Devouring Stars: Master of Evolution

Chapter 148 Adaptive Evolution

Within the vast mountain range, centered around a cosmic-level mother nest, purple fungal carpets spread, covering large swathes of land.

The once lush vegetation has turned into a strange purple fungal carpet, which extends hundreds or even thousands of meters underground, continuously drawing nutrients from the soil.

Every few kilometers, tumors will grow in these fungal mats, and the fungal mats will expand again with these tumors as the center.

With its rampant reproduction, these fungal carpets covered thousands of kilometers of ground in just over ten days.

All the plants and animals were killed, and only the insectoid race survived within thousands of kilometers.

This was the first extinction-style expansion of the swarm, killing all living things without leaving a single one alive.

Qin Mu intends to completely control this world, turning it into a secret breeding base for the Zerg swarm, and has no intention of allowing any non-Zerg creatures to exist there.

It was this destructive expansion that enraged all surviving life in the mountains, including the rock giants.

In the midst of a continuous mountain range, on a mountain peak about 100,000 feet high, a thick arm, hundreds of meters long, extends from the massive mountain body.

This mountain is the ancestral home of the rock giant race, and their sacred mountain. The first rock giant was born from this mountain range.

This mountain itself possesses a magical power, naturally condensing powerful primordial energy of the universe.

Within the Holy Mountain's territory, the rock giants' strength, defense, and even regeneration will be greatly enhanced.

A demonic rock figure awakens from the mountain. Its body is made of hard rock, and its feet are planted on the ground as if connected to the earth, drawing infinite power from it.

With heavy steps, it arrived outside the mountain. Although its movements seemed clumsy, each step was like an earthquake, shaking the entire mountain range.

When it raised its head, it saw an extremely wide open space before it, where millions of rock giants had gathered.

These rock giants range in height from over 300 meters to over 1,000 meters, standing majestically as if sculpted by the mountains themselves.

Behind it, however, a steady stream of rock giants continued to converge from afar.

They remained silent and motionless, as if waiting for something.

"roar--"

A roar filled with boundless rage came from the mouth of the tallest and strongest rock giant.

With that roar, all the rock giants began to move.

Opposite them were countless insectoids, swarming between the mountain peaks. These insectoid swarms were dense and overwhelming, like a tidal wave, covering every inch of the mountain.

Behind the continuous mountain range, the swarm of insects continued to gather, their numbers far exceeding those of the rock giants.

Between the two, the vast land was littered with the corpses of the insect swarms and countless fragments of rock after the core of the rock giant had shattered.

The war between the insect swarm and the rock giants has broken out more than once, leaving the land uneven and filled with the smell of gunpowder.

Within the swarm, the Golden Horned Beast roared to the sky, and the massive swarm began to surge forward, like a tidal wave crashing onto the battlefield.

"boom--"

Charging at the forefront, the Flame Tank Zerg, over thirty meters tall and renowned for its strength and defense, was instantly obliterated upon colliding with the Rock Giant, turning into a blurry mass of flesh and blood.

The rock giants were so enormous that their bodies were extremely thick and heavy. The attacks from the Flametan insectoids could only reach their legs, sending up some gravel.

The rock giant recovered from such a minor injury instantly as he stepped onto the ground.

However, the Rock Giant only needs to move forward to crush several Flame Tank Zerg, and each attack can bring down a group of Zerg.

However, these Flame Tank Zerg were originally intended to be cannon fodder to absorb the strongest first wave of impact.

After the Rock Giants were held back by the Flame Tank Zerg for a while, the main units behind them, such as the Golden Horned Zerg and the Fire Dragons, immediately moved in.

These equally, or even larger, insectoid and rock giants clashed fiercely, making the battlefield extremely brutal.

The stones on the rock giant's body flew off and then constantly regenerated.

They possess formidable defenses and exceptional regenerative abilities, making even the main forces of the Golden Horned Insect Clan and the Flame Dragons struggle against them.

There are too many high-level cosmic-level powerhouses among the rock giants. These rock giants, which have awakened from their slumber, contain energy stored up over thousands of years and are located in their ancestral land, making them extremely difficult to kill.

When their bodies break down to a certain extent, they often escape by sinking underground. After returning to their ancestral lands and resting for a period of time, they can recover quickly.

As giant, snake-like Zerg units with enormous eyes appeared on the mountain peaks behind the swarm, the situation on the battlefield slowly began to improve.

These serpentine insectoids shot out rays of extremely high temperature from their eyes, which converged and shone on the rock giant's body.

The rock giant's body turned bright red under the extremely high temperature, its body constantly crumbling and reforming.

