Chapter 80: Gene Modification Department (First Update)

Returning to the Meng Yuan Chu Altar, Qi Sheng sat cross-legged.

The brief journey ended, and he returned to his busy state, flipping through information produced by players to seek directions for updates and optimization.

And the Mechanical Overlord encountered during this trip had already been marked by him as an hostile faction.

The Mechanical Overlord's goal of crushing the Monster World was destined to run counter to his ultimate goal.

But this hostile faction need not be dealt with for the time being.

At least before the player legion advances to the Earth Roar Continent, it will not pose a substantial threat to the development of the player legion.

In his eyes, the boundless Monster World seemed to have become very exciting during the years when the Four Gods disappeared.

The terrifying Black Tide, the Counter-Tide Legion, the Mechanical Overlord... clearly countless new forces were rising in this ancient and vast world, staging an unprecedented grand epic struggle for hegemony.

The future of heroes vying for power made Qi Sheng look forward to it.

Currently, the hostile factions explicitly marked by him were the terrifying Black Tide and the Mechanical Overlord; as for the Counter-Tide Legion, he was temporarily unclear whether they were friend or foe, or if there were conflicts of interest.

Thinking of this, Qi Sheng raised his head to look at the guiding water sphere floating beside him:

"Guide, if I, in the identity of Beneath Di Zhao, try to recruit this Eight Extremities God of unknown identity, what is the probability of success?"

【Boss, without specific conditions for analysis, I am unclear whether the Counter-Tide can be recruited... It is best not to make contact before knowing the other party's specific situation; the identity of the Beneath Di Zhao heir is too sensitive, and rash exposure will inevitably attract the attention of various factions, including traitors greedy for the power of Beneath Di Zhao and external powerful enemies.】

Hearing this, Qi Sheng nodded to indicate understanding.

Similar words had been spoken to him by all four of the Great Servants.

Beneath Di Zhao was the creator of the Monster World; its power was something even the manipulator behind the Black Tide could not refuse.

Before possessing sufficiently strong strength, exposing one's identity was simply a suicidal act.

At that time, with various factions gathering, the player legion would have no room for development, and he would also completely lose initiative, becoming the center of contention for various factions, drifting with the current.

This was also the reason he had chosen to burn Shou Shou Jili to go out hunting back then.

Without thinking deeply about this issue, Qi Sheng's gaze jumped to the forum.

While flipping through quickly, a post refreshed three seconds ago caught his eye.

【Finally, it's my turn to get rich; before successful containment, I'll post first to draw fire. The more you roast, the happier I am, because I know you are very jealous. Those who want to scold, come to my livestream room; best to tip some money.】

Poster: Good Hero Kills My Teammates First

Content: (Livestream Room Link)

Qi Sheng's line of sight jumped to the livestream room.

In the livestream footage shot from the Guide's clone's perspective, three players were fighting a emerald-green plant at a volcanic crater west of the Earth-Cracked Furnace region.

This plant's roots pierced the earth, its branches and trunk were like flexible whips, whipping the three players until they "ao ao" cried out; every strike left red marks on their bodies, and the black-armored great snake at the very front was whipped until its skin cracked and flesh tore, with most of its scales falling off.

But these three players did not retreat; while crying out "ao ao," they persisted in the fight.

Looking at the analysis screenshot in the bottom left corner of the screen.

【Extraction (Generation One Meng Yuan Chu)】:

Hunting Level: 18

Guide Analysis: A special monster controlling the power of Meng Yuan Chu, possessing the special ability to extract plant essences.

Seeing it was a Meng Yuan Chu monster, the livestream room was flooded with "You really deserve to die."

What the onlooking players could least tolerate was that the three-player squad was obviously on the verge of successfully containing the Meng Yuan Chu.

One could see that most of the branches waved by "Extraction" were already broken, and the frequency of waving and whipping was decreasing with time; containment was just a matter of time.

"Fierce Snake Coiling."

Accompanied by a roar, the ten-meter-long black-armored great snake in the footage, enduring dense whip-like lashes from the branches, lunged at Extraction and coiled tightly around Extraction's body.

"Ao, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, you guys output damage quickly, my soul is about to be whipped out."

Although there was 90% pain suppression, the remaining 10% pain feedback still made the player who chose the black-armored snake bare his teeth and grimace; subsequently, he bit down hard on Extraction's trunk, sharp teeth piercing the epidermis and digging deep inside.

Seeing this, the other two teammates raised their hands, condensed black ink fireballs, and threw them at Extraction.

After the fireballs contacted Extraction, they turned into tongues of fire spreading out, but several seconds later they were extinguished by the green light released from Extraction's body, unable to cause sustained damage.

The fierce battle continued for another five minutes.

