White Swan

The Ram-Headed Man still stood there blankly, having no idea what was about to happen.

The Transparent Liquid on the ground also began to slowly flow back, crawling up the Ram-Headed Man's body.

The liquid began drilling into the Ram-Headed Man's body, adhering to its flesh.

Prophet Bai Xiang must have discovered long ago that the Ram-Headed Man was also a Theseus Cell lifeform, so it wanted to graft it as well.

Mo Ling hurriedly activated teleportation on the Transparent Liquid, trying to salvage the situation.

But there was too much liquid on the ground, and most of it had already burrowed deep into the Ram-Headed Man's body.

In Mo Ling's view, the liquid had even entered the Ram-Headed Man's brain and was drilling toward the Red String Worm inside.

This was bad.

If the Ram-Headed Man was truly grafted, Prophet Bai Xiang would become stronger than ever before.

Then, a lifeform capable of turning into all kinds of creatures while being utterly impossible to kill would appear in this world.

No one here would be its match.

The Ram-Headed Man finally seemed to sense something and began clutching its head.

The Transparent Liquid on its body had completely vanished, entirely entering the Ram-Headed Man's body.

At that moment, Mo Ling once again felt powerless.

In his despair, Mo Ling suddenly considered a question.

Would the Red String Worm allow its host to be grafted by another creature?

If that creature's actions would prevent it from finding the mother worm, it should stop it, right?

Mo Ling could only hope that the Red String Worm had evolved the ability to resist grafting.

However, the flesh on the Ram-Headed Man's body began slowly turning into Transparent Liquid.

It was over.

Though he did not know how far the grafting had progressed, this phenomenon showed that the Ram-Headed Man was becoming more and more like Prophet Bai Xiang.

The Ram-Headed Man lowered the hands clutching its head. Its eyes were vacant, and it had clearly entered the grafted state.

Mo Ling's mind still raced, searching for a solution.

The Red String Worm?

There was no response at all. He could no longer count on it.

The Ugly Duckling Phenomenon?

Suddenly, a spark of inspiration broke through Mo Ling's despair.

He swiftly controlled the Cube and searched through the temple.

Before long.

He found one!

A Flesh Race member pinned beneath a stone, barely clinging to life.

This was the only Flesh Race member still alive. If not for the faint rise and fall of its chest, Mo Ling would not even have noticed it.

He selected a piece of flesh from the Flesh Race member's arm and immediately teleported it into the Ram-Headed Man's brain.

Blood-red color spread outward.

Like ink dripping onto paper.

A solid piece of flesh devoid of Transparent Liquid suddenly appeared within the Ram-Headed Man's brain, which had already been filled with Transparent Liquid.

The solid flesh continuously expanded, forcing the Transparent Liquid out of the Ram-Headed Man's brain.

As the solid flesh continued to spread, the Ram-Headed Man gradually regained consciousness.

It touched its head, looked at the body that had turned into Transparent Liquid, and directly extended a chainsaw to cut it away.

Its body then healed again, and all traces of the liquid completely vanished, turning back into solid flesh.

Mo Ling hurriedly teleported the severed Transparent Liquid into the Cube and destroyed it outright.

The liquid was forced out of the Ram-Headed Man's body bit by bit, while Mo Ling worked with it to destroy every bit.

He flew above the Ram-Headed Man's head and watched the escaping liquid closely, not letting a single drop slip away.

The Ram-Headed Man seemed to realize that the Cube was helping it. It even gathered the liquid together and raised it before the Cube.

After being invaded by the liquid, the Ram-Headed Man seemed to have become much smarter.

The remaining liquid transformed into tiny creatures and tried to escape, only to be caught by the Ram-Headed Man on the spot.

It held up one of the tiny creatures and placed it before the Cube. Mo Ling then teleported its palm and the tiny creature away together.

A piece of the Ram-Headed Man's palm was directly missing, but it did not care and continued searching for overlooked Transparent Liquid.

Some of the liquid tried to burrow underground, but Mo Ling watched them closely from overhead, leaving them nowhere to hide.

Finally, through Mo Ling's efforts, all the Transparent Liquid was teleported away and destroyed.

The powerful Prophet Bai Xiang disappeared without a sound.

The Ram-Headed Man raised one of its hooves and looked beneath itself. When it found that no more Transparent Liquid was dripping down, it became very happy.

It walked back to the frame it had been holding at the beginning and picked it up.

During the battle, the frame had been smashed apart, leaving only a few Wooden Sticks.

There were no suitable vines left in the temple to bind the frame together.

But the Ram-Headed Man's intelligence seemed to have improved greatly.

It extended a chainsaw from its arm and actually cut mortise-and-tenon joints into the ends of the fallen Wooden Sticks.

After stacking the Wooden Sticks together, they became the familiar Rice Character Frame once more.

It pulled several chains from its body and secured the Rice Character Frame again.

Then it happily lifted the Rice Character Frame to inspect it, seemingly delighted by the knowledge it had just learned.

Next, the Ram-Headed Man walked beneath the Cube, raised the Rice Character Frame, shook it a few times, and bleated several times.

It then planted the Rice Character Frame into the ground.

The Ram-Headed Man charged toward the leader who was trying to flee, seized it, cut open its limbs, and bound it to the Rice Character Frame with chains.

It was the familiar "Vitruvian Man"-style binding.

After Prophet Bai Xiang vanished, the Transparent Race members present no longer dared draw the Ram-Headed Man's attention. They could only watch its actions in fear.

The feathers sealing the temple began to dissipate and dry up.

The Transparent Race members who had been beside the leader scrambled out of the temple.

The Ram-Headed Man did not stop them. Instead, it continued tormenting the leader.

As it tortured the leader, it kept bleating at the Cube overhead.

Mo Ling could understand the strange Abyssal Language, but he truly could not understand what the Ram-Headed Man was trying to express.

Perhaps it was merely making meaningless noises.

Yet he could sense no malice in the Ram-Headed Man's cries.

It seemed that the Ram-Headed Man also knew the Cube had saved it.

At that moment, Mo Ling also felt fortunate that he had acted so decisively.

He had merely made clever use of one property of the Ugly Duckling Phenomenon.

The property of transforming into a similar creature.

Mo Ling guessed that the researchers must have had a reason for naming this phenomenon the Ugly Duckling Phenomenon.

In Andersen's Fairy Tales, when the Ugly Duckling first saw the White Swan, it finally realized its true identity.

And the Ram-Headed Man's source species was the Theseus Cell.

There was only one type of creature similar to Theseus Cells: normal cells.

This was also the Ram-Headed Man's "White Swan."

Mo Ling's teleportation had made the Theseus Cells within the Ram-Headed Man realize their true identities.

At that instant, the Theseus Cells began transforming into normal cells.

Once all the Ram-Headed Man's cells had transformed into normal cells, Prophet Bai Xiang's grafting naturally could not succeed.

Because the targets of grafting could only be Theseus Cell lifeforms.

Cellular transformation was merely Mo Ling's conjecture. This method had truly been a gamble.

Fortunately, Mo Ling succeeded.

The powerful Prophet Bai Xiang had truly been forced out of the Ram-Headed Man's body by an absolute property.

The instant the Ugly Duckling became a White Swan, Prophet Bai Xiang could no longer turn the situation around.