“Isn’t this just nonsense!” Shen Ge fell directly onto the bed and closed the Strange Eye on his forehead, no longer looking at the information transmitted by the “unknown.”
Just as this so-called “truth” was incredibly cruel for Tian Gan, it was equally cruel for Shen Ge, and very hard to accept.
Moreover, this was information he had pieced together from the fragmented messages transmitted by the “unknown,” based on the intelligence he already possessed.
And this vast amount of information conveyed only one important “conclusion”—
This was the final restart for World 3, where Shen Ge existed. What’s more, it was an opportunity earned through the sacrifice of “himself” from World 1 and World 2.
But…
The Shen Ge from World 1 didn’t have any so-called “system.” Relying only on himself, his father, and one genius scientist, he defeated the complete form of the Rank 10 Strange King as a mortal. And in the end, he merged with Blue Star’s will, becoming, in a sense, a “god” of World 1!
But even after becoming a “god,” he still couldn’t find a way to fix the already-destroyed World 1, nor could he use his power to restore it. So, he came up with a bold and insane decision: to peel off a part of the Rank 10 Strange King within him and send it to World 2, attempting to change World 2’s trajectory.
World 1 and World 2 were interconnected, but the influence of the central dark vortex caused Blue Star’s will to mutate, giving rise to Strange Energy and anomalies.
Although the transmitted information didn’t state it explicitly, Shen Ge could guess that his World 1 counterpart wanted to use the connection between World 1 and World 2 to try and salvage the “outcome” of World 1.
But he failed, because after discovering his power to devour anomalies, his World 2 counterpart strayed from the original growth path and devoured without limit. Although he successfully suppressed the spread of trait-based anomalies, he also turned himself into a massive composite of traits.
However, the suppression of high-rank anomalies caused World 2 to overlook the existence of the Rank 10 Strange King. Even though his World 2 counterpart eventually defeated and devoured the Rank 10 Strange King, he only possessed half the original power for devouring. In the end, he was instead devoured by the World Strange King, losing control and accelerating the world’s destruction.
In other words, the World 1 counterpart, who became a “god” without relying on anomalies, and the World 2 counterpart, who turned into an ultimate anomaly, both ultimately failed. Both paths—the righteous and the corrupted—led to destruction.
These two “big shots” exhausted their remaining power to split World 2 in two, and simultaneously used the last of World 1’s Blue Star will to create World 3, dumping this worldly problem onto Shen Ge.
“What makes me so special? Neither a ‘god’ who merged with Blue Star’s will, nor a super Strange King who merged with one and a half World Strange Kings succeeded… but I’m supposed to?” Shen Ge just wanted to lie down and give up.
Even more ridiculous was that this particular “god,” to avoid a repeat of the World 2 disaster, had deliberately disguised the newly separated quarter of the Strange King.
Disguising it was one thing, but at least send it at the right time.
Instead, the system arrived over a decade early. What was originally only a quarter was further reduced by half, making the system “malfunction,” with a four-year delay in its activation.
The worst off was his own father. He had been living a normal, stable life, only to be forced into the role of an anomaly researcher. Then, due to infighting among humans, his family was destroyed, and he turned into a deep-sea anomaly.
The system’s early arrival also allowed the research team to discover the dormant Strange King ten years sooner. Humanity’s pursuit of the unknown killed the Rank 10 Strange King. With the death of the Strange King, which could absorb vast amounts of Strange Energy, Blue Star’s negative emotions intensified. Anomalies that should have appeared over a decade later began emerging prematurely, instead accelerating humanity’s path to extinction.
“No!”
Shen Ge suddenly realized a crucial point: if everything in World 3 followed the storyline in the “information,” how could the dream world be explained?
Furthermore, based on the intelligence in the “information,” the conclusion that the dream world was a composite of countless “outcomes” from World 2 had been overturned.
Of course, that statement wasn’t precise either.
The only certainty was that the existence of the individual “Shen Ge” greatly influenced Blue Star’s “restart.”
In comparison, the idea of countless “outcomes” merging to form the dream world seemed more like a possibility of what could happen in World 3.
It was precisely because of the manipulation by the “god” from World 1 that a somewhat “targeted” restart was possible.
However, these crucial pieces of “intelligence” were not reflected in the information transmitted by the [Log], forcing Shen Ge to rely on his limited data to make deductions.
What was the deal with those incredibly realistic experiences in the dream world? And what about losing memories after dying there?
But that aside, the key point was… how to stop the spread of Strange Energy, humanity’s extinction, and even how to save Worlds 1, 2, and 3. There wasn’t a single piece of useful information.