With its feet firmly planted on the ground, the rock giant can draw power from the earth to quickly repair itself.

However, under the attack of these high-temperature rays, its repair speed was far slower than the damage, and it was soon pierced by the high-temperature rays, shattering its core.

Once the core was shattered, the rock giant's massive body finally collapsed, turning into countless fragments of rock.

This Zerg unit with enormous eyes is a new type of Zerg that Qin Mu hatched after several stalemates with the Rock Giants.

This is a ranged unit created by Qin Mu after studying numerous cosmic monsters. They were originally a type of cosmic monster called the Blazing Serpent.

After Qin Mu's modifications, the Blazing Serpent incorporated some of the Blazing Behemoth's genes, enhancing its control over flames, and also incorporated the Fire-Eyed Insectoid's unique eye genes.

Thus, a Zerg unit, hundreds of meters long, resembling a snake in appearance, and with a single eye in the center of its forehead, was born.

This single eye is the source of the scorching rays.

These one-eyed monsters are named the Fire-Eyed Bugs. When the Fire-Eyed Bugs are about to launch an attack, their single eye slowly opens, and a dazzling light shoots out from it.

Immediately afterwards, a scorching ray will shoot out from the eyes and rush straight towards the enemy.

This ray is incredibly powerful and extremely hot; few monsters of the same level can withstand it.

Even massive, heavily armored enemies like the Rock Giant struggle to withstand the combined attacks of the multi-headed Fire-Eyed Insectoids.

However, these powerful Fire-Eyed Insects also have obvious weaknesses: they are weak in close combat and can be easily killed once they get close.

As the rock giants were killed one by one by the Fire-Eyed Insects, their existence immediately attracted the attention of some cosmic-level rock giants.

One by one, stones imbued with the power of the domain were condensed and launched like giant catapults onto the mountain peaks behind, crushing swarms of Fire-Eyed Insects to death.

The situation suddenly became deadlocked again.

"boom--"

In the center of the battlefield, the massive body of the Golden Horned Beast clashed with the leader of a ninth-tier cosmic-level rock giant, a thousand meters tall and as heavy as a mountain.

The earth trembled, and an invisible force field spread out. Centered on the leader of the rock giants, the gravity increased by more than ten thousand times. The agile body of the golden-horned behemoth was suppressed, and it had no choice but to confront it head-on.

This is precisely the domain suppression that occurs after the Earth Domain spreads.

Rock giants, these natural children of the earth, can naturally comprehend the Earth Domain once they reach the cosmic level. The domain is thick and unified, with extremely strong defense and attack.

At the moment of collision, the golden patterns on the Golden Horned Beast's body lit up, and the Golden Domain, with its enhanced talent, was unleashed at full power, barely managing to suppress the Rock Giant Leader.

With a four-tier difference in level and being on the Rock Giant's home turf, even the Golden Horned Beast would struggle in a direct confrontation.

In terms of strength and attack, the Golden Horned Beast is actually more powerful, but it is slightly inferior in defense. More importantly, the Rock Giant Leader's regenerative ability is too strong. If you don't kill it once, it is difficult to really seriously injure it.

In other battlefields, blazing behemoths roared as they fought against the high-ranking rock giants. Their lizard-like bodies spewed flames, scorching the rock giants' bodies. The fire domains slowed down their regeneration process.

Killing these rock giants is extremely difficult; they have no souls, and it is incredibly hard to kill them on the ground.

"Unless we bring in more Zerg units, it won't be easy to take over this ancestral land of the Rock Giants in the short term."

"This mountain range must be a place where the master of the world specifically cultivates rock giants; it is a natural energy gathering point."

Inside the Zerg hive, Qin Mu pondered a way to break the deadlock.

These rock giants became an obstacle to the expansion of the swarm. In order to kill these rock giants, Qin Mu had mobilized tens of thousands of cosmic-level Zerg and billions of star-level Zerg.

This battlefield is just one of the four main battlefields where the Zerg swarm and the rock giants clash.

Although the terrain within the mountains is extremely vast, it is clearly insufficient to accommodate hundreds of millions of rock giants and insectoids battling it out.

Over the course of three consecutive days, the swarm lost hundreds of millions of star-level units, and even a cosmic behemoth like the Blazing Behemoth was killed in battle.

Needless to say, the rest is even more obvious.

Among the swarm, only two fifth-tier cosmic-level golden-horned behemoths could suppress the opponent, but there were four main battlefields surrounding the ancestral land of the rock giants.

There are already six cosmic-level ninth-order rock giants among them!

