"Take him away! Throw him into the 'Forest of Repentance'!" To maintain order, Lu Yuan didn't kill Ian on the spot. He waved his hand as if shooing a fly.
"This boy insulted an Immortal. Lock him up for three days to show him the wrath of Heaven!"
Two disciples grabbed Ian. One whispered with a sneer, "Kid, you've got guts. The forest is crawling with 'Spirit-Eating Mosquitoes.' In three days, there won't even be bone dust left of you."
Ian was tossed into a gray, hazy forest. It was truly shambolic. The ground was covered in rotting leaves, and the so-called "Spirit-Eating Mosquitoes" buzzed in the air.
But in Ian's eyes, these mosquitoes were perfect experimental subjects.
He observed for five minutes. These insects didn't bite for blood; they were attracted to this specific "decayed Qi." "I see. They sustain themselves by consuming the weak bio-electricity of the human body."
Ian reached into his pocket and pulled out a "paperweight" he had swiped from Lu Yuan's desk. It was a low-grade spirit stone.
He pulled out a multi-tool folding knife—the only thing he brought from Earth—and began carving into the stone.
"Since you all think cultivation is metaphysics, let me give you a lesson."
An hour later. Using spirit stone shards and dry branches, Ian built a crude... High-Voltage Bug Zapper.
By tapping into the unstable energy of the spirit stone and combining it with a specific geometric alignment, Ian created a small electromagnetic induction field.
Zzzzzzt—!
The Spirit-Eating Mosquitoes within a hundred meters rushed toward the trap like fanatics, turning into charred organic matter in flashes of miniature lightning.
Ian leaned against a tree, watching the scorched corpses pile up. "Three days? If I wanted to, I could format this entire forest's ecosystem."
The next morning. Wang Erdog, an outer sect disciple, arrived with a body bag. "A pity. This kid's skin looked clean; he might have made good fertilizer for the herb garden..."
His voice stopped dead.
In the forest, there were no screams, no bones. The "barbarian" Ian was sitting under a tree, eating a skewer of... "What are you eating?!" Wang screamed in horror.
Ian took a bite of something golden and crispy. "Spirit-Eating Mosquito larvae. Ugly, but high in protein. And after being fried by electricity... they taste like burnt shrimp crackers. Want one?"
Wang looked at the clean forest, then at the glowing blue "strange device" in Ian's hand. He was paralyzed. "The mosquitoes? There were tens of thousands of them!"
"Right here," Ian pointed to a pile of black ash. "Due to their low IQ, they engaged in a collective physical suicide party. By the way, the landscaping in this forest is terrible. Zero drainage. I suggest a remodel."