So, Lin Feng decided to make the most of this opportunity and lay a solid foundation for the future Tier Two Corps.

With this in mind, Lin Feng opened his eyes and glanced at the Black and Yellow Zerg Cocoon beside him, a faint smile playing on his lips.

’It seems I’ll have to properly develop and exploit the Zerg Race’s top-tier biotechnology in the future, especially anything related to the Spiritual Domain.’

Previously, when Lin Feng was in the Underground Hive, he had thought Ling Yi’s pride in the automated production line for Tier Two Tiger Spine Zergs was misplaced.

The Tiger Spine Zergs, as mass-produced units, were far from perfect. Their low Spiritual Attribute was a significant flaw, though this was likely related to the Zerg Race’s need for simple weapons of war...

But a flaw is a flaw.

The mass production Lin Feng envisioned, however, had to achieve perfection in every aspect.

A device that could effectively raise the Spiritual Attribute Value would be incredibly appealing and valuable.

As Lin Feng stared thoughtfully at the Black and Yellow Zerg Cocoon, Shen Jie, who was inside it, was trapped in a painful struggle within the Spirit World of the Spinal Zerg Realm.

...

Several months had passed since he encountered that group of Human Awakeners.

During this time, Shen Jie managed to stay lucid, but he would invariably lose himself in the midst of Slaughter. His sense of self vacillated, struggling between his human and Zerg identities until it began to fracture.

Every time new Zerg Armor grew over the wound on one side of his face, Shen Jie would rip it off without a moment’s hesitation and crush it.

He used the searing, intense pain to constantly remind himself that he was a human, not a bug.

But Shen Jie knew full well that if this continued, he would eventually become a raving lunatic.

So this time, he set his sights on the center of the sulfur fields: a volcano that was still billowing thick smoke and constantly spewing ash and magma!

He had reached Tier Two Late Stage Perfection a long time ago...

But from the moment he had advanced to the Late Stage, Shen Jie had instinctively sensed a terrifying creature lurking within the volcano—a powerful Zerg ten, or even a hundred, times stronger than a Tier Two Tiger Spine Zerg.

Shen Jie suspected a High-tier Zerg was hidden there, and killing it might be his only way to escape the Zerg Race’s Spirit World!

With this in mind, Shen Jie decided to undertake this final, suicidal act while he still had some sanity left, before he lost his clarity for good.

After another few days, he eliminated all the Tiger Spine Zergs in the geothermal sulfur fields near the volcano. Then, disregarding the risk of complete Assimilation, he gorged himself, devouring all the high-energy zerg flesh.

He brute-forced his power beyond Tier Two Peak, pushing himself to the threshold between Tier Two and Tier Three, bringing him infinitely close to the level of a High-tier Zerg.

If he were to face the Tier Two Peak Tiger Spine Zerg from the Underground Nest again, Shen Jie was now confident he could hold his own.

By now, his body had swelled to twice its original size.

He stood three and a half meters tall, and the pair of massive bone blades that were his arms now stretched six or seven meters long.

Then, with madness raging in his eyes, Shen Jie sat amidst the corpses of hundreds of Tiger Spine Zergs. After tearing the Zerg Armor from half his face, his now-exposed gaze was utterly resolute. He became a blur, sprinting toward the distant volcano.

The base of the volcano was several kilometers in diameter, and the crater at its peak—the vent spewing smoke and fire—was hundreds of meters wide.

It was an extremely active volcano.

It was in a constant state of semi-eruption...

Unlike the bubbling hot springs in the sulfur fields, the bubbles that surfaced here were pockets of orange, liquid magma. A single burst from the roiling heat could instantly carbonize any organic matter.

The surrounding temperature was over a hundred degrees Celsius, and the shimmering air rose in waves, distorting space as it refracted the light.

Lower down, yellowish-white toxic gases drifted from the porous rock of the mountainside, blanketing the slope in a perpetually descending, ring-shaped cloud of poisonous miasma.

An ordinary Tier One life form would be poisoned to death by the extremely harsh environment just by reaching the foot of the volcano, let alone setting foot on the crater’s rim...

The hundred-degree heat was like an air fryer, crisping flesh-and-blood life forms to a golden brown before they even had a chance to dehydrate.

Shen Jie had now reached the halfway point of the mountain, where he was about to face the thick, yellowish-white miasma head-on.

It was an acidic, toxic fog formed from sulfur and other substances vaporizing in the high temperatures and mixing with water vapor.

The acrid smell made Shen Jie feel slightly dizzy.

