66: Chapter 66: The Demon Tree Reaches its Ultimate Sublimation, and the Entire Region Embraces an Evolutionary Frenzy!

One morning.

In the center of the basin, the Blood Abyss Sea surged without warning.

In the center of the Blood Abyss Sea, the towering Liquid Metal Blood-Devouring Demon Tree suddenly writhed.

Streaks of dark golden law patterns slithered across its bark.

The millions of tons of abyssal tai sui meat that Lin Yuan had poured out had been thoroughly drained of every last bit of nutrients by the Demon Tree over these long years.

Buzz—!

The crown of the Demon Tree suddenly expanded, obscuring the sky for dozens of miles around.

Immediately, an eerie dark purple halo bloomed from between the leaves.

The dark purple pollen that had originally filled the Wasteland Divine Domain underwent an extreme sublimation at this instant.

The color of the pollen became extremely deep.

Each grain of pollen transformed from its original dusty state into tiny, solidified energy crystals.

All creatures within the Wasteland Divine Domain simultaneously stopped moving.

Whether it was the Demon Vultures and Bone Blade Bats tearing at each other, the Dark Gold Poisonous Miasma Insect Race hiding deep underground, or the Tyrant Demons soaking in the magma acting like "skyrockets."

From the depths of every creature's genes came an irresistible craving.

"Hiss—" Inside the Insect Race mother nest, the king let out a high-pitched hiss.

A million insects surged out from the ground.

They opened the spiracles on their carapaces and desperately inhaled the pollen crystals drifting in the air.

The Demon Vultures in the sky gave up their pursuit of the Bone Blade Bats, raised their necks, and gulped the pollen into their bellies.

This energy was too pure!

After the creatures absorbed the pollen, the wounds on their bodies healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Their bone density increased, and their carapaces became darker and shinier.

This domain-wide carnival lasted for three full days and nights.

Three days later, another change occurred on the crown of the Demon Tree.

The huge petals that had been emitting a faint light began to rapidly close and shrink.

In just half a day, the flowers across the sky withered.

In their place, fist-sized, dark golden seeds grew on the branches.

Click.

The main trunk of the Demon Tree let out a soft sound, like the sigh of a god.

A fierce wind suddenly arose.

The dark golden seeds on the branches detached from the parent body and were swept up by the red and green intertwined radiation storm.

Moving with the wind, they drifted to every corner of the Wasteland Divine Domain.

At the edge of the basin, the Tyrant's dark golden vertical pupils stared fixedly at the seeds drifting in the sky.

As the ceiling of combat power in the Divine Domain, it maintained an instinctive vigilance against this unknown change.

The Tyrant strode forward, walking straight to the main trunk of the Demon Tree in the center of the Blood Abyss Sea.

It extended its sharp claws, covered in liquid metal armor, and tore off a flesh cocoon hanging from the trunk.

The Tyrant then grabbed a handful of nutrient solution secreted by the Demon Tree's roots, stuffed it into its mouth, and carefully sensed it.

"Roar." (It's fine, doesn't affect chow time.)

After confirming that the Demon Tree's mutation had no negative impact on the Tyrant Demon race's food source, the Tyrant lost interest, turned around, and walked back to its camp.

The world of a king is very pure.

As long as the foundation hasn't collapsed, everything else can be messed with as much as one likes.

But just because the Tyrant didn't care, didn't mean other races didn't.

The seeds grew more numerous by the day.

Soon, in every corner of the Divine Domain, one could see these "high-level blind boxes" with a faint dark golden shimmer.

The most critical thing was that these things had left the central area of the basin.

They were no longer exclusive to the Tyrant Demons.

A Soldier Insect leader tentatively used its mouthparts to pick up a seed that had fallen on the ground and swallowed it whole.

Only a few seconds later, dark golden light erupted from the Soldier Insect's body.

Its strength, which had originally been stuck at the peak of Bronze, actually forced its way through the rank barrier amidst a series of bone-cracking sounds, stepping into the early Silver stage!

With this, the bottom-tier creatures of the entire Wasteland fell into a frenzy of competition.

Grab!

In the sky, a Demon Vulture had just snatched up a seed that had landed on a cliff.

A dozen Bone Blade Bats rushed out from the side, their infrasonic bone blades shredding the Demon Vulture into pieces.

On the bank of the River Styx, an Oscillating Liquid Metal Crab clamped onto a seed that had drifted onto the water surface with its giant claw, but before it could bring it to its mouth, a large, tooth-filled maw broke through the water from below.

A Scarlet Flying Blade Bone Fish swallowed the crab along with half of its claw.

In order to fight for these scattered seeds, another storm of blood and slaughter was whipped up across the Wasteland.

However, a strange thing soon happened.

A Soldier Insect that had consumed a seed had its neck bitten off during a fight over food with its own kind.

According to the past of the Wasteland, this corpse would soon turn into blood.

It would flow along the cracks in the crust into the earth veins and eventually become nutrients for the central Demon Tree.

But this time, it did not.

After the Soldier Insect died, its corpse quickly shriveled.

A large hole suddenly burst open in its abdomen, and a dark red sprout drilled out from its remains.

The sprout grew as it encountered the wind, absorbing the residual energy within the corpse and the free radiation energy from the surrounding surface.

In just half an hour, a small tree, three meters tall, entirely dark red, with faint liquid metal flowing on its branches, was fully formed on the Soldier Insect's bones.

This appearance was completely a miniature version of the Liquid Metal Blood-Devouring Demon Tree!

It was not just the Insect Race.

The Demon Vultures that died under the heavy metal toxic clouds, the Liquid Metal Crabs that died at the bottom of the River Styx—as long as they were creatures that had consumed the seeds while alive, these miniature sub-trees grew at the locations of their deaths.

