209: Chapter 209 The Rebellious Beast Mark Bearer and the Truth of the Deep Sequence!

The deepest part of the sinkhole.

Inside an extremely hidden cavern passage, Mandrill and Tiger Fiend were advancing rapidly.

Suddenly, both of them stopped in their tracks at the same time.

The vibrations coming from the rock strata overhead were far earlier than expected.

Shouldn't it be a slow collapse from the natural decay of the Seal?!

Why is it clattering nonstop like dumplings being dropped into a pot?!

“Not good!”

Mandrill smashed a falling rock blocking the way with a single punch, hot white steam billowing from his nostrils.

“The Spider King's consciousness is dissipating a full two days faster than estimated?!”

“If he draws his last breath, the Myriad Spiders Symbiotic Web will break. Once thousands of high-tier Magic Spiders lose their suppression, not even a fly will survive within a hundred-mile radius.”

Tiger Fiend's icy blue vertical pupils contracted into a thin line. Keeping his feet moving, he quickly followed along the rock wall.

“What does the life or death of Dingxi City have to do with us?”

“I'm not worried about the Magic Spiders slaughtering the city.”

Mandrill raised his hand to tear away a layer of black spider silk covering the entrance of the passage, taking a large stride forward, his voice deep and muffled.

“Once the Spider King's consciousness completely dissipates, the Tier 7 shadow gene inside him will lose its rational suppression and go completely berserk. If it burns out in a rampage, this living specimen will be completely ruined.”

“So what if it burns?”

Tiger Fiend licked the milky-white saber tooth protruding from his lips, his tone casual. “Is the The Fifth Speaker short of mutation potions? At worst, he can just create a few more Advanced thugs.”

Mandrill stopped.

He turned around, staring down at Tiger Fiend.

In those eyes, there was no anger, only the cold patience one would have when looking at a stupid cat.

“Advanced thugs?”

Tiger Fiend's steps also came to a halt.

“An ordinary human sergeant was able to hang tens of thousands of high-tier Magic Spiders here like cured meat for a whole five years. What do you think he relied on?”

“In that specimen of his, there is not only Tier 7 Source Energy, but it also contains a complete... [King Gene]!”

Tiger Fiend's feet were completely frozen in place.

“A crowd control sequence... Absolute Mental Domination!”

Mandrill enunciated each word.

“As long as the lab can reverse-engineer the Source Energy frequency of this gene, we won't need to build a Tier 7 legion. We can mass-produce 'artificial beast kings' that reign supreme over their species.”

“With just a single injection, one can use the mental symbiotic web to forcibly enslave billions of Source Beast populations on a planet.”

“No supplies needed, no logistics. A single person is a world-ending beast tide.”

Tiger Fiend's breath hitched for half a beat.

His muscle-bound brain indeed managed to connect the dots this time.

But precisely because he figured it out, he noticed an even bigger problem.

“...Big Brother.”

Tiger Fiend lowered his voice. He didn't stop walking, but his speaking speed clearly quickened.

“Since this thing has such terrifying strategic value, why was the mission given to us by the higher-ups merely to 'recruit' a Tier 7 Magic Spider? Didn't you also say just now that the high schooler with the complete Silver Blood is our biggest harvest this trip?!”

Hearing the word 'recruit', a cold sneer appeared on Mandrill's rough, dark face.

“Do you think... the The Fifth Speaker was born a monster of the Tongyuan Society?”

He squeezed sideways through a narrow rock crevice, his beastified right arm scraping sparks against the stone wall.

Once out of the crevice, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

A deep, dark cave filled with traces of human habitation lay just twenty meters away.

The cave entrance was tightly sealed by thick black spider silk and shadowy mist.

Mandrill stared at the mist and spoke.

“Five years ago, he was the chief gene engineer of the Federal Research Institute! He was also the core creator of the entire [deep sequence] project!”

Tiger Fiend was startled, as if thinking of some extremely terrifying taboo rumor. “Could it be that the rebel— five years ago...”

“That defection shook half of the Federal high command. But what nobody knows is that he brought along a newly refined experimental product, which was also the ultimate achievement of the [deep sequence]... the God-Creation Potion!”

