Chapter 16: A Porcupine Is Still a Pig, Right?

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The crocodile was swallowing a patterned snake, yet its eyes kept darting toward the yelping puppies.

Lu Li hurriedly turned its head aside. “Brother Croc, once we’ve eaten the snake, we can’t eat the dogs too!”

The Yangtze alligator crawled away impatiently, heaved up a rock, and gulped it down with a thud before beginning to pick through the surrounding area.

Seeing that it had given up on the puppies, Lu Li breathed a sigh of relief. The little boy’s body had stopped convulsing as well. Though the air he exhaled was still hot, his body temperature was clearly beginning to fall. The puppies quieted down too, huddling together and starting to snore softly.

She carried the four little ones around, intending to look for their mother, when the crocodile suddenly sprang to her side. The willow branches burst outward, instantly putting the whole area on alert.

Lu Li quickly shielded the child and gripped her dagger.

A rustling sound arose, and the bushes began to tremble. Lu Li wrapped the children in willow branches and carefully assumed a defensive stance.

A blackish-gray snout poked out, its whiskers trembling incessantly. Its piglike nose sniffed vigorously at the air. Apparently sensing nothing that posed a threat, it extended a huge ratlike head with a flamboyant punk-rock crest, waggled its rump, and swaggered out. It did not even raise its quills.

Its tiny, black-bean eyes spun as they fixed on Lu Li. Its short legs stepped on the leaves, producing a crisp crackle, while its black-and-white stubby tail trembled nonstop. Seeing its smug expression, Lu Li could not help laughing. Clearly, its coat of long quills had never let it suffer a loss.

The porcupine, weighing more than a dozen pounds, held a branch between its two front teeth. It twisted and turned its way to the patch of open ground farthest from Lu Li, lowered its enormous backside, and sprawled on the ground. Opening its mouth, it hugged the branch with both paws, raised its triangular ears, and began chewing, its cheeks bulging rhythmically.

Lu Li approached as quietly as possible, afraid of frightening it away. She could only carry out the scan within the detector’s maximum permitted range.

Was it contribution points or worthless trash? Once again, everything hinged on this one attempt. As she waited for the scan results, Lu Li nervously swallowed again and again.

Seventeen percent. A hundred thousand contribution points seemed to be beckoning to her just ahead. Lu Li steadied her excitement and called out, “Sister Willow, could you weave me a sturdy basket?”

The willow branches touching the target animal lifted high into the air but did not move. Brother Croc had never seen such a strange thing either; it opened its jaws wide, its four limbs twitching restlessly.

Lu Li was not as fond of courting death as they were. After asking Sister Willow which tree was the hardest, she carried the little ones behind it and used the willow branches to follow the system’s tutorial on weaving a basket.

The willow branch around her wrist, helpless before Lu Li’s slack attitude, was dragged behind the tree with great reluctance. Yet the pointed tips of its leaves secretly poked out.

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Following the system’s instructions, Lu Li’s hands never stopped moving, but her attention had drifted to the battlefield.

The black-and-white creature was nearly a meter long. The slender mane around its head and neck curled docilely against its body, while its black-and-white quills lay smoothly along its back. It was currently hugging the branch and savoring it carefully, looking entirely focused and completely nonaggressive.

The Yangtze alligator cautiously lifted a claw and edged closer. The porcupine instantly curled into a ball, its quills exploding outward, yet it continued clutching the branch, cheeks puffed as its jaws worked without pause. Seeing that it still showed no intention of attacking, the crocodile turned toward Lu Li, a trace of worry passing through its eyes.

Meeting its gaze, Lu Li was puzzled. Wasn’t it trying to catch the porcupine? Why was it looking at her as though it wanted to sigh?

It crept a little closer. The porcupine still did not attack. Once it had judged the distance, the Yangtze alligator suddenly slammed its tail against the ground, propelling its body forward. With its jaws wide open, it twisted around and pounced at the porcupine, apparently intending to swallow it whole.

