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

As the days passed, the strange power within Shen Ge slowly but steadily grew, starting from nothing. But as his exploration deepened, his doubts about the island also grew stronger.

The island's ecosystem is too "perfect" and "closed," with a strangely clear food chain. After death, the corpse is decomposed by the fungal carpet, and energy seems to be circulating in some way, but no energy escapes outward.

This doesn't make sense.

Shen Ge had ventured deep into the experimental bases of countless freak organizations, and even with energy-binding fields, those places couldn't completely prevent the leakage of freak energy. This island, however, was like a natural "Faraday cage," locking all the freak energy inside.

"Unless... the entire island itself is a giant 'creature,' or rather... a giant 'experimental apparatus.'"

Shen Ge decided to go to the "heart factory" in the center of the island again. The eerie energy provided by the low-level eerie creatures was nearing saturation. He needed higher quality "nourishment" and also needed to solve this ultimate mystery.

This time, he was much better prepared.

The restoration of his supernatural powers strengthened his body once again, with the most significant change being his "high-speed self-healing" ability, which was comparable to the supernatural.

Shen Ge returned to that huge basin, and before him was still that giant, ever-beating heart.

Shen Ge did not attempt to "steal" energy from the outside again, knowing that it would only attract endless pursuit. Instead, he used the "Strange Eye" to carefully observe the flow of strange energy throughout the basin.

Soon, he discovered an astonishing fact.

Energy does not flow unidirectionally from the heart to the callus.

At the very bottom of the heart, near the thick fungal carpet, there is an area where energy fluctuations are extremely weak, almost nonexistent.

There seems to be an unknown "entrance" there, continuously drawing some kind of primal, eerie energy from the deeper earth to power the heartbeat.

That's the real "source"!
Shen Ge's target instantly shifted from the heart itself to this mysterious "entrance." He waited for the chaotic moment when a fleshy cocoon matured and fell off, and a new, eerie creature crawled out of the basin. Using the eerie cover, he silently sneaked into the bottom of the basin.

Shen Ge avoided the writhing blood vessels that resembled octopus tentacles and arrived at the area with the weakest energy. Pushing aside the thick fungal carpet, what was revealed was not rock or soil, but a flesh-and-blood passage covered with a translucent mucous membrane, rhythmically contracting and expanding.

It's like the esophagus of a giant beast, or some enormous latrine.

Shen Ge didn't hesitate; he'd been to places like this far too many times. He took a deep breath and plunged inside. The tunnel walls were slippery and elastic, filled with a strong, fishy stench. He slid down the tunnel, and after what seemed like an eternity, his vision suddenly opened up.

He fell from the end of the passage, landing on a cold, hard surface with a metallic clang.

Shen Ge quickly stood up and looked around. This was not the underground cave or flesh nest he had imagined, but a... unimaginably huge factory that had been abandoned for who knows how many years!
Or rather, an experimental base!
Hanging from the towering dome was the giant heart he had just seen, with countless thick pipes connecting from the bottom of the heart to the rusty, oddly shaped giant machines below.

He was standing on a piece of long-rotted metal, with bottomless darkness beneath his feet.

In the distance, rows of huge glass containers, resembling hibernation pods, stood tall, their surfaces covered with cobwebs and thick dust, but their interiors were empty.

The control panel, riddled with complex wiring, was long since turned off, and the screen was covered in cracks.

On the wall, one could still see some blurred signs cast from an unknown metal. The twisted lines and aggressive design style gave Shen Ge a sense of familiarity.

Shen Ge leaped down and landed steadily on the ground.

Walking up to a control panel, Shen Ge brushed the dust off with his hand. The structure of the instrument, the layout of the circuitry, the design philosophy that pursued ultimate efficiency…

Everything was so similar, it could even be said to be a complete replica of... the experimental bases of those freak organizations he had destroyed!
Shen Ge reached out and touched the metal casing of a machine that was almost weathered into powder.

