Ling Chen sat cross-legged on the ground with a smile, waiting quietly for Tang Yinmeng's breathing to stabilize before he spoke.
"You are a smart person; you should be able to see how strong I am. You want revenge, and I can help you, but... what about the reward?"
"If you can't offer me satisfactory terms, I might... eat you, you know?"
"Uh... this..." Tang Yinmeng's body stiffened.
"I can wash clothes, cook, do many, many things..."
"Even... it's not impossible..."
As Tang Yinmeng spoke, her face suddenly turned red.
"So young, yet such unhealthy thoughts... Sigh, never mind, I'll give you a few choices."
Ling Chen smiled.
"First, be eaten by me. Although you're not very clean right now, I imagine you'd be quite good after being washed, perhaps very delicious."
Tang Yinmeng forced a smile, "Then... what about the second option?"
"The second option?"
Ling Chen chuckled, "The second option is to become my collection. Your face is very beautiful, perfectly suited for soaking in formaldehyde."
Tang Yinmeng swore that never in her life had she hated her face, which had once brought her countless compliments, as much as she did now.
Tang Yinmeng's face was pale, her lips trembled, but she was powerless to speak. Yet, the next moment, she felt as if she heard heavenly music.
"Of course, there's also a third option."
Ling Chen chuckled, seemingly very pleased with Tang Yinmeng's current reaction.
"After killing that scumbag, I want all the spirit artifacts on him... You should know what spirit artifacts are, right? Your scalpel is a type of spirit artifact."
"Also, didn't you say you could wash clothes and cook? Come be a servant at my house. Although there's no salary, three meals a day and eating your fill every day is certainly doable~"
Tang Yinmeng paused, then immediately pleaded, "I choose three, I choose three, please!"
Her eyes misty with tears, she threw herself into Ling Chen's arms. Her pitiful state was enough to stir protective instincts in almost any man in the world.
However, Ling Chen felt nothing, though a faint smile lingered on his face, because his true intentions lay elsewhere.
If any bystander had seen this scene, they would surely have cursed furiously,
"Tang Yinmeng, you fool! Can't you see he's trying to make you obediently create spirit artifacts without resistance?"
However, no narrator would pop out, and even if one did, Ling Chen would silence him forever.
The points he just mentioned were her entire value, including the servant part.
Ling Chen would be very busy in the coming days, with no time to clean the castle-like villa, which was over 2000 square meters, not including the garden.
It wasn't that Ling Chen was stingy with money; it was that he had already transformed the villa into a very powerful steel fortress before the apocalypse.
Some core components required regular maintenance, and how could Zhuang Han, that big oaf, possibly clean those things?
Ling Chen was too lazy to clean those things, and he also didn't have time to clean them. The most important thing right now was to continue searching for second-tier (Bone Eater Realm) mutated beasts.
Mutated beasts, or spirit beasts formed by the infiltration of spiritual energy, are a valuable cultivation resource, especially for evolvers. Putting aside everything else, just their flesh and blood can quickly increase an evolver's cultivation speed.
The purity of energy in the flesh and blood of a beast of the same tier is double that of an ability user!
Cultivators after the apocalypse, whether mutated beasts or ability users, or later the demon race and barren plants that appeared due to further spiritual energy infiltration, and even later the sub-humans and beast-kin,
Are all one level, one world; one tier, one universe. The power unleashed at each level varies greatly. For example, a level one Corpse Ghoul's claws can only tear through sheet metal, but a level thirty Corpse Ghoul can easily tear through slightly thicker bulletproof steel plates.
A level one Bone Eater Realm can punch through a concrete wall, while a level two can completely collapse a wall, not to mention the often more than tenfold difference between tiers.
And the higher the tier, the greater the difference between each level will become, eventually reaching the terrifying point of one level, one world; one tier, one universe.
Killing across tiers was extremely rare in the few hundred years after the apocalypse. Even if it did happen, it was only at low levels. At high levels, killing across tiers usually involved external means.
For example, Ling Chen's reverse scale pendant was an external means, not Ling Chen's own strength. If he truly faced a Shura with a quasi-Shura body, he would surely die miserably, not even being a match for one blow from the opponent; being killed with a single punch would be a normal occurrence.
Killing above one's level was as difficult as ascending to heaven, but now, if Ling Chen were to reach the third tier (Hundred Phases Realm) during this period, everything would be different.
Among evolvers, there is no friendship, no love, no tenderness; only mutual exploitation, mutual deception, and mutual slaughter.
The so-called alliances of evolvers are actually countless hordes of mutually exploiting rabble, because you never know if your companion next second will tear you into pieces and use you as nourishment for evolution.
Under the immense pressure of survival and death, evolvers desperately devoured flesh and blood. Some mentally fragile evolvers even chose suicide. All evolvers in the entire mutated circle were cultivating frantically, hunting frantically, only to ensure that one day they would not be eaten by their own kind.
This led to an extremely rapid cultivation speed for mutators in the early stages of the apocalypse, and their overall strength once surpassed ability users!
This, in turn, forced ability users to begin cultivating frantically. Although this situation only lasted for a few short months and eased somewhat when mutated beasts began appearing in large numbers, it still eliminated a small portion of ability users and mutators in this game of life and death.
Subconsciously, Ling Chen was still in the hands of the mutated Mu Xi at this time, barely surviving each day, living a life worse than death.
By the time he escaped, it had already been more than 30 days, but he still couldn't bear the cruelty of being eaten alive. The first Blood Ripple only appeared after he forced himself to eat a few pieces of meat.
Although he gained the Blood Ripple through cruel torment, he couldn't bring himself to be as decisive in killing as he was in this life.
At that time, he still had normal emotions: he pitied, he was kind, he would be afraid, he would cry, he would be angry, he would be sad, and he would find joy in suffering.
But hundreds of years later, his humanity gradually wore away with the passage of time, leaving only an unpredictable smiling face and a heart yearning for ultimate freedom. He used elegant actions to bury his ignoble past.
As for the little Tang Yinmeng in his arms, who was trying to please him, she was nothing more than a small, bland amusement, a slight seasoning in his life.
He had long since cultivated a heart without sorrow or form.
