The Medical Student's Life of Pi

Coordinates: Liver - Outskirts of Hub H-124.

At this moment, this hub had turned into a meat grinder.

In order to compete for the purification management rights of the H-124 traffic hub, Li Ming, Dragon War, and various other large and small guilds, solo players, and casual players had rushed in from all directions. Nearly eighty thousand players were gathered in this small area, dense as an army of ants, desperately hammering away at the Sarcoma Fortress built from countless dead cells.

The sounds of battle cries, explosions, and verbal abuse sparked by kill-stealing made the area as noisy as a wet market.

However, in another corner of this world, the vibe was completely different.

Coordinates: Aortic Arch - Branch Intersection.

This was a highway hub where blood surged. Huge Crimson Boats, like busy buses, sailed toward every corner of the body.

On a somewhat empty Crimson Boat stood a player with the ID "Anatomy Class Representative."

He wore no heavy armor and carried no weapons. To put it bluntly, he barely participated in combat; his entire net worth couldn't even afford equipment, forcing him to wear a white novice cloth tunic, practically running around naked. He had a pair of system-gifted goggles perched on the bridge of his nose, held a small notebook in his hand, and muttered to himself.

"According to the 9th edition of Systematic Anatomy, the flow rate at that intersection just now was extremely high; it should be the Renal Artery leading to the kidneys... hmm, not going there, it's full of the smell of urea."

"This path has bright red Red Blood Cells, which suggests a very high oxygen content, and the flow is upward... most likely the Common Carotid Artery or the Subclavian Artery."

Anatomy Class Representative was a fifth-year medical student in reality and a famous "researcher" and "scenery enthusiast" on the forums.

Ever since he learned not long ago that the game's setting was inside a colossal creature—a Titan—Anatomy Class Representative had gone completely mad!

Other players played the game to: kill monsters, level up, and loot gear.

He played the game to: take a tour of the human body.

"Brothers, it's your Class Representative, and today we are going to do something big!!!"

He waved at the Image Recording Crystal floating beside him, speaking with great excitement.

Using an Image Recording Crystal could record in-game footage, achieving the effect of video recording or even live streaming. At this very moment, Anatomy Class Representative was live streaming.

"Based on my deductions over the past few days, plus the experience of dying dozens of times, I've discovered a pattern: as long as you follow the blood vessels with extremely thin walls, slowing flow rates, and gradually decreasing temperatures, you can reach the boundary of this world."

A few lines of text drifted across the bullet comments:

"Stop throwing your life away, streamer; last time you went to the large intestine and almost drowned in crap."

"Boundary? Does this game even have invisible walls?"

"No, no, no, it's not an invisible wall."

Anatomy Class Representative pushed up his glasses, his eyes burning with fervor, "In medicine, that's called the cutaneous microcirculation. In other words—the skin."

"I'm going to see what this giant's skin actually looks like! I'm going to see the world outside!"

"Roar roar roar roar! I will be the first man to reach the End of the World!"

The journey was long and tedious.

Anatomy Class Representative transferred Crimson Boats five times.

From the aorta to the arteriole, then to the metarteriole.

The surrounding scenery began to change drastically.

The Crimson Channel, originally as wide as a river, gradually narrowed until it was only wide enough for one Crimson Boat to barely squeeze through. The surrounding vessel walls became extremely thin, presenting a translucent texture.

More importantly, the temperature had dropped.

[System Prompt: Ambient temperature has decreased. Please pay attention to keeping warm.]

"We're here! This is it!"

Anatomy Class Representative jumped off the Crimson Boat in excitement.

There was no road ahead; the blood vessels branched out here into countless hair-thin Capillary Networks. The Crimson Boats couldn't pass normally and had to line up, squeezing and deforming to get through.

"Next, traveling on foot!"

He took out a Bone Pickaxe and began to dig into the tissue outside the vessel wall.

The tissue here was no longer moist muscle or mucous membrane, but had become increasingly dry and hard.

He struggled through layers of grayish-white, rock-like stratum corneum.

"This is the Stratum Basale... this is the Stratum Spinosum... this is the Stratum Granulosum..."

"The geological structure here perfectly matches skin histology! The developers are gods!"

Finally, after digging through the last layer of hard "rock," a deep, profound darkness caught his eyes.

"I'm out!"

Anatomy Class Representative crawled out of the hole using his hands and feet.

Coordinates: Titan Epidermis - Back Wasteland.

The moment Anatomy Class Representative stood up straight and saw the scene before him, the Bone Pickaxe in his hand clattered to the ground.

The chat in the livestream also came to a complete standstill at this very instant.

This was a vast, limb-less, grayish-white Gobi desert.

The earth was cracked and dry, covered in massive canyons—these were the skin textures of a Titan.

At the edge of his vision stood rows of black pillars piercing the clouds; they were so tall their tops were invisible, their surfaces covered in black scales—those were pores.

But what was most shocking was the sky.

There was no longer a ceiling.

There were no flesh walls.

There was only an endlessly deep darkness, and the billions of stars flickering within that darkness.

[System Prompt: You have arrived at the "End of the World"—Titan Epidermis.]

[Achievement Unlocked: Looking Up at the Starry Sky.]

"Holy sh*t..."

Anatomy Class Representative couldn't help but drop to his knees, looking up at that starry sky with tears streaming down his face. The shock of this moment hit him straight to the crown of his head!

"We really are... inside the body of a giant. Outside... is the universe!"

