The Monster is Coming

Chapter 349 The Path to Breaking Free and Advancing (Thanks to the generous patron of that year and that time)

Upon discovering a special item with the potential to advance one's career path, Li Zheng immediately became interested.

But it's just a hobby.

Near the "Bloodstone Furnace" at the bottom of the valley, there are a large number of stitched bodies and "evil warriors" forged by the Bloodstone Furnace.

The hunting level of the stitched creatures is generally around level 80-130.

Although the Evil Gu Warriors have relatively pure bodies and are the future life carriers of the Evil Gu Insect Clan, their current life level is around 50.

These are all test versions.

Each batch of flesh and blood casting is an optimization of the life structure.

The evil insect race wanted to use this method to create the most perfect life form.

Although he couldn't completely accept the rules, Li Zheng had already marked this place on the map, and he would definitely come and challenge it when he had the strength.

The hunting mission is not over yet.

He decisively withdrew from the area where the Bloodstone Furnace was located and explored the surrounding areas.

Hunting, fighting, recovering... Kurisu spent the next few days hunting and moving between locations.

However, his series of hunting activities also attracted the attention of the evil Gu insect clan. Under the control of the insect king, the number of stitched bodies coming to surround him increased.

Li Zheng gradually began to feel the strain.

Just as he was preparing to leave the area and head to the edge to slow down his hunt, he heard the sound of wind breaking through the air.

He suddenly turned his head to look at the sky, and his pupils contracted sharply.

A massive, imposing, stitched-together structure is hurtling towards us.

It has three heads: the left one is the rotten head of the old soldier of the Reverse Tide with his eyes wide open in anger; the right one is the head of the priest of the Compassionate Heart Clan; and the one in the center is the main head, which is entirely carved from blood crystal. Twelve vertebrae spread out on its back like a peacock's tail, with barbed claws protruding from each bone joint.

The torso looked as if it had been crudely forged from the bodies of dozens of powerful individuals of different races, with liquid blood essence flowing between the muscle textures.

boom!
The entire valley trembled when the monster landed.

Instead of attacking immediately, it simultaneously locked onto Li Zheng with its six different colored eyes, and its vocal cords, enveloped in blood crystals, vibrated out a metallic, grating sound:
“You…are…complete, we need you.”

"I want your mother!"

Under the influence of his inner energy, Li Zheng responded with a sudden punch.

The gale condensed into a drill-shaped vortex at the fist's edge, slamming solidly into the abdomen of the stitched body.

The force, enough to easily pierce a city wall, only made the stitched body retreat a small half step. The liquid shell formed a perfect buffer ripple at the point of impact, and even wrapped around Li Zheng's fist.

Click!

The sutured body's thoracic cavity suddenly split open, revealing a gear-shaped rotating bone saw inside.

The moment Li Zheng withdrew his hand, a terrifying force pressed down, the earth trembled violently, and it sank a section of the ground.

At that moment, the monster's claws came stabbing down like a storm.

Each chelicerae tip shimmers with energy of different properties.

Lightning, ice, poisonous fog... In battle, it's like having hundreds of killing techniques crammed into a single body.

Li Zheng was not afraid at all, and activated his Battle Spirit Soul trait.

Instantly, his inner energy surged violently, and he unleashed a punch imbued with critical strike properties.

boom!
Both figures retreated simultaneously.

At this moment, Li Zheng also started the analysis and scanning.

They discovered that the opponent was level 117, but was definitely capable of fighting them.

Although he has not yet returned to his hometown to activate the "Tyrant Dharma Form" function, he has assessed his combat strength, which is around 120 hunting level.

Then the stitches came again.

Li Zheng decisively met the attack head-on, his runic weapon transforming into a golden gauntlet, his fist clashing against the bone blade of the stitched body.

The shockwave from the explosion created spiderweb-like cracks in the rock walls within a radius of ten thousand meters.

His right arm muscles were bulging, and his inner energy surged through his meridians like boiling magma. Every punch he threw was accompanied by a roar that seemed to tear through the air like a dragon's cry.

"kill."

Two years of arduous training, from street brawls in the canteen to the subsequent mastery of combat techniques.

Direct confrontation has always been his forte.