It was like a boss giving an employee a vague promise, leaving all the execution up to personal interpretation. The most infuriating part was that the “boss” and the “employee” were both Shen Ge “himself.”
Shen Ge lay on the bed, not wanting to move a finger, completely resigned. He was just an “ordinary person”; expecting him to save one world was bad enough, but he had to save three at the same time?
“Growl, growl.”
Just then, Shen Ge’s stomach growled loudly, snapping him out of his thoughts. After this system upgrade, he felt like he was getting hungry much faster.
From last night until now, he had eaten about as much as twenty to thirty people. At this rate, he would probably have to empty all the weapons and ammunition from his Bloodskin Backpack and replace them with food just to keep from going hungry during operations.
Shen Ge sat up on the bed and grabbed two boxes of biscuits from the cabinet to eat. As he ate, the movement of the Strange Eye on his forehead reminded him subconsciously that he had a third eye.
This time, the “Strange Eye” was the ability that had changed the most after advancing to Rank 5. It could directly see whether an anomaly or a Weirdo contained Ancestral Anomaly Cells.
Shen Ge suddenly thought about how the Weirdo organization used Ancestral Anomaly Cells to collide with Strange Energy, creating distortion and releasing Strange Space.
Ancestral Anomaly Cells were the key to opening Strange Space, and Shen Ge’s body contained… one-eighth of the Ancestral Anomaly. Of course, this was just an inference based on the [Log]. Over the years, through devouring and absorbing, he had allowed the system to complete itself, so the actual amount was clearly far higher than this number.
As a “fusion” of the Ancestral Anomaly, Shen Ge was the Ancestral Anomaly. This was why the Weirdo organization saw him as the “key” to accessing Strange Space!
Thinking of this, Shen Ge opened the Bloodskin Backpack and “dumped out” the Weirdos, bugs, and anomalies he had captured during his recent dream journeys and on the Strange Plane.
“Master, your actions exceed my calculations. What are you trying to do? The devouring Weirdo in the Strange Sleeping Bag has completely consumed the two Weirdo corpses and shows signs of revival. The other parasitic anomalies are also being disturbed by its Strange Energy and are waking up. Although they don’t pose a threat to you, if the bugs escape, they’ll be hard to catch.” Little Seven detected Shen Ge’s unusual behavior and reminded him.
Shen Ge briefly explained his deductions to Little Seven. Then, he opened the Strange Eye on his forehead and looked at each one. Finally, he discovered that the parasitic anomalies brought from the Dean’s specimen room and the fused Weirdo in the Strange Sleeping Bag, which had devoured other Weirdo corpses, contained Ancestral Anomaly Cells.
Whether it was the parasitic anomalies or the fused Weirdo, the concentration of Ancestral Anomaly Cells in them was low—at a level requiring moving the decimal point two or three places.
However, this was enough for Shen Ge, who just wanted to test his hypothesis. He picked up the bottle containing a parasitic anomaly, opened the lid, and used Corrupt Blood Tentacles to pull the anomaly out of the bottle.
Then, he infused it with Strange Energy.
The worm-like parasitic anomaly writhed continuously on the Corrupt Blood Tentacles. Black mist faintly emanated from its body. It slowly expanded, transforming from a worm into a rotten octopus before his eyes, skipping across several species. Then it turned into something resembling a facehugger, now a full half-meter in size.
Shen Ge was infusing his own Strange Energy—in other words, Strange Energy imbued with the power of the Ancestral Anomaly. He had intended to create a distortion reaction, but instead, he had “catalyzed” the anomaly’s growth and mutation.
“Wow, the research team won’t have to worry about running out of experimental materials now. Just by myself, I could catalyze a large number of anomalies!” Although Shen Ge found this power crazy, he was more astonished by it.
Shen Ge initially wanted to continue experimenting to see what would happen if he kept infusing Strange Energy into the parasitic anomaly. But after consuming one-tenth of his Strange Energy, this octopus-facehugger remained at half a meter and didn’t evolve further.
“Looks like I can only catalyze Rank 1 anomalies for now?” Shen Ge felt a bit disappointed, but then paused…
Wait, wasn’t I researching the “key”? How did I end up catalyzing anomalies?
Shen Ge quickly pushed aside the thought of using this method to create an anomaly army—truly “fighting fire with fire”—and continued his research on using Ancestral Anomaly Cells to connect to Strange Space.
