2: This isn't a blueprint, it's an autopsy report.

Dead silence.

In the holographic livestream room of Sector 9527, the air seemed to have been completely sucked dry by some indescribable gravitational field.

Just a second ago, the place was filled with millions of comments praising the "architectural aesthetics of the Lightborn Civilization" and engaging in boring discussions about the "photosynthetic efficiency of Forest Elves." Those bullet comments were like a flowing river of neon—noisy, cheap, and utterly meaningless.

The next second, the neon river stopped flowing.

Li Cang's recitation of the Imperial Truth, laced with the scent of rust, engine oil, and tyrannical oaths, didn't sound like a typical contestant's declaration.

It was more like a blood-stained Chainsword, brutally slicing through the greenhouse glass meticulously woven by these high-dimensional viewers.

Harmony?

Resonance?

Rationality?

No.

The man on the screen told everyone in the coldest way possible: the ultimate answer for a civilization is not ascension, but crushing all aliens beneath its treads.

[System Alert: Detected exponential growth in attention for Player No. CN-9527.]

[Level 1 Traffic Threshold breached.]

[Forcing allocation of exclusive commentary seats... Connection complete: Judging Panel No. 103.]

In the void above the livestream room, two pillars of light symbolizing authority crashed down, tearing through the pitch-black data mist.

The left pillar dissipated, revealing a woman dressed in a minimalist silver-gray uniform.

Isabelle, the Federation's Chief Civilization Architect.

She looked cold, holding a single-lens data monocle between her fingers. Behind the lens, her gray-blue eyes were as sharp as a scalpel.

She was famous in the industry for her almost pathological, rigorous deductions of sociological models.

On the right was a dark shadow as imposing as an iron tower.

Former Interstellar Colony Defense Chief Karen. He still had the metal interface left by an implanted exoskeleton on his neck, and his entire person radiated a scent of gunpowder mixed with old leather.

He sat there like a decommissioned artillery piece that hadn't been dismantled.

"I am Isabelle."

The female architect put on her glasses. She wasn't frightened by that declaration like the ordinary viewers; she directly pulled up the data blueprint from the backend, which was still dripping with blood.

"I believe the confusion you all have right now is: why would a newly born infant civilization let out such a mad-dog-like roar?"

Isabelle's finger swiped sharply in the void, pulling the deformed technology tree to the center of the public screen.

"Anger usually stems from incompetence, but if you understand his foundation, you will realize this isn't just anger—it's a... gamble."

On the screen, the areas representing [Physics] and [Society] were a dead, pitch-black color, like necrotic limbs.

Only the single point for [Biology] shone with a blinding light, even seeping an ominous bloody halo outward due to energy overload.

"He abandoned tool manufacturing; he abandoned the social contract."

Isabelle's voice echoed in the livestream room, carrying a hint of chill she couldn't hide:

"He dumped a full 3,400 points—this hard-earned blood money from 'Radiation Wasteland' and 'Eternal Warfare'—entirely into an extreme branch of biology."

"More than that."

The tactical analyst Karen beside her suddenly interjected. His prosthetic eyes, which had seen countless people, stared fixedly at the end of the tech tree, his voice low and raspy like sandpaper:

"If it were just simple biological enhancement, it would at most create a pack of beasts with well-developed limbs. But look here."

Karen's thick finger pointed at a crimson node that had never appeared in the qualifiers.

There, the green branches that should have derived into [Basic Agriculture] or [Herbalism] had long since withered.

In their place was an eerie tentacle that proliferated like cancer cells, twisting and spiraling.

[Unique Derived Node: Gene Alchemy]

"This is a technical atrocity induced under extreme high pressure." Karen stared at the entry, his brow furrowed. His veteran's intuition made him feel extremely uncomfortable.

"This node no longer pursues environmental adaptation; it pursues the violation of the environment. It doesn't produce food, it doesn't manufacture medicine—it only produces one product: killing efficiency."

The bullet comments finally snapped back to reality, and dense skepticism instantly flooded the screen:

"Specing biology into military tech? Then what do they eat?"

"Starting in a wasteland with no agriculture and no industry, these people will starve to death as soon as they land!"

"Is this a suicide playstyle? Just to grab attention?"

Isabelle looked at the scrolling text and slowly shook her head, giving her final verdict as an architect:

"From an architectural perspective, this blueprint has already collapsed. He has built an extremely powerful terminal for violent output, but has completely severed the logistics supply cycle. This is like building a heavy tank that devours fuel, but not giving it a fuel tank."

