Coordinates: Liver - H-124 Hub Periphery.
This hub had now become a grinding mill of flesh and blood.
To fight over the purification management rights for the H-124 transportation hub, Dawn, Dragon War, and guilds of all sizes, solo players, and casual players had all rushed in from every direction. Nearly eighty thousand players had gathered in the cramped area, packed together like an army of ants marching to war as they desperately assaulted the Sarcoma Fortress formed from countless dead cells.
The cries of battle, explosions, and arguments triggered by competing for monsters made the area as lively as a marketplace.
Yet in another corner of this world, the atmosphere was entirely different.
Coordinates: Aortic Arch - Branch Junction.
This was a highway hub where blood surged endlessly. Massive Crimson Boats, like busy buses, traveled toward every corner of the body.
On one rather empty Crimson Boat stood a player with the ID "Anatomy Class Representative."
He wore no heavy armor and carried no weapon. To put it bluntly, he had barely participated in combat at all. His entire fortune could not even afford equipment, so he could only wear a set of white beginner's cloth clothes, practically running around naked. He had on a pair of wind goggles gifted by the system, held a little notebook in his hand, and muttered to himself.
"According to the ninth edition of Systematic Anatomy, the flow rate at that fork just now was extremely fast. It should have been the Renal Artery leading to the kidney... Mm, not going there. It reeks of urea."
"The Red Blood Cells in this route are bright in color, which indicates an extremely high oxygen content. And the flow is upward... It's most likely the Common Carotid Artery or the Subclavian Artery."
Anatomy Class Representative was a fifth-year medical student in real life, as well as a famous lore enthusiast and scenery lover on the forums.
Ever since he had learned not long ago that the game was set inside the body of an incomparably massive creature—the Titan—Anatomy Class Representative had completely lost his mind!
Other players played games like this: kill monsters, level up, get equipment.
He played games like this: a one-day tour of the human body.
"Brothers, this is Class Rep. Today, we're going to do something huge!!!"
He waved at the Image Recording Crystal floating beside him and spoke excitedly.
Image Recording Crystals could record in-game footage, achieving the effect of video recording and even livestreaming. At this moment, Anatomy Class Representative was livestreaming.
"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 blood vessels with extremely thin walls, slowing flow rates, and gradually declining temperatures, you can reach the boundary of this world."
Several comments floated across the chat:
"Streamer, stop feeding. Last time you went to the large intestine, you almost drowned in shit."
"The boundary? Does this game have an invisible wall too?"
"No, no, no. Not an invisible wall."
Anatomy Class Representative pushed up his glasses, his eyes blazing with fanaticism. "In medicine, it'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 outside world!"
"Hohohohoho! I'll be the first man to reach the End of the World!"
The journey was long and dull.
Anatomy Class Representative transferred Crimson Boats five times.
From the aorta to an arteriole, then to a metarteriole.
The scenery around him began to change drastically.
The Crimson Channel, originally as broad as a river, gradually narrowed until it could barely accommodate a single Crimson Boat. The surrounding vessel walls became incredibly thin, taking on a translucent texture.
More importantly, the temperature had dropped.
[System Notification: Environmental temperature decreasing. Please keep warm.]
"We're here! This is it!"
Anatomy Class Representative excitedly jumped off the Crimson Boat.
There was no road ahead. The blood vessel branched here into a Capillary Network as thin as hair. Crimson Boats could no longer pass through normally and could only squeeze through in a line, crushed and deformed.
"Next, we cross on foot!"
He took out a Bone Pickaxe and began digging through the tissue outside the blood vessel wall.
The tissue here was no longer moist muscle or mucosa. It became increasingly dry and hard.
He struggled through layer after layer of grayish-white, rock-like keratinized tissue.
"This is the Stratum Basale... This is the Stratum Spinosum... This is the Stratum Granulosum..."
"The geological structure here completely matches skin histology! The developers are gods!"
Finally, after breaking through the last layer of hard "rock," a streak of deep darkness entered his sight.
"I'm out!"
Anatomy Class Representative crawled out of the hole on his hands and knees.
Coordinates: Titan Epidermis - Back Wasteland.
The instant Anatomy Class Representative straightened up and saw the scene before him clearly, the Bone Pickaxe in his hand fell to the ground with a clang.
The chat in the livestream also froze completely at that moment.
Before him stretched a vast, barren gray-white wasteland.
The ground was cracked and covered in enormous ravines—these were the Titan's skin patterns.
At the edge of his vision stood black pillars that pierced the clouds. Their tops could not be seen, and their surfaces were covered in black scales—those were body hairs.
But what shocked everyone most was the sky.
There was no longer a ceiling.
No Flesh Wall.
Only endless, profound darkness, and billions of faintly visible stars within it.
[System Notification: You have reached the "End of the World"—Titan Epidermis.] [Achievement Obtained: Looking Up at the Starry Sky.]
"Holy shit..."
Anatomy Class Representative could not stop himself from dropping to his knees, gazing up at the starry sky with tears streaming down his face. The shock of that moment went straight to his skull!
"We really are... inside a giant's body. Outside... is the universe!"
"This is insane, isn't it? This game even made this! Could it really be some game released by an advanced civilization?"
However, the romance of the stars and the sea did not last long.
Rumble—!!!
