The mother star secretly transformed itself from us

Chapter 2486 [Hot Lungs]

Thanks to the abundant stockpile of kneeling creatures under the roots of the flesh and blood tree, the Bone Sister's plague minions have grown into a large-scale system, greatly relieving the old father's worries without the need for a horde of dogs. After all, any living thing cannot withstand the three-body social logic that starts with zero-frame corpse explosion, and even undead are no exception.

At the edge of sight, the endless dark red earth in all directions was being eroded by the filthy colors of red, white and black, with a continuous flow of flesh and blood like water veins. It was being carried and pulled by some greedy force, converging towards the center of cancerous mutation.

The filthy, muddy land where the group was located had blossomed like a broccoli flower in a chaotic, demonized form. The main structure of the blossoming land was supported by a black thorn forest formed by the unfortunate flesh and blood entities that were wet batteries. The frozen domain served as the framework, and below that was the huge hole that Bone Girl had dug out by mining and exhuming corpses with a bang, swinging her hammer and scythe.

Plague servants surged forth from the ground in an endless stream, their stiff yet stubborn steps spreading in all directions. The swamp-like infected zone was surrounded by bursts of exploding corpses and flames, and the energy glow on the ground formed winding, ethereal, and dazzling aurora-like ribbons, as pleasing to the eye as cooking smoke.

"Emmmm," Old Wang paused for a moment, startled by the tangled, sticky bits of meat, dried vegetables, and broth being stirred, before downing the bowl in one gulp: "Slurp, with this mess, I can't even tell what's wrong with it, it's completely upside down!"

The mother and daughter, along with Dr. Carlisle, didn't dare utter a sound, but they nodded vigorously like chickens pecking at rice. Having lived in this area for so long, they had never eaten such a sumptuous meal, nor had they ever seen anyone actually extract oil from a stone egg.

The little girl, Yulia, hugged a stainless steel basin bigger than her head and squatted down at the entrance of the Explosive Behemoth's carapace, just like Old Wang. She happily ate a bite of the stewed meat, which was tender, fatty, and full of energy. Then she looked up at the pendant hanging above the "door," which was constantly radiating light and seemed to have a water storm gathering inside. Her light green eyes reflected the light, clear, lively, and vibrant.

"Mom, what is the outside world like? I think I don't remember anymore."

Yulia is six and a half years old and has been here with her mother for at least two years. Her few precious memories of the outside world have been destroyed by the cruel survival mode. Her memories seem to only retain some particularly vivid colors of the outside world, and nothing more.

Anastasia couldn't speak, but she smiled and stroked Yulia's soft hair, pulled her into her arms, and pointed to a bright line of the horizon in the distance.

"The sun!" Yulia suddenly exclaimed excitedly, "I know! It's the sun! Mom, isn't it less cold outside now? Aren't there lots of green trees, Christmas trees, and Santa Claus?"

Anastasia was about to nod when Old Wang scoffed and said with a grin, "Outside? It's over minus fifty degrees Celsius outside! This place is at most a tundra climate, but outside it's a proper Ice Age!"

Yes.

There's no Christmas tree, no Santa Claus, it's all fake, all fake.

In short, we don't know exactly how Anastasia introduced this story to Yulia. It was probably about Santa Claus living in a place facing the sea where spring is warm and flowers bloom. Yulia slammed her spoon back into the bowl, her little mouth opened into an "O" shape, and her big eyes were filled with a little despair.

"Zhong~" The young lady's eyebrows shot up, and she rolled up her sleeves and stormed over there angrily: "I'll teach you to talk nonsense! I'll teach you to talk nonsense!"

Old Wang scrambled to his feet, yelling, "Hahaha! Hahaha! Ouch, don't hit me! I bet this little brat's mental age will increase by ten years tonight! Hahaha!"

Li Leisi: "Dog!"

Li Cang: "You beast!"

Master Wang, who had done a good deed every day and was full of merit, picked out a bowl of instant noodles for Yulia with satisfaction. He pointed to the so-called surface where the liquefaction was getting worse and worse: "Replenishment pool, damn it, if this thing reacts, it's afraid it will boil me and my bones into soup, right?"

The replenishment pool, once upon a time, this simple name simply represented a wet pit battery made from limited-proliferation corrosive liquid and No. 3 black oil as raw materials to provide power for No. 3 dog legs. Then it became a dog kennel. And then, under the insane methods of the magician, it has become the cesspool it is today, which even needs the Twin Tyrants' cancerous aberration plasma cannon to be personally blessed and catalyzed and mutated.

