7: Chapter 7: An Ecological Disaster in Others' Eyes? My Perfect Whetstone!

After the virtual course introduction.

Fatty Wang wiggled his plump body to squeeze out of the crowd, threw an arm over Lin Yuan's shoulder, and kept wiggling his eyebrows.

"Yuanzi, let's go! A new Succubus Tavern has opened in the Fifth District of the Star Net."

"I heard it's full of 1:1 scale holographic projections of high-level succubi. That waistline, it's absolutely stunning!"

"My treat today. I'll take you to see it and help you relax those tense nerves."

Lin Yuan looked at the expectant expression on Fatty Wang's face and shook his head decisively.

"Not going."

"Did you get water in your brain?" Fatty Wang widened his eyes. "The beginner protection period won't last much longer. Everyone is rushing to relieve their stress."

"You started in a Wasteland environment. If you stare at those scorched lands every day, you're going to drive yourself schizophrenic sooner or later!"

"The Abyss won't give us a break." Lin Yuan's tone was flat as he pushed away Fatty Wang's arm. "Instead of wasting time at a tavern, it's better to let my believers swing their blades a few more times."

The corner of Fatty Wang's mouth twitched, and after a long while, he squeezed out a sentence: "You deserve to be single! I'm going to go have fun myself; you can just play in the mud in your Wasteland!"

A white light flickered, and Fatty Wang logged off directly.

Lin Yuan's expression remained unchanged as he exited the virtual lobby.

Removing his holographic access device, Lin Yuan opened the terminal trading network on his wrist.

He was very clear about his current limitations.

His one hundred Petrified Goblins, relying on [Rough Body Tempering] to brawl with each other, had reached a bottleneck in their progress.

Fighting among themselves lacked the pressure of true death.

Without the crisis of death, it was impossible to force out greater potential, and even more impossible to give birth to "War Faith."

The conventional way for gods to improve the strength of their believers was very simple.

Spend tens of thousands of faith points to buy "Primary Marrow Cleansing Potions" or purchase "Silver-grade Combat Skill Cards" for forced enlightenment.

Lin Yuan only had a few hundred faith points in his account; he couldn't even afford the dregs of the potions.

He could only use the rules of the Wasteland to solve the problem.

He clicked on the black market channel and entered the "Alien Species Zone."

He entered the search criteria: rapid reproduction, high aggression, highly toxic adaptation, and low price.

The system aperture rotated, automatically filtering out 99% of normal creatures.

Finally, a dozen entries with red skull warning labels popped up.

Lin Yuan scrolled directly to the bottom of the list and locked onto an F-grade ecological disaster species.

[Abyssal Corrupted Cockroach Egg Case].

Description: An associated species from the edge of the Abyss. Omnivorous, with terrifying reproductive ability. It gnaws on all visible plants, its excrement contains strong acids, and it severely destroys soil structure.

Warning: It is strictly forbidden to introduce it into a normal divine domain! Once it spreads, the cleanup cost will be more than ten thousand times the purchase price!

Price: 10 faith points/kg.

The forums were full of abuse directed at this trash species.

A few months ago, a commoner god didn't believe the hype and bought one kilogram to throw into their grassland divine domain.

Three days later, their pride and joy, the centaur believers, were gnawed down to nothing but skeletons by the insect swarm.

Looking at the ugly egg case on the holographic projection, a strange glint flashed in Lin Yuan's eyes.

An ecological disaster in others' eyes, but a perfect whetstone in Lin Yuan's eyes.

The Wasteland Divine Domain had no pure water sources that needed protection; the soil had long since cracked and carbonized, and the only plants were the equally toxic Ash Spore Mushrooms.

The cockroaches' acidic excrement could even further neutralize the fire toxins in the scorched earth.

Lin Yuan transferred two hundred faith points and bought twenty kilograms of egg cases.

Spatial ripples appeared in the air of the bedroom.

A black sealed bag slammed onto the floor.

Lin Yuan closed his eyes, his consciousness detaching from his physical body.

Piercing through the astral realm, he descended above the vast scorched earth.

Below, the Ash Spore Mushrooms had spread into a dark gray fungal mat covering dozens of acres.

The Petrified Goblins, well-fed and satiated, were wrestling with each other in twos and threes.

Lin Yuan opened his storage space and poured out all twenty kilograms of Abyssal Corrupted Cockroach egg cases.

The dense black egg cases followed the embers falling from the sky, landing thickly on the scorched earth at the edge of the fungal mat.

Lin Yuan communicated with the divine domain core with his mind, consumed three hundred faith points, and adjusted the flow of time.

A few days in the main world passed, which was stretched to three months within the divine domain.

Looking down from above, Lin Yuan watched the ecological evolution below.

Less than three days after the egg cases landed, the first batch of corrupted cockroaches hatched.

They were pitch black, over half a meter long, with their backs covered in hard, rotting carapaces, and their mouthparts were filled with serrated teeth.

Following the scent, they found the Ash Spore Mushrooms.

The insect swarm surged toward the fungal mat and began to gnaw frantically.

The neurotoxins carried by the Ash Spore Mushrooms had almost no effect on them.

After eating their fill, the cockroaches quickly mated and laid eggs.