Extraction completely lost the energy to continue fighting, and its branches hung down lifelessly.

Accompanied by two large fireballs hitting Extraction, the black ink flames no longer extinguished but burned fiercely; Extraction's branches drooped, withered, and shrank.

Along with it, the black-armored snake teammate still in a coiled state was also ignited by the black ink flames; after loosening its tense body, it fell to the ground and rolled around:

"Unfilial son, quickly give me a potion, it hurts so much I'm dying."

"Damn it, in the next life I definitely won't play melee; it's too miserable. I've taken fewer beatings in this whole life combined than I just did, I almost had my soul whipped away."

Amidst the cursing of the leading player, the other two players rushed to help, muttering:

"Brother Dian, melee is the choice of a true man; in our squad, you are the strongest; melee is none other than you."

"Brother Dian, quickly switch to Gargoyle; the black-armored snake's damage absorption is still a bit weak; only the most fierce Gargoyle is the best match for your Painful Painful Minghun."

Just as the three members of the squad were talking, a global channel announcement rang out:

【Challenger Notification (Global Channel): Congratulations to players Good Hero Kills My Teammates First, I Am Teammate, and I Am Good Hero on successfully killing the Generation One Meng Yuan Chu monster Extraction, obtaining Shou Shou Jili reward: 10,000 points (shared by participating players)】

Under the barrage of bullet comments from onlooking players, the three players were smiling very happily.

After switching to human form, the leading player used his obviously swollen head to smooth his hair toward the camera and said flirtatiously:

"Containing a Meng Yuan Chu is easy peasy; signing off!"

The livestream footage was then cut off.

Half an hour later, the forum successively refreshed review posts for the new Meng Yuan Chu Painful Painful Minghun "Extraction."

Among them, the one with the highest attention was the review share by player Night Is Coming.

"Stop rushing me, the preliminary review post is here."

Poster: Night Is Approaching

Content:

Before explaining the review content, let me add a buff: this review is for reference only; if you have different opinions, we can discuss them together, and uncivil language is not allowed in the comments section.

Now, let's get to the main topic.

I can tell you clearly: this is the weakest Painful Painful Minghun in the version, bar none.

Of course, by 'trashiest' I mean only for the current version; perhaps a compatible Painful Painful Minghun will appear in the future and perform very powerfully.

Just like the Brain Overclock, Lucky Fortune, and Great Fortune Painful Minghuns I reviewed before—waste Painful Minghuns that seemed useless in the early stages were later proven to achieve excellent performance when paired with other compatible Painful Minghuns.

The Extract Painful Painful Minghun is the same.

The ability effect of this Painful Painful Minghun is to extract the essence of spiritual plants.

I conducted multiple tests and found that this Painful Painful Minghun is only effective on plant-type lifeforms, but the effect is pitifully weak.

The test target was a Level 10 Ghost Wood; the damage dealt each time Extract was used was even less than a single strike from a Level 10 Strength Axe—simply the most useless thing imaginable.

Although Extract can obtain plant energy, this thing means little to us.

We can simply sacrifice the spiritual plants directly to Beneath Di Zhao, so why bother with an extra Extract step when the obtained Shou Shou Jili will not increase?

Unless the Monster World will open the Alchemist profession in the future, I cannot think of what use the Extract Painful Painful Minghun has.

The full test video is placed below; brothers who are interested can take a look.

One last thing: the Extract Painful Painful Minghun's effect is the bottom-tier existence when paired with any Painful Painful Minghun in the current version; it can be listed as number one among the ten weakest Painful Minghuns.

……

Learning Sea Has No Limits: Seeing a new Painful Painful Minghun being sealed, I got excited for a moment, only to find it's a useless Painful Painful Minghun; I'll continue killing evil spirits.

Is This Beaver?: I thought the Extract Painful Painful Minghun's effect was to drain the target's life energy to heal myself, but it turns out to be the ability to extract resource essence; after reading Brother Night's written introduction, I'm too lazy to even click open the review video; it's definitely a trash Painful Painful Minghun.

Killing Intent Stirred: What I want most right now are the Stealth, Divine Stride, and Guaranteed Kill Painful Minghuns from the Test Tower's Painful Painful Minghun Library; plus my Black-Armored Snake's Super Poison, and I can play the Assassin build I've been longing for; I hope I get to play this build in my lifetime.

Night Is Approaching (OP) replying to Killing Intent Stirred: I advise you to continue pairing with your current Painful Minghuns and not plan future pairings; this game's worldview is very vast; I asked the Guide, and it stated that the Di Zhao Mountain Range region we are exploring is just a small corner of the Monster World; from this, we can see the Moon Eclipse Clan intends to develop and operate this game for a long time; there may be many Painful Minghuns we will never seal in our lifetimes, or even see, and our descendants will have to strive for them.

