Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 1198 [The Seventh Perfect Embryo: Forgrim.]

After completing all the allocations, Xia Xiu did not make any further considerations. He gathered the three golden leaves from his palm and then transferred them to Eden's core hosting layer through the genealogy interface. The three leaves were stably sealed under the dual lock of data and reality, becoming high-level resources that could be dispatched but not abused.

“Eden, send these three to Turs, Lupercal, and Vulcan respectively, with the highest priority, using secure links as the route, and no additional approval is required.”

[Instruction confirmed]

[Target nodes locked: Turs Colbert/Luppercar/Vulcan]

[Submission Path: Genealogy Core Channel]

Security Level: Highest

Xia Xiu: "Prepare another Sword-class frigate for me."

He tapped lightly on the armrest of the throne, his tone remaining calm.

"I need to go and see the state of that world corrupted by the womb of the Great Old Ones. Let me know if there's any news about the resolution meeting."

[Instructions received—]

[Ship dispatch in progress...]

[Type: Sword-class frigate]

Status: Available

Armament verification complete.

[Additional Loadout: Divine Colossus x3]

Once Eden had everything ready, Xia Xiu didn't say anything more. He handed over control of Blackrock Fortress to Eden, while he himself had already transferred directly to the docking area via the internal transmission node.

The ships are in position.

The Sword-class corvette is not flashy in appearance, but against the backdrop of Blackrock Fortress, its structure appears exceptionally compact and sharp. Behind it, three hundred-meter-tall [God-given Colossi] have been fixed in place and stand quietly in their dedicated compartments.

Xia Xiu did not linger, but boarded the ship directly. The hatch closed, the engine was ignited, and after a brief period of energy accumulation, the entire ship broke free from the gravitational pull of the Blackrock Fortress and cut into the outer etheric passage.

Target—The Great Old Ones corrupt the world from the womb.

……

……

In the etheric subspace.

The ship no longer follows the conventional physical path, but instead moves at high speed along the calculated shortest structural line. The external scene is no longer the starry sky, but a constantly flowing deep information structure. Those light bands and distorted outlines quickly sweep past the sides of the ship, like afterimages of reality compressed into data.

Xia Xiu sat in the main control position.

His consciousness had already spread out in advance, using the coordinates provided by the Golden Tree to lock onto the target area, while simultaneously using his great spirituality to perform a secondary calibration of the path to avoid entering the unstable etheric fissure.

The voyage was short because the Golden Tree provided fast hyperspace route nodes, allowing the ships to reach their destination quickly.

As the ship completed its final warp jump and deceleration, the view ahead began to clear.

And at that moment.

Xia Xiu's gaze narrowed slightly; he finally saw that corrupted world.

That area should have been a complete world structure.

But now, its boundaries have shown obvious signs of collapse, as if some force is pushing it open from the inside, and while pushing it open, it is constantly eroding its structure, causing the entire plane to exhibit an unstable state of expansion.

From a distance, it no longer looked like a world, but more like a piece of decaying tissue.

The surface of the plane is covered with large areas of dark red and gray-black interwoven. These areas are not static, but slowly writhing, like something growing, constantly pushing out of the surface structure from the inside, completely rewriting the originally stable landscape.

Closer to the core, countless cracks can be seen.

The cracks were irregular, with torn edges. Inside the cracks, there was not emptiness, but a deeper fleshy structure, with countless tube-like structures crisscrossing and extending within, as if transporting some kind of nutrient or carrying out some kind of unfinished construction.

Between these cracks are pustules.

Huge, bulging structures are attached to the surface of the plane. They rise and fall constantly, as if breathing. In some transparent areas, the outlines of the interior can be vaguely seen—the incomplete existences that are curled up, struggling, and waiting within them.

"This guy, how come he looks just like the boundless expanse He covers... Is it because all supreme deities of flesh and blood have such ugly appearances?" Xia Xiu couldn't help but start complaining in his mind.

He discovered that whenever the supreme divinity involving flesh and blood was involved, it was basically a matter of exchanging appearance for stats, with muscles replacing thought, and the anus leading directly to the brain.

They possess powerful physical attributes and mechanics, but in terms of intelligence... they are all super-male individuals who can only say "Aba aba".

While complaining about how ugly the supreme divinity of flesh and blood was, Xia Xiu began to scan the world with his great spirituality.

Seven medium-sized planes.

Hundreds of small planes.

They no longer operate independently according to their original structure, but are forcibly linked together by some higher-level will, like a piece of rotting tissue being brutally stitched into a whole. The broken boundaries erode each other, and the matter, energy and information between them constantly intersect, making the whole area present a strange unity.

