Shen Ge raised his hand and brought the pig-slaughtering knife down in a single slash. Those tentacles had just opened their disgusting large mouths when their heads were chopped off, and the black blood flowing from the severed ends was mixed with a large number of flesh worms. From the cracks in the rock wall behind the tentacles, fist-sized flesh worms were also squeezing out one after another, a dense, packed mass—utterly nauseating.
“A big weirdo grows little weirdos in its belly—your species really does progress in harmony together…” Shen Ge couldn’t help but complain.
Shen Ge had no intention of wasting time on these flesh worms. He simply raised his hand and made a grasping motion in the air, and the condensed invisible barrier directly sealed off the cracks that kept dropping flesh worms.
Then he shone his flashlight toward the “passage” he had just cut open and dug his way inward along it. Behind the steel rebar frame was a pitch-black corridor.
Both sides of the corridor were covered with black tentacles writhing like venomous snakes—extremely disgusting.
Shen Ge used the invisible barrier to separate himself from the walls and walked inward along the corridor. The deeper he went, the more the hallway gradually took on an eerie green glow, exactly like in horror films when a vengeful ghost appears and the whole room turns green. Thanks to this green light, he could barely make out his surroundings—better than complete darkness—but the green glow in such a narrow passage gave off an intense psychological sense of oppression.
Shen Ge walked forward for nearly twenty minutes. The passage became narrower and narrower, but it wasn’t a problem with the building itself—it seemed a collapse had occurred here, and combined with the weirdo’s fusion, flesh and stone walls had merged and compressed together, causing the passage to narrow.
But this posed no difficulty for Shen Ge. He simply opened his dual Weird Domains and, using the “Collapse” effect of the Invisible Weird Domain, passed through the obstructing barriers.
At the end, there was an open space, like the “lobby” area on the first floor of a research institute. At intervals, there were metal hatch doors, but these too had been fused with the weirdo’s flesh and blood, looking like human buildings covered in Zerg creep from StarCraft.
Speaking of “creep,” the surroundings of this lobby were coated with a thick layer of flesh and black blood, and many tentacles were writhing about. It really did look no different from things like Xenomorphs or the Zerg.
Shen Ge walked to one of the metal hatch doors, intending to pass through directly using “Collapse,” but found himself blocked by an invisible force.
“Weird energy?” Shen Ge felt the reaction of this energy was somewhat strange, because neither his Weird Eye nor the collision of his own Weird Domain gave him the erosive sensation of being blocked by weird energy.
Shen Ge tried increasing his weird energy consumption to release “Collapse.” The collision between the Invisible Weird Domain and the wall surface produced intense spatial distortion—the entire wall was pulled and deformed. Not to mention breaking open the metal hatch door, he couldn’t even tear off a single piece of the flesh covering it.
“Defense this strong?” Shen Ge was somewhat surprised.
Shen Ge decided to use the most conventional method of breaking open a “door” inside a weirdo’s body. First, he fired several shots at one spot with the Weird-Destroying Revolver, then immediately released weird energy to break through the defense. As soon as “Collapse” came out, the entire wall was once again visually pulled and distorted.
But this time it was different. At the spot where Shen Ge had blasted a hole with the Weird-Destroying Revolver, the pulling force of the distortion caused the hatch door to rapidly twist and deform.
With a harsh “creak, creak” sound, the thick metal door was indeed breached by Shen Ge, revealing a dark corridor behind it.
Shen Ge withdrew his Weird Domain. Without the invisible barrier blocking it, the torn and deformed metal hatch door was slowly recovering at a visible rate.
In the quiet space, the “creak, creak” sounds of the metal hatch door self-repairing echoed, and combined with the eerie green light in the corridor behind him, it made one’s hair stand on end for no apparent reason.
But Shen Ge felt nothing. He was just curious whether the metal hatch door’s repair was the weirdo automatically detecting damage inside its body and repairing it, or whether the door had come alive on its own.
What Shen Ge meant by “come alive on its own” had actually been demonstrated in the bellies of many high-tier weirdos before. It wasn’t that these fused objects, or the high-tier weirdo’s own flesh and organs, had developed consciousness—rather, it was a “new individual” created by parasitic-type weirdos parasitizing within its body.
Shen Ge guessed that the “high-tier weirdos” inside high-tier weirdos’ bodies were probably born exactly this way. Because the nutrition (weird energy) inside a high-tier weirdo’s body was too abundant, the parasitic-type weirdos parasitizing within absorbed too much of the high-tier weirdo, and therefore their rate of mutation was actually faster than weirdos on the outside.
It’s like certain bacteria in the human body—once a person falls ill and their antibodies drop, these bacteria multiply very quickly.