He spun around and swept a whip kick toward the stitched-together head, the force of the kick tearing through the air and leaving a trail in the blood mist.

The three heads of the stitched body tilted back simultaneously, and crimson rays suddenly burst from the eye sockets of the blood crystal head, colliding with Li Zheng's leg energy.

Boom!

A blinding light exploded, and Li was thrown into the air by the recoil. He twisted and adjusted his posture in mid-air, his feet carving two scorched furrows into the rock face.

But before he could land, the ground suddenly cracked open, and another stitched body burst out of the ground.

This one was even more ferocious than the previous one. Its torso was pieced together from the remains of different ferocious beasts, and six barbed tentacles extended from its back, each ending in a still-moving eyeball.

It opened its massive maw, unleashing a powerful, highly concentrated burst of corrosive energy.

Li Zheng's pupils contracted sharply, and he clasped his hands together, his inner energy condensing into a thick blood shield in front of him.

The moment the energy cannon struck the air shield, the soles of his boots plowed two deep furrows in the ground, and the skin on his entire arm was ripped open, with blood dripping down his wrist.

"besides?!"

Just then, another stitched body fell from the sky.

This slender body exuded a terrifying spiritual pressure. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed to be a stitched-together body composed of the remains of several spiritual cultivators.

The hunting level has reached 135.

Its fingertips were wrapped in talisman-like dark blue threads, and with a wave of its hand, a binding spiritual power pressed down.

Li Zheng roared, his fighting spirit burning to its limit. His amplified qi transformed into crimson flames, forcefully resisting the constraints of the formation.

He stomped on the ground and charged toward the nearest stitched body like a cannonball. His fists, elbows, knees, and shoulders—every inch of his body became a killing weapon, and every collision exploded into a cloud of blood mist.

A fierce offensive finally broke through the stitched structure blocking their path.

But there are too many enemies.

The fourth, the fifth... more and more stitched bodies appeared from different directions. They did not rush to attack, but instead, like a gradually tightening net, they compressed Li Zheng's evasive space step by step.

As Li Zheng smashed the head of the third stitched body, a bone spur gleaming with an eerie light pierced through his shoulder from behind.

Amidst the gasps and exclamations of viewers in the live stream, Li Zheng instantly felt a numbing sensation spreading throughout his body.

Looking down, the bone spur was being removed, and all the surrounding sutures stopped moving.

They watched him silently, as if assessing a perfect piece of evolutionary material.

Chestnut grinned, his bloodstained teeth flashing in a sinister smile:
"You're in trouble."

The next second, his consciousness was swallowed by darkness.

Before he completely lost consciousness, he had only one thought: he had to cheat and ask the Gold Coin Merchant Guild to find a way to teleport him back.

Continue the unfinished trial mission.

After an unknown amount of time, when Li Zheng awoke from his coma, he found himself bound in a sea of ​​blood, unable to move an inch.

I checked the time on the function panel and found that half a day had passed.

He was a little confused.

Am I being imprisoned?

Puzzled, he glanced at the live stream chat, then looked up at the guiding water sphere floating beside him:
"Brother Guide, have I become a live research subject?"

When asked, the guide opened his sleepy eyes:

[That's right, you have the most perfect and pure body, the most desired research subject for the evil Gu insect race. They hope to glean the true meaning of life from you.]

Upon hearing this, Li Zheng couldn't help but roll his eyes:

"Can this be done?"

[They really can! They were already close to success; you are the key to them overcoming the final hurdle.]

"Huh, this works?"

[Why not? The life structure of a player's pure body has no detection limitations. Back then, the Reverse Tide Legion's organ modification team studied your life structure in detail. It's just that the Reverse Tide Legion simply couldn't apply your pure body to reality. Organ transplantation is easy, but replacing the life structure requires a microscopic approach down to the spiritual vein particle level. The Reverse Tide Legion simply cannot achieve this level of life replacement.]

[But the Evil Gu Insect Clan is different. They are already conducting research on life reshaping, aiming to replace themselves from insect bodies into entirely new life forms. Your pure body is the perfect template they need. Although they can't research much, even understanding a part of it can help them create a new life form with infinite growth potential.]

However, this kind of creation inevitably comes at a price; they cannot have the challenger system that players do.

