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

Meanwhile, the alloy materials salvaged from the underground base on their ship began to exhibit a strange reaction. Faint fluorescent veins, resembling the texture of a circuit board, began to appear on the surface of some metal plates, and a weak, low humming sound emanated from deep within the ship.

“Brother…” Kyle gripped the bone spear nervously. He saw something even more terrifying happening at the edge of that “silent” area.

That invisible "boundary" began to show slight distortions and fluctuations.

It's like a flat piece of black paper being gently poked from behind by an unseen hand, creating a tiny bump.

Immediately afterwards, a tiny "crack" appeared at the protruding front end.

Something... is about to be "squeezed" out of that "plane".

Shen Ge was secretly gathering all his strength, ready to deal with the worst-case scenario at any time.

The "crack" opened slowly and silently. It had no color, no light, yet it gave everyone present the feeling that... it was "staring" at them.

It is "examining" the key.

The resonance of the hull became even stronger, and several alloy armor plates fixed to the hull even began to vibrate slightly on their own.

Seemingly confirming the identity of the "key," the "crack"... or rather, the "gap," suddenly opened up to both sides.

It is no longer a plane, but a deep, unrecognizable opening leading to an unknown dimension.

An indescribable "suction" emanated from the cave entrance.

It wasn't a physical attraction, but rather an attraction directed at the "concept" itself, seemingly calling out to the "echoes" on the ship that shared its origin.

"Hurry up!" Shen Ge said.

Before he finished speaking, something strange happened!

A piece of alloy plate with the sharpest edge, which Kyle had tied to the ship's side as extra armor, suddenly emitted a piercing metallic wail as the strange tendons securing it were instantly torn off by an invisible force.

The heavy metal plate did not fly towards the cave entrance, but instead began to "disintegrate" in an inexplicable way.

It first lost the concept of "thickness" and became a sheet of metal as thin as paper.

Then, it lost its "form" and was stretched and twisted in the air, turning into abstract data streams that shimmered with faint light.

Finally, it lost even its "color" and "light," turning into pure "information," which was swallowed whole by the hole.

This process happens within a second.

A solid substance, before their very eyes, had its physical properties "erased," reduced to its most essential "concept," and then swallowed up.

Fear, like an invisible giant claw, gripped the hearts of everyone on board. Alai covered Moya's eyes tightly, but his own body trembled uncontrollably.

This is more terrifying than any bloody monster because it overturns their understanding of "existence".

And this is just the beginning.

After swallowing the first piece of the ship's hull, the hole seemed to become even "hungry."

More and more alloy components began to resonate, and the entire "Ark No. 1" began to groan under the strain.

Is this what the "prophet" meant by "making the puzzle complete"?
What she wanted was not for them to sail the ship in, but for this hole to devour everything on their ship and the materials in the mysterious laboratory beneath the island, piece by piece!

In that instant, Shen Ge finally understood the "Prophet's" intentions. If he stood idly by, then the "Ark No. 1," a body he had personally built, a coexistence of technology and the bizarre, would be dismantled and devoured piece by piece until all the "bones" originating from the old era were consumed.

At that time, all that will be left is a "shell" pieced together from bizarre wreckage and tendons, unable to withstand even a small storm on this mad sea.

They will lose their only refuge and become prisoners of this fog.

The "prophet" then resolved the problem of waking the "cradle" without bloodshed.

What a brilliant example of "using someone else's knife to kill someone else"!

Shen Ge knew this wasn't the time for anger; he had to make a decision immediately. Should he sever all the resonating alloy components, make a painful but necessary sacrifice, and escape by boat?

still is……

"All of you, retreat to your cabins and close all exits!" Shen Ge ordered in a low voice.

Although Alai and the others were filled with fear, their trust in him had already surpassed everything. They immediately retreated back to the cabin as quickly as possible and covered the hatch tightly with the thick wing membrane canvas.

Shen Ge was left alone on the deck, facing the "hole" that was devouring his life's work.

