In the oppressive and rusty air of Green Acid Star, Morgana's figure shuttled like a ghost around Zombie who was eating crazily.
Her eyes composed of the highest-level arcane runes were flashing with dazzling blue light, and she was conducting an all-round deep scan of the mutated body with microscopic precision.
"There is no fluctuation of necromancy magic, nor any known blessing of the undead law," Morgana's fine electronic sound sounded in Ian's Sea of Consciousness, with a trace of rare confusion, "But every cell in this body is releasing an extremely violent vitality, even though this vitality has been completely distorted."
"Cosmic Energy?" She murmured in a low voice, and a complex double-helix structure model danced rapidly on the holographic screen. "Master, the scan results show that extremely high concentrations of Cosmic Energy were forcibly injected into the bodies of these individuals. The strength is enough to destroy the original genetic sequence of any carbon-based organism in an instant. Is this an experiment by the Sage Clan?"
Ian walked slowly to the Zombie. Although the other party roared threateningly, under the pressure of his invisible arcane magic, the monster could only huddle in the corner and tremble.
"It is not something that can be accomplished overnight if you want to thoroughly analyze Cosmic Energy," Ian stared coldly at Zombie's cloudy eyeballs, with a kind of rationality for analyzing all things in his eyes, "Sage Clan obviously lacks patience. They adopted an extremely crude and efficient 'Law of Large Numbers' experiment: they looked for a human planet with a genetic basis similar to their own, and then used massive amounts of Cosmic Energy to bombard the entire planet indiscriminately."
His voice echoed in the dead ruins, "Luck children with talents will survive this baptism, and their DNA will be forcibly reorganized by Cosmic Energy, thereby gaining the extraordinary ability to control this great power. And those who fail - that is, the vast majority of ordinary people, their genes will collapse because they are unable to carry this power, and eventually degenerate into this kind of living monster that has lost its reason and only has the instinct to eat."
"A barbaric, primitive, but extremely effective method of creating gods in this war-torn era," Morgana commented, but then she pointed out the inconsistency in the data, "However, this still cannot explain the current situation. According to our underlying understanding of Cosmic Energy, genetically mismatched individuals should instantly disintegrate and turn into ashes under the impact of energy, rather than continue to exist in this form of 'Zombie'."
Ian nodded slightly, frowning. "Indeed, this 'living dead' state does not conform to common sense of physics. Is it a by-product of too high a concentration? After all, Empire has never conducted extreme experiments in which massive amounts of energy were poured onto civilians."
He carefully examined each line of monitoring data, trying to find biochemical traces similar to "T-virus", but the feedback results were blank.
"Since local scanning cannot give an answer, then expand the observation range," Ian gave the order.
The two figures disappeared in an instant, and the next second, they appeared above a dense forest dozens of kilometers away. Below, two violent energies were colliding fiercely, and the dust stirred up even blocked the sunlight.
Ian Looking around, he saw a human man whose skin had a silvery metallic texture, fighting with a giant bear that was as tall as a hill and had energy claws on its hands.
"Two Second Tier life forms," Morgana analyzed in the air, "That person's power is 'Body Metallization', and that bear has mastered 'Energy Construction'. What's interesting is that their genomes are deeply imprinted with the mark of Cosmic Energy."
Through observation, Ian discovered a key detail: During the battle between these two creatures, the mutated genes in their bodies were continuously using their powers to passively absorb the remaining Cosmic Energy in the surrounding atmosphere to strengthen themselves.
"Although the way of using power is extremely primitive and does not even have the most basic spell model, it is already a miracle in alchemy that Second Tier can produce combat power in just a few months," Ian commented lightly, "And they are probably not the strongest predators on this planet."
In order to obtain deeper intelligence, Ian launched a mental search. By reading the broken brain waves of the two gladiators, he gradually outlined the current combat power structure of the planet.
"The 'Five Calamity Tier Superpowers' and the 'Seven Demonic Beasts'? Interesting names," Ian said with a playful smile on his lips. According to the intelligence, the strength of these twelve life forms has crossed the threshold of Fourth Tier, and each one has the terrifying destructive power to destroy a modern country on its own.
"Master, we have discovered an extremely special target that is worth seeing," Morgana pointed to a coordinate in the distance.
