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

The twisted trees on the outskirts became utterly deformed here.

Some tree trunks are covered with tumors that look like eyeballs, while some branches stretch towards the sky like twisted human arms.

The ground was no longer solid soil, but a soft, elastic, dark red fungal carpet, as if the entire earth had transformed into the flesh and blood of living beings.

The deathly stillness in the air grew stronger. There were no birdsong, no insect chirps, and even the sound of the wind was swallowed up by the thick, impenetrable black fog. All that remained was his heavy breathing and the "plop" sound of his feet on the fungal carpet.

The bizarre transformation of plants, which is rare in "reality," has become the norm here.

Shen Ge's vigilance was at its highest. The trace of strange energy within him made him more perceptive than ordinary people. He could sense that the danger lurking in this area was far greater than that of the first-tier strange creatures on the outskirts.

Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, then abruptly shrank back, hiding behind a huge, fleshy tree covered in "eyeballs".

Not far in front of him, a seemingly ordinary dead tree came to life.

Its dry bark peeled away like a disguise, revealing a pale, muscular body underneath. Where the crown once stood, a huge mouth split open, revealing countless tiny, needle-like fangs.

Shen Ge did not attack immediately; he quietly observed and analyzed the opponent's behavior patterns.

He saw a passing "mushroom monster pig" approach without warning, and was instantly entangled by the tentacles disguised as tree roots, dragged into its mouth, and crushed into mincemeat before it could even scream.

"Fast speed, powerful, but it seems... its range of movement is limited," Shen Ge silently analyzed in his mind.

Things are different now. Without the strange powers and strange domains, he has to be more cautious.

Instead of fighting head-on, Shen Ge circled around and approached quietly from the other side. He tied a boulder to a high ground with vines, then climbed up to a high point. He calculated the attack range of the strange predator's tentacles and pushed the boulder down with a bang.

The boulder crashed down with a whooshing sound, and the eerie predator was indeed startled. Several tentacles shot out like lightning, smashing the boulder to pieces in mid-air.

It's now!

Taking advantage of the moment when its attack missed, Shen Ge leaped down from the high ground like a cheetah, gathering all his strength in the bone spear in his hand, and precisely pierced the softest part of the huge, split mouth of the strange predator!

"Roar!"

The bizarre predator let out a painful roar and frantically waved its tentacles, but Shen Ge, having landed a successful blow, immediately withdrew and retreated, refusing to linger in the fight.

Shen Ge circled around the enormous creature, constantly harassing it by throwing stones, looking for an opportunity to attack. Right now, all he could rely on was pure strength.

Half an hour later, this powerful second-tier monster was finally dismembered by Shen Ge's relentless fighting, eventually turning into a pile of "pieces of flesh" on the ground.

Shen Ge stepped forward, and when his hand touched the corpse, a strange energy several times larger than all the strange creatures he had hunted before was devoured and absorbed.

[System energy... 0.3%... Core command detected... Attempting to reboot...]

In my mind, the intermittent sound finally became a little clearer!
A surge of joy welled up within him, but he immediately became alert and glanced around. This was no place to linger. He quickly dismembered and devoured the most elusive parts of the monstrous predator, then hastily departed.

After several days of in-depth exploration and hunting, Shen Ge's reserves of strange energy were slowly and steadily increasing, and his understanding of the island was becoming increasingly radicalized.

This place is essentially a closed ecological cycle system.

After their bizarre deaths, their bodies are decomposed by the fungal carpet, turning into nutrients that nourish those bizarre plants, which in turn become food for some herbivorous monsters.

Everything was orderly and cyclical.

But that biggest mystery always lingered in his mind—

Where does this strange power come from?

He finally saw the answer when he passed through a "bone forest" made up of countless white bones and pushed aside the last thick black fog.

Then, he was completely stunned.

Before him lay a vast basin, resembling a meteorite crater. In the center of the basin floated something indescribable.

It was a giant sarcoma heart, over a hundred meters in diameter, woven from writhing flesh and shimmering black crystals...

