Chapter 566: A Psychedelic Reality

After another ten minutes or so, the entire core had softened completely.

Zhang Lie clutched the crystalline, multicolored orb in his hands that glowed like a piece of art. He felt a sense of unusual familiarity with the core, as though it were only an extension of his body.

Once he felt such a sensation, Zhang Lie couldn't resist his impulses any longer, and he swallowed the core whole.

As the core slid down his throat, Zhang Lie felt a huge lump of energy settle in his stomach.. Subsequently, all that energy contained within the core burst apart.

Almost immediately, Zhang Lie took on the color of a boiled prawn, and his blood began to froth and boil. His body burst with multicolored light, which erupted from all his orifices. The light remained around Zhang Lie's body, turning him into a glowing jewel that would have dazzled all those around him.

Like an aurora, the mists around him continuously shifted colors, gleaming green and purple, white and gold, blue and silver. Solar energy swelled within his body, gushing out of his eyes and mouth and melding with the rainbow-colored mist.

The two sources of energy clashed once and again, fighting for dominance as they merged irrevocably with each other. The energy seeped into Zhang Lie's body through every pore and into every cell.

The mists surrounding Zhang Lie spun, burned, puffed up, and hissed. If Zhang Lie were the sun, then these colored mists were a corona that augmented his light.

The mists moved like ribbons fluttering in the sky, dyed with all the colors of the rainbow. They spun around Zhang Lie like skeins of thread, soft as silk, in an explosion of color that was at once captivating and bewitching, as though all of life's mysteries could be captured in that glowing, resplendent light.

The light augmented and accentuated the solar energy radiating from Zhang Lie, tangling and merging with it as Zhang Lie assimilated the new disaster gene fragments into his body.

His mind on the verge of giving out, Zhang Lie circulated his [Ninecarp Transformation] desperately. Filled with energy, each revolution of the framework took mere moments— just over half a minute, an incredible and previously unimaginable speed.

Even Zhang Lie himself could barely believe it, considering that this had previously been an hour-long process that required his full concentration. Even more shockingly, this speed was increasing moment by moment. His new 'blood' proved to be incredibly conductive to his genetic energy, and his evolution was spurred further and further onward by the energy of the disaster-grade clam's core.

Unlike before, having already absorbed 21 disaster gene fragments, Zhang Lie's body was barely strong enough to handle the strain of the absorption, but this time around, the disaster gene fragments affected not just his body, but also his mind and mental energy.

The multicolored light drifted toward his head and soulspace, seeping into a different dimension entirely. Zhang Lie's head pulsed as though it were about to explode. He clutched his head and keened as he rolled on the ground, barely able to retain a sliver of consciousness.

As the disaster gene fragments forever changed his mind, they sapped at his consciousness.

Were it not for Zhang Lie's expanded soulspace and soul refined for two mortal lives, his consciousness might have winked out from this blow alone. Who knew what would happen then? Perhaps his mind would be replaced by something alien or other; perhaps he would no longer be himself.

Zhang Lie tried to suppress the disaster-grade energy with the strength of his soul, but even that had startlingly little effect. After all, the weakest part of a human body was the brain. As his brain swelled with energy, Zhang Lie's thoughts turned to mush; he was unable to string together a train of thoughts. He felt as though his brain was like a balloon, which had been forcibly inflated to twice its maximum capacity.

His brain cells gorged themselves on the energy, knowing that they would be destroyed if they didn't, evolving as they approached a threshold. This was a slow, arduous, grueling process, one that Zhang Lie gritted his teeth and struggled through.

His skull and bones might have been fortified, but what of his brain? Mists, illusions, and hallucinations appeared before Zhang Lie's eyes as his will was dragged into layers of dream. He thought he could see different worlds, different skies, in just the blink of an eye. His body was surrounded by a mysterious energy that translated him between reality and illusion.

Zhang Lie journeyed into many different worlds. One was his past life, an alternate reality in which he hadn't died and was continuing to struggle under adversity; another was a world without genetic lifeforms, an Earth that hadn't been invaded by aliens. Yet another was a pile of ruins and rubble.

With each blink of his eyes, he took on a different identity in a different place.

In time, he learned to break out of these illusions, to distinguish truth from reality. With enough willpower, he could remind himself that he was trapped in an illusion, no matter how relaxing or calm that illusion might appear at first glance.

And each time he escaped from a world of dreams, his headache grew more subdued, and the multicolored mist around him diminished. As he kept honing his willpower, his soul and soulspace absorbed the mist and grew larger.

As the mist around him vanished and seeped into his body, perfectly intertwined with the solar energy that formed his own core, Zhang Lie felt his body's condition improve bit by bit.

When at long last the pain vanished in its entirety, Zhang Lie sat up and opened his eyes. Multicolored light shone within, as splendid as fireworks in the night sky, as radiant as a bonfire, causing the sea and sky's natural beauty to pale in comparison...