Lucas sighed as he looked at the lifeless yellow insect.

Killing the insect was quick and effortless, but it pained Lucas's heart.

The second bus was destroyed, almost beyond repair. It would require a lot of resources to fix.

Was it worth killing this insect after all?

"Can this insect's shell repair the bus?" Lucas asked the system in his mind, without even considering digging out the insect's nucleus.

If repairing the bus required the yellow insect nucleus, Lucas couldn't be bothered to dig it out. After all, the system would take care of it.

This time, the system didn't respond but instead displayed a panel showing the three-dimensional blueprint of the bus at that moment.

Starting from the windshield, the front of the bus was compressed all the way to a position behind the driver's seat.

Looking at the blueprint, Lucas clenched his teeth with a tinge of heartache.

Many of the previously added "+" signs reappeared, indicating that they needed to be added again to initiate the repair process.

The bus was significantly damaged, almost downgraded.

Heartbreaking!

Lucas closed the panel in frustration, instructed the mute girl to keep watch, and began digging out the insect nucleus with a heavy knife.

The heavy knife couldn't leave a mark on the yellow insect's carapace, so Lucas gave up.

Even the abdominal carapace was impenetrable to the heavy knife.

Lucas felt a bit desperate.

"Can you just take away the whole insect and settle my account?" Lucas came up with an idea for the system.

[The host should dig out the nucleus themselves. If the insect carapace is taken directly, the nucleus will not be counted.]

Sure enough, Lucas heard the system's response.

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Lucas felt like the system was indirectly urging him to improve his strength so that he wouldn't struggle to dig out the nucleus.

Standing by the side of the yellow insect, Lucas felt somewhat helpless.

The weapons he possessed couldn't even damage the insect carapace.

After circling around the insect a few times, Lucas's gaze landed on the insect's head, and a sudden idea emerged.

Lucas climbed into the bus through the skylight, opened the damaged medical room, and took out several grenades.

It took him more than ten minutes to use the heavy knife to create a hole in the mouth of the yellow insect.

A substantial amount of colorful insect innards were scooped out.

Suppressing his disgust, Lucas inserted a grenade directly into the hole.

Lucas knew that the explosion power of the grenade wouldn't damage the yellow insect nucleus. He trusted the grenade to explode inside the insect's body.

Lucas also knew that the grenade wouldn't be able to blast through the insect's carapace.

But none of that mattered.

After the first grenade exploded inside the insect's body, Lucas took the mute girl's dual blades and continued to extract the innards from the hole.

He dug for a while and threw another grenade inside.

After each grenade explosion, he continued digging.

No matter how tough the insect's exoskeleton was, its internal body was still made of flesh and blood.

In this way, almost all of the yellow insect's innards were pulverized by three grenades.

It took over half an hour, but the nucleus was finally dug out.

The yellow nucleus was about the same size as the red nucleus, just a different color.

Without resting, Lucas immediately opened the bus blueprint and had the system collect the insect carapace.

Lucas wasn't sure how much value the yellow insect nucleus could bring to the bus's upgrade and modification. But at least, the bus was restored to its original state.

After refreshing the blueprint, Lucas saw the bus in pristine condition.

Not bad at all. The insect carapace was enough to repair the bus.

Lucas was quite satisfied. After all, he had obtained the yellow insect nucleus as a tangible reward.

"Not a loss!"

Lucas directly exchanged for a yellow capsule and opened it.

[Congratulations to the host for obtaining a bag of thorn seeds.]

[Congratulations to the host for increasing skin hardness. Skin hardness +10.]

Lucas clicked on his attributes.

Skin hardness: 93 (non-human, 50% chance of immunity to red-level infections and insect infections.)

Suddenly, Lucas had a hunch that if his skin hardness exceeded 100, his body might undergo a significant transformation.

He clicked on the panel again.

[Thorn Seeds x10]

Can grow in any soil without sunlight.

This indicated something to Lucas, but he was a bit confused and felt like nothing had been said.

Was this seed meant to be eaten or used for something else?

Unable to figure it out, Lucas directly took out one of the thorn seeds and threw it into a level-one nutrient-rich soil.

He signaled to the mute girl to board the bus, preparing to return to the community.

This area didn't give Lucas a good feeling. He had a sense that there might be dangerous things lurking in the darkness that he couldn't handle.

In this reborn post-apocalyptic world, many things were different from his previous life. Lucas no longer dared to easily rely on his eleven years of experience from his past life to judge certain things.

Without the expected gains, Lucas quickly returned to the villa community.

As Lucas was about to get off the car, he noticed a green seedling growing in the nutrient-rich soil.

Immediately, Lucas's interest was piqued.

Originally, he wasn't very satisfied with using a yellow capsule to obtain this somewhat mysterious seed. But Lucas didn't expect the seed to sprout so quickly.

Without hesitation, Lucas quickly pulled out a cucumber seedling next to the green sprout and moved the nutrient-rich soil directly underneath the bus.

This action by Lucas attracted everyone's attention.

"Sir, what kind of food are you planting?" A curious boy asked Lucas, thinking it was some kind of crop.

Lucas took out a cigarette from his cigarette case and put it in his mouth.

"Nobody say a word, just watch."

Lucas didn't know what this seed was either, so he patiently waited for it to grow.

While everyone was talking, the green sprout surprisingly grew visibly fast. In just five minutes, it grew to over one meter tall.

In the gaze of everyone, the green sprout, which originally had only two tender leaves, began to branch out.

Branching out further...

Ten minutes later, the sprout had grown over three meters tall, with thirty to forty branches covered in sharp thorns. It had transformed into a plant that was completely black in appearance.