Ian teleported to the interior of the military town called "Iron Fortress". In a Chamber of Secrets room that was guarded by layers of defenses and wrapped in heavy lead armor, a South Asian man was shirtless, sitting cross-legged in an extremely primitive posture, with his eyes closed, and fell into deep meditation.
A few minutes later, the man breathed a long sigh of relief and slowly opened his eyes. There was a vicissitude in his eyes that did not belong to this era.
"I must reach 'Calamity Tier' as soon as possible," he said firmly, looking out the window at the horizon divided by barbed wire. "My kind of 'Energy Refinement Method' is the real hope for the continuation of mankind."
"That man... the way the energy flows in his body looks familiar," Morgana said in surprise.
"Yes, he is a 'seeker' like me," Ian said with a flash of admiration in his eyes, "The vast majority of superpowers on this planet rely on the chance of genetic mutation and passively receive power.
But he is different. He actually relied on some ancient meditation knowledge to create a set of original techniques that can actively sense, absorb and regulate Cosmic Energy."
Morgana used computing power to conduct a comprehensive deep scan of him. "He used extremely high-density Cosmic Energy to compress a crystal similar to 'Energy Core' at the key node of the cerebral cortex. He has reached the peak of Third Tier and is exploring how to impact Fourth Tier."
"Condensing the core in the brain? That's really a tightrope walk," Ian used Time Magic to retrace the scene of this man's breakthrough. He saw that when the man named Raj was condensing the core, he only succeeded by a small knowledge of the anatomy of the brain and a lot of luck.
"Although rough, he did carve a gap leading to Truth in this barren world without anyone's guidance," Ian sighed.
"Master, should we take him back to the Empire? With his talent, he will definitely become an excellent Arcanist after systematic training," Morgana suggested.
"No, at least now is not the time," Ian calmly refused, "Let this planet evolve on its own as our experimental ground. I want to see how far such a civilization based on Cosmic Energy can go without external intervention. When the fruits are ripe, Empire will harvest them again."
Although he doesn't plan to take him away now, Ian doesn't mind giving this interesting seed a little extra boost. Before leaving Chamber of Secrets, he conveniently prepared a bottle of "Felix Felicis" that can greatly improve the stability of the soul, and quietly injected it into Raj's respiratory system.
After dealing with Raj's matter, Ian did not immediately go to the Sage Clan's home planet. He returned to the ruins where Zombie was haunted, and the mysterious energy that caused the mutation still lingered in his mind.
"That kind of energy... it's more like a negative polarity manifestation of Cosmic Energy," Morgana finally locked onto an extremely weird energy fluctuation by collecting biological samples from Zombie, "We can call it 'Dark Cosmic Energy'."
"Not only that, the source of this energy is not in Green Acid Star, nor is it in the Sage Clan's laboratory," Ian's eyes became extremely deep.
He activated Time Scepter again and forcibly set the timeline back to the second when the experiment started. In the holographic projection, the originally clear sky was suddenly torn apart by an extremely dazzling bright light. Behind the light, a black singularity could be vaguely seen.
Ian closed his eyes and cast the highest level "Divine Sense Projection". His consciousness instantly broke away from the shackles of the physical body, crossed the edge of physical space, and directly entered the mysterious zone called "Void Realm" - the final place where different timelines intertwine and everything collapses.
"What is this?" In his conscious state, Ian was deeply shocked by the scene in front of him.
In this realm that was supposed to be dead and blank, what he saw was no longer the normal timeline of Blink with arcane glory. Instead, he saw countless collapsing worlds wrapped in a black shadow full of despair, depression and a strong negative aura.
That cold aura seemed to completely freeze all the souls who entered here. Ian felt that these black timelines were like maggots attached to the bones, trying to penetrate into the normal Multiverse, and the "Dark Cosmic Energy" on Green Acid Star was just the tip of the iceberg from which these shadows had leaked out.
An extremely terrifying and huge concept took shape in Ian's brain like lightning, and Arcane Emperor couldn't help but feel a chill from the depths of his soul:
"This is... the legendary one who was completely abandoned by Law of Causality and is composed of countless nodes of despair - Dark Multiverse?"
Deep in this abandoned star field, Ian finally realized that Sage Clan's stupid experiment seemed to have inadvertently opened a door to the deepest nightmare in the world.