"A heretic who steals divine power? Thunder Judgment?"
Qin Feng listened to Ning Fengzhi relay the message over the communicator, his expression unmoved.
He simply spoke into the communicator in the tone of someone giving orders to a subordinate. "Mine manager, your job is mining, not passing along messages."
"I'll handle the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan."
"You have three days. If the first batch of Vibranium ore isn't on my conveyor belt by then, you know what happens."
On the other end, Ning Fengzhi shuddered involuntarily.
It was as if he could see once more the mushroom cloud that had risen fifty kilometers away, and the Thunder Tyrannosaurus that had been turned into a living battery.
"Yes, Master! I guarantee I'll complete the task!" Ning Fengzhi's voice was full of urgency. He didn't dare mention Yu Yuanzhen again.
Qin Feng casually ended the call.
To him, a challenge from a primitive tribe that could do nothing but discharge electricity through brute force was less important than a set of abnormal data in his laboratory.
He turned and looked at the auxiliary screen in the Central Control Room.
On it was a real-time monitoring report on the test subject "Tang San," just sent over by Orochimaru.
"Boss, something's off about Tang San's data!" Grey Wolf held a wrench in his mouth and pointed at the warning curves spiking across the screen. "His cells are undergoing massive, unprogrammed apoptosis, but his vital signs are being forcibly maintained by some strange energy cycle!"
"It's like a boiler about to explode, with someone frantically shoveling coal into it while pouring ice water over the outside!"
Qin Feng walked up to the screen and brought up a dynamic visualization of Tang San's evolving genetic sequence.
In the image, the purple strands representing the Cursed Seal virus were rapidly devouring the blue strands representing Tang San's own genes.
At the same time, a golden energy flow—Tang San's Mysterious Heaven Skill inner power—was trying to wrap around, suppress, and even break down the purple strands.
"Heh. Interesting." Qin Feng's lips curled into a smile.
He connected to the internal communications line for the Underground Level 4 Biological Laboratory.
"Doctor, how are things going?"
Orochimaru's pale face appeared on the screen. Behind him stood a huge cultivation tank.
Tang San was submerged inside it, his skin an unnatural grayish black. The three-tomoe Cursed Seal on his neck glowed ominously, like red-hot brands.
"Qin Feng, your test subject has given me a tremendous surprise!" Orochimaru's voice brimmed with undisguised excitement.
He pointed at Tang San, who was trembling slightly inside the tank.
"The bloodline factors of his Second Martial Soul—that black hammer—are being activated passively! It's actively devouring the Heaven Cursed Seal I planted in him!"
"It seems to want to turn the Senjutsu Chakra inside the Cursed Seal into its own nourishment!"
"But..." Orochimaru continued, his golden snake eyes gleaming with fascination. "His method of conversion is far too primitive, far too crude! That so-called 'Mysterious Heaven Skill' of his is like a stubborn old man insisting on using the same set of punches against ten thousand thugs who never fight by the rules!"
"The result is that his genetic chain is on the verge of total collapse under the combined strain of the Cursed Seal's mutagenic impact and the Mysterious Heaven Skill's forced redirection!"
"His body is turning into a real battlefield! Every second, hundreds of millions of cells are wailing, dying, and mutating!"
Qin Feng listened to Orochimaru's report without a trace of sympathy.
He merely watched Tang San's face twist with agony on the screen.
"He thinks he's fighting back."
"In reality, he's just using his life to provide my experiment with the most valuable data."
Qin Feng tapped the control panel, sending an instruction through.
"Doctor, I can see that his mental strength is still resisting. It'll affect the purity of the data."
"Increase the dosage."
"I want him to stay conscious as he watches his body collapse, step by step, and then... receive a 'new life' at my hands."
Orochimaru let out a hoarse laugh. He liked the plan.
He walked over to a control panel and began operating it with practiced ease.
"Also, his Mysterious Heaven Skill is interesting." Qin Feng's gaze fell on the golden energy flow. "It's like a program that's been hard-coded. It can't adapt, but it's stable enough."
"Record its operating pattern, Brother Wolf. Analyze it later and see if you can turn it into a 'charge and discharge management system for biological batteries.'"
"Sure thing, Boss!" Grey Wolf replied excitedly. "It'll be perfect for managing Thunder No. 1! Much more stable than letting it discharge on its own!"
Tang San lay inside the cultivation tank, his consciousness adrift in a haze of excruciating pain.
He could feel an evil force eating away at his limbs and organs, corrupting his Soul Power.
His prized Mysterious Heaven Skill was doing everything it could to protect his heart and dantian, refining the invading energy over and over.
He thought he had held the last line.
He thought that if he just endured, he could drive out the evil and strengthen his foundations, just as his master had taught him.
But he didn't know.
Every time he circulated his energy and resisted, every detail of how his Soul Power flowed through his body was being precisely recorded and transmitted to a cold machine, becoming lines of code that could be freely modified.
His struggle was meaningless.
Just then, a cold liquid was injected into his body through a tube connected to him.
It wasn't an anesthetic, nor was it poison.
It was... a stimulant that would make him feel more alert!
In an instant, the pain intensified tenfold! A hundredfold!
"AAAAAAAH—!!!"
A silent scream echoed wildly through his mind.
He could clearly "see" his bones growing brittle, his muscles dissolving, and his black hammer Martial Soul devouring everything around it as it grew more and more grotesque, more and more... unfamiliar!
This wasn't his Martial Soul!
This wasn't his body!
"No... no!!"
In that moment, fear and despair completely overwhelmed Tang San's will.
Qin Feng stared without expression at the mental pain index, which had climbed to its peak, and calmly gave Orochimaru an order.
"We've collected enough data."
"Now, inject him with the T-Virus First Generation Stable Strain."
"I need a self-evolving test bed to determine the limits of how the T-Virus can fuse with this world's bloodline powers."
"As for that hammer..."
Qin Feng pressed down hard on the screen, right over the genetic sequence representing the Clear Sky Hammer Martial Soul.
"I want it to bear the surname 'Qin' down to the genetic level."
"It's time for our protagonist to undergo his first 'evolution.'"
Before you continue