Chapter 1061: Surprised!

The Great Octopus looked at his ancient ancestor, a ninth-tier being, filled with immense emotion.

If this were before, he would surely have been overwhelmed with excitement, kneeling down without a second thought, filled with boundless reverence.

But... times had changed.

As someone who knew the ultimate secrets of the universe and had "entered the city" (meaning gained advanced knowledge/status), he didn't completely look down on his ancient ancestor, who still appeared bewildered and somewhat like a country bumpkin. However, he couldn't help but feel a certain sunny disdain.

What if he was ninth-tier?

What if he was unimaginably powerful?

What if he could crush him with one hand?

How pathetic.

Amidst his complex feelings and a strong sense of superiority, the Great Octopus sighed and continued to explain: "In the ancient Land of Evolution, that Asura quickly became synonymous with filth, evil, and decay. Wherever he went, there were natural disasters; wherever he spoke, there were desolate lands.

"Countless people were terrified of him. In that era of rising heroes, he became the champion of combat duels. No one dared to challenge his dignity. Regardless of winning or losing, he would douse people with faeces and poison their excrement, fighting like a street shrew. Who could endure that?"

In the distance, the players recalled this and showed a hint of terror.

Playing with mud was one thing, but playing with poop? Who could stand that?

At the time, everyone speculated that this guy might be a septic tank worker or a pipe unblocker in real life, constantly carrying a plunger. However, others argued that given his advanced knowledge, he was unlikely to be a low-level worker. More likely, he was a highly educated individual, perhaps even a university professor or teacher, who secretly harbored a dark obsession with foul odors.

After all, the game network didn't prevent psychologically disturbed players from joining. The internet was full of all sorts of people, capable of evolving any kind of creature, but this was simply too terrifying.

In fact, that player had become a legendary urban myth back then.

The Great Octopus took a deep breath. "But he soon grew dissatisfied. Loneliness at the top, he felt as if he had stopped progressing. He then conceived that pure filth and evil shouldn't just be physical, but also spiritual... like despair. The black despair condensed from bloodline remains—that was the 'death essence'.

"Sir, you evolved the 'Gate of Alchemy.' So, to evolve the 'Gate of Death' as an antithesis to yours, he came up with a daring idea."

"What daring idea?"

Luos couldn't help but feel curious, a shiver running down his spine as he was drawn into the narrative.

Indeed, collecting all the world's impurities—remains, filth, corpses, rot—and fermenting them together to evolve something within was highly likely to produce powerful, poisonous creatures.

It was certainly a very imaginative concept.

"His even bolder idea was the 'Mobius Ring'—where no one survives." An indescribable horror flashed in the Great Octopus's eyes.

Luos still didn't understand.

The Great Octopus took a deep breath. "The Mobius Ring was an extremely evil summoning ritual he designed, a composite being... Its specific prototype was based on aggregated life forms like the Old Gods!"

"Old Gods?" Luos was bewildered again.

"You... you don't remember?"

The Great Octopus froze, looking at his ancestor with a hint of sorrow. "Have you forgotten even the Old Gods? You've forgotten your ancestor's glory..."

Luos: "???"

What was I supposed to remember...?

"Old Gods... Old Gods," he mumbled, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall any impression of them. Suddenly, he felt an eerie, sinister sensation.

The Great Octopus's expression shifted slightly, then gradually softened. Soaking in the tub and stirring the murky black water, he sighed, "Never mind, never mind... The Old Gods were composite life forms... countless lives gathered together, serving as organs and tissues, to form a single entity."

Such life forms exist?

Luos frowned slightly, finding this path of evolution too powerful and bizarre, involving a profound depth of knowledge.

He couldn't help but ask, "How do these combined tissues, forming an army, transfer food to each other?"

The Great Octopus was slightly surprised. "Naturally, some of these tissues are 'pipeline organisms'... acting as substitutes for the creatures' blood vessels, transporting food and nutrients."

Luos understood.

The Great Octopus's voice suddenly became strange. He said, "This Mobius Ring is also a composite being... but it has no pipeline transmission. It's shaped like a pyramid, where the first layer eats food, the second layer eats the one above it... One after another, they form a biological centipede, and then this centipede connects head to tail, forming a ring...

"Based on speculation, he might have been influenced by a film from their civilization, or perhaps by a 'human centipede' concept from some culture. He called it the Mobius Ring, an eternally perpetuating biological ring."

Luos: "......"