"Damn it, I'm a prisoner now. It seems the only way out is to free myself."

Just as Li was about to free himself, the sea of ​​blood suddenly trembled violently.

Unseen by Li Zheng, the stitched-together entities controlled by the evil Gu worms surged towards the "Bloodstone Furnace" from different directions in the region, like swallows returning to their nests.

The entire sea of ​​blood instantly boiled.

Hundreds of millions of stitches emerged from the canyon fissures, crawled out of piles of rotting corpses, and peeled away from the shadows of the rock walls.

One after another, like moths drawn to a flame, or like pilgrims on a pilgrimage, they threw themselves into the Bloodstone Furnace without hesitation.

The melting of each sutured body intensifies the bloodlust in the furnace.

The ancient patterns on the surface of the furnace lit up one by one during this period, like a thirsty beast awakening.

Although Li Zheng was trapped deep in the sea of ​​blood, he could still feel the chilling fluctuations of life.

"What's going on?"

[Through their research on you, the Evil Gu Insect Clan has officially crossed its final life-shackles and is now preparing to enter the experimental phase. The price is that the entire clan will be used as nourishment to shape the perfect body they envision. This body will bear the fusion of the consciousness of all the Evil Gu Insects; from now on, it will no longer be a collective consciousness, but an independent self-awareness.]

"It would be too reckless not to try it out."

[In the past you haven't witnessed, the evil insectoid race has waited far too long; you are the opportunity they've been longing for.]

Upon hearing these words, Li Zheng was speechless.

Players are usually the ones seeking opportunities outside, but they never imagined that they themselves could become opportunities for other races.

……

At this moment, a blurry figure was taking shape in the center of the Bloodstone Furnace.

It draws upon the most essential parts of billions of stitched bodies, with all materials being continuously purified, blended, and sublimated under the melting of bloodstone, becoming a part of it.

Gradually, the sound of a heartbeat could be heard coming from the furnace.

Like raindrops falling on the surface of a lake.

Then it grew heavier and heavier, like the beating of war drums or the roar of thunder.

Until the entire valley began to tremble in rhythm.

Boom!Boom!Boom!
More and more stitches leaped into the furnace, becoming the final nourishment, and blood-red light shot into the sky, dyeing the clouds crimson.

Beneath that crimson sky, a humanoid figure slowly opened its bewildered eyes.

"who I am."

In an instant, millions of voices rang out simultaneously in its mind.

Weaving together a cluster of memories unique to new life.

And, a story of climbing to the summit.

As the amount of memory information increased, the new humanoid life closed its eyes again, and in an instant, memory images flooded in like a torrent.

Countless voices echoed in my mind.

……

who am I?
In that ancient little world that is almost forgotten, our ancestors were the most lowly maggots.

The world was dark and putrid, with thick miasma like an ever-present gloom shrouding every inch of land.

Despite its scarce resources, it has become a prized commodity fought over by various factions.

The earth was covered with a layer of rotting corpses, the remnants of life left behind by years of relentless war.

Every piece of rotting flesh and every bone exudes a nauseating stench, yet it is the warm cradle upon which we depend for survival.

We struggled to writhe in the folds of the decaying corpses, dodging energy shockwaves that could bring destruction at any moment, or attacks from other ferocious predators.

Although this world is full of rotting corpses, they are still resources that need to be obtained through competition.

Those enormous, rotting flesh monsters feed on all matter. Wherever they go, putrid liquid splatters, and our people are crushed in droves. There are also bone spirits that parasitize the bones. They gain power by devouring bones and control the bones to attack us. Once we are entangled by their bone tentacles, our life force will be instantly drained...

In this world, we are at the very bottom.

In the face of extreme food scarcity, brutal battles often erupted among members of the same tribe over a single bloody bone fragment, tearing each other apart with their tender, fragile teeth.

Until one day, an ancestor suddenly awakened to intelligence while munching on a strange crystal.

It sensed its own existence and became aware of the tragic situation of our kind.

"Why can't we be like them, becoming predators that devour other races?"

It questioned itself and even the world, followed by anger at the injustice of its own fate.

It was this very question that ushered in a new future for our Evil Gu Insect Clan.

From that moment on, we embarked on an endless climb.