Countless thick, blood vessel-like black pipes extend from various parts of the heart, deeply embedding themselves in the rock walls surrounding the basin, like a giant spider web covering the entire basin.

With each heartbeat, a deep, thunderous roar resounded, and a powerful energy wave spread outwards, causing Shen Ge to feel a pang of heart palpitation.

On the surface of the heart, there are translucent, slowly wriggling... fleshy cocoons.

Through the thin membrane of those fleshy cocoons, Shen Ge could clearly see the strange, varied nascent forms that were being conceived inside.

Some resemble stone crabs, others predators… all the strange creatures he had hunted before could be found here on their “production line.”

With each heartbeat, a stream of pure energy flows through those blood vessels and into the fleshy cocoon.

When the fleshy cocoon matures, it will fall off and into the fungal carpet below, then awaken, crawl out of the basin on its own, and become a link in the island's food chain.

Shen Ge had seen tumors, strange things, and even the hearts of high-level strange tumors. He had seen all these things... but he had never seen such a "straightforward" strange transformation, or rather... a production method!
This is the bizarre production factory!
Shen Ge held her breath and carefully retreated, completely concealing herself in the black mist.

This giant heart before us is undoubtedly the "source of eerie energy" and "incubator of the eerie phenomena" for the entire island.

The energy fluctuations emitted by each of its pulses far exceeded those of any second-order anomaly he had ever encountered, and he even faintly sensed a trace of... fifth-order, or even sixth-order anomaly energy fluctuations!

He used to be able to easily crush a sixth-tier monster, but now... safety comes first! With his current strength, he wouldn't even be able to tickle this "heart".

But he keenly noticed a crucial point: this heart didn't seem to have any intention to attack. It was like a sophisticated biological machine operating according to a set program, simply producing and transmitting energy to maintain the ecological cycle of the entire island.

"An energy source without self-awareness... or rather, its consciousness is dormant?" Shen Ge's mind raced.

He moved stealthily around the edge of the basin, like a wild beast observing its prey. He noticed that the black blood vessels extending from the heart would form fist-sized, slightly bulging "energy nodules" at certain nodes before being injected into the fleshy cocoon.

These nodules act like valves and booster pumps on a water pipe, responsible for precisely delivering energy to each fleshy cocoon.

A bold, almost insane idea sprouted in Shen Ge's mind.

He couldn't directly attack the heart itself. But what if... he just severed one of its "capillaries" and "stole" a little energy from these energy nodes? This was tantamount to pulling teeth from the mouth of a sleeping tiger; the slightest carelessness could awaken this terrifying being and bring about annihilation.

Yet, an intense temptation lingered in his ears. The bizarre energy contained within a single energy nodule was likely greater than all the bizarre creatures he had hunted in the past month combined. If he succeeded even once, his power recovery rate would increase exponentially!

Find wealth in danger!
Shen Ge stared intently at the energy node tumor on the closest and smallest blood vessel to him. He took a deep breath, suppressed his greed and fear, and began to carry out a meticulous plan.

He spent two whole days observing the energy delivery frequency of that nodule.

He discovered that every ten minutes or so, the nodule would have a noticeable energy pulse, with the light intensifying momentarily before dimming again.

What he was going to take advantage of was the brief gap between the end of one pulse and the beginning of the next.

He spent another three days crafting various tools in the vicinity. He ground the hardest animal bones into awls and wove ropes from supple vines. He even simulated the entire process of rushing out from the ambush point, attacking, and retreating several times, calculating every detail to the extreme.

Day 5

Shen Ge lay like a rock, lurking in a crevice less than twenty meters from the black blood vessel. He adjusted his breathing to the slightest level, concentrating all his strength in his right arm, the bone cone in his hand radiating a cold, icy light.

The sarcoma's heart continued to beat rhythmically, its dull sound like the drumbeat of death.

Shen Ge waited, and the moment the light of the target tumor shone brightly again and then slowly dimmed, he moved!
His figure shot through the darkness like an arrow released from a bow, the fungal carpet beneath his feet barely making a sound.