Mandrill's voice was flat; the events of the past had nothing to do with him anyway.

“While passing through the outskirts of Dingxi City, two Tier 8 experts from the Federation intercepted him across regions. At that time, the Source Energy molecules of the potion were in a state of violent transition, making it impossible to forcibly store it in spatial storage. During the desperate struggle, it fell into this great rift valley beneath our feet.”

Tiger Fiend subconsciously glanced at the ground beneath his feet.

Right here!

“The chief later sent people to turn this damn canyon upside down countless times, but they couldn't even find a shard of a test tube! It was thought that the potion had already evaporated under the shadow erosion. Until three years ago...”

“Grey Falcon accidentally noticed that high-tier Source Beasts in Black Spider Canyon were abnormally scarce. Upon a top-secret investigation, he discovered that the potion had been picked up by an unlucky Federal sergeant.”

Mandrill paused for a beat.

“In a desperate situation where he was surrounded and hunted by Source Beasts, that sergeant injected the potion into his own body.”

Mandrill raised a thick finger, pointing at the deep, dark cave at the end of the passage, and spoke in a deep, deliberate voice:

“So the King Gene in the Spider King's body is not some natural Awakening at all. It was personally refined by the The Fifth Speaker before his defection! It is also the only perfect experimental product left behind by the Federation's 'deep sequence' God-Creation Project!”

Only the sound of the two men's breathing remained in the passage.

Tiger Fiend only felt his throat go dry.

He finally understood why the The Fifth Speaker had sent the First and Third Beast Seal Users to move out at the same time.

“So our mission this time...”

“Is not recruitment.”

Mandrill interrupted him, his lips curling into a cruel arc.

“'Recruitment' is just a smokescreen the The Fifth Speaker put up for the council. He wants to secretly retrieve what he lost five years ago. For living reverse-engineering, only this original specimen can do the job.”

“Without it, the so-called mass production is nothing but empty talk.”

Tiger Fiend understood everything now.

He took a deep breath, his gaze turning complex.

“Then once we get the living specimen, hand it back, and exchange it for a Tier 8 reward...”

Before he could finish his sentence, he noticed that Mandrill's expression was off.

“Hand it back? Hahahaha!”

Mandrill suddenly burst into a low, violent fit of wild laughter, a fire of greed igniting in his highly ambitious eyes.

He turned around, facing Tiger Fiend directly.

His three-meter-tall body blocked the faint light peeking from the cave entrance, casting a massive shadow that completely enveloped Tiger Fiend.

“That high schooler named Su Ming has the 'complete Silver Blood' that can reshape a perfect Physical Body!”

He raised his beastified right arm, pointing to the cave sealed shut by spider silk behind him.

“And inside here lies the 'perfect mental sequence' that can command a myriad of beasts!”

Tiger Fiend's Adam's apple bobbed.

He could tell.

Mandrill had no intention of handing these things back.

“Silver Blood to reshape the Physical Body, and the King Gene to command a myriad of beasts!”

Mandrill's voice was kept very low, but every single word made his scalp tingle.

“Why would someone who possesses both of these things ever go back to being someone else's dog?”

Tiger Fiend did not speak.

The silence lasted for three seconds.

Then, a grin slowly split across the half of his face covered in silver-white tiger stripes.

The icy blue vertical pupils reflected Mandrill's figure.

At this moment, he felt no fear, no hesitation.

Instead, just like Mandrill, he was filled with a hunger and madness that had been suppressed for far too long!

“Whatever Big Brother says to do, that's what we'll do!”

Mandrill bared his teeth in a grin, turning to face the deep cave, the knuckles of his beastified giant arm popping loudly.

“First, we take the Spider King. Then, we hunt the Silver Blood!”

“After today, this Dingxi City will no longer be the Federation's border, nor will it be the Tongyuan Society's backyard...”

“Instead, it will be the place where we two brothers tear apart the old Laws and ascend to the pinnacle of all things...”

The [Myriad Beasts Throne]!”

...!

(7,500 words. Begging for a five-star review, the negative reviews are giving me a brain aneurysm orz...)