In the first week, there were thousands.

In the first month, there were tens of thousands.

In the third month, the number of cockroaches reached a staggering hundreds of thousands.

A massive black insect swarm surged everywhere on the Wasteland.

They didn't just eat mushrooms; when extremely hungry, they even gnawed deep pits into the scorched rock on the ground.

The peaceful days of the Petrified Goblins were over.

The mushroom farm was their lifeline for survival.

On the day the cockroach swarm invaded the farm in force, the goblin tribe was forced to fight back.

War broke out.

There was no formation and no tactics.

One hundred Petrified Goblins brandished their stone flails and charged into the black insect swarm.

On the first day, the goblins were locked in a bitter struggle.

The cockroaches' carapaces were extremely hard, and their mouthparts could bite through the goblins' surface layer of Stone Skin.

A few weaker goblins were overwhelmed by the insect swarm, leaving not even their bones behind.

An extreme sense of crisis completely activated the [Boiling Blood] trait.

The goblins' eyes turned crimson, and the dark red blood vessels in the cracks of their Stone Skin surged.

Their strength exploded, doubling.

Their flails smashed the cockroaches' carapaces, and green acidic bodily fluids splattered everywhere.

The injured goblins grabbed the dead cockroaches, tore off their limbs, and ate their flesh raw.

In the continuous life-and-death struggle, [Rough Body Tempering] began to operate around the clock.

The weak fell into the insect swarm, turning into fertilizer for the scorched earth.

The surviving goblins underwent drastic physical changes.

Their height grew from 130 centimeters to over 160 centimeters.

The gray-black stone armor on their bodies became thicker, and sharp stone barbs grew from their shoulders and elbows.

Their eyes no longer held the innate cowardice of the goblin race, replaced instead by bloodthirst and madness.

Today, three months later.

Lin Yuan looked down at the earth.

Of the original one hundred Petrified Goblins, only sixty remained.

But these sixty survivors had already undergone a complete transformation.

They were no longer scattered soldiers fighting on their own.

In the Wasteland basin, a thirty-member goblin hunting party was moving quietly.

They used insect tendons to string together the hardest cockroach carapaces and tied them to their chests to make crude armor.

What they held in their hands were no longer flails evolved from wooden sticks, but pale bone blades polished from the forelimbs of giant cockroaches.

The hunting party's target was a behemoth up ahead.

A giant Corrupted-Carapace Cockroach King that had mutated due to consuming an excessive amount of Ash Spore Mushroom toxins.

Over five meters long, its back carapace had a dark green metallic luster, and as its mouthparts opened and closed, it dripped venom that corroded the scorched earth.

The Cockroach King sensed the living creatures approaching, let out a piercing hiss, crushed rocks with its body, and lunged straight at the hunting party.

The goblins did not retreat.

The leading goblin captain was nearly 1.8 meters tall, his body covered in dark red scars.

He let out a violent battle cry and was the first to activate [Boiling Blood].

Thirty goblins went berserk simultaneously.

They quickly spread out their formation, flanking and attacking from both sides.

The bone blades struck the Cockroach King's carapace, bursting with blinding sparks.

The Cockroach King's thick forelimbs swept horizontally, knocking two goblins away by their chests.

The goblins rolled over a dozen meters on the ground, their chest Stone Skin shattering over a large area.

But they scrambled to their feet, ignoring the pain, and continued to pounce on the giant insect's flanks.

The captain seized the opportunity.

He stepped on the Cockroach King's hind legs and used the leverage to leap high into the air.

Gripping the bone blade with both hands, he used the gravity of his descent to fiercely stab into the weak neck area at the gap in the Cockroach King's carapace.

Dark green toxic blood gushed out, drenching the captain's head.

The toxic blood made a hissing corrosive sound, but it could not pierce through his advanced, hardened Stone Skin.

The Cockroach King rolled and struggled frantically, crushing large patches of rock, before finally stiffening and dying completely.

The fierce melee battle came to an end.

The hunting party succeeded in killing the king-level mutant, paying the price of a few minor injuries.

The captain pulled out his bone blade, cleanly and efficiently cut open the Cockroach King's abdomen, and tore out a huge poison gland.

He walked to the center of the basin.

There stood a crude altar built from scorched rocks, upon which was enshrined a giant stone shaped like the face of Lin Yuan's consciousness.

The captain laid the poison gland and the most intact piece of carapace flat on the altar.

Thirty goblins knelt on one knee in unison.

"Endless blood battle!"

"Glory belongs to my Lord!"

The fanatical shouting tore through the Wasteland storm and shot straight into the clouds.

Lin Yuan hovered in the clouds.

[Log: Your believers have undergone a bloody battle, and their minds and bodies have been sublimated!]

[Log: Your believers have generated a high-level faith resource — [War Faith]!]

[Notification: Your divine domain's ecological chain has initially formed a closed loop, and the stability of the Wasteland rules has increased by 10%!]

Dark golden power of faith rose from the top of the goblins' heads, crossed space, and gathered into Lin Yuan's body.

In reality, Lin Yuan's physical body emitted the crackling sound of bone remodeling, and his sense of power expanded exponentially.