The system is four years ahead of schedule, but Weird is still a cub.

The corrupted blood tentacle rolled up the fingernail-sized black blood crystal fragment and hovered in front of Shen Ge. He looked at the fragment carefully.

The strange eye penetrated the dark purple strange mist flowing on the surface of the fragment and focused on the weak but pure core. The cold, heavy, and absolutely still fluctuations were exactly the same as the breath of the strange king underground, but with an indescribable trace of... "imitation".

It is a strange reaction to the characteristic of "immobility".

Shen Ge looked at York in the distance. From York's performance in the mine just now, it was obvious that he knew something about the Black Mountain Base and the things underground.

"York." Shen Ge's voice rang out in the silent temporary camp, with a power that penetrated people's hearts, instantly attracting everyone's attention. He looked directly at the man holding Xiaoya, sitting by the fire, with a look of shock on his face.

York's body trembled, and he subconsciously hugged Xiaoya tightly in his arms. His eyes were a little evasive, and there was a hint of fatigue after the struggle.

"Tell me, what are you hiding? About these 'black blood crystals'... and the people who were captured." Shen Ge's gaze was as real as substance, falling on York's face, making him tremble all over.

The camp suddenly became quiet, with only the crackling of the burning campfire and the howling of the wind in the distant wasteland.

Uncle Cheng, Mother Cheng, Camille, and the survivors who had just escaped all looked at York with bated breath.

York's lips were trembling, and the hideous scar on his face looked even more distorted under the flickering firelight. He looked down at Xiaoya who was sleeping in his arms, then looked up at Shen Ge's eyes that seemed to be able to see through everything. Finally, his gaze swept over the captured tribesmen from the Stone Forest Tribe, whose faces still showed the fear and confusion of returning from the Black Mountain Base.

"……Yes."

York's voice was extremely hoarse, and filled with a desperate look of desperation, "I saw them at the Black Mountain base... They... those 'hunters', they are not human at all, they are devils in human skin!"

He raised his head abruptly, his eyes emitting a mixture of deep hatred and fear. He said hatefully, "Deep in the mine, near the crack in the sky, they took those 'black stones' that looked like rotten meat that fell from the crack... and... and..."

His voice was choked with sobs and his body began to tremble violently, as if he had returned to that bloody and horrific scene: "... and the disobedient people! The rebellious people! The sick people! Even... even those who just worked a little slower were thrown into a huge... mixing pool like animals!"

"That pool... is bubbling... It's filled with... a sticky, dark red mixture of flesh, blood, and minerals! It's like... like a boiling pot of... hell soup!!"

York's voice suddenly rose, with a tearing pain: "Then...then those crazy people in white coats poured a green, glowing liquid into it, and the things in the pool began to beat like a heart! Fusion!"

"In the end...in the end, what was fished out from the bottom of the pool was this 'black blood crystal'!" York pointed at the fragment that Shen Ge's tentacle was holding, his eyes filled with physical disgust and fear.

"I... I saw with my own eyes... a piece of black blood crystal that had just been fished out... contained half of a human face... that hadn't been washed clean!"

"Ugh!" A young miner could no longer hold back and lay on the ground vomiting violently.

The faces of the others were as pale as paper, many of them covered their mouths, their eyes filled with unbelievable horror and deep sadness.

"Statue of the God..."

York suddenly murmured in a low voice: "In fact, I know that in order to stabilize the effect of the Sky God Statue, Patriarch Laoshi secretly fed the Sky God Statue with the black blood crystal fragments brought back by the miners who escaped from the Black Mountain Base. In the past two years, the appetite of the 'Sky God Statue' has been growing, and it has eaten more and more strange flesh and blood. Only by feeding it with black blood crystal fragments will it 'calm down'."

Shen Ge frowned, "You mean, the stone statue in your tribe eats this kind of thing made from human flesh and strange flesh?"

York closed his eyes in pain, nodded and continued, "Old Stone Chief has always believed that it was a blessing from the gods that allowed the stone statue to radiate power to protect the tribe. Not all strange flesh and bones can be used to feed the 'god statue'. We have actually found similar strange flesh and blood before, and we also fed it with this kind of flesh and blood, but what we found before were very small pieces scattered on the wasteland. We thought...we thought it was a holy object bestowed by the gods...who...who knew...it turned out to be..."

