Every time Shen Ge passed through the intestine-like passage, he would return to the open experimental area. As for the “doors” on the surrounding flesh walls, apart from varying degrees of coverage by flesh and fungal carpet, there were no useful markings or traces to be found on them, which made it extremely difficult to tell whether a given path had already been taken.
Moreover, when Shen Ge returned along the same route and discovered that the flesh and fungal carpet covering the “doors” also showed subtle changes, he drew two conclusions—
First, the flesh and fungal carpet covering the “doors” were being controlled by the Oddity and constantly shifting, as if they were alive.
The other possibility was that this space itself was chaotic or overlapping, so that whether he returned the way he came or continued forward after entering through Door A, he would never encounter Door A again.
Comparing the two, Shen Ge felt the second possibility was more likely, because based on past experience, the higher-tier the Oddity, the more chaotic the distorted space inside its body.
For instance, the first time Shen Ge encountered a chaotic space inside an Oddity was the distorted space after Liu Zongrui merged with the villa, where both time and space became overlapping and chaotic.
In the several subsequent experiences dealing with giant Oddities of fifth tier and above, although the distorted and chaotic space was not as obvious as inside Liu Zongrui’s belly, traces of chaos and distortion could still be seen to varying degrees.
“Looks like getting out won’t be so easy…” Shen Ge gazed up at the ceiling covered in flesh and blood. Looking carefully, he could indeed see the black blood vessels in the flesh twitching slightly.
Now there was only one path before Shen Ge: before the surrounding Oddity energy corrosion drained his own Oddity energy, find the weak point of this space and break through.
In fact, if the thing trapping Shen Ge were a fourth or fifth-tier Oddity, he could have broken through directly using his own Oddity Domain. But the problem was that this was a sixth-tier Oddity.
Between beings of the same tier, without the suppression of a tier gap, breaking through using only abilities would undoubtedly lead to a war of attrition in Oddity energy consumption.
But the difference was that Shen Ge was in a half-human, half-Oddity state. His Oddity energy came from the system fused with him, and the system was not a complete Ancestor Oddity either—it was also a “broken remnant.”
Shen Ge’s Oddity energy reserves were far inferior to this complete sixth-tier Oddity. Therefore, unless he used the “Silkworm,” his Oddity energy simply could not match the opponent’s.
After recognizing his current situation, Shen Ge retracted his Oddity Domain, maintaining only the Three Characteristics and the Formless Barrier for defense.
This was destined to be a war of attrition, so he could only “save” Oddity energy as much as possible.
After returning to the experimental area once again, Shen Ge changed his approach this time. He no longer insisted on always taking the first door and finishing one path before considering others. Instead, he explored according to different patterns while observing the subtle changes in the flesh and fungal carpet covering the “doors” each time he returned to the experimental area.
However, this process was long. Even though Shen Ge sped up his movements and maintained the agility attribute boost the entire time, this walk lasted nearly twenty hours.
It was not until the 173rd return to the experimental area that Shen Ge finally arrived at one that was somewhat different from the previous ones. This area had more instruments and experimental tables than before, with about twenty tables holding different types of corpses.
Some had been skinned but still retained a discernible “human shape.” Some had been tortured until only a puddle of flesh remained. And others… there was simply no way to describe with words what that indescribable mass actually was.
Call it an Oddity—it had human limbs. Call it a Monster—yet the Oddity Eye could not detect any Monster cell Oddity energy reaction on it.
Apart from these rather distinctive specimens, Shen Ge also spotted many familiar “Oddity” body parts among them, such as rotting flesh, tentacles, and various flesh-petal heads.
But this experimental area was “different” from previous ones not just in these specimens and instruments. The “doors” on the flesh walls on both sides had become transparent, and behind them were not flesh passages but individual “observation rooms.” Through the transparent glass, one could see various strange Oddities locked inside.
The key point was that most of them were still “alive,” frantically pounding on the laboratory’s explosion-proof glass, the walls, and even devouring each other.
And these Oddities had incredibly powerful regeneration abilities. During the mutual feeding, one would have an arm bitten off, and before the fight even continued for a few more moves, the arm would grow back.
“…Good grief, never afraid of famine, are they?” Although Shen Ge found the scene of Oddities eating each other disgusting and horrifying, he also felt it was full of ridiculousness.
Just imagine two vicious dogs fighting. One bites off the other’s front paw, then the two dogs tangle for a few dozen seconds, and the dog that lost its front paw has already regenerated.