“Wait! Brother Croc, don’t!”

Lu Li, who had been watching the battle closely, hurriedly cried out to stop it. But the crocodile’s jaws snapped shut the instant they touched their prey, and the porcupine’s quills shot outward at the same moment.

The victor was decided almost in the blink of an eye.

Under the force of the crocodile’s tremendous bite, the densely packed quills nearly pierced straight through its jaws. Brother Croc, who had looked so mighty moments before, convulsed in the throat, then flung its mouth open and let out a howl of agony.

Quills covered the inside and outside of its mouth. The ones launched by the porcupine had pierced its tough scales and sunk deep into the flesh beneath. The inside of its mouth had made the most contact with the porcupine, and because it had clamped its jaws shut at the instant the quills struck, it could only force its mouth open while enduring the pain. One section, covered in barbs, remained lodged inside, while the other end tore free from its flesh, leaving punctures that gushed blood.

The porcupine quickly retreated after attacking the alligator. Clearly, it was an extraordinarily powerful mutant, possessing both tremendous speed and formidable durability.

The Yangtze alligator, its swollen mouth dripping blood and bristling with quills, retreated from the porcupine. The porcupine finished eating the branch in its paws, shook its quill-covered body, rose to its feet, and began pursuing the alligator step by step.

The Yangtze alligator had only undergone a size mutation and was utterly outmatched. It fled desperately.

The porcupine kept its quills raised and darted around it from every direction. Tormented into frustration, the alligator instinctively lifted a claw to swat at it. The pain in its mouth brought it back to its senses, and it abruptly stopped—but the porcupine slammed its body into the raised limb.

“Mm-hmm~”

The quills drove into the claw that had been thrust toward them. The Yangtze alligator howled in pain and could no longer lower its injured left foreleg, leaving it raised high in the air.

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Thanks to its formidable defensive mechanism, the porcupine had virtually no natural enemies.

Having never suffered a setback, it now prowled smugly around the alligator’s feet, provoking and taunting it, luring it into touching the quills so it could be stabbed once again.

The Yangtze alligator was nearly driven mad. Even its snorts carried a hint of fear as it turned pleading eyes toward the willow branches, which were enjoying the spectacle without the slightest concern.

Lu Li was startled as well. She had thought Brother Croc would be able to win effortlessly, but as expected of a Yangtze alligator—even a mutated one—it had still lost in spectacular fashion.

She had never imagined it would lose to a porcupine, much less lose so miserably. She glanced at the ugly, lumpy basket in her hands, which was only half woven and inexplicably had too many or too few strands in places, and began to doubt whether it could ever hold the porcupine.

After watching to its heart’s content, the willow branch swayed twice, stretched its leaves, and finally consented to crawl down from Lu Li’s wrist.

Perhaps it was only her imagination, but Lu Li sensed a look of disdain from one of the branches.

The moment the willow branch moved, it wrapped around the timid porcupine that had been harassing the Yangtze alligator. The quills were disturbed and shot out in every direction.

Lu Li hurriedly ducked her head, barely evading the sudden attack. The Yangtze alligator, however, was not so fortunate. It had only just escaped the porcupine’s pestering, sexually suggestive harassment before quills from every direction pierced through the scales on its back and lodged in its flesh. It howled in pain without pause.

Several quills were also driven deeply into the willow branch, but judging from the branch’s agile movements, they seemed to have no effect.

Lu Li relaxed slightly and regained some confidence in her basket. But before long, she could no longer smile.

The porcupine moved with astonishing speed. It seized the willow branch that had reached toward it and stuffed it into its mouth, pinning it in place with its two front teeth. Its eyes gleamed as it stared at the willow branches surrounding Lu Li, all waiting for orders, and saliva poured from its mouth.

The captured branch struggled desperately. The willow whip lashed the porcupine again and again, sending quills flying across the ground.

Unable to catch any of the other branches, the porcupine chewed away at the one in its mouth, its beady eyes fixed on Lu Li and shining brightly.

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