

Having personally sent away someone with whom he had been on decent terms, Sun Meng felt a faint heaviness in his heart. After copying the technical data from the two rooms, he obtained small spaceship technology and the manufacturing blueprint for an alien landing multifunction mecha.

On Earth, many people fell silent when they saw Sun Meng eliminate a contestant with whom he had previously cooperated.

After surviving the earlier beast tide, none of the remaining people were naive saints. They all knew that in future struggles between civilizations, bloodshed would be inevitable. Yet this scene, where people had been allies one moment and were then killing each other for survival the next, was still deeply shocking.

"At present, the technologies we've obtained are very useful," Xu Xiao said. "But from the looks of it, the threats we may face later could come from the vast cosmos beyond Earth, or even from other worlds. Otherwise, the flagship of the civilization from the last competition wouldn't have contained things like this."

As he looked over the technologies Sun Meng had acquired, he sank into thought.

By his reasoning, the path Earth civilization was now taking was clearly one of universal cultivation. Yet judging by the technologies offered as game rewards, why did it resemble the form of a technological cosmic civilization?

'There is still too little information,' Xu Xiao thought.

Meanwhile, Sun Meng scanned several ordinary technologies along the way. He encountered quite a few attacks, but he dealt with them all with ease.

What he had said before was no empty boast. Ordinary contestants truly were no match for him.

"Kokolalu has been eliminated. Eighteen contestants remain. Three hundred and seventy-eight technologies remain."

At the system announcement, Sun Meng stopped in the middle of raising his hand to scan.

He had not encountered Kokolalu or Muxingye on the way and had assumed they had not entered this special assessment. Now that he heard the news, he could not help but sigh.

"If there is a chance to form a true alliance later, then I should still ally with Kokolalu," Sun Meng thought. After all they had been through, he had come to regard Kokolalu and Muxingye as friends to some extent. Their tastes and preferences were similar enough, and both sides could accept cooperation between civilizations.

At that moment, a map appeared before everyone's eyes. It was the map of the entire ship, with the unscanned areas clearly marked.

After checking the nearest locations, Sun Meng moved off at once. There were still quite a few technologies left, and no one ever complained of having too many.

The other seventeen contestants also quickened their pace.

After scanning eight technologies in succession, Sun Meng met a new opponent: a contestant who looked like a savage, wielding a massive spiked club. If not for the high-tech armor on his body, Sun Meng might have taken him for a native of some primitive civilization.

"Bug, die!"

The savage-like contestant roared. As his club came crashing down, Sun Meng clearly felt the gravity around him change.

He expanded his domain, and within a radius of one meter the gravity returned to normal. That was the effect of his domain: for a short time, it restored his bow-and-arrow state to peak condition and kept it there.

A crimson arrow shot forth and directly pierced the savage contestant's weapon. The violent explosion sent him slamming into the wall, and the effect of the domain vanished with it.

"How is this possible? You can actually ignore my domain ability!"

The savage contestant's face was filled with shock. In the past, even when opponents managed to break free from the restraint of his domain, it was only by relying on their own domain abilities to force their way through. Sun Meng was the first to ignore it completely.

Sun Meng said nothing. He loosed another arrow and sent him back to the main city.

After scanning the room, he obtained a constant-temperature environment technology.

By this point, only five contestants remained, while thirty-three technologies were still unscanned.

A glance at the map showed Sun Meng that only five of those thirty-three technologies were clustered in one place; the rest were scattered sparsely elsewhere.

Two choices lay before him. The first was to go straight to the place where the five technologies were clustered, though there was a high chance of encountering other contestants there. The second was to search for the scattered technologies, though by the time he found them all, the contest would basically be over.

Taking out the ship's structural blueprint, Sun Meng compared it and found that the location containing the clustered technologies was a large area toward the rear of the ship's middle section, seemingly a residential zone.

Would the technologies inside be very useful?

Sun Meng hesitated, because he saw that one of the technologies in that area was probably, judging from the blueprint, a gravity device.

Although his mind and body had both evolved, his way of thinking had not improved much. In this regard, he still lacked Xu Xiao's clear, analytical ability.

'Let's go take a look at that residential area,' Sun Meng decided in the end. After all, there were five technologies there.

He sprinted all the way there, and upon entering the range of that large room, he saw that others had also arrived from two different directions.

With only five contestants left, three of them had gathered here.

No one gave the others a chance to speak. They attacked at once.

One of the two opponents suddenly expanded in size, and the fingers on both hands turned into ten whips that lashed toward Sun Meng and the others.

At the same time, another man snorted coldly. His body abruptly grew larger, and he seemed to turn to stone as he directly shook those whips away.

Sun Meng immediately drew his bow and nocked an arrow. The Third Arrow of the Setting Sun pierced the contestant's attack in an instant and sent him back to the main city.

The next moment, he felt a strong gust of wind blowing toward him. He released his domain, but it was broken through in an instant.

However, the stone-like contestant failed to land his surprise attack as well. The rebound force from the domain's collapse knocked him backward.

In his shocked state, Sun Meng's arrow had already pierced his chest.

After eliminating the two of them, Sun Meng finally let out a breath. He had not expected that someone could actually approach him so closely before he had time to react at all. He could clearly feel the feedback from his domain: the other party's domain ability was a tremendous destructive force, one that struck directly at others.

It could be said that if Sun Meng's domain were not special, anyone would have fallen to that ambush.

He began scanning, only to discover that after scanning one section, he received nothing but a damaged piece of technology.

Could it be that, because this was a complete whole, all the parts had to be combined together?

Though puzzled, Sun Meng did not stop. After all five parts had been scanned, the five sheets of technical drawings fused into one.

An ecological simulation pod.

This technology was equivalent to constructing a miniature ecosystem aboard the ship, a stable one at that. It would be tremendously useful both for cultivating life forms and for simulation experiments, and the technology behind it should also be applicable to planetary terraforming.

At that thought, Sun Meng grew excited. If planets could be transformed, did that mean Earth might one day be able to gather materials from other planets in space to expand its own size?

'Who would have thought that even a third-tier technology could be this powerful? What level, then, might fourth-tier or even higher technologies reach?'

"All technologies have been scanned. This assessment is concluded."

The system's voice rang out, pulling Sun Meng out of his reverie.

'So, as I expected, choosing this route meant giving up the remaining technologies,' Sun Meng thought, though he did not regret it. Compared with the other ordinary technologies, the ecological simulation pod was far more suited to Earth's civilization at present.

A beam of light fell, and the next moment Sun Meng appeared in the main city.

"The first phase of the assessment has concluded. A total of two thousand two hundred civilizations have passed. A one-month rest period will begin, and the wild public zones will be opened. Death in the public zones will return you to the main city, where points may be spent to revive. Assessment points have already been issued to your personal cards. The second phase will begin in one month."

Sun Meng exhaled in relief. At last it was over, and he suddenly felt much more relaxed.

When he returned to his room, a figure appeared before him and bowed.

"Lord!"