We faced fierce competitors head-on, constantly evolved, and finally broke through the layer of rotting flesh to reach the surface.

But they discovered that the outside world was far more complex than they had imagined, and that it was not just a place where people indulged in filth and decay.

Our first opponent nearly wiped out our entire race.

This is a faction called the "Crystallized Vine Clan".

They do not rely on flesh and blood to survive, but feed on life energy and can also secrete a crystallized venom.

Whenever they appear, the vegetation in the entire area withers at a visible rate, a sign that energy is being forcibly extracted.

Once our people are entangled by the vines, their carapace will crystallize and shatter instantly, their bodily fluids will be sucked into transparent crystals, and in the end, only a light, empty shell will remain, which will dissipate with a gust of wind.

There is also the "Singing Sand Tribe".

Their bodies are like flowing gold sand, usually lurking under the dry riverbed, but once they sense living creatures, they will turn into sandstorms and sweep in.

The roar of the sand rubbing together could shatter our consciousness. Those caught in it would be ground into powder by millions of grains of golden sand, leaving not even a fragment of their carapace.

Most terrifyingly, they can release an invisible, seductive sound wave, leading countless members of their tribe step by step into a death trap.

Faced with these powerful enemies, we suffered heavy casualties.

Through repeated struggles that nearly led to our extinction, we have learned to be more united.

They use the tunnels hidden beneath the rotting flesh for guerrilla warfare, craft weapons from spikes dropped by monsters, and refine poisons from collected rotting liquid that can temporarily paralyze enemies.

Our life forms have also continuously evolved to adapt to war.

Every victory is accompanied by the sacrifice of countless people, but our desire to escape the plight of the underprivileged only grows stronger.

Now that we've embarked on this path, we must walk all the way to the top.

To become the master of this world, to become the predator at the top of the food chain as described by our ancestors, and to no longer worry about safety.

That climb was fraught with endless enemies; we climbed up by stepping on the corpses of our own kind.

Each generation serves as a stepping stone for the next, and the only fulcrum for evolution under the feet of those who follow.

This is a heart-wrenching evolutionary history.

To survive the venom of the Crystallized Vine Clan, we gnawed on decaying grasses with anti-venom genes, watching our kin's bodies swell and burst in spasms, green sap splashing onto the rock walls... until the survivors' carapaces oozed a faint green hue, armor formed from the toxins precipitating within their bodies.

From then on, the tips of our chelicerae began to secrete substances that could neutralize the crystallized venom, which became our weapon to defeat the Crystallized Vine Clan.

In order to resist the alluring sound waves of the Singing Sand Clan, we learned to adjust the resonant frequency of our shells to a specific band.

Countless members of the tribe experienced a breakdown of consciousness during the resonance evolution experiment. Some had their carapaces shatter on their own due to high-frequency vibrations, while others had their tentacles stiffen like withered branches. Ultimately, the tribe's auditory system evolved the ability to "filter sound waves."

To resolve the chaotic tribal control system, we evolved a collective spiritual network capable of carrying the thoughts of all our tribesmen.

When we defeated these formidable enemies, we discovered that the challenges were not yet over.

Every time a powerful enemy is overcome, an even more powerful force will emerge.

Upon becoming the strongest power in that region, we will face the challenge of "higher intelligent beings".

They are smarter than us.

This is also the first time we've realized that wisdom can be a weapon.

Our evolution relies on fragments of memory in our genes, while their evolution relies on inheritance, writing knowledge on paper or engraving it on information crystals.

It can also pass on the wisdom of generations to future generations through language.

A young, intelligent being can use the traps and mechanisms left by its ancestors as soon as it leaves its territory, while we need to sacrifice countless members of our tribe to gain even a little survival experience.

We are too weak compared to them.

But we have never given up on the road to the summit.

Since they cannot compete in intelligence, they evolve to possess absolute overwhelming power.

In the endless conflict, the race's development has fallen into a death spiral, once again facing the crisis of annihilation.
The group evolved in different directions, all in search of a way to defeat their rivals.

Until a king of insects proposed the "parasitic theory," using the power of a powerful enemy to defeat another powerful enemy.

The first to try it paid a heavy price.