Instead of retreating, he took a step forward and walked to the very front of the bow, just a step away from that "silent" area.

Shen Ge believes that the only way to contend with this mysterious black hole is to activate the characteristics of the "Progenitor Strange Cells" and release the power of the "devouring" characteristic.

The system had crashed more than once or twice, and Shen Ge knew very well that even if it was in a crashed state, the progenitorous strange cells that had merged with his body were real.

He is the progenitor, the mysterious one.

Shen Ge wanted to see if this "black hole" that was devouring the ship's hull could also devour its most fundamental and eerie characteristic: "devouring."

Just as Shen Ge released the insignificant strange energy within his body, attempting to create a strange energy neutralization point with the black hole to trigger a strange energy storm and see if he could break free from the constraints of this area, another unexpected change occurred!
In that instant, Shen Ge felt as if his consciousness had been ripped from his body and plunged into a chaotic vortex composed of countless fragmented data, chaotic wails, distorted biological gene fragments, and cold experimental logs.

It seemed as if he were lying on that experimental table, being dissected.

[…Experimental subject Alpha-001…failed to integrate with the “Ark” life support system…]

[Warning! Membrane contamination has exceeded...%...#@#￥...Containment procedures...failed...]

[...Mega-biosignal...approaching...Warning! Imminent impact...]

[...The Abandonment of "Ark Zero" Protocol...has been...activated...]

Countless fragmented messages of despair belonging to the "pioneers" of the old era flooded his mind. This was the chaotic core of "Sample 1." It lacked a complete consciousness, possessing only the most basic, contaminated instincts: analysis, learning, and assimilation.

These "pioneers" are the strange organization in this world; they achieved "victory" here and became the masters of humanity.

Unfortunately, they still couldn't stop the spread of the anomaly, leading to the world's eventual destruction, and yet, rebirth from that destruction. Their research target, naturally, was the progenitor anomaly cell.

And what is Shen Ge? He is the fusion user of the progenitor's bizarre cells.

Therefore, when this "sample 1" attempts to analyze and devour Shen Ge, how could its "authority level" possibly be higher than that of the original?

This "memory" did not appear in Shen Ge's mind; rather, it was more like a scene "played" out of the black hole in front of him.

At the same time, the "hole" stopped swallowing the ship's metal plates outward and suddenly contracted, drawing all its power back to fight against Shen Ge, the "virus" that had invaded its core.

The humming on the deck stopped abruptly, and the unsettling "silent" area began to flicker and distort violently, like a black-and-white television screen with a poor signal.

Each flash represents a clash and collision on the information level between two primordial, bizarre cells from the same origin but different worlds.

Shen Ge stood at the bow of the ship, his body motionless, but his face grew paler and paler.

Although "Sample 1" lacks independent consciousness, its accumulated energy and information pollution over countless years are simply too vast.

He was like a highly skilled programmer trying to use a personal computer to format a super data center that had already infected the entire city with a virus.

It seems that Shen Ge has no chance of winning, but through his efforts over the past few years, he has devoured the corpses of countless high-level strange creatures and grown to the seventh level, which means that he has repaired 70% of the ancestral strange creatures in his body!

Even though the spatial tear nearly ripped him apart and then reformed him, causing the strange energy within his body to spill out, the Primordial Strange Element was not greatly affected.

To put it bluntly, even if you break a piece of iron, it's still iron; it's not like an ordinary stone that you can use to stage an accident.

This is a contest of strength.

It's not about strength, but about their origin and "characteristics".

This is an extremely dangerous balance. If one is not careful, Shen Ge's consciousness will be completely overwhelmed by the endless information garbage, and he will become another polluted, selfless "whisper".

While Shen Ge was fully focused on this "tug-of-war" of devouring,

Behind them, in the thick fog, on the outline of a turtle's shell.

The "Prophet's" starry eyes were watching this silent war from afar. A near-perfect, cold smile slowly crept onto her lips.

The harvest time she had been waiting for was almost here.