She pushed her glasses up, her gaze seemingly piercing through the data stream as if trying to see the operator's mental state:

"This isn't a blueprint for civilization development at all; this is an autopsy report written on a suicide note. I truly cannot imagine what he intends to do. I can only assume that he believes fuel suitable for civilization development is everywhere."

...Inside the holographic pod, the temperature remained as cold as absolute zero.

Li Cang couldn't hear the noise outside. Even if he could, he would only let out a contemptuous snort.

Logistics?

Agricultural cycles?

Those are just games of house for greenhouse civilizations.

In that dark and desperate 40th millennium, in a universe where even gods could fall, there was only one eternal cycle: sustaining war through war, forging flesh with flesh.

[System Prompt: Civilization Blueprint 'Imperium of Man' has been solidified.]

[Severe Warning: Detected a devastating resource gap in this blueprint. Based on logical deduction, your civilization will collapse due to a total famine within 48 hours of landing.]

[Please immediately select an 'Incubation Period' deduction theme to obtain emergency survival resources.]

A task panel radiating a faint blue light popped up before Li Cang's eyes.

This was the last lifeline the system gave to novice civilizations—a series of tasks with increasing difficulty designed to guide a civilization on how to survive in the wilderness. Generally speaking, this was also the first threshold to filter out reckless newcomers.

[Incubation Period · Phase One: Foundations of Survival]

[Theme 1: Kindling]

Objective: Obtain the first stable heat source.

Conventional Path: Drilling wood for fire, collecting surface coal.

Reward: 1,000 BP.

[Theme 2: Shelter]

Objective: Establish a settlement to resist radiation storms.

Conventional Path: Digging caves, setting up radiation-proof tents.

Reward: 1,000 BP.

[Theme 3: Totem]

Objective: Establish early social cohesion.

Conventional Path: Electing a leader, establishing primitive beliefs.

Reward: 1,000 BP... A total of five basic themes, all teaching you how to be a proper "primitive."

According to the logic of a normal player, one must follow the steps: first fire, then building a house, and finally considering what to eat.

Because on the Radiation Wasteland, the low temperatures at night and radiation storms are more lethal than wild beasts.

But Li Cang's gaze didn't even linger for a second on the first three options.

Fire?

That is the comfort of the weak for warmth.

Shelter?

That is the grave where cowards hide.

His finger, like a sharp scalpel, cut directly to the bottom of the list and hovered over the high-risk option marked in red.

[Theme 4: Tools and Killing]

Objective: Manufacture the first batch of standard weapons and complete a successful hunt.

Reward: 1,000 BP, force-unlock the [Military] technology tree.

In the livestream room, Karen's battle-hardened intuition made him sit up straight instantly, his exoskeleton interface emitting a faint hum:

"Skipping the survival steps? Going straight to making weapons?"

"That's a tactical dead end."

Karen's voice suddenly rose; he couldn't understand this suicidal behavior.

"His civilization is currently penniless; those 1,000 'standard human bodies' are bare-handed, without any protection.

In this wasteland model, there is no ore, no wood, not even a decent piece of obsidian to be found.

What is he going to use to make weapons? What is he going to use to hunt those mutated radiation beasts?"

Isabelle quickly called up the resource monitoring, a large waterfall of data flowing across her glasses:

"Data confirmed: Current inventory is only the 1,000 baseline human units just deployed. No external materials. According to the law of conservation of mass, he cannot create weapons out of thin air."

"Without materials, there are no tools. Without tools, there is no killing," Isabelle concluded. "He's stuck. This is a logical deadlock."

Just when everyone thought CN-9527 would have to reset the match due to resource depletion...

Li Cang performed an operation that froze the entire sea of data stars.

He chose [Theme 4].

Then, on the "Resource Allocation" interface that popped up, he didn't look for resource points on the map like others did.

With an expressionless face, he reached out and dragged the 1,000 "human body" icons—the sparks of civilization and a player's most precious assets—directly into a black selection box named [Gene Alchemy Conversion Vat].

But he didn't drag them all in.

His fingers made fine adjustments in the void, like a pharmacist performing precise mixing, accurately dividing the proportions.

On the screen, the cold system prompt no longer sounded like it was announcing game progress, but like it was reading a death sentence:

[Creator intent detected: Executing 'Extreme Biomass Recycling' protocol.]

[Warning: This operation is irreversible and will result in permanent population loss. Confirm?]