The ground suddenly trembled violently.
In the distant sky, a "meteor" trailing green flames crashed viciously into the wasteland with an aura of destruction.
The shockwave kicked up clouds of keratin dust and nearly blew Anatomy Class Representative away.
"A meteor impact? No!"
He climbed to his feet and zoomed the camera in as far as it could go.
That was not a meteor at all.
It was a Void Devouring Insect as large as an aircraft carrier!
Anatomy Class Representative did not know that this was a cosmic parasite. It was enormous and possessed extraordinarily powerful physical capabilities. When its species migrated, it could often easily devour entire planetary systems! When deployed on a large scale, it could even inflict severe damage upon the ecology of a stellar system.
It had a hideous mouthpart and heavy carapace. The moment it landed, it extended countless tentacles, plunged them deep into the ground, and began frantically gnawing on the Titan's keratinized layer.
On its back, countless smaller Void Fleas—though each was still roughly the size of a tank—leaped down like a landing force and began spreading in all directions.
[Warning: External invasion detected.] [Entity: Void Parasitic Race.] [Description: They roam the universe, greedily consuming the flesh and blood of Ancient Gods.]
"What the fuck... Did I just get handed a Star Wars script?"
Anatomy Class Representative trembled in terror.
The atmosphere here was extremely thin, and his health bar was rapidly dropping due to oxygen deprivation and radiation. He could not stay long. After taking several photos from afar and recording for a while, he immediately retreated back into the Titan's body.
The combat power of those monsters was simply a dimensionality-reduction strike against players, whose current maximum level was only LV.20!
Higher Dimension: Titan Divine Body.
Gu Yuan watched everything coldly.
"So, they've finally been discovered?"
He was not surprised. Players' desire to explore was boundless. Someone would eventually find that path leading outside.
"But these damned mites..."
Gu Yuan felt an itch and a stabbing pain on his back.
The Void Devouring Insect colony had been biting his skin for who knew how long. At first there had only been a scattered few, but later they had brought their entire families running over, becoming unbearably annoying! He had lacked the strength to deal with them before, but now they actually wanted to take advantage of his body's recovery to pierce through his dermis and suck blood.
"System, prepare to issue a mission. Have the players clear them out."
[Simulating...] [Conclusion: Current player combat power is insufficient. They lack equipment for survival in a vacuum and means of penetrating armor with heavy firepower. Sending them directly would be sending them to their deaths.]
Gu Yuan shook his head helplessly.
Though he wanted to make use of the players, he did not want them to die meaningless deaths.
Without equipment, the players would not even be able to breathe outside his body, much less fight monsters.
"If they want to journey into the stars and the sea, they first need a ship and spacesuits."
Gu Yuan could not directly cheat and hand out equipment to the players. He could only take another route and make them 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."
Besides, he was poor too. Creating that kind of advanced Bio-Dynamic Armor required enormous amounts of energy, and he still needed to reserve energy to repair his internal organs.
"Since they've discovered a new map, let's give them a preparation period. Consider it a big promise from the developers for an upcoming game update."
With a light tap of his finger, an unfinished Void Obelisk rose simultaneously from the central plazas of several important fortresses densely packed with players.
Server Announcement: [Player "Anatomy Class Representative" has discovered the boundary of the world—the Starry Wasteland!] [A new threat is approaching! Cosmic predators are gnawing on our homeland!] [Server-wide quest chain activated: Titan's Arsenal (Phase One).] [Description: To fight the powerful enemies in the Void, we require more advanced equipment. Ancient genetic blueprints have been unsealed, but we need materials to forge them.] [Quest Objectives:] Collect resources: High-strength materials such as high-purity alloy bones, high-energy substances such as high-energy fuel. Light up the technology tree: Once the server collectively obtains 1 billion Bio-Energy, the Bio-Dynamic Armor (Mecha) technology and research line will be unlocked. [Tip: As Titan Kin, you must ease the Titan's burdens and confront both internal and external threats! It is time to prepare for the enemy from beyond!]
In the livestream, Anatomy Class Representative was animatedly bragging to his viewers when the comments suddenly became dense, all of them saying "Watch out" and "Turn around." He spun around sharply and saw a massive monster crawling through the path he had dug into the Titan's body. It opened its bloody maw and charged toward him. In the final second before his death, he shouted at the camera:
"Brothers! Get ready to pilot Gundams—"
The screen went black.
But the players throughout the entire world of Titan erupted.
The battle for H-124?
Before the allure of that dazzling starry sky and Mechas, it suddenly did not seem so appealing anymore.
"I'm going mining! Nobody stop me!"
"Where's the thickest fat layer? I'm going to pump oil!"
"Mechas! Mechas! Mechas!"
Gu Yuan watched the players begin gathering resources and completing quests like mad dogs in order to unlock the new version, then closed his eyes in satisfaction.
"Very good. Full of spirit!"
"As long as you put in the grind and obediently hand over Bio-Energy, you'll have everything you want~"
"Whether it's a body in reality or technology in the game!"
That was right. As a member of the Titan Race, Gu Yuan had countless black technologies stored in his mind. The Bio-Dynamic Armor being unlocked this time was real technology!
If you think this book is good, remember to add it to your bookshelf so you don't lose it next time.
Before you continue