The same principle applied to weirdos. Therefore, those flesh jars and high-tier weirdos Shen Ge had seen earlier were very likely not experimental subjects that the Monster Organization had deliberately left inside high-tier weirdos’ bodies, but simply parasitic-type weirdos parasitizing within high-tier weirdos, mutated from absorbing the high-tier weirdos’ weird energy.
“So to put it that way, the other high-tier weirdo was a parasite in this sixth-tier weirdo’s blood. It absorbed too many nutrients and step by step became a high-tier weirdo. But because its survival location wasn’t inside the body but in the flowing blood, it gradually assimilated with the blood vessels?”
Seeing the metal hatch door fused with flesh and blood speed up its recovery, Shen Ge stopped delaying. He directly used Wu Zong’s new ability “Mistify” and squeezed through the gap in the door.
Shen Ge shone his flashlight around the dark, narrow passage behind the door. It was similar to the corridor with the dim green light—the only difference was that there were more tentacles on the walls, and the green light had become even dimmer.
Shen Ge walked forward with his flashlight. As he walked, he noticed something was wrong. The passage, originally about two or three meters wide, grew narrower and narrower, until at the end it was less than a meter wide.
The weird tentacles on both walls were twisting and dancing. As the passage narrowed, the distance between the two sides grew closer, and the dancing tentacles could even directly touch the opposite wall.
Because the number of tentacles on the passage walls was shockingly large, it made it look as though the tentacles had completely blocked the passage. It felt like driving into an automatic car wash—those spinning brush rollers.
Shen Ge noticed that not only the walls, but even the ceiling and floor were squirming. It seemed the degree of fusion here was much higher than outside, making this place feel like being inside a weirdo’s esophagus.
Shen Ge tried strengthening the invisible barrier to walk forward, but the resistance was much greater than he had imagined. He carefully observed the tentacles on both walls and found they were squeezing toward his direction, as if trying to wrap around the invisible barrier, to pull him into the passage.
Shen Ge immediately expanded the Invisible Domain and used “Collapse” on the surrounding tentacles, wanting to “pull” them all down in one go. After the Weird Domain collided with the tentacles on the walls, visible distortion and trembling appeared in the air—clearly a neutralizing reaction caused by the resistance of the wall’s weird energy.
Even if he could pull down all the tentacles and open a path this way, it would probably consume a lot of weird energy. Shen Ge thought it over and decided to retract the Weird Domain and use Wu Zong’s “Mistify” to force his way through.
For safety, he combined the “Invisible + Silent” properties together. After mistifying, he squeezed toward the “gaps” in the wall of tentacles.
Strangely, the three properties that usually made weirdos freeze on the spot the moment he activated them—perhaps because he was inside a sixth-tier weirdo’s belly—this time after activation, the weird energy consumption had clearly increased significantly, and those tentacles seemed able to sense him.
But no matter what, Shen Ge successfully exited the passage, and then… he was back in the “lobby” from the beginning.
“Back again?” Shen Ge’s brows furrowed slightly. He looked behind him—the corridor with the dim green light was still there, and the tentacles densely packed into a wall were still there too, proving this wasn’t a hallucination, nor was he trapped in a “maze.”
“A problem with the architectural style?”
“Similar layout?”
Shen Ge walked to the door he had chosen at the beginning and observed it carefully. The weird flesh and blood attached to the metal hatch door was even thicker now—he couldn’t even see the hatch door.
If it wasn’t that the metal hatch door had accelerated its repair after being damaged and then been covered with even more flesh and blood, then it meant this wasn’t the same hatch door as before.
With the experience from the first time, Shen Ge did the same thing—trying to use the Weird Domain to forcefully pull the hatch door open. But when he continuously released weird energy to strengthen the power of “Collapse” and attempted to break through the flesh’s defense, he vaguely saw something inside the distorted flesh that seemed to want to drill its way out.
The next second, the flesh on the metal hatch door was peeled away, revealing the metal hatch door behind it. There was a large hole in the door, and a disgusting monster’s head happened to be “stuck” in the hole.
Earlier, because of the thick layer of flesh covering it, Shen Ge hadn’t seen this monster, and the monster had also been sealed by the flesh, fallen into a state of “suspended animation.” Now that the flesh had been peeled away, it immediately woke up.
“Gurgle.”
“Gurgle.”
The weirdo had two fist-sized eyeballs on its bald head. Its entire body was already rotting—it looked like a cross between a human and a dog, half-crouched on the ground. It had no skin, and the dark red flesh still showed obvious signs of decay. The stench from its body was so foul it made one want to vomit.