Judging from the degree of decay, this place has been abandoned for far longer than a few decades, or even a few hundred years... It is a deathly stillness that could only have formed over thousands of years, or even longer.

A product of modern technology, yet it presents the vicissitudes of ancient ruins.

This intense sense of temporal and spatial disorientation led him to a unique, yet most improbable, conclusion.

He's still on Earth!
This place is very likely the old world that was completely destroyed after the strange event occurred!
An Earth that, after an apocalypse, has endured an incredibly long period of time and has "revived" in some unknown way!

But... this doesn't make sense!

Shen Ge's brows furrowed deeply. He knew very well that, based on all the intelligence he possessed, Earth's "world power" had long since been exhausted. Forget restarting, it couldn't even repair itself. Earth's fate should have been to vanish into cosmic dust in endless silence.

If it can really be "restarted", isn't that exactly the effect that "Tian Gan" and Shen Lin are pursuing?

If it's not a "reboot," then what is the purpose of the existence of this world?
Who, or rather, what force, has brought this world, which had already been sentenced to death, back to life in such a bizarre and distorted way?

Shen Ge continued deeper into the underground experimental base, filled with doubts. The air here was filled with a strange smell that was a mixture of metal corrosion, chemical decay, and the dried-up smell of some kind of biological tissue.

The massive glass walls had long lost their luster and were covered with spiderweb-like cracks. Broken petri dishes and decaying metal instruments were scattered on the floor, covered with a thick layer of dust, almost ankle-deep, which testified to the long years this place had been abandoned.

He entered a huge room labeled "Sample Storage Area," where rows of storage cabinets made of a special alloy stood, most of their doors open or rotten, and the cabinets empty. But a few were relatively well-preserved, seemingly maintained by some residual energy.

Shen Ge used all his strength to pry open one of the cabinet doors. A cold, pungent smell wafted out. Inside the cabinet, in a huge glass container, was a gruesome "sample" being soaked.

It was a human body, but half of his body had been forcibly fused with some kind of machinery and flesh.

Metal braces pierced his spine, and several thick cables connected from the back of his head to a long-extinguished energy core. His arms were transformed into mantis-like bone blades, and his chest cavity was cut open, revealing not internal organs, but a mass of... a necrotic, dark red tumor that shared the same origin as the island's eerie creatures.

"A weirdo... a failed modification." Shen Ge muttered to himself. This familiar modification style once again confirmed his guess.

In another storage cabinet, he found something even more astonishing: a "strange" sample still in its embryonic stage, sealed in a crystal-like container. It was a prototype that closely resembled the "Stone Crab Strange," but its energy core was an implanted artificial chip that shimmered with a faint light.

"These strange things... are they man-made?" This discovery completely overturned Shen Ge's basic understanding of this world.

Shen Ge chose to delve deeper and eventually found some clues in a control room that was locked behind layers of protective doors and was already dilapidated from the erosion of time.

The text on the console was already blurred and illegible, and most of the content was no longer recognizable.

But Shen Ge still managed to piece together some chilling phrases from the remaining fragments of text:

[Year 247 of the New Era... The final stage of the "...Project"... failed...]

[...The core energy of the "World Tree" is depleted...unable to prevent the arrival of the "Great Silence"...]

[...The ground is no longer suitable for survival...The first batch of "Ecological Recyclers" are deployed...The "Ark" Protocol is activated...]

[...hoping the flame can continue...]

Shen Ge stared at some "familiar" names, remaining silent for a long time.

He could finally be certain that he was still on Earth, but not on the Earth of his own timeline.

This is a "future" where, after the bizarre event, human civilization was not completely destroyed, but survived in some way and even developed more extreme technologies. It is a future where... the apocalypse has passed and thousands of years have gone by!
The “…plan” sounds like an experiment combining weirdos and the bizarre.

The “ecological cyclers” are undoubtedly the man-made anomalies on the island.

"Ark"... Is it the Ark I know?
But this is unreasonable!
As far as he knew, the world's power on Earth had long been exhausted, making it impossible to support civilization for thousands more years, let alone give birth to something as unbelievable as the "World Tree".