He didn't say anything else, but the answer was self-evident.

The "essence" devoured by the "Statue of the God" that had been worshipped by the Stone Forest Tribe for generations and regarded as a source of protection turned out to be such a bloody and evil creation.

Camille gasped, Cheng's mother and others turned pale, and even Shirley, who was used to seeing strange disasters, felt a chill running from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.

But Shen Ge discovered a problem. If this black blood crystal was the product of the fusion of human flesh and blood and the strange flesh and blood that fell from the cracks in the sky space at the Black Mountain base, then what were the "fragments" that the tribesmen saw in the wilderness?
Shen Ge pondered for a while: "So, the stone statue is not a protector at all, it is more like a... receiver? Or a container to be fed? The source of the 'exorcism' power it exudes is this polluted 'black blood crystal'. In fact, it releases more powerful weird energy fluctuations to achieve the effect of dispelling low-level weirdness."

This speculation is undoubtedly closest to the "truth".

Then a new question arises: what exactly is this "statue of God" and is there any connection between it and the New God religion?
"Let's go back to the Stone Forest Tribe and find Chief Old Stone to find out the origin of the stone statue. Also...what is the connection between it and the crack in the sky and the 'new god' underground!" Shen Ge said after a moment of thought, with unquestionable determination in his voice.

He looked in the direction of the ruins where the Black Mountain Mine and the Seventh-Rank Ghost King were buried, then raised his head to look at the huge, scar-like space crack under the gray-yellow sky.

"The thing hidden underground has been buried for now, but its aura is still there. The crack in the sky is the only passage we have seen so far that may lead to 'reality' or leave this fragmented world. But before approaching it, we must find out the details of this 'black blood crystal' and the 'celestial statue'. Otherwise, if we rashly approach the crack in the sky, the consequences will be unpredictable."

Shen Ge's gaze finally fell on the exhausted survivors. They had experienced the torture of the mine and the shock of the collapse, and were now like frightened birds.

"Uncle Cheng, organize everyone to break camp immediately. The wounded and the weak will be given priority to board the bus. Don't worry about not having enough seats. I brought a lot of them. Camille, York, you are responsible for maintaining order."

When Shen Ge said this, Uncle Cheng and others didn't know how to respond for a moment. As a materialist, the statement "I carry a lot of cars with me" sounded weird.

York was obviously more willing to believe Shen Ge at this moment. After rescuing Xiaoya, a glimmer of hope rekindled in his eyes. As long as he could save his people and reveal the truth, he would do anything. Camille immediately took action and began to organize people.

Uncle Cheng looked at Shen Ge. This young man seemed to have some kind of magic that could point out the direction in desperate situations and bring order to chaos.

Uncle Cheng came back to his senses and immediately cooperated with Camille to make arrangements: "Everyone, hurry up, pack up and get ready to go!"

The temporary camp immediately became busy. Although the survivors were tired and frightened, under Shen Ge's steady and powerful command, they seemed to have found their backbone and their movements became much more agile.

The makeshift camp was quickly packed up, and the survivors, exhausted but with a glimmer of hope, squeezed into the jeeps without figuring out how the man could "conjure up" such modified jeeps suitable for driving in the wilderness like magic.

But none of this matters. After all, he is a man who can survive a head-on confrontation with the "New God" and "bury" the New God in the process. Turning into a few jeeps doesn't seem to be a big deal.

Uncle Cheng asked the anti-ghost warriors to be evenly distributed to each car as drivers. If there were no people to spare, he asked Xiao Qi to derive corrupt blood tentacles to control the survivors to drive.

At first, the survivors were a little scared of these "weird tentacle-like" monsters, until they found out that they could only control their hands and feet like exoskeletons to drive cars, and then they felt relieved.

The convoy set off again, rolling over the charred wasteland, raising dry dust, and heading towards the Stone Forest Tribe.

The carriage was filled with silence after surviving the disaster. The loud noise of the mine collapse and the horrific scene described by York were like a cold shadow hanging over everyone's heart.

Xiaoya curled up in York's arms, sleeping unsteadily, occasionally uttering frightened mumblings.

