This desire for survival was like the emotions of a pnt. It also felt somewhat simir to the emotions of mushrooms or System's old slime friends.

  System soon found a fist-sized piece of meat among the scattered pieces of meat that was trembling slightly. After he found it, he could even more clearly feel a faint emotion from the meat as if its life was about to end.

  He used his tentacles' [Perception] ability to inspect the piece of meat. After not finding anything abnormal, he tore off some of the meat's flesh and put it in his mouth.

  The meat's fvor was still the sweet and spicy taste typical of Abyss creatures, but it also contained some undead foulness. However, compared to the other pieces of meat scattered on the ground, the stench of the undead attached to this piece of meat was very light.

  Although the piece of meat's flesh and blood were filled with the chaotic aura of the Abyss, System found that the emotions of the meat itself were very simple. Like ordinary pnts, it only possessed two desires—to survive and to grow.

  System suddenly had an idea, and a faint green light appeared around his tentacles, which was the druidic [Healing Power].

  With the appearance of the green light, the trembling piece of meat in System's tentacles began to calm down, no longer emitting wailing emotions like before.

  The life force from [Healing Power] soon eliminated the undead stench from the meat. The meat regained its calmness, and its emotions became like those of a pnt seed. Only when System hit it hard with his tentacles would it emit some subtle emotions again.

  Once he noticed that the piece of meat behaved simir to a pnt seed, System's tentacles began to glow with a slightly darker green light. This time, instead of using [Healing Power], he was using a different ability—[Pnt Growth].

  The effect of [Pnt Growth] seemed to be more significant than the effect of [Healing Power]. He watched as the piece of meat grasped in his tentacles began to wriggle rapidly. Before long, fleshy roots began sprouting from the meat.

  Thanks to System's healing actions, the piece of meat that should have died had come back to life.

  In addition, after the fleshy roots had sprouted from the piece of meat, System's [Pnt Growth] ability seemed to have formed an inexplicable connection between him and the meat.

  For example, if some of the piece of meat's fleshy roots were torn off, System would sense it as long as the distance between the two of them wasn't too far.

  He still couldn't fully understand why this connection had been formed, but if his guess was correct, his druidic power had likely pyed a role.

  It was precisely because of this special connection between them that System had conflicting ideas about how to deal with the piece of meat.

  Generally speaking, taking part of this demonic insect nest back to the ant nest for cultivation was tantamount to cultivating a bomb that could explode at any time. Without even mentioning the centipede demons the demonic insect nest produced, the cultivated insect nest might attract the Death Knight again. That was definitely not a result System wanted to see.

  That was why his original pn had been to either throw the piece of meat away or kill and eat it.

  However, when he discovered that [Pnt Growth] had a wonderful interaction with the demonic insect nest, he suddenly had other ideas.

  If he continued using [Pnt Growth] and formed a deeper connection with the demonic insect nest, could he control the demon centipedes it produced?

  Once System had that idea, it lingered in his mind.

  ...

  Taking the piece of meat back to the nest was likely to cause unpredictable disasters, but at the same time, he was reluctant not to do so.

  While System was struggling to decide, he suddenly had an epiphany and immediately figured out a solution.

  Why was he so worried? There was no need to bring the piece of meat back to the nest.

  It only took Excavator a few dozen minutes to dig a hundred-meter-deep underground passage. With her help, System could build a research base a few kilometers away from the ant nest to study the demon insect nest.

  With his flying speed, flying a few kilometers only took a few minutes, so traveling between the two locations wouldn't take much time.

  This way, even if the Death Knight showed up to destroy the demon insect nest, there wouldn't be any impact on the ant nest.

  ...

  System soon began implementing his pn. With Excavator's help, he successfully built a hundred-meter-deep experimental base five kilometers away from the ant nest where he could cultivate the demon insect nest.

  He found that cultivating the nest was very simple, as there was no need to provide food for the fleshy roots. They also didn't need to absorb sunlight. Instead, the roots grew by plundering nutrients from the soil like a pnt.

  After only one day, even without System using [Pnt Growth], the mass of fleshy roots sprouting from the meat had grown one third rger. The roots had spread out like the branches of a pnt after growing about ten centimeters over the course of the day.

  By observing the growth of the demonic insect nest, System also learned why there had been such a huge hole underground where the nest had originally been located; it had been left behind after the fleshy roots had absorbed the surrounding soil.

  System's understanding of the demonic insect nest constantly deepened as he spent several more days cultivating it. Eventually, he realized that the nest was cking something very important.

  He had used [Pnt Growth] to cultivate the nest for seven days, and the nest had grown rapidly, reaching a diameter of nearly half a meter. The fleshy roots on the outside had grown to a length of about seven meters, while the base of the fleshy roots had become as thick as a baby's arm.

  However, System found that the demonic insect nest he was cultivating didn't have the ability to produce eggs. Even if it grew bigger, it would only reproduce like a potato, expanding from a single nest into a cluster of nests.

  The nest seemed to need something special to activate it. Without that special activator, it would never be able to produce eggs. It could only grow aimlessly by absorbing soil like a strange pnt or mushroom.

  After coming to that realization, System suspended his research on the demonic insect nest. At the same time, in order to prevent the nest he'd cultivated from multiplying rapidly in a short period of time, he decided to clean up part of the nest's fleshy roots every once in a while.

  Soon after he finalized his pns, System's [Intuition] gave him an inexplicable feeling, and his antennae picked up a strange, yet familiar, scent.

  Ying had returned from the Abyss.