174: Chapter 174 The Third Life Form: The Star Core Embryo!

...

[Transition Countdown: 120 seconds]!

The instant the command was issued, an inhuman, intense pain and an extreme sensation of collapse...

...swept through every single cell of Su Ming's body like a tsunami!

"Ugh!"

Before he even had time to make any preparations,

his body curled inward uncontrollably,

and the familiar dark-gold silicon-based patterns on his skin...

...flickered wildly at this moment, shining to their absolute limit!

His veins bulged one by one, and the silver-white blood beneath his skin surged at high speed.

Even through his skin, bright silver light could be seen darting through his veins.

His heartbeat changed.

It was no longer the "thump-thump" of a normal person,

but a dull, metallic resonance,

as if someone were beating a giant drum inside his chest.

With every beat, the entire abandoned building vibrated slightly.

The massive load-bearing pillar beneath him, which was strong enough to support the entire floor,

cracked with countless dense fissures!

The gravel and puddles near his feet began to float uncontrollably.

This was the miniature gravitational field skyrocketing inside him, leaking out into the surroundings!

[110... 109...]

Just ten seconds had passed on the countdown.

A violent ache and tearing sensation radiated from the depths of his bone marrow,

as if hundreds of millions of ants were gnawing on his bones.

"Hiss..."

Su Ming clenched his teeth, squeezing out a muffled groan from between his lips.

Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed the side,

his five fingers sinking directly into a half-finger-thick scrap steel plate beside him,

as easily as piercing tofu.

This was far more painful than his last Silicon-based Fusion!

"Fortunately... I didn't pass out."

Su Ming remained conscious amidst the agonizing pain. He could feel that the "Mortal shell" that had bound him for eighteen years was being crushed piece by piece.

On the System panel at the edge of his vision,

the line reading [Realm: Tier 4 · Gold]...

...was rapidly fading and blurring, as if being slowly rubbed away by an eraser.

[90... 89...]

The countdown entered its second stage.

The dissociation phase ended; the collapse phase began!

If the pain just now was a tearing sensation, then what he felt now...

...was being crushed by his own weight!

Inside Su Ming's body, the dissociated atoms no longer expanded outward,

but instead began to violently collapse toward the center of his body!

Extranuclear electrons were stripped from their inherent orbits by the immense intrinsic pressure, turning into a chaotic sea of free electron gas.

This was not a superficial pain of flesh and blood, but a deep tremor of every fundamental particle composing his body being squeezed and crushed!

*Bzzzt...*

The blindingly bright dark-gold patterns extinguished at this moment.

The morphological characteristics of the Silicon-based Fusion completely receded!

A layer of silver-blue corona emerged on the surface of Su Ming's body!

This was the result of the stripped free electrons overflowing from his body,

wildly ionizing the air.

"Holy crap... this hurts way more than stealing electricity..."

Su Ming's lips twitched, his teeth grinding with a creaking sound.

The thick steel plate beside him, marked by his finger indentations, finally could not bear the force. It let out a piercing screech and silently collapsed inward, deforming like a soda can squeezed by an invisible giant hand!

At his chest, an invisible, inward-collapsing gravitational core began to appear.

The surrounding rain, dust, gravel, and iron filings were all sucked toward his body, crushed into powder the instant they touched his skin.

"Argh...!"

A particle-level squeezing sensation surged through his entire body, causing Su Ming's consciousness to blur.

His back arched violently, the veins on his temples bulging. A thread of shimmering silver-blue liquid slowly seeped from the corner of his mouth.

The newly born degenerate fluid overflowed from his body for the first time!

His density was still skyrocketing exponentially.

Every second, he grew harder, heavier, and denser than the last!

On the panel, a brand-new notification popped up!

[Detected that the essence of life has broken through the planet's carbon-silicon evolution limit...]

[Stripping mundane martial arts evaluation System...]

[60... 59...]

The collapse reached its critical point!

Deep within his chest, something took shape.

A faint speck of silver-blue light lit up in the exact center of his chest.

It was tiny and dim.

But in that instant, Su Ming felt as if the entire world had gone quiet.

The torrential rain, the wind, the cracking of the building, the alarms... all faded into the background.

Only that single speck of light remained.

Stellar Core!

It rotated slowly in the center of his chest. With every rotation,

a ring of fine silver-blue patterns extended from the light point,

spreading outward along the skeletal structures of his ribs, spine, and limbs.

They were finer and more fluid than the previous dark-gold ones,

resembling the lines of latitude and longitude forming on a planet's surface.

The pain also faded rapidly.

Su Ming grinned. Silver-blue fluid slid from the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"Heh... actually looks pretty cool!"

[30... 29...]

The atoms of his entire body had finally completed a unified degenerate reconstruction.

The Star Core Embryo stabilized and ran smoothly.

The out-of-control gravitational field retracted back to his body's surface, forming a thin, invisible forcefield membrane that breathed close to his skin.

The floating water at his feet fell to the ground with a splash, and the attracted gravel and iron filings scattered.

The silver-blue corona on his body's surface contracted ring by ring,

eventually sinking completely beneath his skin.

The stellar patterns faded, and his skin tone returned to normal.

Su Ming's tense body slowly relaxed.

The steel plate debris that had been crushed into powder in his palm rustled down through his fingers.

System notifications began to flood the screen!

[Low-dimensional martial arts adaptation mode deactivated!]

[Mass Origin System unlocked!]

[Celestial Ultimate Path Panel loading...]

The old Realm entry completely vanished,

and a new attribute column was rapidly generating!

[3... 2... 1... 0!]

One hundred and twenty seconds.

The countdown hit zero.

Su Ming stood up and exhaled a long breath.

There was not a single hint of discomfort in his entire body.

Only a sense of absolute control, with his body feeling incredibly light and filled with power that was about to overflow.

He looked down at his hands,

His skin looked no different from a normal person's, but he knew that every single atom beneath this skin...

...no longer belonged to the category of carbon-based or silicon-based.

The System panel before him was completely refreshed.

All the old frameworks, old Realm markings, and old adaptation instructions had completely disappeared.

In the center of the silver-blue high-tier interface,

a line of text, gathered from countless points of starlight, slowly lit up.

It carried a profound weightiness, like that of the endless starry sky.

[Third Life Form — Star Core Embryo]!

Officially activated...!

...