"This is too absurd, this game actually rendered this? Could this really be a game deployed by a higher civilization?"

However, this romance of the sea of stars did not last long.

BOOM—!!!

The earth suddenly shook violently.

In the distant sky, a "meteorite" trailing green flames, carrying an aura of destruction, slammed fiercely into this wasteland.

The shockwave kicked up a sky full of keratin dust, nearly blowing Anatomy Class Representative away.

"Meteorite impact? No, that's not right!"

He scrambled up and zoomed the camera lens to its maximum.

That was no meteorite at all.

It was a Void Devouring Insect the size of an aircraft carrier!

Anatomy Class Representative did not know that this was a cosmic-level parasite, massive in size with extremely formidable physical attributes. When their species migrated, they could easily devour entire planetary systems! When deployed on a large scale, they could even deal a heavy blow to the ecology of a star system.

It had hideous mouthparts and a thick carapace. As soon as it landed, it extended countless tentacles, driving them deep into the earth and frantically gnawing at the Titan's keratin layer.

And on its back, countless smaller Void Fleas, each estimated to be the size of a tank, jumped off like landing troops and began to spread in all directions.

[Warning: External invasion detected!]

[Entity: Void Parasitic Race.]

[Description: They wander the universe, greedily feeding on the flesh and blood of Ancient Gods.]

"What the hell... did I get the script for Star Wars?"

Anatomy Class Representative was trembling with fear.

The atmosphere here was extremely thin, and his health bar was plummeting due to oxygen deprivation and radiation. He couldn't stay long; he snapped a few photos from afar, recorded some footage, and immediately retreated back into the Titan's body.

The combat power of those monsters was, for players currently capped at LV.20, nothing short of a dimensional strike!

Higher-Dimensional Space: Titan Divine Body.

Gu Yuan watched all of this with indifference.

"Finally discovered, have they?"

He did not feel surprised. The players' desire for exploration was infinite; someone was bound to find that path leading to the outside world.

"However, these damn mites..."

Gu Yuan felt a wave of itching and stinging on his back.

The Void Devouring Insect swarm had been biting his skin for who knows how long. From the initial few stragglers to later bringing their whole families, it was simply annoying! He hadn't had the strength to deal with them before, but now these things were actually trying to drill through his dermis to suck blood while his body was regaining vitality.

"System, prepare to issue a quest and have the players clear them out."

[Deducing...]

[Conclusion: Current player combat power is insufficient. They lack vacuum survival gear and heavy armor-piercing weaponry. Sending them directly is equivalent to suicide.]

Gu Yuan shook his head helplessly.

Although he wanted to utilize the players, he did not want them to die meaningless deaths.

Without equipment support, the players couldn't even breathe outside his body, let alone fight monsters.

"If they want to go to the sea of stars, they must first have ships and spacesuits."

Gu Yuan couldn't directly cheat and give the players equipment. He could only find another way and let the players work for it themselves.

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

Furthermore, he was broke. Manufacturing that kind of high-level Bio-Dynamic Armor required a massive amount of energy, and he still needed to save his energy to repair his internal organs.

"Since a new map has been discovered, I might as well give them a preparation period. Consider it a grand promise made by a developer for a game update."

Gu Yuan tapped his finger lightly, and simultaneously, an unfinished Void Obelisk rose in the central plazas of several key fortresses where players were densely gathered.

Server-wide Announcement:

[Player "Anatomy Class Representative" has discovered the boundary of the world—the Starry Wasteland!]

[A new threat is approaching! A cosmic-level predator is gnawing at our home!]

[Server-wide quest chain initiated: Titan's Arsenal (Phase I).]

[Description: To combat the formidable enemies in the void, we need more advanced equipment. Ancient genetic blueprints have been unsealed, but we require materials to forge them.]

[Quest Objectives:]

Collect resources: High-strength materials such as high-purity alloy skeletons, and high-energy substances such as high-energy fuel.

Light up the tech tree: The server-wide cumulative acquisition of Bio-Energy must reach 1 billion to unlock the Bio-Dynamic Armor (Mecha) technology and research line.

[Hint: As the kin of the Titan, you must resolve the Titan's worries and face both internal and external troubles! It is time to prepare for the foreign enemy!]

In the livestream, Anatomy Class Representative was gesticulating wildly as he chatted with his audience when, suddenly, the chat flooded with messages of "Watch out" and "Turn around." He spun around abruptly, only to see a massive monster burrowing into the Titan's body through the path he had dug, charging toward him with its blood-red maw wide open. In the final second before his death, he shouted at the camera:

"Brothers! Get ready to pilot mechs—"

The screen went black.

But the players across the entire Titan world were boiling over.

The battle for H-124?

In the face of that brilliant starry sky and the allure of mechs, it suddenly didn't seem so appealing anymore.

"I'm going to mine! Don't anyone try to stop me!"

"Where is the thickest layer of fat? I'm going to go extract oil!"

"Mechs! Mechs! Mechs!"

Gu Yuan watched the players, who were now acting like mad dogs to hoard resources and complete quests for the sake of the new version, and closed his eyes in satisfaction.

"Very good. Such high spirits!"

"As long as you put in the grind and obediently hand over the Bio-Energy, you shall have everything~"

"Whether it's a physical body in reality or technology within the game!"

That's right, as a member of the Titan race, Gu Yuan's mind was filled with countless pieces of black technology. The Bio-Dynamic Armor being released this time was real technology!