Of course, this "parasitic transformation" was not 100% successful.

If the host's rank was too low before death, or if the corpse was too severely damaged during the fight, or if the residual energy was insufficient, those that broke out of the body would wither during the process of sprouting.

They would turn into a pool of dark golden pus, corroding along with the host's remains, becoming fertilizer for this Wasteland.

But even with a considerable failure rate, as time passed, with tens of thousands of creatures dying in competition every day in the Divine Domain, the number of small trees still showed explosive growth.

Ten years passed.

Every corner of the Divine Domain, every mountain peak, and even the bottom of the River Styx's riverbed, were covered with these dark red sub-trees.

They were like nails driven into the land of the Wasteland.

When the number of sub-trees exceeded several million, quantitative change finally triggered a qualitative change.

Rumble!

A continuous resonance sound came from the depths of the Divine Domain's earth veins.

The root systems of these millions of sub-trees connected with the root system of the mother tree in the center of the basin, tens of thousands of kilometers deep underground.

A massive "Earth Vein Parent-Child Network" covering the entire Wasteland Divine Domain was officially declared complete.

The environment changed.

The red and green radiation storms, originally violent, chaotic, and rampaging everywhere, became orderly under the guidance of the sub-tree network.

The leaves of the sub-trees absorbed the radiation toxins and heavy metal miasma from the air.

After transformation through the trunks, they exhaled a faint dark golden "Dark Abyss Spiritual Qi."

The Wasteland was no longer purely dead silence and desolation.

Under the nourishment of the "Dark Abyss Spiritual Qi," a type of black thorny grass even grew on the carbonized crust.

The energy concentration in the air soared.

The law of gravity became more stable, and the spatial toughness increased several times over.

This was a completely positive transformation of laws.

...

The transformation of the environment naturally gave birth to brand new anomalies.

The extreme north, the volcanic cluster.

Back when Lin Yuan was in custodial mode, he had stripped away a massive amount of negative traits and dumped them all into the volcanic cluster.

[Abyssal Deep Corrosion], [Nether Death Qi Residue], [Whispers of Demon God Remnant Souls]...

Tens of thousands of incomplete negative traits should have been chaotically trampling and devouring each other in the magma, forever remaining just a pot of chaotic and tyrannical magma liquid.

However, with the dark golden seeds falling all over the sky and landing in the volcanic craters, and the Dark Abyss Spiritual Qi spreading throughout the Divine Domain, after a hundred years of accumulation, amidst the ultimate destruction, a glimmer of vitality was finally conceived.

"Boom!"

Inside the main volcanic crater, dark black magma surged and rolled.

Elemental life forms, entirely condensed from black poisonous fire, with vague humanoid outlines, slowly stood up from the magma.

[Calamity Fire Spirit]

Without complex intelligence, they were pure elemental bodies following primitive instincts.

On the very second day after this group of Calamity Fire Spirits was born, a group of Titan Violent Demons, full and bored out of their minds, came to the volcanic crater as usual.

They leaped into the crater with practiced ease, preparing to use their bodies to plug the eruption vent and play another exciting game of volcanic "skyrocket."

Dozens of Titan Violent Demons used liquid metal to stack into a human plug.

Before they could start pressing down, the magma below suddenly split to both sides.

Dozens of Calamity Fire Spirits crawled up along the magma walls.

"Roar?"

The Titan Violent Demon acting as the very bottom of the plug looked down and was stunned.

What kind of thing is this?

Before he could react, the Calamity Fire Spirit at the very front swung the poisonous fire whip in its hand.

Crack!

The long whip lashed fiercely across the Titan Violent Demon's face.

The whip strike, carrying extreme cold bone-scraping and poisonous fire, ignored the defense the Violent Demon was so proud of.

The extreme cold froze the liquid metal, and the poisonous fire corroded along the cracks into the bone marrow.

"Awoo!"

This seven-meter-tall Titan Violent Demon let out a miserable scream.

The human plug instantly disintegrated.

The Violent Demons fell into the magma, colliding head-on with this group of elementals who didn't play by the rules.

Relying on their environmental advantage in the magma, the Calamity Fire Spirits had forms that gathered and dispersed unpredictably.

Physical attacks passed straight through them, making it difficult to cause substantial damage.

Yet every whip from the Fire Spirits could lash the Violent Demons until their skin split and their souls trembled.

The Violent Demons who escaped the volcanic crater stood on the edge, pointing down and cursing.

"You can't play fair, can you? If you've got guts, come up and fight one-on-one!"

The Fire Spirits ignored the Violent Demons' impotent rage.

They walked to the edge of the crater.

Their hollow eyes looked toward the [living casting mother nest] operating not far away.

The Mother Nest emitted the aura of a creation belonging to Lin Yuan.

Although the Fire Spirits had no consciousness, their origin came from the negative traits Lin Yuan had dumped in, so they had an instinctive awe for this aura of creation.

They stopped their steps, did not cross the line, turned around, and submerged back into the magma.

The Violent Demons saw this scene and looked at each other.

"Heh, these black coal balls are actually quite sensible. They know not to smash the pot they eat from."

"Since it doesn't affect the arsenal's production of high-grade metal embryos, the Violent Demons gave up the idea of calling for backup to level the volcano."

"Anyway, they had nothing to do after eating their fill every day, aren't these ready-made sparring partners?"

From then on, the extreme north volcanic cluster had a new activity.

Every day, large groups of Violent Demons lined up to jump into the volcanic crater, engaging in hardcore physical and magical brawls with the Calamity Fire Spirits.

Although they were lashed until they howled every time, under the tempering of the extreme cold and poisonous fire, the magic resistance attribute of the Violent Demons' living liquid metal armor began to improve in a straight line.

The 500-year custodial period was already halfway over.