Xia Xiu didn't linger on the overall structure for long. He raised his hand and summoned the [Black Seal] in the void. The seal resonated with the area the moment it appeared, and extremely fine yet precise lines of perception extended out from it, penetrating the distorted plane layers and quickly filtering out information nodes of the same origin from the chaotic structure.

The result was quickly confirmed.

Five places.

Each one exists stably, has a complete structure, and provides clear spiritual feedback, which means that they are not failures, but individuals that have completed key stages.

Xia Xiu's eyes narrowed slightly. He knew very well what this meant, because in addition to the five complete beings, there were seven failed embryos that were clearly on the verge of collapse. A total of twelve homologous beings were concentrated in the same area. This scale far exceeded the scope of normal evolution and was more like a kind of deliberately guided "mass incubation".

"This time... so many?"

He said something in a low voice, with a hint of surprise in his tone, but he did not stop. He directly gave the order for Eden to deploy the ship's void defense and lock onto the plane where the nearest complete entity was located.

The protective structure loaded instantly, creating a stable barrier that isolated the entire Sword-class frigate from the outside world. Once the path was confirmed, the ship's propulsion system increased its power, forcibly cutting into the target plane. ...

……

Medium-sized plane: Carax.

The moment the ship broke through the dimensional boundary, what first came into view was not the surface, but a layer of nebulous dust so thick it was almost stagnant. Those grayish-yellow particles had been suspended high in the air for a long time, enveloping the entire world in a constant dimness. Light could not penetrate normally, and the concept of day and night had long disappeared. Here, only a perpetually stagnant dusk remained.

As the gaze continues downward, the true nature of this world gradually comes into view.

Karax was originally a dwarven-dominated mining colony plane, where the entire world revolved around resource extraction. Numerous mines and industrial facilities formed its core structure, while supplies of necessities relied on trade with external pantheons.

But after being sacrificed by Moradin, collapse was almost inevitable.

The etheric storm blocked all external channels, completely isolating the entire world. Food and energy, which originally depended on external input, collapsed precipitously in a very short time.

Resources are depleted, land is becoming unusable, and time is out of order.

The ecosystem that was once barely able to survive collapsed rapidly, farming became meaningless, large areas were transformed into wasteland, and the entire planet could only rely on the remaining industrial system to maintain a minimum level of operation.

The powerful influence of the Great Old Ones' womb has completely severed the flow of time here from that of the present world. Although it was only sacrificed for less than a year, time here has already gone through the iterations of several generations.

Initially, dozens of fortified factories became the sole nodes of life.

These factories are not only responsible for producing resources, but also for food synthesis, using extremely inefficient conversion mechanisms to transform surplus materials into synthetic foods that are barely enough to sustain life.

But that was far from enough; famine became the norm, and death became the backdrop.

In order to perpetuate civilization, the world made the most direct choice—to become completely utilitarian.

All behaviors that do not directly participate in production are eliminated. Art, philosophy, entertainment, and leisure—these were once considered symbols of civilization—have all disappeared here. The existence of intelligent individuals is compressed to the most basic functional units.

Individuals are incorporated into the labor system from childhood, circulating and being consumed between factories and mines, while those who cannot provide value—whether young orphans, elderly people, or patients who have lost their ability to work—are disposed of in a unified manner to conserve limited resources.

Further collapse comes from within.

The various fortress factories did not form a unified command structure. In an environment of extreme resource scarcity, they chose to fight against each other, plundering and clashing for the remaining mineral veins and energy. This internal friction constantly weakened the overall structure, causing the world to accelerate its end even without external intervention.

However, this was only the initial form. After the desperate battles of the first two generations, the creatures of the Carax welcomed their savior—Forgrim.

Before the complete collapse of the Carax, an object misjudged as an ordinary meteorite struck the waste mining area outside the largest fortress factory. The three night shift workers who were sent to the scene did not find any metal debris or mechanical structures at the impact point. Instead, they found a constantly flowing, gradually converging radiance.

The light slowly coalesced under their gaze, eventually transforming into a flawless baby boy. This process itself was beyond the comprehension of everyone at the time.

According to Carax’s extremely utilitarian survival rules, any individual who cannot immediately generate value should be regarded as a waste of resources and eliminated. The third worker at the time, Sulac, was trying to end this anomaly on the spot with this logic.

However, this action was stopped in an instant by another worker, Turley, in a more direct way. Her shooting was not out of pity, but an instinctive judgment about the unknown. The key to saving the baby was not that shot, but something else that happened afterward.

