Chapter 17: Rainforest Arena
Drip—
A drop of sour water mixed with a foul stench slowly trickled down Jiang Ning’s cheek.
A scorching heat spread across her face. Her eyelashes trembled slightly as she slowly opened her eyes from the dizziness of the teleportation.
“!”
The moment she opened her eyes, a look of terror appeared on Jiang Ning’s face, and she curled up into a ball.
A silver-white Viper was coiled in the air above the giant, purplish-red umbrella-shaped tree she was leaning against.
The Silver Viper opened its fangs, its cold snake eyes fixed on the ‘prey’ before it.
Saliva dripped from its fangs, landing on the spot where she had just been lying.
Jiang Ning swallowed hard. The spot on her face where the Viper’s saliva had splashed was faintly aching.
Not far away.
The muscular man, who had also awakened in the rainforest arena, was startled by the Silver Viper as well.
Fortunately, the Silver Viper was still some distance from where he was.
As he breathed a sigh of relief, he looked towards the Silver Viper again.
He discovered that there seemed to be another person under the Silver Viper.
The muscular man took a closer look and found that the person was actually the kid he had been eyeing earlier.
He hadn’t expected the kid’s luck to be so bad, encountering a mutated beast right at the start.
Now, without him having to do anything, Jiang Ning would be eliminated early.
The muscular man’s fear gradually turned into joy, as he already considered Jiang Ning’s supplies as his own.
He had 10 more tubes of nutrient solution than others right from the start. It would be hard for him not to win!
In the audience stands.
After all the contestants had been teleported to the arena, dozens of large and small live broadcast screens began to appear on the cubic screen.
Some were fixed cameras around the arena, but most were aerial shots.
“As of now, all contestants are in position. Now let’s take a look at the situation in the arena.”
The host, Jin Jiu, took the microphone and quickly scanned all the scrolling live broadcast feeds. His attention was suddenly drawn to one feed, and he enlarged the aerial live broadcast of the rainforest where Jiang Ning was.
A look of regret appeared on Jin Jiu’s face. “Oh my, it seems this is truly unfortunate! This contestant actually encountered a B-rank mutated beast, the Silver Viper, right at the start.”
In the live broadcast, Jiang Ning’s body was trembling non-stop under the Viper’s hunt.
“One is a 12-year-old young contestant, and the other is a highly venomous B-rank mutated beast. The disparity between the two is simply too great. It seems we are about to welcome the first-ever eliminated contestant in Spark Rush Forward.” Jin Jiu shook his head, preparing to switch the live broadcast feed.
As a professional host, he was skilled at capturing all sorts of potential hot-topic shots.
But this comparison, which had no suspense at all, had no other explosive point besides holding the title of ‘first eliminated contestant’.
At this moment, the rescue team on standby in the arena also perked up, ready to launch a rescue operation as soon as Jiang Ning crushed the tinder.
“Wait!”
Jin Jiu suddenly stopped the action of switching.
In the feed, the Silver Viper launched an attack on Jiang Ning, biting towards her at an extremely fast speed.
“Why hasn’t she extinguished the tinder yet?”
The audience outside the screen, including Jin Jiu, began to feel anxious for Jiang Ning. Jin Jiu explained to the clueless audience outside the screen, “The Viper’s fangs can secrete a deadly poison. Once bitten, a specific serum must be injected immediately, or death will follow.”
“It’ll be too late soon. Why hasn’t she acted yet?” Jin Jiu’s tone was filled with confusion.
In the live broadcast feed.
The moment the Silver Viper was about to bite her, Jiang Ning quickly rolled to the right, dodging the Silver Viper’s fatal blow.
After steadying herself, she quietly stared at the Silver Viper.
The Silver Viper was a terrestrial creature, an expert at ambushing. Although its surface movements were slow, its attacks were actually fast, accurate, and ruthless, as just demonstrated.
The Silver Viper had almost no weaknesses. After mutation, the Silver Viper was even tougher, with its entire body covered in scales that looked like ice crystals.
If it was just her alone now…
In the instant Jiang Ning was thinking, the Silver Viper seized the opportunity, and its second attack fell.
Fortunately, this body’s flexibility was decent. Jiang Ning managed to dodge the attack by bending her soft body backward.
After two consecutive attacks missed, the Silver Viper did not attack rashly again. It retreated back into the tree.
There was no emotion in its vertical pupils.
It hadn’t expected this seemingly weak and harmless human to be so difficult to deal with.
Jiang Ning knew that blindly dodging was not a solution. She stared intently at the Silver Viper’s abdomen, which was coiled around a branch.
Strike a snake at its seven-inch point.
Mutated beasts should be no exception.
Many vines were entwined on the red umbrella tree. Jiang Ning pulled one, tested its sturdiness, and then casually tucked the vine into her waist.
Taking a few steps back, she used the vine to swing in the air.
Jiang Ning held the vine tightly with one hand and took out a short blade from her back with the other.
On her first try, the vine only carried her halfway.
A little more.
Jiang Ning tried again, this time taking two more steps back.
The Silver Viper sensed this human’s intention. It flicked its forked tongue and no longer lay in ambush, directly confronting Jiang Ning head-on.
Jiang Ning found the seven-inch point, raised her short blade, and stabbed towards it.
“…”
She had underestimated the hardness of the Silver Viper’s scales; her blade was stuck between them.
The Silver Viper flicked its tongue, its sharp fangs looking like they were about to swallow her whole.
