Super Gene

Han Sen was afraid something bad might happen, so he stuck to using the name San Mu. He had been there for a long time, so had grown accustomed to him under his assumed name. But once, during a conversation, he let slip that his real surname was Han.

Chu Ming and Qu Lanxi had been in the Third God’s Sanctuary for far too long, so it was unlikely they had heard of the name Han Sen. They actually believed Han was a fake surname he was trying to use to trick them.

Qu Lanxi thought about it quite a bit, though, trying to think of which family could raise someone so powerful.

But she didn’t let the thoughts consume her. All she knew, deep in her heart, was that Han Sen was a person she should cherish. It was worth being friends with him.

"San Mu, are you really going to try to tame this wind beast?" Chu Ming looked at Han Sen, who was squatting down near the wind beast. He believed him to be a madman.

"This beast hails from Thorn Forest. If I tame it, it can guide us through that knotted labyrinth, and help us avoid the more dangerous hotspots," Han Sen said.

"I suppose, but it is almost unheard of for humans to tame creatures. We aren’t like the spirits, to whom it tends to come easily. If Yu Yan failed to tame it, how will you find success?" Chu Ming asked inquisitively.

"I either do it or I don’t." Han Sen stroked what remained of the beast’s fur, and in response, it opened it bloody maw and tried to bite his hand.

But it was heavily injured, and it could barely move its head enough to reach. The best it could do was growl beneath its weakened, raspy breathing.

Han Sen continued to stroke the beast, and stroked its head. Then, he activated his holy light and used it to heal the wolf.

Qu Lanxi and Chu Ming both looked incredibly surprised, watching Han Sen heal it with a healing skill. Very few humans had this power, and women were the most likely to choose to learn that sort of hyper geno art. It was rare to see a big man like Han Sen choose such an ability.

But the power of the skill was still capped at Han Sen’s first and only opened gene lock. In the Third Sanctuary, its effectiveness was not nearly as high as he wanted it to be. It didn’t seem to do much good for the wind beast, at first.

After ten minutes of healing elapsed, however, there were some visible reductions to the severity of the wolf’s wounds. It was getting better.

Energy returned to the wind beast, and it tried to chomp Han Sen’s arm. He expected this, however, and so he made sure to dodge. He fired a coin at the wolf’s head in retaliation, and pinned it to the ground.

The beast was ruthless, and it wasn’t grateful for the healing it was receiving. It still wanted to attack Han Sen.

But it was still injured, and its movements had been inhibited by the weight of the coin. The wind blades were all crushed by Han Sen.

Han Sen fired a few more coins at the wolf, to completely suppress it. No longer could it cast wind blades, either. Alongside the continued healing, Han Sen fired more and more coins to prevent it from retaliating.

In this way, Han Sen spent the next few days. With it pinned, he continued healing the wolf and getting closer to earning its affection. But the beast was indeed wicked and cruel. If it wasn’t being suppressed by the coin, Han Sen would already have been ripped to shreds. He knew this was a process he could not rush, so he diligently kept with it, for long stretches of time each and every day.

Han Sen went to a hidden spot along the river and placed the dry mutant seed in the soil. He gave it a waterdrop, and when he returned the second day, it had already started to grow.

Han Sen tried to provide it with more waterdrops, but it could not receive more than one year’s worth of energy at a time. Providing it more energy would not help.

After it started to grow, it looked very much like a pine tree. But it was only one foot tall, and was beetroot red. Every day, when Han Sen came back, he gave the tree a year’s worth of energy. Its size always remained the same, and the only visible change was how red the tree was becoming.

Still, Han Sen believed this to be for the best. If it was a big tree, it’d be discovered far more easily.

He didn’t want it to end up like the Dragon-Blood Tree, which was discovered even within the confines of their yard. A small tree such as this would be difficult to find, and that was ideal for him.

But mutant gene plants took over a hundred years to produce fruit, and he only had thirty years worth of energy. He did not have enough to make it fully grow.

All the wild gene plants within a few dozen miles had been harvested by Han Sen. If he wanted to collect more, he’d have to venture further. Quite possibly, he’d have to venture beneath the rotten boughs of Thorn Forest.

"If I follow the stream, I should be fine." Han Sen decided to follow the stream up through the forest to find the plants he wanted.

He walked another dozen miles and noticed the presence of many wild geno plants growing along the banks of the river. There were around thirty in total, and Han Sen managed to gather another twenty years of life-giving waterdrops.

After harvesting those, locating more only proved more difficult. This time, instead of continuing upstream, he went downstream. He stuck to following the river, as there would not be many geno plants if he ventured away from it.

"I need to tame the beast sooner, if I want to venture deeper into this forest." Han Sen felt annoyed.

The wind beast soul had proven even harder to train than Han Sen first believed, and it failed to respond and become tame through the kindness he was showing it. If neither kindness nor cruelty quelled its hostility, Han Sen was going to run out of options.

"Hmm, so what other ways can I try to tame it?" Han Sen pondered, on his return to the quaint cabin of home. As he approached the wind beast, it cast gusts of bladed winds.

But as usual, Han Sen was able to break them all with a punch. He saw a coin on the beast had broken, so he made sure to add a few more.

"I have heard some people eat and sleep with creatures. If they lived with them long enough, the creature would believe it was of the same kind. Hmm, should I try doing that?" When he turned to look at vicious, drooling maw of the beast, Han Sen dropped the idea.

But as he did, another idea cropped into Han Sen’s mind. He spoke to the beast and said out loud to himself, "Perhaps this might work."