Twenty meters is covered in the blink of an eye!
Without the slightest hesitation, he poured all the strange energy accumulated in his body into the bone cone and fiercely stabbed it into the energy tumor!

"Pfft!"

The bone cone pierced precisely into the surface of the tumor, and he encountered a resistance that was far more viscous and resilient than he had imagined.

But his strength was so great that the bone spike still managed to pierce through the thin membrane.

A stream of extremely pure, scorching liquid energy instantly gushed out from the bone cone, drenching Shen Ge's head and face.

Become!

He didn't have time to think, and dared not be greedy. He pulled out the bone spike, turned around and ran!

Almost as soon as he turned around, the punctured energy node suddenly contracted, and the entire black blood vessel trembled violently.

The enormous heart in the center of the basin suddenly started beating faster for a moment!
An invisible, angry wave of consciousness swept across the entire basin like a raging torrent!

"Discovered!"

Shen Ge felt a chill run down his spine. He pushed his speed to the limit, frantically fleeing into the depths of the jungle. Behind him, the wave of consciousness clung to him like a leech.

In the basin, several newly matured flesh cocoons burst open prematurely, and several newly born second-tier monsters roared and chased after him, following his aura.

This is a race between life and death.

Shen Ge used all his strength to escape. He rushed through the bone forest and through the fungal carpet, the roars behind him getting closer and closer.

As it ran, it absorbed the strange and karmic energy clinging to its body.

System energy... 2.7%...

System energy... 3.6%...

System energy... 5.4%...

As his supernatural energy continued to grow, just as Shen Ge felt his strength was about to run out, he plunged into a hidden cave he had prepared beforehand, located below a stream, and then blocked the entrance with a boulder.

The icy stream blocked out most of his senses. He gasped for breath in the darkness, listening to the eerie creatures chasing him lingering and howling nearby before gradually fading away.

The crisis has been temporarily averted.

Only then did Shen Ge have time to feel the changes in his body. The liquid strange energy he had absorbed in that instant was like a depth charge detonating in his dried-up energy sea.

The immense energy surged through every cell of his body, and the long-dormant primordial cells, like ferocious beasts starved for millennia, greedily devoured everything.

However, this surge of strange energy was still a drop in the ocean compared to his once vast and boundless total amount of strange energy. It did not bring about the expected complete system reboot; rather, it was more like forcibly lighting up a faint LED indicator on a pitch-black, lifeless circuit board.

Shen Ge tried to mobilize his power, but found that it was still empty.

But as he concentrated his mind and focused all his attention on his eyes, the world in his field of vision finally underwent a slight change.

The scene before him was shrouded in a faint, blurry halo, similar to thermal imaging. He could vaguely "see" the faint life energy within living things, and... the more conspicuous dark red spots of energy representing the strange power on those eerie creatures.

The most basic "evil eye" function was activated in an extremely rudimentary and vague way, and this time it was on his eyes!
Shen Ge looked at the faint light coming in from outside the cave. With a clear goal in mind, this island was no longer just a hunting ground in his eyes.

It has become a treasure trove that can be "analyzed" and "utilized".

That giant heart, though terrifying, also revealed its operating rules.

Since there was a first "theft," there can be a second and a third. All he needs is stronger strength and a more meticulous plan.

He wanted to be like the most patient virus, slowly and meticulously draining all the energy of the island from within, transforming it into his own power, and reawakening the system!
Although the Eye of the Deceit cannot yet analyze data or see through ranks, this "energy vision" is enough to increase his chances of survival tenfold on this perilous island.

He was no longer an "ordinary person" who could only rely on his senses and experience; he regained a trace of "insight" belonging to the King of Devils.

With this faint "mysterious eye," Shen Ge's hunting efficiency underwent a qualitative leap.

He can detect the strange creatures disguised as plants in advance, identify enemies hiding in the shadows, and find their core energy more accurately.

He became a true, highly efficient hunter.

Every day, Shen Ge returned to camp with new prey, greatly improving the lives of Alai's family and relieving them of food worries. Meanwhile, he was quietly accumulating the strange power needed to restart the system. (End of Chapter)