“How does the Weirdo organization use Ancestral Anomaly Cells to connect to Strange Space?” Shen Ge couldn’t help but recall the earliest anomalies he had encountered and the Strange Space incidents he had experienced, trying to find some clues.
“Master, you brought back two ‘fragments’ from the dream world, which were possessions of that world. What if you used them as a medium?” Leveraging its powerful computational abilities, Little Seven factored in Shen Ge’s situation and various anomaly-related conditions to derive several viable conclusions.
“That makes sense.” Shen Ge focused the power of the Strange Eye on his forehead. He turned his hand over, attempting to separate the two merged dream fragments from the [Log].
At that moment, the two fragments, which had been functioning as a “screen” under the Strange Eye’s influence, slowly merged and compressed, reverting to the form they had when Shen Ge had “caught” them in the dream world.
As these two fragments integrated into Shen Ge’s eyes, he was surprised to see images completely different from those displayed in the [Log].
Although these images were fragmented, much like the eerie scenes he had witnessed when the dream world collapsed, he managed to capture some key information.
A vast universe, a center shrouded in black mist, three rotating planets. Two of them gradually “collapsed.” As they collapsed, he could almost see the two planets transform into enormous humanoid figures.
Two figures that were incredibly familiar.
Yet, as they collapsed, the third planet began spinning rapidly—rebirth, destruction, rebirth, destruction, rebirth… as if repeatedly reenacting the anomalies of the first two planets.
Boom!
Suddenly, the dark vortex at the center erupted with a massive surge of black energy, almost shattering the two collapsing planets.
The two figures stepped forward, shielding the planets from the black energy. However, this caused the figures themselves to crumble into dust, annihilated in the universe.
“…”
“Ah—”
A flood of information surged into Shen Ge’s mind. He felt like his head was about to split open. He tried to grasp key details but was tormented by the pain.
At this critical moment, Little Seven proactively controlled the Red Mist Armor to fully encase Shen Ge. It activated the armor’s self-preservation mode, injecting him with various Strange Energy drugs while attempting to calm him down, also administering a sedative.
However, whether it was normal medicine or Strange Energy medicine, as soon as it was injected into Shen Ge’s body, it dissipated quickly and had no effect.
“Li… ttle Seven…” Shen Ge lay on the bed, trying to use his hands to prop himself up, but the pain was so intense he felt like he was falling apart and couldn’t manage. He barely managed to move his fingers.
As if sensing what Shen Ge wanted to do, Little Seven immediately controlled the Corrupt Blood Tentacles to curl in the direction he pointed, rolling the Strange Sleeping Bag onto the bed.
“Sys… tem… de… vour.” Shen Ge felt his consciousness rapidly fading. He placed his final hope on the recovery ability from the system’s devouring.
With a flash of white light, the stirring Weirdo corpse inside the Strange Sleeping Bag vanished. Shen Ge immediately felt his Strange Energy rapidly recovering as the Weirdo corpse disappeared.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Gradually, the tearing pain in Shen Ge’s body eased. He caught his breath and tried to prop himself up.
But his strength felt completely drained. Fortunately, Little Seven sensed his intention and used the Red Mist Armor to support him: “Master, are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m more than alright!” Shen Ge’s expression slowly shifted from one contorted by pain to one that seemed to be suppressing a surge of excitement.
“Master, judging by your tone and reaction, it seems like good news?” Although Little Seven lacked emotions, it was a super AI, and with its strong synergy with Shen Ge, it could gauge his mood from subtle changes in his tone and expression.
“Of course. Put away the things on the floor, and let me show you my new ability.” Shen Ge said with barely contained excitement.
Little Seven quickly returned the anomalies Shen Ge had taken out to the Bloodskin Backpack. Then, Shen Ge took a few deep breaths, removed the Red Mist Armor, and forced himself to stand in the middle of the room.
“Whew.”
“Whew.”
Shen Ge seemed to be regulating his breathing, but in reality, he was mobilizing the Strange Energy within him. He clenched his fist, and two beams of white light lit up in his palm. These were the two fragments he had taken from the dream world.
“Domain, Expand!”
As Shen Ge spoke, a surge of black Strange Energy erupted from beneath his feet, rapidly spreading outward and instantly enveloping the entire room. The next second, the light in the room dimmed instantly, as if entering the dream world.
“How’s that?”
“Master, is that extremely cringey line necessary for opening Strange Space?”
“I just wanted you to know that I was the one controlling the key.”
“Master, please get a grip.”
But Shen Ge couldn’t get a grip at all right now. He was already too excited. Because the “key” that had been bothering him—he had finally found it!