Jiang Ning used all her strength and pressed down hard on the body of the short blade.
“Come on, give me some strength at this critical moment!” Jiang Ning muttered to herself.
She held her breath. The sun in her mind suddenly flashed, and an unknown force was injected into the short blade.
Just as the Silver Viper’s fangs were about to reach her, the short blade plunged fiercely into the Silver Viper’s seven-inch point.
Fearing it wasn’t deep enough, Jiang Ning even made a special effort to cut a semi-circle around the seven-inch point.
The Silver Viper’s head shook violently, its body rapidly swelled, and it let out a ‘hissing’ sound.
Jiang Ning’s arm was accidentally scratched by its scales.
She held onto the vine and moved away from the Silver Viper.
After a while.
The Silver Viper finally stopped moving.
And the skin on Jiang Ning’s arm, which had been cut by the Silver Viper, began to ooze black blood.
“Damn it!”
She was poisoned.
She needed to be injected with serum immediately.
But even if she crushed the tinder now, it would take the rescue team five minutes to arrive. In her current situation, she couldn’t even last three minutes.
In desperation, Jiang Ning suddenly thought of the tiny bit of psychic energy in her body.
Right, she still had the sun.
During the battle just now, it seemed that her psychic energy had gone into the short blade, which was what allowed her to kill the Silver Viper at the critical moment.
Jiang Ning tried to mobilize the psychic energy in her body, concentrating it towards the injured area.
Three minutes later.
Her wound had actually healed on its own!
This scene stunned the rescue personnel who were preparing to rush over.
What happened? How did it suddenly heal?
After healing her wound, Jiang Ning collapsed onto the ground, her body once again in a state of exhaustion.
Just now, she had truly squeezed out the last bit of psychic energy from her body.
Great, the 5000 star coins were out of reach, and she had used up a sun on the first day.
Jiang Ning sighed, stood up, and prepared to store the Silver Viper in her nano-ring.
She was counting on this B-rank mutated beast to recoup her losses.
The competition rules didn’t say that contestants couldn’t take out the mutated beasts they killed.
Her hand, which was about to store the beast, paused. Her eyes were suddenly flashed by something.
Jiang Ning raised her hand to shield her eyes and looked towards the flashing spot.
A green, round-handled object was hanging between the Silver Viper’s two horns.
“A Spark Stamp,” Jiang Ning raised an eyebrow.
Jiang Ning climbed up the tree trunk and successfully took a stamp engraved with a green flame from the Silver Viper’s head, storing it in her waist bag.
In the audience stands.
Everyone was stunned by this reversal.
Jin Jiu, as the host, was the first to react. He said with passion, “It’s born! The first contestant to obtain a Spark Stamp is born!”
The audience stands were silent.
After a while, someone said, “It’s rigged!”
“This person must be an actor sent in by the organizing committee.”
“How could a 12-year-old child take on a B-rank mutated beast alone? Winning is one thing, but to also happen to pick up a Spark Stamp? How could there be such a coincidence.”
“The acting is too obvious.”
Following these few sentences, the audience in the stands began to shout, “Rigged, rigged!”
At this moment, Jin Jiu also had difficulty controlling the emotions of so many audience members. He directly switched the live broadcast feed to another contestant who had obtained the second stamp in the desert area at the same time.
The few people from the organizing committee on the high platform were also at a loss.
They had sent ‘actors’ in, but not this one.
In the arena.
Jiang Ning was unaware of the changes in the audience stands. After cleaning up the site, she walked towards the low umbrella tree cluster in the distance.
“Had enough of watching?” Jiang Ning asked.
The muscular man, who had witnessed the entire process of Jiang Ning hunting the mutated beast, no longer dared to provoke this formidable figure.
The audience far away from the live broadcast feed hadn’t seen it clearly, but he had seen it clearly. Jiang Ning had used an ability to kill this mutated beast.
Awakening an ability at the age of twelve, this must be a child from some large family on a major planet.
And he had actually dared to have designs on her.
He must have been crazy.
Fortunately, he hadn’t made a move yet.
The muscular man smiled obsequiously. “I just happened to be teleported nearby. I have no designs on you, really.”
“Is that so? You don’t want my nutrient solution?” Jiang Ning retorted with a cold smile.
Before the competition officially started, this person’s eyes had directly treated her and Ke Lai as his supply starters.
“No, no, no, I never had any designs on your nutrient solution,” the muscular man shook his head repeatedly, even his form of address had changed to ‘you’ (honorific), as if he already regarded Jiang Ning as some important figure here for training.
Jiang Ning: “More words are useless.”
She deftly took his tinder from the muscular man’s waist bag.
“No, don’t,” the muscular man looked at her in terror.
Jiang Ning directly extinguished the tinder belonging to the muscular man.
【Contestant Han Ping’s tinder has been extinguished. He has lost his qualification to compete.】
A robotic voice echoed throughout the entire Mount Dora arena.
As the voice fell, a green teleportation array, identical to the one before the competition, formed under the muscular man Han Ping’s feet. The next second, he disappeared from before Jiang Ning.
Jiang Ning knew that he had already been teleported out of the competition venue.
She opened her clenched fist; the tinder had turned to ash in her palm.
Han Ping had shown great malice towards her from the very beginning. Although he was temporarily scared by her act of hunting the mutated beast and didn’t dare to make a move on her, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t have that thought again later.
So, it was better to just send him out at the very beginning.