However, Haoyuan did not immediately tighten his coils to the limit to violently crush it to death.
Like a seasoned hunter, he carefully felt the young hadrosaur's breathing.
Whenever it exhaled, Haoyuan tightened his grip with force, preventing it from inhaling.
While conserving his strength, he drove the young hadrosaur toward suffocation step by step.
With its rib cage unable to expand to take in air and its lungs unable to draw breath, the young hadrosaur would soon asphyxiate.
Yet Haoyuan was hunting in the vicinity of a hadrosaur herd.
Beside the young hadrosaur were many subadults and adults.
Seeing Haoyuan attack one of their kin, they instinctively moved to drive him off.
Haoyuan had no choice but to seize every passing second.
According to his estimates, his constricting strength should have been more than enough.
His body was three sizes larger and far thicker than others of his kind, augmented by the continuous evolutionary growth of his constricting power since birth.
If he still couldn't take down a young hadrosaur around 1.3 or 1.4 meters long, he would really feel like crying.
He believed in the divine power of his talent, Thought Evolution!
Yet the reality was that by the time those subadult and adult hadrosaurs charged up to drive him away, the young hadrosaur in his coils still hadn't suffocated!
How could this be?!
Haoyuan was stunned. His strength was clearly sufficient—were this young hadrosaur's bones simply too thick and sturdy?
If he had known, he would have chosen a smaller ornithopod instead. What a massive miscalculation...
In truth, Haoyuan's senses weren't wrong. His strength was indeed enough to strangle this young hadrosaur, provided he had just a little more time.
Unfortunately, the subadult and adult hadrosaurs had no intention of standing idly by.
Seeing his cooked duck about to fly away, Haoyuan refused to give up. He decided to hiss at the herd to intimidate them, buying enough time to finish strangling the young hadrosaur first.
Once their kin was dead, they certainly wouldn't care about the carcass, allowing him to safely claim his prize.
With that thought in mind, he—
“Haaah!!!”
The cold, sinister snake hiss he had expected never came. Instead, a deafening, majestic power erupted.
“ROAARRR!!!”
A violent gale swept across the ground before him, whipping up swirling sand, flying stones, and billowing dust.
The suffocating pressure and the gale blasting into their faces struck like a cataclysmic landslide, instantly freezing the subadult and adult hadrosaurs in their tracks.
The primal fear of apex carnivorous dinosaurs etched into their genes, paired with the mouthful of razor-sharp teeth Haoyuan revealed as he roared, sent shivers down their spines and made their legs tremble violently. In an instant, they lost every shred of courage, leaving only sheer terror to sprout, spread, and run rampant.
Soon, one of them whimpered in distress, crying out as it backed away before turning tail and bolting in absolute panic.
Spurred by this, the others panicked even more and scrambled to follow in utter disarray.
Fear quickly swept through the entire herd, sending them stampeding for their lives and kicking up plumes of yellow dust.
It even thoroughly spooked the other herbivorous dinosaurs grazing nearby. Assuming an apex predator had truly arrived, they all scattered in panic, kicking up dust and causing the earth to tremble under their pounding feet.
Soon, not a single dinosaur remained in the clearing before him.
Witnessing this, Haoyuan was completely dumbfounded.
At first, he had also assumed a massive carnivorous dinosaur had arrived.
Until he clearly realized that the sound had come from his own mouth.
In that moment, he was dazed, followed immediately by an uncontrollable surge of ecstasy.
“A dragon roar! That was a dragon roar, oh my god!”
Haoyuan was ecstatic.
He had thought the greatest change to his skull was the structural spatial vision granted by his dragon whiskers sensing airflow.
Never did he expect that the true payoff would be this dragon roar of absolute intimidation!
“This is way too cool!”
Haoyuan was brimming with excitement and shock.
The sheer volume and power of this dragon roar seemed completely abnormal.
It was overwhelmingly loud, and it had actually kicked up a gust of wind.
No matter how one looked at it, it was miraculous!
Could a normal carnivorous dinosaur do something like this?
Obviously not, right?
This was practically a superpower!
Haoyuan marveled in awe.
He never could have imagined that the dragon head produced by Thought Evolution would yield such an effect.
“Is it because of my own longing and mental image of dragons?”
Because in his subconscious, dragons were magical mythical creatures, had Thought Evolution imbued it with a touch of supernatural power?
“Isn't this way too magical and amazing?!”
Haoyuan couldn't help curling the corners of his mouth.
“This path is definitely the right one. I can evolve into a mythical creature—no...”
Haoyuan's gaze suddenly sharpened with determination.
“I am mythology itself!”
The bold thought surged forth from within, washing over his entire serpentine body with an exhilarating sense of release, as though every cell were cheering in celebration!
...
Name: Haoyuan
Race: Flood Dragon (Custom)
Evolution Path: 1. Large Body Size (Incomplete), 2. Claws (Incomplete)
Energy: 5
Haoyuan had discovered that his race could be modified, so he changed it.
It wasn't on a whim, either.
Mainly, not long after devouring that hadrosaur and while searching for a safe resting spot, he happened across an adult ancient snake of his own kind.
From the scent it gave off, it was a female.
In the past, whenever female snakes saw him, they would pounce eagerly like Hehuan Sect enchantresses finding a handsome cultivation furnace, coiling passionately around him to demand his genes.
But now, that female snake's eyes held only wariness and terror.
She actually hissed at him!
“Damn it, she doesn't even see me as one of her own anymore!”
Haoyuan was furious—and in his rage, utterly delighted!
“Hahaha, as expected of me! I truly have evolved!”
Since even ancient snakes no longer recognized him as one of them, his race had undoubtedly changed.
Thus, Haoyuan excitedly changed his race from Ancient Snake to Flood Dragon.
While flood dragons usually possessed claws, in his memory, a snake with horns on its head was also called a flood dragon, wasn't it?
This definitely counted as a flood dragon.
And since his head looked so much like a dragon's, it was definitely a flood dragon.
He certainly couldn't be compared to mere horned snakes.
He was a true flood dragon possessing dragon might and a dragon roar!
Thoroughly convincing himself, Haoyuan happily swapped Ancient Snake for Flood Dragon.
“The more I look at it, the better it looks!”
Looking at the words “Flood Dragon” on the panel, Haoyuan nodded in satisfaction.
He then glanced at the energy below and focused his attention on the claws column.
The panel's data instantly came into focus.
Evolution Path: Claws (5/250)
“From the looks of it, if I want to evolve claws, I'll need fifty hadrosaurs of that size.”
“However, factoring in daily bodily energy consumption, it might actually take fifty to sixty hadrosaurs?”
Daily survival, slithering, and hunting all consumed energy.
That energy couldn't simply appear out of thin air.
Thus, the panel data was dynamic.
It displayed real-time energy values.
For this reason, whenever he wasn't hunting, Haoyuan would rest as much as possible to maintain minimum energy expenditure and conserve energy.
Rate on N.U.