Shen Ge then came to an adjacent observation room. This one was filled with various “instruments of torture,” and on a rack was bound an Oddity capable of high-speed regeneration. The original researchers seemed to have used the Oddity’s high-speed regeneration ability to skin it, dismantle its bones, dissect and decompose it, and so on.
“This regeneration ability is terrifying. If you cut off limbs to make Oddity energy weapons, wouldn’t they be inexhaustible?” Shen Ge marveled.
Wait. Inexhaustible?
“Inexhaustible?”
Shen Ge immediately thought of that characteristic weapon he had been “yearning for,” which according to the system’s marker was in the underground research institute.
Although he had not yet confirmed whether he had reached the bottom level, the abilities displayed by these experimentally studied subjects were more or less connected to “Inexhaustible.”
“Could it be that the characteristic weapon was made from these things? The mother body?” Shen Ge speculated that the characteristic weapon “Inexhaustible” was likely equipment forged from a mother body possessing characteristic abilities. The researchers in the underground institute then extracted cells from the “Inexhaustible” Oddity through some method and conducted Monster experiments, which was how they created so many monsters that were neither human nor Oddity, neither Monster nor proper Monster, yet possessed super regeneration abilities.
Click.
Click.
At that moment, a series of strange sounds suddenly came from the experimental area. Then all the “doors” on the right flesh wall opened. Although some of the locked-up Oddities were still absorbed in eating each other, several Oddities immediately ran out from the observation rooms where some had already finished their battles or where only a single Oddity had been confined.
Shen Ge took a look with his Oddity Eye. These Oddities were not low-rated either—most were tier 4 and above, and there were dozens of them.
This was the first time since Shen Ge learned that Oddities existed in this world that he had seen so many tier-4 and above Oddities at once. It was clear that the “nutrition” inside this sixth-tier Oddity’s belly was indeed quite good!
These terrifying Oddities smashed through the seals throughout the experimental area, wreaking havoc freely, attacking and devouring each other. The entire laboratory descended into chaos.
Fortunately, Shen Ge was maintaining his Three Characteristics state and had not been discovered by the Oddity swarm. Although he was now sixth-tier, facing a siege from dozens of fourth-tier Oddities, it would be hard to guarantee he could kill them all without alerting the sixth-tier Oddity.
And this space was extremely strange, exuding a dangerous and mysterious aura everywhere. Shen Ge had been trapped for nearly a day and did not dare to expose himself so carelessly.
Boom!
At that moment, with a loud crash, the right flesh wall was smashed down by Oddities ramming recklessly into it, and more and more Oddities surged out.
“This many?” Even Shen Ge was shocked by the number. Was a high-tier Oddity’s body really just a cultivation tank for low-tier Oddities?
Compared to the many Oddities Shen Ge had seen before, he felt this sixth-tier Oddity was the most absurd, actually able to “cultivate” so many fourth-tier Oddities.
Wait!
Shen Ge suddenly thought of a possibility. Perhaps it was not just because the sixth-tier Oddity’s body was “nutritionally sufficient,” but also partly thanks to this underground research institute?
It could now be confirmed that this underground research institute was the work of the Monster organization, because only they possessed a research level far exceeding that of some major Oddity-fighting nations.
Shen Ge speculated that the Monster organization had built this underground research institute beneath Daijing, probably intending to conduct some kind of research on the characteristic “Inexhaustible.” Whether the research succeeded or not was unknown, but in this world’s timeline, this underground research institute became the fuse for Daijing’s loss of control.
After Daijing fell, this “sixth-tier Oddity”—which might have been foreign or might have originally belonged to the underground research institute—successfully fused with the underground research institute. However, hindered by a seventh-tier Oddity that originally existed in Daijing, it had been hiding underground developing secretly for years. But the Oddity energy generated after the fusion also “catalyzed” the Oddities in the original laboratory, which was how such a large number of Oddities came to be born.
These Oddities existed like parasites inside the sixth-tier Oddity’s body, growing through its Oddity energy. And the sixth-tier Oddity was no “philanthropist”—it did this so that it could have food available without ever leaving the underground.
At this moment, Shen Ge finally understood why any high-tier Oddity would inevitably have parasitic-type Oddities inside its body, or rather, would become an Oddity cultivation tank.
The higher-tier the Oddity, the more “afraid of death” it was, and the more it could sense the oppressive presence of even higher-tier Oddities. Just like how every time Shen Ge fought monsters above his level, the system would go crazy like it was having a fit, frantically warning him how dangerous this was and urging him to run away and hide to develop secretly.