After sealing his mandibles and the spiracles on his abdomen, he plunged into the fog in one breath.

However, Shen Jie had still underestimated the miasma’s potency.

Not only was the yellowish-white toxic fog highly poisonous, but the temperature within it was also scorching.

The temperature of the rocks on the ground reached several hundred degrees, and the toxic fog enveloping the mountainside was heated to sixty or seventy degrees. At the same time, dust and moisture combined to make it incredibly thick and viscous.

Shen Jie’s pace slowed considerably. As the toxic fog touched his Zerg Armor, the concentrated sulfuric acid within it began to eat away at the shell with a SIZZLING sound.

The worst pain, however, came from the half of his face he had torn open. The thin, newly-forming shell there was quickly eaten away by the miasma’s acid, exposing the muscles and blood vessels beneath...

The stinging, burning pain felt like a thousand needles stabbing his face at once, stimulating every nerve ending. The consolidated feedback to his brain nearly caused Shen Jie to faint from the agony...

If he were to pass out here, he would surely be consumed by the toxic miasma. His entire body would be corroded away, not even bones remaining, long before the heat could cook him.

Shen Jie gritted his teeth. He began to draw on the vast reserves of Life Energy he had accumulated, channeling a continuous stream to every tissue on his body’s surface. It stimulated them to proliferate and divide, regenerating the parts corroded by the miasma.

Once the warmth from his core flowed into his limbs, especially his feet, Shen Jie lowered his head and charged forward with all his might...

Finally, after several minutes, a figure pitted and scarred all over burst out of the toxic miasma zone, which was hundreds of meters wide...

Shen Jie collapsed to the ground. He could feel the searing heat radiating from the tattered Zerg Armor on his knees and hands, and he used the sensation to confirm that he was still alive...

As he slowly came to his senses, he lifted his head and looked up. The final destination of his journey was not far off:

The crater was just a hundred meters ahead.

Shen Jie hauled himself upward, one step at a time.

With every step that brought him closer, the instinctive fear in his heart grew more intense.

He could sense it—the High-tier Zerg. It was right below the Zerg Armor on the soles of his feet, down within the magma at the volcano’s peak...

The rational, human part of his mind refused to believe that a terrifying Life Form capable of withstanding thousand-degree temperatures could exist in this world.

Even at Tier Two Peak, he could only endure temperatures of two or three hundred degrees for a few minutes. Any longer, and his Biological Zerg Armor would fail under the intense heat, leaving him burned to a crisp.

’So what kind of being could possibly feed on magma and live inside a volcano!?’

He had overcome countless hardships...

Shen Jie was now too weak to fight, yet with the resolve of a man marching to his death, he pressed on. He had to see the truth behind the fear that had haunted his heart.

As he climbed step by step to the crater’s summit, the thick Zerg Armor on the soles of his feet was scorched away, layer after layer, only to regenerate, layer after layer.

A minute later, Shen Jie’s figure finally crawled onto the summit of the active volcano.

He immediately leaned over and peered down...

In the three-to-four-hundred-meter-wide oval crater, he saw a pool of magma three hundred meters across. It was a churning mass of black and yellow, bordered only by a ring of volcanic rock that had cooled to a mere few hundred degrees.

On the far side of the crater, where the rim was constantly eroding and collapsing into the magma, billows of thick, blackish-grey smoke rose. Countless tons of volcanic ash drifted into the atmosphere, a process that had, over years, completely shrouded the entire planet.

Shen Jie took a deep breath. Now that he was here, the instinctive fear in his heart had actually lessened.

But nothing could stop his resolve to issue a challenge!

He took another deep breath. As the scorching air roasted his throat and lungs, stoking a fiery pain...

...he summoned every ounce of his strength and let out a piercing shriek!

It was the sound of a Tiger Spine Zerg’s challenge cry, the signal for a duel among Spine Zergs.

And as Shen Jie poured all of his resentment, rage, and ultimate despair into that cry...

The very next moment, the magma pool in the crater began to churn violently, like water in a boiling kettle. The ground itself began to tremble!

Then, a pale Golden limb, a hundred meters long and slender like the blade of a sharp Long Saber, rose from the magma...

...and shot straight toward Shen Jie on the rim of the crater.

The next second, Shen Jie revived on the spot.

He tore open the shirt on his upper body. He looked down at his pale chest, from which he could still faintly feel a searing, tearing heat.

"Tier Three... King Spine Zerg!!!"

"The very essence of Slaughter..."