The members of the tribe are crushed by the immune system within the host's flesh and blood, making it impossible for them to effectively parasitize.

But through continuous experimentation, we finally found the secret to parasitism.

We have learned to parasitize the gaps in the nervous system, like vines clinging to a tree trunk, using the host's body to move.

When the first intelligent being parasitized raised its longbow and fired an arrow that struck its own kind precisely in the heart, we saw fear in the eyes of an intelligent being for the first time.

It turns out that for highly intelligent beings, emotions are a sharper weapon than pain.

Evolution accelerated in the years of subsequent battles.

We no longer strive to forge a harder shell; instead, in order to better parasitize, we have become as thin as a hair, capable of easily penetrating skin, bones, and even gaps in armor.

The parasitized host retains all memories and skills, but can be manipulated by our consciousness at crucial moments, like a puppet on a string.

A stealthy infiltration plan is being devised.

Their closest friends, who were laughing and talking about the future one second, could plunge a poisoned dagger into their heads the next.

An experienced hunter will lead the entire herd into the trap we set.

This tactic of "using someone else's knife to kill" is a hundred times more efficient than brute force, but it also makes us utterly deserving of the evil insects in the mouths of intelligent beings.

But this is not enough.

The host that is parasitized will eventually die, and the decay of flesh and blood will deprive us of our nurturing environment.

So the group began to study preservation techniques.

We secrete a special mucus that keeps the dead body alive, and the nerve endings never wither under the nourishment of the mucus.

When the first intelligent being's corpse, encased in slime, appeared as if "resurrected," we witnessed the enemy's collapse. Because they faced not only us, but also their own kind, whom they perceived as desecrated.

The more crucial breakthrough came from an unexpected fusion.

Since the parasitic body was already incomplete, the tribesmen had a sudden inspiration and tried to merge the two incomplete bodies and continue using them.

This idea has been proven feasible in numerous experiments.

Two completely different life characteristics achieved a brief balance in the mucus.

The insect kings realized that flesh and bones could not only serve as hosts, but could also be pieced together and reassembled like building blocks.

Thus, the era of sutures arrived.

We graft the heads of intelligent beings onto the bodies of other species, combining different life structures to create a more powerful suture.

But this process was incredibly difficult.

Each piece of the puzzle is a provocation against "natural life".

The stitching of life is highly unstable, and mutual repulsion always occurs.

This can cause the stitched body to suddenly turn into a stinking puddle of mud during battle, or to suddenly explode.

However, suture technology is advancing rapidly.

Through this technology, we have climbed step by step to the top of the small world, overcoming the fear of intelligent beings.

Our strength has never been a transformation that happens overnight, but rather the result of engraving every struggle into our genes, so that every step of growth for those who come after us is built upon the steps paved with the lives of our predecessors.

Thus, we became the rulers of the Bloodstone world.

The question posed by the first ancestor to develop sentience received an answer at this moment.

We have successfully reached the end point that our ancestors longed for: the top of the food chain.

But this is just our self-righteous "eternity"; new crises have already been quietly sown and are fermenting under the catalysis of time.

The eighth century of being the ruler of the world.

The population has swelled to the point that it can cover every inch of the small world.

Newly hatched insect eggs emerge from the soil, and their tentacles begin to bite each other as soon as they peek out from the ground.

Even the most barren, rotten soil has been completely devoured, leaving only the bodies of their own kind as energy for incubation.

We once thought that "life-suturing technology" could solve all problems.

But when the remains of the last intelligent creature were pieced together, we discovered that the world we had conquered had long since become an empty shell through endless consuming.

The earth lost its energy flow channels, cracking open with spiderweb-like ravines.

The light in the sky grew dimmer, and even the turbulent energy currents became thinner.

The world is drying up.

The insect kings were terrified by this.

We can stitch up a body, but we can't mend a crumbling earth; we can control a host, but we can't stop the last bit of energy in the air from being sucked away.

The youngest members of the tribe died in droves; they were born without enough energy to maintain the hardness of their shells, which would shatter at the slightest touch.

The community's consciousness network is filled with unprecedented despair.

We stand at the top of the food chain, only to find that the top is sinking into an abyss.

Just when we were in despair, a turning point appeared.