Over these past few years, the system had practically wanted to stick the words “Stay steady, don’t be reckless” onto Shen Ge’s forehead. Before he completed his fifth-tier mutation, the system would exaggerate the danger of same-tier battles.
It was precisely because of this “instinct” of high-tier Oddities that most of them had the habit of hiding underground and developing quietly.
But developing quietly also required “resources.” Going out to find resources was clearly unlikely, so they adopted a relatively safe approach—
Cultivating Oddities inside their own bodies.
This explained why the flesh inside high-tier Oddities behaved as if it were alive, automatically preying on those parasitic-type Oddities.
But this also carried risk—the danger that one might accidentally produce a high-tier Oddity, and inside one’s own body at that.
Shen Ge had previously seen Oddity eggs and parasitic Oddities inside high-tier Oddities, and had assumed the Monster organization was using high-tier Oddities’ bodies as cultivation tanks. But in reality, it was very likely that the high-tier Oddities had fused with these research institutes and incidentally made use of the institutes’ specimen resources to cultivate their own “food.”
Of course, all of this was just Shen Ge’s speculation. After all, he believed that relying solely on an Oddity’s intelligence would not be enough to accomplish something so perfect.
Unless high-tier Oddities also possessed consciousness and a certain degree of intelligence!
Although Shen Ge had dealt with sixth-tier and above Oddities several times, these high-tier Oddities gave him the impression that they did not possess intelligence and acted more on instinct.
Even the two eighth-tier Oddities from the “future” that triggered a divine war and sank the entire Sakura Island—the behavioral patterns they displayed were also hard to associate with the word “intelligence.”
But if they did not possess intelligence, then all these deeds would be hard to explain, especially something like cultivating “food” inside one’s own body. This was also why Shen Ge initially suspected the Monster organization.
However, what the truth actually was did not matter at the moment. What mattered was that this sixth-tier Oddity wanted to break through to seventh tier by absorbing the high-tier Oddities inside its body, such as that Alien Empress.
Once it completed its seventh-tier breakthrough, Daijing would essentially have two seventh-tier Oddities. If it successfully devoured the other, then with the birth of an eighth-tier Oddity, not only Daijing but the entire world would truly head toward its end, and Shen Ge’s “Dual Transference Door” plan would fall through.
Naturally, Shen Ge did not want this to happen, but he clearly felt powerless. Because although this sixth-tier Oddity was said to be the same tier as him, it was not a newly advanced sixth-tier Oddity, but one that had been sixth-tier for years and was about to complete seventh-tier mutation—a quasi-seventh-tier Oddity.
It was like how among Saiyans, the blonde-haired ones simply had more value than the black-haired ones. A little black-haired one could not even touch the heels of a little yellow-haired one.
Shen Ge thought to himself that for now he should not worry about all that. First, find a way out of the sixth-tier Oddity’s body, then figure out how to complete the crisis mission.
At this moment, after the Oddities had smashed down the right flesh wall, Shen Ge used the cover of the Three Characteristics and the Formless Barrier to “step in midair,” successfully reaching the space behind the wall.
Although this place was also covered in flesh and fungal carpet, it could still barely be made out as a storage room for materials and experimental equipment. Apart from some shelves and storage boxes, there was a tightly closed hatch at the very back.
In fact, this hatch was completely covered in flesh and blood—without careful observation, one would not notice it at all. But Shen Ge was usually quite thorough in his observations. By observing the thickness of the flesh wall, he noticed a protruding section here. After cutting away a chunk of flesh with his pig-butchering knife, he discovered the hatch behind it.
After completely stripping the flesh from the wall, Shen Ge used the Formless Barrier to block the flesh from spreading, effectively preventing the sixth-tier Oddity’s Oddity energy from covering it.
Only then did he deploy his Formless Oddity Domain and cast “Collapse” on the hatch, passing directly through.
The space behind the door was about a hundred square meters, with every surface covered in disgusting blackened flesh. Stepping on it was like stepping on a sponge—it instantly caved in.
And with the appearance of this depression, Shen Ge clearly felt the sixth-tier Oddity locking onto him again. He quickly leaped into the air, using the Formless Barrier to isolate himself from the ground.
But it seemed already too late. With a series of “puff-puff” sounds, black, viscous blood vessels shot out from the flesh in all directions, coiling toward the mist-form Shen Ge like tentacles.