Shen Ge sat in the passenger seat of a car with his eyes closed. With classmate Xiao Qi on guard, he didn't need to keep an eye on the surrounding movements.

He wrapped the fingernail-sized black blood crystal fragment in a thin layer of corrupted blood, isolating it from most of the strange energy reactions, and held it in his hand.

Student Xiao Qi sensed the black blood crystal through the Corrupted Blood Gloves, repeatedly scanning and analyzing the strange energy reactions in it.

"Master, the preliminary analysis results are out."

Xiao Qi's voice rang in Shen Ge's ears: "The core composition of the strange energy of this fragment is very special. It is different from any strange objects that we know of. According to York, it should be an 'artificially synthesized' energy crystal, which forcibly compresses and fuses highly concentrated 'characteristic' strange energy, unknown flesh and blood energy from the other side of the space rift, and... a large amount of mixed life essence, that is, the essence of human flesh and blood."

"But analysis and testing have found that it is like a substance that was originally 'born' in the human body. For example, in other words... relics."

"Ah?" Shen Ge was stunned. He didn't expect that classmate Xiao Qi would come up with such a "metaphor".

In a sense, it's quite appropriate.

Just looking at it this way, the formation of this black blood crystal is somewhat different from York's description. After all, he "saw with his own eyes" the researchers at the Black Mountain Base using human flesh and blood to fuse with strange flesh and blood, and then refining this black blood crystal.

Xiao Qi continued, "This crystal is extremely unstable, and has strong corrosive and exclusive properties. But the strange thing is that the strange power contained in it, which is similar to the 'immobility' property, is not its natural attribute, but is 'branded' with it later. It's like... it has been 'contaminated' or 'marked' by some powerful existence, forcibly giving it the prototype of this characteristic power."

Xiao Qi paused, and the data stream flashed in front of Shen Ge's eyes: "More importantly, this 'branding' method is highly similar to the extremely weak but real 'characteristic fluctuations' we detected on the statue of the God of the Stone Forest Tribe, the 'weird power field' that dispels low-level weirdness, in terms of energy spectrum. The similarity is more than 70%."

Shen Ge narrowed his eyes and said thoughtfully: "It's interesting."

After several hours of testing, Xiao Qi made a new discovery: "Master, I just matched the black blood crystal with the various strange items we had previously 'saved'. Guess what I found?"

"..." Shen Ge's expression froze when he heard that. Xiao Qi's database was the largest strange database in the world. How much could he know with his own brain?
How the hell do you guess this?
Xiao Qi obviously didn't have the ability to keep people in suspense. After a pause, he continued, "Master, after conducting an in-depth test on the black blood crystal, I found that it was surprisingly similar to the 'Strange Energy Silkworm' you ate before, in terms of the blood and flesh reactions and strange energy fluctuations."

"In other words, black blood crystals may be the predecessor of 'silkworms'."

"so--"

"Would you like to try one?"

Shen Ge suddenly opened his eyes, and a sharp light flashed in his eyes.

"What? It is extremely similar to the 'Weird Energy Silkworm', are you sure?" Shen Ge could not forget the violent power that the Weird Energy Silkworm brought him. It allowed him to use the characteristic of "misfortune" to have a head-on battle with the real "Original Weird Ancestor" Earth.

Having said that, asking him to "taste" this black blood crystal is somewhat too much.

Of course, Xiao Qi was just joking, but this analysis brought up a new question: are the weird organization that studies this black blood crystal actually the ones who created the strange silkworms?

If the connection between the black blood crystal and the strange energy silkworm can be confirmed, and a basketful of them can be brought back, Shen Ge can then take drugs and kill the Strange King happily!
It's a pity that fantasy is beautiful, but reality is cruel.

Xiao Qi just said that the similarity is very high, which does not mean that the black blood crystal must be the strange energy silkworm, and the strange energy fluctuations similar to the characteristic of "immobility" contained in it may be the fundamental purpose of the Monster Organization in developing it, to create a medicine that can obtain "characteristic" power!
Weirdos can gain the power of characteristics through this "drug", so if it is used on weirdos, the characteristics may no longer be the "exclusive power" of Shen Ge and Weirdos! (End of this chapter)