"Confirm." Li Cang's voice had no ups or downs.

[Instruction executed.]

[Step One: Energy Extraction]

[Screening 40% of the population (elderly, weak/low-potential individuals)... Inputting into organic dissolution vat.]

[Initiating bio-enzymatic dissociation... dehydration... compression.]

[Obtained: 'High-Energy Organic Paste' x 120 units.]

[Step Two: Material Stripping]

[Screening 30% of the population (top 10% individuals by bone density)... Executing 'Live Stripping and Calcium Reshaping'.]

[Extracting spinal columns, femurs... injecting hardening agents.]

[Obtained: 'High-Strength Bio-Bone Material' x 90 units.]

[Step Three: Subject Modification]

[Remaining 30% of population: Marked as 'Subjects'.]

[Preparing to implant bone swords, injecting high-energy paste.]

At that moment.

The originally dense bullet comments in the livestream room experienced a moment of vacuum, as if everyone's throats were being held tight by an invisible giant hand.

Isabelle suddenly stood up from the commentary seat, her chair flipping over onto the floor.

On that face, which was usually as cold as frost, the emotion of "horror" appeared for the first time.

She looked at the rapidly decreasing population numbers and the fast-growing material reserves on the screen, her voice as dry as if she had swallowed a handful of sand:

"He... he took his own people..."

"Ate them?"

"No."

Beside her, Karen stared fixedly at the screen, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. It was the instinctive fear of a soldier toward this kind of absolute, cold-blooded rationality.

He understood, and precisely because he understood, he felt a bone-chilling cold.

"It's not just eating. In that man's calculations, there is no concept of 'people,' only 'resources'."

Karen pointed at the data streams being reshaped on the screen, speaking one word at a time:

"Flesh is rations, bone is a blade, soul is fuel."

"A normal civilization takes hundreds of years to complete primitive accumulation, needing to go from gathering wild fruits to planting crops, from polishing stone tools to smelting bronze. But he skipped all of that."

"He doesn't need farmland, because the weak are the farmland; he doesn't need mines, because his own kind are the mines."

Karen took a deep breath, his voice trembling slightly... inside the holographic pod.

Li Cang looked at the flickering crimson numbers in the resource bar, seeing how the originally cold "population" had become warm "corpse starch" and "bone serrated swords." A curve without any warmth hooked at the corner of his mouth.

He could feel the huge repulsive force within the system's logic; it was the instinctive resistance of conventional civilization evolution logic toward such extreme behavior.

But he didn't care.

Cruel?

Perhaps.

But in the dark 40th millennium, mercy is the greatest poison.

If he didn't do this, these 300 people would freeze to death, starve, or be eaten by radiation cockroaches on the very first night of their descent.

Instead of letting them rot in meaningless wailing, it was better to let them become the first foundation stones of the Imperial edifice.

Only the monsters that survive are qualified to define what justice is.

[Resource balancing complete.]

[Biomass conversion finished.]

[Prerequisites met: Army has been formed.]

[System Prompt: The first round of deduction officially begins.]

[Loading map: Holy Terra - Europa Radiation Wasteland Zone - Gene-Cathedral Ruins]

His vision suddenly plummeted.

Passing through thick radiation clouds and howling acid rain, falling toward that desolate land.

Ruins, endless ruins.

This place was once the pinnacle of human civilization; now only twisted steel bars and broken concrete remained, whimpering in the yellow radiation storm.

In the darkness, a pair of eyes burning with tyrannical thunderous light slowly opened.

[Main Perspective Locked: Proto-Thunder Warrior]

[Individual Codename: Arik Taranis]

He didn't speak.

Arik Taranis lowered his head, looking at his huge palms covered in a rough carapace, feeling the alchemical concoction surging through his body like magma.

That wasn't just power, but a primitive impulse to tear apart everything living in front of him at any moment.

He tightened his grip on the serrated bone sword, which was still stained with warm bone marrow, the bones grinding with a tooth-aching crack.

This wasn't some high-tech alloy; this was the spine of his fellow countryman, polished into a lethal weapon after being hardened by alchemy.

The warmth of the periosteum even remained on the hilt, but he didn't feel the slightest bit of disgust.

Here, survival is the only morality.

He looked up at the sky covered in radiation dust. There was no sunlight there, only endless gloom and the flickering phosphorus fire in the distant ruins.

But he didn't need sunlight.

It would be a bloody dawn belonging only to war.

A monster born for war was breaking out of its shell.