The tribe found the answer to the problem in a relic left behind by intelligent beings.

It contains a vast amount of knowledge.

Among them is a record of the "origin of the world".

Intelligent beings discovered the limitations of the world long ago, and they have been studying how to refine the world's primordial energy, even drawing maps of passageways that cross space.

They were wiped out before they could even put their plan into practice.

This might be a path to save our race: refining the world and traversing space.

Using the technology of intelligent beings, refine the essence of the entire world into the original land, and take it away from here.

It's a big gamble.

Refining the world means utterly destroying our home, the place we depend on for survival, but if we don't do it, our entire race will perish together.

Following the methods left behind by intelligent beings, we built a refining array at the center of the world.

The Insect Kings personally oversaw the formation's core, guiding the flow of primordial energy with their own consciousness.

That was a process more painful than evolution. Each guidance would cause the Insect King's body to become part of the energy and merge into the light of the refining array.

When the first wisp of primordial energy was extracted, the collapse of the world began.

Ashes kept falling from the sky; it was the world crying.

We witnessed the earth wither at a visible speed, and the mountains transformed into a torrent of energy that flowed into the center of the formation, without the slightest hesitation.

At that moment, we had an epiphany.

Perhaps, in the eyes of our ancestors, the "end point" was not a fixed place, but the hope that the clan could continue forever.

When the last piece of land turned into a point of light and merged into the core, only a single, radiant piece of land remained in the world, and a large number of people were simultaneously refined in the process.

Following the map provided by the intelligent beings, we used our last bit of energy to activate the spatial channel and initiate teleportation.

At the other end of the passage was a sight we had never seen before.

The sky was even wider than our home world, with colorful clouds flowing through it, and the energy in the air was so concentrated that it almost condensed into liquid... Later we learned that this world was called: Monster World.

The moment we descended into the monster world, we were suspended high in the sky, looking down at the endless mountains and forests.

At this moment, we only have one piece of our original homeland, which is the weight of the entire homeland world condensed into one piece, and it is also our final inheritance that transcends life and death.

The path that intelligent beings failed to traverse, we, the "evil insects," will continue.

Upon first encountering this world, we are struck by its vastness and immensity.

A new battle and climb are about to begin.

This time, we will still fight for evolution and survival.

On this new land, survive until you reach the top of the world again.

But the cruelty of the monster world is far beyond our imagination.

This place is home to many powerful clans. Those races that are born strong possess divine power from birth, and their every move can cause mountains to crumble and the earth to split.

We are so weak; in their eyes, we are nothing more than insignificant ants.

The limitation of lifespan is like an insurmountable mountain, and the crisis of annihilation could strike at any moment.

Every time we clash with a powerful race, we are easily defeated.

We watched helplessly as the corpses of our people piled up like mountains, and fear and despair spread throughout our tribe.

There is only one reason why we have survived time and time again.

The powerful tribes didn't care whether our remaining members posed a threat to them, and were unwilling to waste time exterminating us.

This is war in our eyes, but in the eyes of powerful races, it's just noise that can be crushed with a mere step.

Perhaps the world is too rich in resources, and we are of no value in the eyes of powerful races.

They even felt that taking action against us was a waste of time.

We don't care about that contempt; we're just glad we survived.

But we will not give in.

After repeated crushing defeats, the insect kings gathered together and once again embarked on a painful evolutionary decision.

We need to break through, otherwise we will always remain at the bottom of this world.

The Insect Kings believe that our weakness lies in the fragility of our life form and structure, making us incomparable to the races of the Monster World.

We could never reach the power that the powerful neighboring races possessed when they were born, even if we spent our entire lives trying.

While suture technology may be a shortcut to becoming stronger, it is a short-sighted approach that cannot break through one's limits.

Our strength is entirely dependent on the strength of the flesh and blood we collect.

The Insect King believes that we need to change our life form and become a new life form with a superior life structure compared to the descendants of the powerful race.

The information stones left behind by intelligent life contain a vast amount of knowledge.

The Insect King discovered a technology similar to that of a stitched life form within this knowledge.

By smelting different ores to create metals, a mechanical body capable of uploading and carrying consciousness is created.

This is a technology specifically designed to serve the seriously injured, allowing them to continue living with a mechanical body.