A clear source of water miraculously emerged from beneath the ground at the crash site, a phenomenon almost impossible in Carax, and was immediately recognized as a miracle.

Carax even erected a stone tablet to commemorate this event.

"At that time, the earth was cracked like dry bones, dust covered everything, the wind swept across it, stirring up ashes and death. In the land of Carax, there was no sound of water for a long time. The people kept company with dust and ate bitter food. There was no memory of sweet rain in the world. Even in the words of the old people, there were only vague legends. It was as if water had never belonged to this world."

Then, as the place where it fell cracked open, as the light dissipated into the dust, and as the crowd was still reeling from the shock and fear, a clear stream gushed forth from the earth, unhurried yet as clear as the light of a newborn. The water was colorless and pure, flowing around the stone, moistening the dust, slowly healing the cracked land, and giving the desolate earth a touch of softness never before seen.

The workers were all terrified when they saw it, for they had never seen such a sight before and did not know what to call it. They felt a vague sense of awe, as if they were seeing something untouchable, as if an ancient legend were awakening from its dusty past.

Saint Colin then bent down and touched the water. Where his fingers touched, a cool, clear sensation jolted him, like a parched man receiving rain. He looked up at the still-uncrying infant, and a decision was made in his heart. He whispered, "This is no accident; this is a miracle."

—This stone tablet is dedicated to the great and perfect phoenix, Forgrim.

It was at this moment that the first recorder, Colin, gave the baby a name. He took the symbol of "the messenger of water who brings rain and life to the parched land" from the long-forgotten ancient myths and bestowed it upon this life that descended upon ruins and dust.

Thus, the name "Forgrim" appeared for the first time in the history of the Carax.

What happened next completely changed the trajectory of this plane's development.

Under the Karax system, all children are forced into the production system after they turn six, and those who fail to meet their quotas are eliminated. This is an inviolable rule, but from the first day he entered the factory, Forgrim displayed an ability structure completely different from that of ordinary people.

He is not only able to complete more than double the production targets in a way that takes far less time than the average, but he is also able to accurately identify defects and hidden dangers in equipment operation during actual operation, and complete optimization and reconstruction in the absence of a complete technical system.

This capability was not a localized improvement, but a systemic enhancement. With his continued involvement, Carax’s core production equipment was gradually rebuilt, mining efficiency was significantly improved, and the accident rate was greatly reduced.

This series of changes brought about not only an increase in output, but also a reshaping of the entire industrial structure. In this process, he gradually transformed from a highly efficient individual into an irreplaceable core node in the entire production system.

But Forgrim's influence did not stop at the material level.

Deep within the factory, in dusty old archives, he reorganized long-abandoned content—art, sculpture, music, and philosophy—knowledge that Carax considered useless, which was given new meaning through his reinterpretation.

He proposed the idea that "form and function must be unified," believing that the value of a thing should not only be reflected in its efficiency, but should also possess structural integrity and elegant expression. This idea did not initially resonate widely, but as his influence continued to grow, this idea gradually permeated the entire social structure.

When he was only fifteen years old, he had already entered the ruling council of the Carax Fortress Factory with his irreplaceable technical skills and accumulated prestige, and in fact became the core decision-maker of the city-state.

At this point, Karax was on the verge of complete collapse. Internal strife between the various fortresses intensified, and the depletion of resources and structural imbalances made the entire world vulnerable to complete collapse at any moment.

It was against this backdrop that Forgrim chose another path.

Instead of unifying the world through war and suppression, he started by reconstructing resources. He first repaired the abandoned mines in the surrounding area and established a low-energy recycling system, enabling Karax to achieve a surplus of resources and food for the first time in history. On this basis, he shared these technologies and solutions with the surrounding city-states free of charge, and put forward only one condition: stop plundering, join the alliance, and rebuild this dying world together.

The vast majority of city-states chose to accept the offer because they saw the possibility of continuation in it, rather than continuing to wait for the end in internal strife. However, one city-state rejected the offer and chose to maintain its original plundering model in order to fight against long-term collapse with short-term gains. This choice was not special; rather, it was a continuation of the original logic of the Caraxes.

Forgrim was preparing to personally travel to the last city-state unwilling to make changes... for a meeting.

The young phoenix hopes to solve the problem through a meeting.

At this very moment, Xia Xiu's ship was in high orbit and had entered stealth mode, while he stood in front of the stone monument that Karax had erected for Forgrim.

“Perfect Phoenix… Forgrim…” The old father squinted slightly as he read the name from the inscription on the stone tablet, which had been translated from information.

……

……