Two of the battlefield swarms with golden-horned behemoths held a slight advantage, but the other two main battlefields were being suppressed.

They could only rely on the Blazing Beast, another celestial behemoth, to barely hold on.

Although the Blazing Behemoth's talent is equally powerful, its strength is only at the fourth level of the cosmic level, making it too strained to fight and forcing it to rely on sheer numbers to sustain itself.

Qin Mu had also considered letting the fungal carpet cover the area to sever the connection between the rock giants and the earth, but as soon as the fungal carpet spread, it would be destroyed by these rock giants who were skilled in the fundamental laws of earth.

Fortunately, although the creep cannot spread to the sacred mountain of the rock giant, it can recover the corpses of the dead insectoids and reclaim some of their energy.

The battlefield has reached a stalemate.

"Should we use the Queen Mother's Nest to hatch a batch of ninth-tier cosmic-level Flame Tank Zerg to break this stalemate?"

Qin Mu pondered.

These swarms of celestial worms have hunted down native monsters on a massive scale, accumulating a large amount of energy.

"Huh? What's this?!"

Qin Mu's eyes suddenly lit up.

In the brutal battlefield, a fiery dragon, covered in blood, landed on the ground and roared furiously. It tore open the chest of a rock giant with a claw, pulled out the rock core, and swallowed it whole.

The violent power of the rock core raged within the fire dragon's body, but the fire dragon ignored it and charged straight at its next opponent, engaging in a frenzied battle.

During the battle, its genes underwent a peculiar change.

In the midst of the frenzied battle, its genetic structure became unstable. After absorbing the power of the rock core, a thick layer of rock appeared on its body.

The fire dragon, which fell to the ground due to immense gravity, absorbed the power of the rock giant during close combat, instantly and significantly increasing its defense.

"Has it evolved on the battlefield?"

Brutal battles are the best catalyst for the evolution of the swarm.

Three days of bloody battle have caused the insect swarm to begin evolving.

Coincidentally, on another battlefield, lion-like golden-horned insectoids and a rock giant were engaged in a frenzied battle.

The Golden Horned Insect's claws and teeth were broken, and even the horns on its head were shattered, but it still fought frantically, relentlessly until the very end.

In the end, it still died.

But in the instant before its death, its power erupted, its innate abilities were amplified, and it used the golden horn on its head to pierce the rock giant's chest.

In that instant, the golden and silver runes within its body seemed to merge together, fusing its golden essence and spatial essence into one, resulting in a sudden burst of power that greatly increased its speed and strength, ultimately killing the rock giant.

Although it died, all the information and data from this moment of primordial fusion were transmitted to the Mother Nest through the soul network.

"Excellent! This is the method for fusing the essence of metal and the essence of space!"

Qin Mu's eyes lit up; even he himself couldn't achieve such a fusion.

Unless one manipulates the Myriad Manifestations Heavenly Wheel and merges the two fundamental laws.

But this relies on the power of the Myriad Manifestations Heavenly Wheel; it is something he cannot do on his own.

His understanding of the fundamental laws of space and the fundamental laws of metal is not yet sufficient to achieve this.

But this Golden Horned Insect did it; it burned itself out in its last moments.

"After awakening their evolutionary talents, the Zerg's evolutionary abilities seem to have become much stronger."

Qin Mu's heart stirred. After the swarm evolved to the cosmic level, its awakened innate abilities began to take effect.

The awakening of his innate analytical abilities made his analytical skills faster, and he even gained some ability to analyze rock and metal life forms.

The swarm is already analyzing the rock giant using this ability, but the analysis is very slow and results cannot be obtained in a short time.

But clearly, this is a very big step forward.

Needless to say, the transformation of the swarm's will not only created a soul network within the swarm, but also caused Qin Mu's own psychic power amplitude to surge to 300!

At this point, after a series of bloody battles, the evolutionary talent began to take effect.

Apart from the Zergling ability, which has not yet shown any abnormalities, the other three abilities have already brought about a qualitative change in the Zerg swarm's strength.

"Immediately analyze the final spatial-temporal origins of the Golden Horned Insectoids, and the method by which the Golden Origin fused, to incubate new Golden Horned Insectoids in this way!"

Qin Mu's eyes lit up.

Two years of research failed to merge the essence of metal and the essence of space, but the swarm naturally accomplished it during the three-day bloody battle.

"Indeed, war is the best catalyst for the evolution of the Zerg swarm."

"The swarm has begun to evolve!"

A long chapter of 4,000 words, 8200 words updated today. Requesting monthly tickets and recommendation votes.

(End of this chapter)