The visitors were the Rat King and his mate.
Accompanying them was a small, level-one rat.
Looking at the massive Rat King, whose size dwarfed even an elephant, Ye Zhongming couldn’t help but show a puzzled expression.
The Rat King and his primary mate had both reached level seven in their mutations and were on the verge of evolving to level eight. Ye Zhongming could even sense the immense power radiating from their bodies.
They could evolve to level eight at any moment, but they were deliberately suppressing it!
This left Ye Zhongming even more confused. Mutated lifeforms’ desire for evolution and power was no less intense than evolved ones. In fact, given their harsher living conditions, these were their very means of survival. Humans had all sorts of desires, but for mutated lifeforms, life’s meaning boiled down to evolution and reproduction. Their daily activities could be summed up as eating and mating.
So, what was making these two giant rats suppress their levels?
Earlier, while crafting equipment, Ye Zhongming had suddenly received a mental signal from the Rat King, transmitted from beneath the ground outside the mountain. He had initially thought they were having trouble with their expansion and had come to ask for help. But now, it seemed that wasn’t the case at all.
The Rat King and his mate lay prostrate before Ye Zhongming, with no guards except for the small level-one rat. This was undoubtedly a gesture of goodwill. This was quite remarkable for a species as timid as rats, who usually had hundreds of thousands of followers even when going to relieve themselves.
Ye Zhongming found it amusing. While mutated rats inherited some of the traits of their original species, such as timidity, this was only relative. Especially for a Rat King of this level, who had fought countless battles to reach his position, Ye Zhongming believed they were cautious, but not to the point of trembling in fear. After all, whether it was him, Xia Bai, the dragon Yangos in the sky, or the earth dragon Yellow Ball on the ground, they could easily kill the Rat King and his mate if they were unprotected. But trembling to this extent? Ye Zhongming didn’t buy it.
This was an act put on for his benefit.
“This… for you,” a vague mental communication entered Ye Zhongming’s consciousness, drawing his attention to the small rat that the Rat King had pushed forward. The little rat was looking around with its small eyes, seemingly indifferent.
“Huh?”
At first, Ye Zhongming hadn’t paid much attention, thinking it was just another special offspring of the Rat King’s colony. But upon closer inspection, he noticed something unusual.
He picked up the small rat, which was now only the size of his palm, and examined it carefully. What he discovered surprised him.
Ye Zhongming detected at least three distinct lifeform characteristics in this little rat.
The first was draconic. Ye Zhongming was very familiar with this, having spent so much time with Yangos, who had repeatedly evolved to level eight. He knew the aura and traits of dragons well. On this little rat, he felt the shape of dragon wings beneath the skin on its sides!
They were unmistakably dragon wings, almost identical to Yangos’s!
A rat with dragon genes?
No matter how much it mutated, this was impossible. The only explanation was that this rat was either a descendant of one of Liu Zhenghong’s experiments or the rats had somehow absorbed the genes of Yangos or another dragon-like creature.
Either way, Ye Zhongming couldn’t help but feel a sense of respect for these rats.
Their adaptability and openness to altering their very essence were traits other lifeforms lacked.
No one wanted to become “something else.”
Humans were especially resistant to this. While some people had transformed themselves into unrecognizable beings, the vast majority opposed such changes.
Besides the draconic traits, Ye Zhongming also found human characteristics in this little rat.
Its limbs.
Though they were still small, it was clear that the hind limbs were human-like legs, and the forelimbs were human-like arms. They were too thin at this stage, making them look somewhat deformed.
Ye Zhongming glanced at the Rat King, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.
The Rat King immediately sent a flurry of chaotic, anxious mental signals, likely trying to explain the situation.
Ye Zhongming waved his hand.
He wasn’t concerned about how the Rat King obtained these human genes. What mattered was whether they threatened Cloud Peak.
At least for now, these rats hadn’t shown any signs of being a threat to Cloud Peak.
The last characteristic was something Ye Zhongming couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t rat-like. On both sides of its neck were three thin, scar-like white lines. These areas lacked the white fur covering the rest of its body, leaving only bare skin. Its tail was similarly bare, like the six marks on its neck, and disproportionately thick compared to its body.
Of course, what surprised Ye Zhongming even more was the energy contained within this little creature. It was far beyond what a level-one mutant lifeform should possess, almost on par with a level-three lifeform.
“Very, promising, grow, strong, want to give, you,” the Rat King sent another mental message. Then it called out to its mate, who stood up after receiving Ye Zhongming’s permission. Everyone could now see that the female rat had a pouch-like structure on her lower abdomen, similar to a kangaroo’s. She reached into it with her forelimbs and pulled out a bag made of animal skin, about the size of an adult human, and placed it respectfully in front of Ye Zhongming.
Many of the evolved present glanced curiously at the pouch, thinking how much it could hold. Carrying such a large bag around must be quite a hassle.
A female guard soldier cautiously opened the bag, revealing its contents.
It was filled to the brim with scrolls.
Ye Zhongming set the little rat, which had grown quite affectionate toward him, aside and approached the bag. He flipped through the scrolls and found that they were all mental-type scrolls—over a hundred!
Most were skill scrolls related to mental abilities, with a few being mental-type job scrolls. When Ye Zhongming found contract scrolls among them, he began to understand the Rat King’s intentions.
“You’re giving it to me as a battle pet?” Ye Zhongming pointed at the little rat and asked the Rat King.
Though highly intelligent, the Rat King wasn’t human and couldn’t fully grasp the nuances of scrolls meant for humans. It only knew that battle pet contract scrolls were mental-type, so it had collected these scrolls and brought them to Ye Zhongming.
Seeing that Ye Zhongming understood, the Rat King became extremely excited, forgetting itself and dancing around, even standing up on its hind legs. At over four meters long, it was a massive beast. When it noticed Ye Zhongming looking up at it, it quickly calmed down, lay back on the ground, and put on a pleading expression.
“But why?” Ye Zhongming asked, squinting his eyes.