“How about you just keep staying stuck there? Maybe those people next door who are living pretty well would be interested in your current pose!” Shen Ge had just finished joking when the weirdo seemed to “sniff” the aura on him, raised its head, and let out a roar.
“No way, it can see me even like this?” Shen Ge felt completely awful. This was the first time the three properties had failed since he mastered the skip-class fighting style.
“No, it hasn’t found my location—it just smelled the weird energy on me. But that doesn’t make sense either. This weirdo is only around third or fourth tier in strength—how could it lock onto my sixth-tier aura?” Shen Ge couldn’t figure it out, but the weirdo clearly wasn’t going to let him keep thinking. It grabbed the large hole in the metal hatch door with both hands.
Creak.
Creak.
The metal hatch door was forcibly pried and twisted out of shape by the weirdo, emitting a piercing sound. Then it crawled out from inside the door.
And then, it swung its claws at the air.
“So it can only sense my general aura, not determine my exact location. That means Invisible and Silent haven’t failed—it’s Wu Zong that failed?”
“No way, Wu Zong just leveled up and it’s already letting me down? You’re less useful than before.” Shen Ge casually complained.
But the situation was clearly not that simple. Most likely, the shielding effect had been weakened by the weird energy black mist, because according to the system’s earlier prompt, this weirdo also possessed a certain shielding ability—otherwise it couldn’t have hidden under a seventh-tier weirdo’s nose for so long.
The weirdo swung its claws several times in a row and hit nothing but air, which made it even more furious. It kept roaring and attacking at the air.
As the attack frequency increased, it seemed able to lock onto Shen Ge’s position more precisely, and the distance grew closer and closer.
At this moment, the weirdo opened its mouth to the maximum, but with a “puff” sound, its head split open, turning into two halves. Each half was covered with sharp teeth, and black blood flowed from the gaps between the teeth, constantly dripping onto the ground.
Every drop of this blood that hit the ground produced a “sizzle, sizzle” corrosive sound, like sulfuric acid.
“Wait, why does this weirdo look kind of familiar?” Shen Ge vaguely remembered that he had previously discovered some shriveled experimental subjects in an underground research institute in Korea, and among them was this kind of weirdo with a head split in two.
But those corpses had all become dried-up husks, and after such a long time, Shen Ge hadn’t paid it much mind. So it wasn’t until the weirdo in front of him split its head open again that he remembered this.
“Why would Korean experimental materials be in this underground research institute? Judging from this weirdo’s appearance, it wasn’t mutated from a parasitic-type weirdo.”
“Most likely, the dead experimental subjects in the research institute were ‘revived’ by the nourishment of weird energy after being fused by the high-tier weirdo.”
“But if these are Korean experimental subjects, did Korea secretly plant them in Dajing, or were they stolen from Dajing?”
Setting that aside, the latter would really fit Korea’s national character.
While Shen Ge was observing the weirdo, the other party was still continuously trying to attack, and gradually becoming more and more precise at grasping Shen Ge’s position.
[Detected a fourth-tier weirdo ahead. Host, please finish the battle quickly to avoid waking more sleeping weirdo experimental subjects.]
“More?”
Shen Ge narrowed his eyes. Although the system’s habitually late prompt no longer served as a warning, it did reveal a very important piece of intelligence.
There were other split-head weirdos here.
After multiple attempts, the weirdo’s locking onto Shen Ge’s position became more and more precise. With a roar, it suddenly pounced toward where Shen Ge was standing, then spat out a large pool of corrosive liquid from its split head, while the two halves of its head snapped shut rapidly.
“Motionless Weird Domain!”
Bullet time!
The weirdo’s figure in the air stalled under the influence of the Weird Domain. In that instant of stagnation, the pig-slaughtering knife in Shen Ge’s hand had already slashed toward its neck. He had thought this one slash would finish off this fourth-tier weirdo, but who would have expected that after the entire blade sank into the split-head weirdo’s neck, the wound rapidly healed and recovered—instead trapping the pig-slaughtering knife.
Healing this fast?
Among the fourth-tier weirdos Shen Ge had dealt with before, there was no shortage of weirdos with high-speed healing, but their speed was far inferior to this split-head weirdo.
The split-head weirdo’s healing gave him the feeling of a lump of rubber clay—after being cut open by a knife, you just press it back together and it perfectly reconnects.
At this point, because of Shen Ge’s attack, the split-head weirdo had become completely “familiar” with his aura. Even with the interference of the three properties, it could still roughly touch his position with every attack.
Only then did Shen Ge notice that a strange weird-energy black mist was drifting around his body, seemingly emanating from the walls on both sides.
“The sixth-tier weirdo is helping it locate me?