This technology inspired us.

However, during testing, we discovered that we seemed to have chosen the wrong path.

We attempted to infuse consciousness into the mechanical puppets we created, and those bodies crafted from spiritual minerals were indeed able to carry the flow of consciousness.

But our consciousness is a flowing swarm of insects, like water, requiring the flexible containment of a container, while the rigid structure of a mechanical body will only cause consciousness to shatter upon collision.

Forcibly driving the mechanical body into battle will tear the consciousness into countless fragments by the energy flowing through the circuitry.

We realized that machines are inanimate, and only flesh and blood are suitable for us.

While ore can be smelted into a fixed shape, flesh and blood can grow, adapt, and evolve during the smelting process.

This is also an innate talent of my race: flesh and blood manipulation.

What we need is not a vessel to hold consciousness, but a physical body that can coexist with consciousness, allowing it to become our true new self.

Thus, the "deification project" began.

The goal is to research flesh and blood technology to create a new life that can support us.

During this period, we are also studying the use of "original land".

Each failed attempt during this period wastes a significant amount of spiritual resources.

The areas that allow us freedom of movement are too few, making it impossible to gather enough resources to invest in the research and development of new technologies.

This predicament lasted for three hundred years.

Until a terrible war broke out.

The war began with a flash of lightning that tore through the sky.

We hid in our nest deep underground, and heard a rumbling sound overhead, like countless mountains colliding.

Some of the bolder tribesmen crawled out of the ground to peek, and then never returned.

In the images transmitted back to the mental network, powerful beings that blot out the sky are fighting, and each collision causes the earth to crack open with countless ravines tens of thousands of meters long.

We have never seen such a horrific war.

The inter-group conflicts in our small worlds, in the face of this war, are like the mutual cannibalism between microorganisms in our eyes—they're not even on the same level.

The earth's crust trembled violently during this period, and we continued to delve deeper underground to escape the aftermath of the war.

During this period, some members of the tribe went to the surface to investigate and sent back images.

The powerful tribes that once instilled fear in us perished in this war like ants.

This disaster also became an opportunity for our people to rise.

On the day the war ended, the world suddenly fell into a deathly silence. We carefully crawled out of the ground, and the blinding sunlight stung our compound eyes.

The once continuous mountain range has disappeared, replaced by an endless plain of corpses.

The air was thick with the stench of blood, yet it also carried an unprecedentedly rich aura of life energy—the life force dissipated after the deaths of countless powerful individuals.

The war that terrifies us has provided us with abundant nourishment and inexhaustible resources to explore the path to the future.

We no longer need to capture the weak creatures of the monster world, as complete life sequence chains for reference and research have already covered the land.

The end of this war is also the beginning of our race's formal ascent to the top of the monster world.

These powerful beings who perished in the war have given us countless inspirations.
During this period, we combined the technology left behind by intelligent beings to try to create rules from the original land of our home world.

Using earth as the furnace base and bones as the furnace walls, we created a life furnace that can nurture new life for us.

After countless attempts, a colossal furnace spanning the entire plain of corpses rose from the ground. The primordial land supported the furnace's base, the corpses of powerful races formed its skeleton, and the surging crimson-gold energy flow served as the furnace's natural ignition fuse.

When the first batch of test subjects were put into the furnace, the entire furnace body trembled.

We selected tens of thousands of complete remains of powerful warriors who died in battle and arranged them in the furnace according to the complementarity of their life sequences.

But several attempts ended in failure.

We never gave up, trying to analyze the life structures of different high achievers at a micro level, clumsily searching for the possibility of success.

We rejoice when the first new life emerges from the sap.

This body has broken free from its insect form and possesses a growth ceiling that we could never have reached before.

It can carry the consciousness of a group; once integrated with it, a brand new group will be born.

But we abandoned this new body.

This body has great potential for growth, but it cannot reach the perfection we crave.

If we set it as the future, we will inevitably be constrained by its lifespan limit.

Not choosing means there is still room for improvement.

In the years that followed, the flames of the Bloodstone Forge burned even more fiercely.

We are no longer fixated on the success of a single body, but have begun to simultaneously catalyze the development of thousands upon thousands of life embryos.