Game Grinders replying to Night Is Approaching: Damn, that hits hard; when I have money, I'll go to the Moon Base and get an injection of longevity gene serum.

Godly Old Hen: More and more Painful Minghuns are being sealed, but the version's true gods are always magic-based, especially the recently developed Clone Fireball build; it's too ruthless; when will we melee players have a chance to shine (God of Wealth clenching fist, face turning red. jpg).

Luckiest Emperor: I'm not very interested in melee or ranged; I only want the Shadow Legion build; the feeling of getting stronger while lying down sounds awesome.

……

Just as players were hotly discussing the Extract Painful Painful Minghun.

Exit of Di Zhao Village.

Yang Yang Tianxuan of the Doomsday Technology Guild was testing the power of the fourth-generation Spirit Energy Firearms.

With the foundation of the first three generations of modifications, they carried out more detailed modifications and upgrades to the structure of the Spirit Energy Firearms.

His gaze swept over the guild members testing the power of the Spirit Energy Firearms not far away.

He saw the tester switch to Bone Fire form, then take out a Spirit Energy Firearm from the spatial bag.

After pulling the trigger, the flames on his body surface continuously injected into the gun body.

The muzzle then spat out bullets tinged with ink-black flames, igniting the Blood Corpse not far ahead; the continuously exploding bullets caused wave after wave of sustained damage, making it impossible for the Blood Corpse to get close.

Two minutes later, the Blood Corpse was completely still, leaving only a corpse turned to charcoal on the ground.

The All-Things Extraction System in the Challenger System then activated, extracting the Blood Corpse whose "Life Stable Structure" had been destroyed, causing it to turn into a gray mist flying toward the player who killed the Blood Corpse.

"Director Yang, the preliminary test results are good, but the gun body will suffer continuous burning damage in Bone Fire form; it won't take long before the weapon's durability is exhausted."

"No problem; the Human form can also use the Bone Fire ability; later, when other players' body tempering levels go up, they won't need to maintain Bone Fire form constantly; don't worry about this issue."

Having finished speaking, Yang Yang Tianxuan looked at the testers on the other side.

The biggest improvement of the fourth-generation Spirit Energy Firearms compared to the first three generations is that they can be used in conjunction with Painful Painful Minghun abilities.

For example, the flames released in Bone Fire form can be injected into the gun body; after merging with the energy provided by Spirit Stones, they condense internally into an Ink Flame Bullet; the preliminary test performance was excellent.

When other element-type attack Painful Minghuns are sealed in the future, they can also be used with the fourth-generation Spirit Energy Firearms to cause sustained elemental damage bombardment on the target.

Just then, information popped up in Yang Yang Tianxuan's mind, prompting a video call.

After connecting, a light screen popped up before him; the man in the picture had slicked-back hair, slightly white in color, and his face was wrapped in a thick beard.

"Xiao Ye, what do you need?" Yang Yang Tianxuan asked curiously.

The man in the picture was named Cheng Ye, a team leader in their Weapon Research Department.

After entering the game and creating the Doomsday Technology Guild, Cheng Ye chose a path completely different from theirs; the Star Veins he embedded were all melee-type Painful Minghuns.

The purpose of doing so was also for weapon research.

Recently, they were preparing to build a simple furnace for smelting Spirit Ore; relying solely on their group of research personnel with no strength to tie a chicken was impossible; they still needed strength-type players to complete the task of hand-crafting the smelting furnace.

Cheng Ye chose a position similar to a Mechanical Engineer, responsible for hard labor such as manufacturing and maintenance.

The batch of measuring tools recently crafted was also completed under his responsibility.

Facing his inquiry, a smile appeared on Cheng Ye's face in the light screen picture:

"Boss, have you seen the latest Painful Painful Minghun review post on the forum?"

"The Extract Painful Painful Minghun that just prompted?" Yang Yang Tianxuan asked somewhat curiously.

"Yes, it's this Extract Painful Painful Minghun; go check the forum..."

After hanging up the connection, Yang Yang Tianxuan felt curious in his heart, not understanding what Cheng Ye wanted to express.

But he still decisively summoned the function panel and opened the forum page.

His gaze searched the popularity list and quickly locked onto the review post published by Night Is Approaching.

As he flipped through the post's content, Yang Yang Tianxuan's expression gradually changed.

"Extracting plant essence?"

He suddenly realized why Cheng Ye had suddenly sought him out.

Extracting the Painful Painful Minghun's Meng Yuan Chu trait made him think of a special division at the Qiongding Technology R&D Center: the Genetic Modification Division.

This division was established after the Xie Yue Shi clan gifted the Human Federation gene-editing technology.