Li Cang glanced at him disdainfully: "Boiled oil."

"What?"

“I said, you’re only fit to render oil, while we’re the ones who make soup. There’s a slight difference.”

"Am I pretty?"

The formation of the fluid replenishment pool came faster than expected. The nutrient layer beneath the flesh and blood tree was incredibly fertile. If this were in other timelines, well, let alone the flesh and blood tree or the alien life form chimera, even a mage would dare to yell, "I want to eat beef!"

As for now
The replenishment pool is just a replenishment pool, merely a battlefield atmosphere group for Li Cang. After fighting wits and courage in the parasitic environment of the flesh and blood tree for so long, it's time for the flesh and blood tree to experience the gifts of nature.

"Huff~" Li Cang clutched a heavily wrapped magic bag, his expression unusually solemn: "Fire in the hole~"

The infinitely proliferating corrosive liquid, No. 3 black oil, and half a dozen dried-up, dehydrated twin tyrants nearing their death.

"Boom~"

Suddenly, the most perfectly liquefied part of the core of the infected zone erupted into a raging torrent. Blood-red waves surged into the air like a volcanic eruption, unleashing a brutal energy wind and lightning. It was as if some kind of blood vessels and veins flowing with energy were being generated under the cancerous and distorted tissue of the infected zone, rhythmically surging with pulsed light, radiating outwards from a single point in all directions.

The entire infected area instantly came alive. The energy veins that appeared and disappeared seemed to be condensing into a physical form, transforming into some kind of terrifying beast that rolled around in the replenishment pool. Even the Silver Ridge Beast's ice-sealing domain could not freeze its activity a second time. All the rebellious sons, Lord Demon Mountain, and plague servants took a deep breath of immortal energy and became full of energy.

Old Wang opened his mouth: "Holy crap, you actually managed to do it! Let it ferment and react a bit more, and you might be able to throw a dog-like creature in and have it swim around a few times!"

"Teacher Cang, you've caused trouble! The replenishment pool has enraged those mutated creatures!"

"The flesh and blood tree is someone else's family, their mother. This bastard not only wants to beat their mother and demolish their home, but also wants to dig up their ancestral graves. Who would be happy about that?"

"All wise men and nobles have gathered; let the feast begin!"

The gentle, nourishing process of the flesh and blood entity only gave the group less than three hours to recover their health. As soon as the replenishment pool came online, the flesh and blood giant tree went berserk, its earth-shattering and mountain-crushing momentum making it seem as if it wanted to uproot itself from the ground. In short, it was cursing very filthy things.

The smooth, mirror-like energy storm overhead was repeatedly torn apart, and various fruits, organs, tendrils, and vines hung down, twisting and writhing, radiating the energy glow of the corrosive wind. They roared and howled, spreading a tangible form of spiritual pollution.

Then, a torrential downpour of bizarre flowers, birds, fish, insects, and beasts descended. Beyond the infected zone, the crimson earth churned, and long-dead but still intact corpses crawled out of the ground. Dark blue miasma continuously rose, billowing into clouds of smoke. Behind them, the fibrous veins of the flesh-and-blood giant trees were connected, like tails, but in reality, they had replaced their main skeletons and were rooted in every muscle fiber.

"Oh haha~"

The entire world came alive. Except for the activated liquid pool beneath his feet, which had an unknown depth and a radius of tens of kilometers, he could still find a place to live. There was no other place on the land where this giant flesh tree was located. Even the composition of the air was being rapidly replaced with the naked eye.

What are you afraid of?

Old Wang is not like Li Cang and his rebellious lackeys, whose level of perversion is perhaps even higher than their level of mutation. He has not yet evolved to the point where he can live without relying on breathing. Although he has a few oxygen candles and a few sets of breathing patches on his equipment, it is obviously not enough to support the life-and-death warfare that the Mage is best at, which is stirring up excrement in the cesspool.

Then, Old Wang saw Yulia skillfully pull out a crumpled thing from her body, which looked like two insoles strung together with crooked tree branches. It hung halfway down her chin like a mask. Not only Yulia and her mother, but almost every one of the trapped subordinates below had one. Only he and a few other people from Snow Dragon City stared at each other blankly.