But the path to godhood is far more difficult than we imagine.

We once thought that as long as we analyzed enough of the life structures of powerful beings, we could piece together a perfect body.

We disassemble, reassemble, and experiment, searching for the optimal solution among the remnants of countless stitched-together structures.

The birth of the first new life gave us hope. It broke free from the limitations of the Zerg's fragile body, was able to carry greater energy, and had the potential to continue evolving.

Each subsequent new life is optimized based on the previous batch.

But we found that the problem still exists.

The upper limit of new life is still locked within the known framework.

No matter how much we optimize it, its growth limit can never surpass the power of the beings it has merged with.

We realized that true perfection is not about piecing things together, but about breaking through limitations.

So we continued to make improvements.

The fire in the furnace burned even more fiercely.

But despite five hundred years of effort and accumulation, we still haven't broken through this shackle of life.

We are not creator gods, and even with the blessing of the Bloodstone Forge, it seems impossible to create a truly perfect life form.

It has fallen into a complete development predicament.

Until his appearance, we saw hope.

In initial combat tests, the abilities possessed by his pure body are unlike any other life form we have analyzed.

It wasn't until we apprehended him and conducted in-depth research that we were completely certain of our hypothesis.

His life structure has no concept of "limits" and is born with infinite possibilities.

The life formulas we've derived from countless analyses seem like childish toys in the face of his life framework.

He is the key we have been waiting for.

This will also help us take the leap to godhood.

The long-dormant plan to become a god has finally begun its final step.

We use the rules of the Bloodstone as our altar and hundreds of millions of our people as fuel.

We forge consciousness into the flames of leap, and refine the insect body into the steps for our "new self" to ascend to godhood.

From now on, there is no need to borrow anyone else's body, no need to hide in the shadows and eke out a living.

Our own blood flows through our veins, and our own bones support our bodies... We are the fusion of billions of "us": the new me.

Our name is three words that resonate and are forged from the deepest resonance of my life: Evil Gu Worm.

Insects transform into dragons, not to ride the clouds and mist, but to shatter the oppressive sky above.

The climb will continue.

They say that the "sky" in the monster world is an insurmountable barrier, a dome that insects can never reach.

But they forgot that when we emerged from the rotten soil, we knew to use our chelicerae to dig away the first rock blocking our way.

This pinnacle belongs not only to naturally powerful races, but also to races like ours that have carved a path out of mud, blood, and broken bones.

We are not afraid of failure; we have experienced countless failures.

……

Memories reverberate.

Rules serve as the guide, flesh and blood as the fuel.

The bodies of billions of evil Gu worms collapsed in the flames of the Bloodstone Furnace. Their shells shattered and their flesh evaporated, but in the instant of their demise, they injected the purest life essence into my new body.

Every drop of blood transforms into runes as it boils, and every nerve condenses into the Dao traces of the "new self" as it burns.

Their consciousness did not dissipate, but was forged by the fire of rules, like rivers flowing into the sea, converging into a boundless ocean of consciousness within the body of the new self.

From now on, there will be no more "we," but only "I."

There are no longer clusters, but individuals.

Memories merge, thoughts resonate, and billions of different perceptions collide and recombine in the furnace, ultimately weaving together a new self that transcends the mundane.

When all matter and consciousness converge.

Deep within the furnace, a pair of indifferent golden eyes slowly opened.

This time, there was no longer any confusion in my eyes.

"I am eternity."

The massive bloodstone furnace continued to collapse, eventually transforming into a blood-red crystal projection in the hands of the humanoid figure.

As for the origin of the rules, they have long been integrated into the body.

At this moment, even the original land of their homeland, in accordance with the final will of the evil Gu insect race, was officially promoted to the rule: Bloodstone.

The evil Gu stood suspended in mid-air, overlooking the earth, with mountains and rivers spread out before its eyes.

Then he looked up at the boundless sky of the monster world.

Its long, blood-red hair danced in the wind, and countless images of "me" flashed through its mind as it climbed its way from the rotten earth to the monster world. A carefree smile crept onto its lips.
"hungry."

　Thank you so much, Ru Meng Si Huan, for the generous donation! Thank you for your support! I'll add a thank you note to tomorrow's chapter title.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)