He was silent for a moment before nodding. "Their people all give off a foul stench. I didn’t know why at first, but later I figured it out. They’re all Defiled."

Mr. Ya sighed. "Draco, you work for the Defiled. Do you have any idea what that means?"

A bitter look crossed Draco’s face. Of course he knew. The Defiled were traitors to humanity, having turned their backs on the human race. Yet even after learning who they were, he continued to work for them, all because he couldn’t part with the benefits.

He’d started out as just a poor kid from the slums. He got lucky and became an Evolver, but he was still at the very bottom of the food chain.

To make matters worse, he failed his second evolution, burying any hope for his future as an Evolver.

But then his luck turned. He found a Storage Ring packed with Evolution Items. By selling off its contents, he was able to afford the natural remedies needed to heal his injuries.

Later, by helping the Defiled procure supplies, he not only earned a handsome reward but could also skim a profit off the top.

That was how his life got better and better. He successfully completed his second evolution, bought a huge villa, married a beautiful wife, and constantly rotated through a series of mistresses...

The only thing was, there was no telling how many families the Defiled he’d helped had utterly destroyed, how many homes they’d shattered and lives they’d ruined.

Behind every vial of extract the Defiled consumed was a human life.

"Boss, what should we do with him?" Mr. Ya asked, looking at Su Ze.

Su Ze considered this for a moment. "Let’s keep him alive for now. We’ll see if we can use him as bait to lure out the Filth Earth Organization. Later, I’ll use the Charming Fox Tail to hypnotize him and make him temporarily forget what happened today."

When Draco heard he’d been spared, he immediately began kowtowing and stammering his thanks.

Su Ze hauled him to his feet. "You’re coming with us to the Mystical Mushroom Forest. You’re going to take us to the spot where you found that rotten corpse."

"Okay," Draco agreed, nodding frantically.

Su Ze wanted to go to the Mystical Mushroom Forest because a particular detail had sparked a theory in his mind.

Back then, when the short, dark-skinned man had found Draco, he seemed to be looking for something besides just the puzzle piece. That’s why he’d asked Draco if he’d found anything else near the body.

’Why would he assume the item he was looking for would be next to the body, rather than inside the Storage Ring?’

’Any normal treasure would almost certainly be kept inside a storage item.’

’Unless... it was something that couldn’t be put into a storage item. Or maybe something that only appears after death...’

’There was only one thing Su Ze could think of that fit that description: a Bloodline Crystal!’

After an Evolver dies, their Bloodline Crystal emerges from their body.

That meant it was impossible for someone to put their own Evolution Crystal into a Storage Ring while they were still alive.

Furthermore, the corpse Draco had found was already decaying and mangled, which meant it had been dead for quite a while.

Over such a long period, the Bloodline Crystal that emerged from the body could easily have been carried off by a mutated beast or even a regular animal.

That’s why the short, dark-skinned man hadn’t been surprised when Draco said he hadn’t seen a Bloodline Crystal.

He then recalled the Tier-One Dung-Eater that Draco had hunted, and the "Void" ability Mr. Ya had absorbed...

Su Ze had reason to suspect that the Bloodline Crystal from the corpse had been swallowed by that very Dung-Eater, only to be absorbed, by a strange twist of fate, by Mr. Ya.

’The short, dark-skinned man must have spent a lot of time searching the area where the body was found, hoping to find that Bloodline Crystal. Of course, his efforts were doomed to be in vain.’

Still, Su Ze wanted to go and see if he could find any other clues.

Mr. Ya then took Draco and Su Ze with him, using Earth Escape to travel to the Lianshui Rainforest, located southwest of Vita City, just outside the borders of Luofan Country.

As a Vita City native, Mr. Ya was very familiar with the area. He quickly led them to a peculiar region within the Lianshui Rainforest—the Mystical Mushroom Forest.

The Mystical Mushroom Forest was filled with all sorts of wild, mutated fungi. These Mutated Fungi possessed bizarre and incredibly dangerous abilities.