The very existence of this world is a huge paradox.

It's like a tree that should have withered and died, but was forcibly grafted in a distorted way, resulting in deformed and bizarre fruit.

Shen Ge looked up at the giant heart that was still beating incessantly in the sky above the dome. He knew that this heart might be the key to solving all the mysteries.

His enemy may no longer be a simple organization of freaks, but a much larger and unknown entity that created this bizarre "rebooted" world.

Having discovered the truth about the underground laboratory, Shen Ge no longer rushed into anything. He understood that the so-called "World Tree" was something he could not currently touch.

He needs more power and more thorough preparation, and the foundation of all of this lies in making the best use of existing resources.

When he dragged the carcass of a second-tier "Stone Beetle" back to the camp once again, Kyle and Roca, as usual, excitedly picked up their stone axes, ready to smash open the shell and share the tender meat inside.

"Wait a minute," Shen Ge stopped them.

Amidst the puzzled gazes of the crowd, Shen Ge did not proceed with processing the ingredients as usual. Instead, he picked up his finely crafted alloy knife and, like a meticulous anatomist, carefully began to cut along the seams of the stone beetle's carapace.

He carefully peeled off the carapace, which was harder than rock, piece by piece. He told Alai that the sharp edges of the carapace could be used as makeshift knives and scrapers; and that the largest and most intact carapaces could be polished into sturdy shields.

Next, he disassembled the stone beetle's two enormous, battering ram-like forelimbs.

He showed the two boys how to use the natural curves and structure of these bones to forge them into powerful battle axes and bone hammers. The hollow leg bones were cut off and made into containers for storing fresh water and blowgun quivers.

Even seemingly useless internal organs and tendons were put to good use by Shen Ge. He soaked the tough tendons in salt water and dried them to make bowstrings and ropes that were more reliable than vines.

Some special glands, after being crushed and mixed, become a poison with a weak paralyzing effect, which can be applied to arrowheads and traps, greatly increasing the success rate of hunting.

Shen Ge also found a unique way to deal with those bizarre flesh and blood.

He discovered that soaking the strange flesh in the juices of certain plants could neutralize the trace amounts of toxicity and residual strange energy, making the flesh more delicious and easier to preserve.

He sliced ​​the processed meat into thin slices and slowly smoked it with the smoke from the campfire to make jerky, which they used as provisions when they went out to explore.

This series of actions completely overturned the Alai siblings' understanding of "prey." In their world, prey was simply food, and once eaten, the end was over. They never imagined that such a hideous monster could harbor so much "treasure."

Shen Ge began to systematically teach them these "wisdoms of survival." He no longer just demonstrated, but taught more patiently and conducted systematic training.

He had Kyle and Roca hone their bones by hand, so they could feel the hardness and resilience of different parts of the bone. He took Ellie and Moya and explored the outskirts of the island, drawing a simple "resource map" that marked where there were edible plants, where there were minerals suitable for making medicine, and where there were dangerous and eerie territories.

Alai became his most capable assistant and "translator." After spending a long time together, she was able to roughly guess Shen Ge's intentions from just a few simple syllables and his eyes.

She relayed the knowledge Shen Ge had imparted to her younger siblings in their own language and manner, and supervised their practice.

The camp is changing rapidly in this atmosphere of mutual learning and growth.

Outside the fence, a new ring of warning traps was set up, consisting of the barbs of strangler vines and the corrosive glands of acid beetles.

Inside the camp, "drying curtains" made of animal hides and strange shells were hung up, on which various kinds of dried meat and herbs were dried.

Kyle and Roca are no longer impulsive teenagers. They have learned to "sneak" through the jungle, to work as a team, and can even set traps independently to successfully capture the first-order monster.

If Shen Ge's previous instruction was merely superficial, he is now aiming to train Kyle and Roca to become "Special Forces' anti-crystal warriors." (End of Chapter)