Chapter 572: Establishing a Farm

Zhang Lie held the core high up in the air, his heart thumping. He had successfully produced a disaster-grade lifeform, but he still had to ensure that the disaster-grade core generated in this fashion would be as readily absorbed as natural ones.

Zhang Lie began absorbing the core immediately. He cut his palm with his sword, then dripped blood onto the core. The moment it touched the core, the blood was quickly absorbed into its interior. It sucked up more and more of Zhang Lie's blood until it turned blood-red.

Then, Zhang Lie closed his eyes and began pouring concentrated, black genetic energy from his body into the core.

After he swallowed the core, Zhang Lie's skin turned red. Steam hissed from his body as primordial energy flooded it. He let out a hissing breath. His body had already begun to crystallize, and the absorption process went much more smoothly this time around.

[For swallowing a disaster-grade core, you received 10 disaster gene fragments.]

Zhang Lie raised his head to the skies and began to laugh. "Haha, I've succeeded, I've really succeeded!"

If he were able to farm disaster-grade lifeforms en masse, he wouldn't have to worry about not having access to enough disaster gene fragments—and not just him, the rest of Team Zenith could use a similar strategy to max out their disaster gene fragments.

Zhang Lie got to work. He traveled through the sea, a human-shaped disaster of his own making. With the power of the disaster-grade mistmeld soulshard, he compelled the peak-grade lifeforms within the region to slaughter each other.

However, Zhang Lie quickly reached a bottleneck once the number of peak-grade lifeforms in the nearby regions diminished greatly.

Just as he was wondering what to do, Zhu suggested, "Mister, do you know the sea of rampaging sharks?"

"One of the seven forbidden regions?"

Zhu nodded. "The sea of rampaging sharks, much like the sea of corroding bone, has a great deal of strong lifeforms within."

Zhang Lie's eyes opened wide. "Peak-grade lifeforms, too?"

Zhu shook her head. "The sharks in the sea of rampaging sharks have the special ability of growing stronger by eating other foes, without any limit to their growth whatsoever."

In some sense, they were similar to humans, but their growth rate was even higher.

.

Humans were limited by the maximum gene fragment capacity they could sustain, but these sharks had no such limit. The more they ate, the stronger they grew. They might not have limits of their own, but they were constrained by the limits of the realm—that was, to disaster-grade at most.

"Why do these sharks still exist, then?"

𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

From Zhang Lie's perspective, these lifeforms with unfettered growth potential should have either taken over the entire ocean or been hunted to extinction.

Zhu shrugged. "It's likely because the sea of sharks neighbors the sea of whales, another of the seven forbidden regions—well, six, now."

Zhang Lie had killed the whirlpool tyrant and dispelled the mists above the sea of mists. The whirlpool strait still existed in principle thanks to the weaker lifeforms that produced whirlpools during the day, but the sea of mists had been conquered for good.

Zhu said, "My father once told me that the sharks in the sea of rampaging sharks originally weren't very strong. It was only when they fought off another clan that they developed into their true potential."

It seemed as though these sharks had experienced the same evolution as Zhu had just a few days ago: they had consumed the flesh of a compatible species and gained an incredible ability.

Once these sharks evolved, they initiated a war in the sea before being roundly trounced by the giant whales that lived nearby.

Once the sharks retreated from the whales' territory, the whales didn't give chase. Perhaps the leaders of the two races had an agreement; subsequently, the sharks began to expand into territory that didn't belong to the whales. Because they were landlocked on one front, they ultimately chose to stop expanding beyond a certain point.

Zhu added, "The sea of corroding bone contains an unusual lifeform known as the bone-corroding shrimp. These shrimp are tiny, but they breed surprisingly quickly. Ten pairs of bone-corroding shrimp can produce ten thousand shrimp within two or three days. Their blood is corrosive, and they consume almost anything in sight. An ordinary lifeform would be consumed completely within moments, down to the bone."

"These giant whales must be a blessing to the ocean, then. If they were to perish, their death would unleash two disasters on the ocean."

Zhang Lie suddenly had a thought. He dove deep into the ocean and began releasing colored mist, which diffused into the water and spread throughout the forbidden regions of the sea.

A layer of multicolored mist appeared above the five unexplored regions, gathering especially thickly above the sea of rampaging sharks, sea of corroding bone, and sea of giant whales. No oceanic lifeform knew the origin of this mist, nor what lay hidden beneath.

As the lifeforms sucked in the mist, their irises glowed with a rainbow gleam. They immediately swam toward the forbidden regions and remained there, never to appear again.

Some of the lifeforms suspected that this was an unusual phenomenon caused by the sea of mists, and indirectly, they were right.

Three species of the forbidden regions, the giant whales, the rampaging sharks, and the bone-corroding shrimp, which had persisted as neighbors in relative peace and prosperity, suddenly devolved into war.

The giant whales were behemoths; even the smallest among them was larger than the whirlpool tyrant in size. Despite their massive girth, they were surprisingly agile in the water, and they would even hunt in packs.

Many alien races who learned of these three forbidden regions thought that the giant whales were acting as protectors of the ocean, and even Zhang Lie fell into this trap.

However, they were all mistaken.

Without the giant whales around, the bone-corroding shrimp could ultimately spread across the entire ocean and even begin destroying the nearby landmasses; similarly, without the bone-corroding shrimp around, the giant whales could dominate over the entire ocean. They remained where they were because the bone-corroding shrimp were an inexhaustible, immediately available source of food.

These two species restricted and balanced each other in a relatively stable equilibrium, but a calamity could rapidly and irrevocably destroy this delicate balance.

The rampaging sharks were blood-red sharks with a multitude of sharp teeth, so sharp and hard that they seemed to be able to grind steel to pieces. These sharks were somewhat afraid of the giant whales, who were known to be sly and despicable, and who hunted in groups. Under ordinary circumstances, these sharks would stay well away.

The appearance of the rainbow-colored mist had curtailed this instinct, and these sharks were the first to break the balance between the whales and the shrimp.

Once the sharks began attacking the whales, the shrimp likewise swarmed into whale territory.

Under the effect of the rainbow mist, the three forbidden regions declared war on each other, entangling the fate of three races...