Its original purpose was to create a batch of super gene warriors for the Human Federation using gene-editing technology, with the grander goal of exploring the mysteries of life and advancing biological science.

To date, the Genetic Modification Division has produced one hundred thousand super gene warriors and made numerous contributions to agricultural biotechnology and medical health.

Today, gene modification experiments fall into two types.

The first is gene editing modification, optimizing gene sequences to grant warriors enhanced physiques and strength.

The second is modification through implanting spiritual seeds.

The most commonly used material for this type of modification is: spiritual plants.

Unlike wild spiritual plants in the Monster World, real-world spiritual plants are cultivated indoors and grown through continuous energy infusion.

Both their medicinal efficacy and growth speed are far inferior to those in the Monster World.

The enhancement method involves extracting spiritual medicinal fluids to stimulate and strengthen human genes, triggering evolution.

This is currently the most advanced modification technology.

But the process carries significant risk: the success rate of creating gene warriors is under 30%, and most participants die from rapid gene collapse, suffering physiological dysfunction, immune system failure, nervous system abnormalities, and other diseases.

He had once discussed this with an old friend from the Gene Research Division and learned that solving gene modification issues required improvements in two areas.

First, the quality of spiritual plants.

The Human Federation's cultivation techniques for spiritual plants are limited and cannot produce high-quality ones; if high-quality spiritual plants were used to extract gene modification fluids, the mortality risk during modification could be reduced.

Second, the physical condition of the experimental subjects.

The higher the physical condition, the smaller the risk they can withstand during gene modification.

And both these problems could be solved in the Monster World after the emergence of Painful Painful Minghun extraction.

First, for fluid extraction, the real world requires highly precise advanced instruments to retain the spiritual plant's essence while removing impurities.

But in the Monster World, this can be accomplished in a short time through the extraction trait.

Most importantly, the Monster World offers a wide variety of high-quality spiritual plants to choose from.

Second, the issue of the subjects' physical condition.

The Monster World is essentially a game; if a subject dies during the experiment, they simply need to wait one hour for the cooldown to end before reviving, with no risk of permanent loss.

His heart pounded as he realized that to the forum players, the "extraction" trait was considered bottom-tier, but to the crew in the Genetic Modification Division, it was pure divine art.

This meant they could conduct gene modification experiments in the game without fear of risk.

As long as they had enough Shou Shou Jili, they could buy as many spiritual plants as they wanted.

In the future, after securing the Yun Tian Domain node, the player faction could even mass-produce spiritual plants.

As for the modification effects, he suspected they were likely tied to increasing Duan Ti experience.

If true, the crew in the Genetic Modification Division could earn massive Shou Shou Jili profits by selling gene serums that boost Duan Ti experience, then reinvesting that funding into building gene modification labs and purchasing spiritual plants.

Thinking of this, Yang Tian Mao Xuan immediately decided to inform his old friend.

He summoned the function panel and selected to exit the game.

As a 30-second countdown flickered in his vision, inside his body unseen, spirit runes rapidly formed and connected.

When the countdown reached zero, the internal consciousness teleportation array activated.

……

Qiongding Technology R&D Center.

"Old Yang, so you've started developing weapons in the game?"

Looking at his old friend's astonished face on the video call, Yang Tian Mao Xuan nodded without hesitation:

"This game has a virtual environment that perfectly simulates real-world physics, ideal for weapon development and power testing—I wouldn't miss it. Your gene modification tech could also advance there…"

After hearing Yang Tian Mao Xuan's explanation, Yu Ze's face showed a helpless expression:

"Your idea's good, but the problem is we simply can't get access to the Dark Lands game—same as the brother who handled the trading center procurement… Qin Ye, right? … Every time he sent us the cracked game link, clicking it only brought up a pop-up saying 'slots filled.'"

Hearing this, Yang Tian Mao Xuan fell silent.

He'd faced the same issue himself, yet he never imagined his old friend still hadn't secured a cracked access.

"Alright, I've heard your suggestion. I'll find a way to solve the access issue—I'll submit another application soon, asking the higher-ups to request a batch of Dark Lands game slots through diplomatic channels."

……

After ending the video call, Yu Ze sat in his office, expression helpless.

He'd thought of Old Yang's suggestion too.

But the problem is the Xie Yue Shi clan's official slots are extremely scarce—no one can get them, and even the cracked versions are impossible to secure. It's outrageous.

He sighed, raised his head, and clicked the shortcut URL saved in the bottom-right corner of his virtual desktop.

The webpage immediately redirected to the Dark Lands cracked version download link.

With no hope, Yu Ze clicked download again.

【Ding~ Download started, progress: 0.01%】

"What the hell?!"

(End of Chapter)