However, just when she thought victory was in her grasp, the competition on Shen Ge's side took a turn for the worse:

[Error...Spatial parameters...Error...Current entity is located in: ████ Deep Sea Zone...]

[...Coordinate calibration failed...The current information projection is located at: the information field of the remains of the megastructure S-04 (codename 'Sleeping God')...]

[Warning! High-level permissions detected from the same origin... executing... a reverse... link...]

The fragmented data, like a cold blade, instantly sliced ​​through Shen Ge's consciousness.

Shen Ge's consciousness seemed to detach from the space-time on the turtle's back and fall into a tunnel composed of countless distorted, shrill data and broken light and shadow. At the end of the tunnel was an absolute darkness and deathly silence that could not be described in words.

In the dead silence of the center, he "saw" the wreckage of a colossal steel ship, larger than mountains, silently suspended in the air—the very body of Ark Zero. It resembled Atlantis, a forgotten city that had sunk into the Mariana Trench.

And in the core area of ​​that wreckage, a huge, pulsating "data tumor," entangled with countless data cables and bizarre fleshy tissue, is the root of everything!

That is the original body of "Sample No. 1"!
At this moment, tens of thousands of "eyes" made up of red alarm lights opened on the "data tumor," staring intently at Shen Ge's consciousness, which had crossed endless space and dared to invade from the opposite direction.

Just as Shen Ge was preparing to go all out, unleashing his most powerful and terrifying energy erosion to engage in a high-stakes gamble with the original entity from afar—

"It's now!"

A cold, greedy, and ecstatic will, like the most venomous snake, pierced his already highly extended and incredibly fragile mental world from behind with unparalleled precision!

He is a "prophet"!
She had been waiting.

The moment Shen Ge establishes the deepest connection with that "shadow of the deep sea," the moment Shen Ge devotes all his attention to that war that transcends space, and the moment his mental defenses are at their lowest point.

What she was waiting for was the moment when this "processor" was overloaded and about to crash!

“Your ‘complete form’…your ‘authority’…along with that dormant ‘source’…will all become stepping stones for my evolution!”

The "Prophet's" spiritual power condensed into countless tiny, sharp ice crystals, frantically surging into Shen Ge's consciousness, attempting to corrupt, disintegrate, and ultimately seize everything about him. In her plan, Shen Ge should now be like an empty shell, hollowed out, at her mercy.

But she miscalculated one thing.

She underestimated the extent to which a warrior who had struggled to survive countless times amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood possessed a fighting instinct that was deeply ingrained in his very being.

Shen Ge was not entirely unprepared when she established a link with the entity of "Sample No. 1".

He seemed to have expected this.

When the "Prophet's" attack came, Shen Ge showed no panic whatsoever.

He was even... waiting for her!

"It's finally here." A cold, soliloquy echoed in Shen Ge's mind.

He suddenly made a crazy move that no one could have predicted.

Instead of severing the link with the "sample 1" in the deep sea to fight against the "prophet," he actively increased the intensity of his "devouring," forcibly turning the chaotic and massive torrent of information from the deep sea, like a flood bursting its banks, around and smashing it hard... against the "prophet" who had just invaded his mental world!
This is no longer a simple case of "driving away one tiger to devour another".

This is equivalent to someone in their living room simultaneously detonating two bombs, betting that they can withstand the explosions better than their two enemies!

"You...you're insane!!"

For the first time, fear was felt within the "prophet's" spiritual will.

She thought she was there to reap the rewards from a weak victor, but to her surprise, the other side threw the core of the battlefield—an atomic bomb that was undergoing fission—into her arms!
Her meticulously constructed, crystal-clear spiritual power was instantly corrupted and assimilated when it came into contact with the information deluge of "Sample 1," which was filled with data viruses, genetic pollution, and mad ramblings, and it let out a mournful cry of being overwhelmed.

The three parties' most elite spiritual forces, using Shen Ge's consciousness as their battlefield, descended into a chaotic, primal, and deadly melee... (End of Chapter)