Perpetually moving?

Forming a ring, it truly would be perpetual...

He was utterly shocked, completely stunned.

Wait, your planet's civilization... it's just too peculiar, isn't it?

A centipede movie... that's horrifying. He had seen cruel torture devices before, but never anything so outlandish. And food... could *that* be considered food?

He felt a profound respect. The evolutionary foundation was indeed deep!

However, it truly was a completely new system. Evolutionary biology... to think there was such a method for biological evolution and deduction? It was simply... eye-opening!

He felt he had learned something.

"And then, he began to act like a chainsaw maniac, attacking, assassinating, and challenging others everywhere. He forcibly captured some wild evolved creatures and gathered them to form the Mobius Ring. He claimed that through this torture, the torment of spiritual despair, leading to defilement and decay, the resentment and defiling aura produced by such dying creatures would condense into the unique 'death essence' of life."

Death... essence?

Luos naturally knew about "prime essence," which represented the source of life.

Prime essence was a minute thread of innate life substance present at the moment life was conceived and formed into an embryo; it was the origin of life itself. However, it quickly vanished, transforming into an ordinary acquired soul, making extraction extremely difficult.

If life had prime essence, then at the moment of death, was there... death essence?

He fell into thought, then exclaimed in surprise, "It's not impossible! All things are relative; if there's an essence of birth, there's certainly a possibility of an essence of death...

"Prime essence is widely used and therefore very common, having been passed down since ancient times. No one knows who discovered it first, but in short, almost all ruins of advanced civilizations show similar extraction methods."

Prime essence was something known to all advanced civilizations; it was a very common substance.

Even technological civilizations without a direct legacy could discover and learn similar techniques from any ancient advanced ruin.

Luos fell into deep thought, his expression solemn. "Extracting prime essence requires mass slaughter of newborns... Death essence, similarly, requires mass slaughter and torture of living beings, making them resentful and die in despair, to produce a tiny thread of death essence... In essence, they are the same."

The extraction of both involved slaughter, large-scale slaughter.

Based on a series of conjectures, death essence might indeed exist... However, this substance was likely extremely dangerous, an unimaginably forbidden poison, and thus had never become widespread!

"At the time, he intended to use this Mobius Ring to create a mass of despairing, dead beings, utterly defiled and decaying. Then, by soaking them within, he hoped to form a new 'Thousand Spider Myriad Poison Body'."

"And did he succeed?" Luos asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.

"No, he failed." The Great Octopus took a deep breath. "He found that no matter what, he couldn't achieve the desired effect. After much contemplation, he finally discovered the problem."

"What was the problem?"

"'Life' is the only prime origin, while 'death' is myriad and strange... Perhaps it requires the fermentation of infinite defilement and the corpses of various powerful supernatural life forms, all gathered together, to truly form the original 'death essence'."

Luos found this explanation somewhat plausible.

The extraction of death essence seemed even more difficult.

"Then, he began collecting various supernatural life forms to conduct the Mobius Ring ritual. At the time, he wanted to gather a team of supernatural beings—wind, fire, lightning, electricity, and so on—to die together in despair and darkness... But when he tried to target the other players, he was surrounded and beaten to death," the Great Octopus recounted.

The players weren't fools.

It was one thing for him to play with poop, and even acceptable that he used it to fight them. They even tolerated him experimenting with ordinary unclaimed creatures... But now he wanted to target them? To make *them* participate in that ritual?

Who could possibly tolerate that? So, they killed him on the spot.

But the great explosion that day, which overthrew the Demon King, involved countless PvP duels with supernatural creatures rushing into battle. Not a single one of them remained clean, leaving a massive psychological scar on all players. To this day, the terror of that moment is still remembered.

Although no one knew if it could have succeeded, no one wanted to sacrifice themselves for his scientific art...

"That's truly lamentable,"

Luos said, shaking his head and sighing. To galactic beings like them, torturing ordinary planetary life and conducting evil rituals seemed perfectly normal; the universe was crueler than imagined. "To think such a fervent scientist, dedicated to truth, still fell."

"And today, I shall inherit the legacy of that warrior and continue his path," the Great Octopus declared with a serious expression.

Luos fully realized what was happening.

At this very moment, in that crude stone crab-king fortress, what exactly were they planning to do with those captured supernatural beings...?

"These people! They're going to... us..." His pupils instantly constricted. A sudden, intense feeling of surviving a catastrophe washed over him. He had almost been doomed.