"?"

We call it "hot lungs".

Old Wang grimaced as he watched the thing's dry, root-like tendrils wriggle and invade under the skin, spreading a large patch of bluish-black blood vessels that looked like poisoning marks: "So this thing..."

Two dry, flattened objects pressed perfectly against either side of Yulia's neck, rising and falling with her breath. Yulia smiled mischievously: "It won't hurt, but it'll itch. The cyclical force field of the alien life form chimera not only alters the composition of the air but also releases tiny microorganisms, like pollen. They'll enter your body through respiration and slowly devour you—"

"Hey, get one for me too!"

"Is there a Santa Claus?"

"Yes, little friend, yes, I'm a liar. I said no to scare you!"

"Is it nice outside?"

"Okay, kid, okay, there's plenty of food and drink outside, and there's even a two-meter-tall, super-handsome simp!"

"Humph!"

Children are innocent and may not understand what real fear is. But when faced with Lao Wang, a railway worker whose father might scare even adults, Guan Yu's words perfectly illustrated what it means to be fearless in ignorance, and he completely subdued Lao Wang.

"That little brat said it was made from the lungs of a special kind of zombie that only moves around fleshy plants, to aid breathing and isolate insects!" Old Wang, overjoyed to have obtained half a dozen lungs, immediately came over to show off his treasure: "Miss, Lei Zi, Cang Zi?"

The young lady reluctantly accepted it: "Oh~"

Li Lei frowned: "Get out!"

"This is interesting~" Li Cang took it as if it were a treasure: "Smack~"

Without a second thought, he smeared it on his chin. At first, it didn't move for a while. Then, the dry, tangled tubular tentacles even seemed to wriggle somewhat reluctantly. Then, less than half a second later, the thing twitched as if it had been electrocuted. But it was too late. The lungs that had just started to revive began to rot and corrode rapidly from those tentacles. In less than half a second, they completely melted into a distorted pool of filth.

"Pfft~" Old Wang patted his belly happily: "Hahaha, what a damn karma! Brother Cangzi, how's it going? Did you put on enough breathing patches? Otherwise, I'll really feed on your pain until I'm full~"

Li Cang, devastated by the loss of his toy, had never been so embarrassed. His old face flushed red, then turned purple, and finally swelled to a deep blue. Enraged, he shouted, "Come here, I'll give you a buff!"

Old Wang: "Hahaha!"

Li Cang, looking on with envy, leaned close to Li Leisi and poked at the two hot lung patches on her slender neck that were gradually becoming vibrant and turning red: "How is it? What does it feel like?"

"A little..." Li Leisi was startled: "Is this my voice? How did it become like this? External resonance chamber?"

"It's a bit rustling, but I must say, the sound has a certain quality to it; I can tell it's you!"

"It feels very itchy, which is strange. It's like being bitten by a mosquito, and it hurts a little. It's tingly and numb. And this thing seems to consume a lot of energy. I'm already starting to feel hungry!"

Carlisle explained, "It's not about energy consumption. The essence of this thing's survival logic is not just parasitism. It slowly homogenizes itself with the same composition as the host, eventually achieving an inseparable state. It was a zombie-like life form in life, and it is still a zombie-like life form now, only it can no longer exist independently."

Li Cang became even more interested, his eyes lighting up: "So, what are its applicable scenarios?"

“Impossible.” Carlisle shook his head. “It doesn’t have universality. Even if it eventually becomes homogenized with the host, it will quickly become inactive and enter a long dormant period because it is not in the ecological environment of the alien life form chimera. I guess this characteristic is given by the bloodline of the alien zombie, and it cannot be easily rewritten even if it enters a wish-granting environment.”

Li Cang raised an eyebrow, as if he had thought of something: "Did you invent this thing?"

“A discovery.” Carlisle gave a restrained smirk, as if his smile had passed, then shook his head slightly. “It’s just a discovery. The thermal lungs aren’t very useful here. The alien life form chimera that rewrites the air composition and disperses microorganisms or parasites is limited by its geographical environment, and it can easily escape and hide, unlike now… cough.”

"That's easy!" Old Wang raised his eyelids and yelled at the group below, "Right now, you all owe her a life. How are you going to repay it?"

Carlisle covered her face: "."

Something feels off, but I also feel a little smug. This guy, who looks like someone owes him a few lives, is actually quite something!