Chapter 9: The Team Grows_1

"Whether it's a black crow or a bat, when I captured them, I felt a faint will to resist."

"Does this mean that the stronger they are, the stronger their will to resist, and the lower the loyalty after they are captured?"

"But why does infusing them with spiritual energy yield different increases in loyalty?" Ye Feng frowned in thought.

Just then, the two sparrows he had healed came chirping and flying over again.

Through the capture ability, he could feel that these two little sparrows were growing more attached to him, and they felt very secure after coming close to him.

Sensing the emotions the little creatures emitted, Ye Feng had an epiphany, "Could it be that the weaker the creature is, the easier it is to increase the loyalty after receiving my help?"

The more Ye Feng thought about it, the more likely it seemed; after all, the weaker creatures faced harsh survival conditions in the wild and could easily become prey for others.

Providing them with protection and helping them to enhance their strength, it was only natural for their loyalty to skyrocket.

As for the stronger creatures, they were already predators in nature and could survive well without anyone's help.

In such a case, it made sense for the increase in loyalty to be less after receiving help.

Ye Feng quickly stopped dwelling on this issue. In his opinion, it was sufficient as long as the loyalty of the creatures he captured was not below 60%.

What he needed was simply that they would not betray him.

However, this train of thought did not last long. Just an hour later, he discovered something that gave him a headache.

The reason was his limited field of vision.

Although his height had reached 35 meters and his "vision" had greatly improved after breaking through to the Second Stage, even so, he could only see up to 3 kilometers away at most. Beyond that distance, things were unclear.

That is to say, if the animals he captured left this range, he would not be able to see what they were doing and thus unable to give orders in real-time.

He finally understood why after reaching 100% system loyalty, the ability for possession appeared.

Only through possession could he command these animals without the constraint of distance!

"It seems that continuously building rapport is something I cannot interrupt."

Ye Feng made some adjustments to his following plans.

...

Time silently passed, and an afternoon quickly went by.

When the afterglow of the setting sun cast a reddish hue over the valley,

six animals were neatly lined up in front of him.

Two sparrows, a black crow, a bat, along with a king cobra and a mouse.

A mutated king cobra and mutated mouse—these were his accomplishments for the afternoon.

Among the group, the strongest in cultivation was surprisingly the mutated mouse, which had reached the First Order Peak.

Of course, if it came to a real fight, the snake, as thick as a thigh and over 5 meters long, was definitely the strongest.

It also ranked second in realm, having reached the Late Stage of the First Order.

Ye Feng was not satisfied with his afternoon's harvest.

Apart from the king cobra, the other mutated beings were simply no match in a fight.

But this was unavoidable, as the location he was in was merely a valley near a city, not a nature reserve or a large forest. The number of animals was naturally low.

As for mutated animals, they were even rarer.

In the afternoon, Ye Feng also experimented with capturing non-mutated animals, trying to infuse them with spiritual energy to see if it could directly cause them to mutate.

But the results were not promising. These non-mutated animals seemed not to absorb the spiritual energy at all. The spiritual energy he infused was exhaled with their breath.

Ye Feng could actually understand this situation; if they were truly capable of absorbing spiritual energy, they would have likely mutated already.

"An entire afternoon has passed, and I haven't seen any of the creatures I want to capture."

"It seems I can only wait until the loyalty of these two sparrows reaches 100%, then use possession to search farther afield," Ye Feng sighed lightly as he spoke.

Actually, the animals on the ground weren't too bad. This was his home field, and in this valley, there was currently nothing that could threaten him.

But the sky was different; he needed to capture a sufficiently powerful bird to hold sway there.

Therefore, his target was the eagle.

He had seen eagles near Yang City, but they were extremely rare.

So, he couldn't be hasty and had to take it slow.

After the six mutated animals lined up, Ye Feng extended six tree roots, infusing their bodies with spiritual energy.

It is worth mentioning that these mutated beings absorbed spiritual energy at different rates, and it seemed there was some correlation with their combat abilities.

The two little sparrows could only absorb 2 Spirit Points per hour.

The mouse absorbed 3 Spirit Points per hour.

The black crow and the bat could absorb 4 Spirit Points per hour.

As for the fastest absorber of spiritual energy, it was of course the King Cobra, which could absorb 10 Spirit Points per hour.

Just the King Cobra alone had absorbed a full 30 Spirit Points from Ye Feng in just a few hours.

Of course, Ye Feng wasn't at a loss because, during that time, the creature had brought back 2 mice, 1 snake, and a pheasant for him.

Ye Feng had devoured more than 70 Spirit Points from these mutated beings, there was no question that he had profited immensely.

This was also why Ye Feng spared no effort in training his subordinates.

However, what slightly annoyed him was that the loyalty of these animals became increasingly difficult to improve as time went on.

After an afternoon, the two sparrows with the highest loyalty only increased by 5%, reaching 95%.

Furthermore, after Ye Feng had infused another 2 Spirit Points into them, he glanced at the loyalty and found it had only increased by 0.5%.

"Take it slow, no need to rush. It's only been one day since I became the World Tree, after all. I still have plenty of time," Ye Feng exhaled and sent the animals out to hunt for him once more.

Then he opened the system panel and took a glance.

Evolution Points: 39/40

Unknowingly, he had already accumulated 39 Evolution Points.

With one more Evolution Point, he could break through again.

"I thought my evolution speed would slow down after breaking through to Level 2, but I didn't expect it to remain this fast," a smile appeared on Ye Feng's face.

Compared to the First Order, the difficulty of evolving at the Second Stage had increased fourfold.

To accumulate 40 Evolution Points, one would need 400 Spiritual Points.

Originally, Ye Feng thought it would take at least half a day to evolve once.

But as his territory expanded and he acquired a group of subordinates, the speed of accumulating spiritual energy was terrifying.

This was still the case even though he had allocated a significant amount of spiritual energy to train his subordinates; otherwise, he would have evolved much earlier.

Of course, it wasn't slow now either. He looked around at the trees, and 202 tree roots simultaneously sprang into action, harvesting spiritual energy from each tree rapidly.

After about fifteen minutes, 48 Spirit Points had been added to his system panel.

"Very good, I can evolve again after I finish adding these points," Ye Feng said with pleasure.