The fusion between the Super Intelligent Body and the Undying Potion proceeded very smoothly—too smoothly, in fact, bordering on out of control.
Just a tiny sample of cells absorbed the gray matter and shattered the slide in one strike. Amid a teeth-grinding crackle, it adhered to the glass shards, forming jagged sharp edges, and rocketed toward Little Black Feet’s throat!
Blackfoot Loli felt a chill and sting on her neck, a flicker of terror flashing in her eyes. Fortunately, the sample was minuscule—like a needle prick. Had there been more, her throat would have been slit!
Afterward, she only dared to perform neural editing on the black fluid in a frozen environment.
The fusion itself was simple, as the Undying Potion had been designed for merging lifeforms. The tricky part was crafting a “wireless network card” to receive Ashley’s consciousness pulses.
Little Black Feet began manipulating the biological computer to run composite function derivatives, etching electrical pulses into the Super Intelligent Body’s diffuse neural network via needle. It demanded several hours of total focus.
Ashley watched curiously from the side but couldn’t make sense of it at all.
Interestingly, the tension in her tiptoes revealed whenever Little Black Feet hit a snag.
Bored with watching, Ashley dozed off on the sofa. She lost track of time until a strange smell wafted into her hazy senses…
Then came Blackfoot Loli’s despairing wail!
Ashley jolted awake and glanced over. In the nearby glass tank, the orange LCL liquid had turned turbid, monkey brains rotting and disintegrating, dissolving into the entire vat.
Disaster!
The graphics card had fried!
Ashley’s heart sank. Reduced to tofu dregs like that—could it even be salvaged?
“Waaah—! My graphics card! All destroyed! What do I do? This can’t be real…”
Blackfoot Loli collapsed on the ground, biting her lip fiercely as she broke down sobbing!
Ashley felt surprised. She’d assumed Little Black Feet’s mentality was ironclad, able to handle anything calmly, but a burned-out graphics card shattered her completely.
“It must be those scumbag second-hand vendors who palmed off a faulty card on you. We’ll go make them pay! Arrest them all!” Ashley rolled up her sleeves. “Tribunal Seventh Group, mobilize!”
“No use…” Blackfoot Loli pounded the floor in tears. “I admit I gambled on it… Bought it dirt cheap… No idea how many owners it’d been through…”
Eh…
No helping that, then…
Ashley patted her shoulder gently. “Don’t cry. Wash your feet—it’ll steady your nerves.”
Little Black Feet only sobbed harder, rolling back and forth on the ground.
“Wuwuwu… How could I be in the mood for foot-washing…”
Ashley barely minded. With several A-Grade Relics now in her possession, losing 100 points merely bummed her out a little.
She silently drained the turbid liquid, cleared the sludge, and refilled with fresh LCL.
The monkey heads were total casualties, leaving a worthless host sans graphics card. Doubtful it’d fetch even 50 value points.
“Sorry… I was too arrogant… Thought my experience let me snag a bargain… Never realized I was the biggest flaw… I cost you money… I’ll work hard to earn it back…”
Little Black Feet stopped crying and prostrated herself before Ashley, apologizing sincerely.
“Eh…”
Ashley had half-expected an offer to repay with her body, but the girl showed real backbone—bankruptcy over soft rice any day.
Yet more than the 150 value points lost, Ashley fretted over the half-finished Metal Lifeform.
At a loss, an idea sparked in her mind—could the Insect House’s One-Cycle Brain-Flowering Fruit serve as a substitute? Both were brains processed with supernatural materials, sharing some similarity.
Her lab sat in the back alley; she fetched it quickly and placed it atop the biological host’s tower-like bone frame.
“What are you doing? Similarity in shape doesn’t make a substitute. You’re the boss and all, but this noob move is… Eh? It’s booting up? It’s booting up!!!”
An electric thrill shot up her spine. Little Black Feet straightened, scalp prickling, staring in disbelief at the sight.
After a stunned few seconds, she dashed to the console to test performance.
“It’s only fifty percent power, but it works for sure,” she marveled.
“You mean fifty percent of the monkey’s? Or compared to peers?” Ashley asked hurriedly, sensing something.
“Compared to peers.”
“So after First Cycle completion, half the spirituality dissipates.”
Ashley pondered. If spirituality wasn’t abstract but a tangible substance, then a biological corpse reading the Insect House program and running it consumed spirituality, converting flesh to supernatural power. Thus, achieving Second Cycle demanded more spirituality and flesh.
“Why aren’t you excited?” Little Black Feet tugged her sleeve insistently, her little face flushing with thrill. “You can mass-produce bio-brain processors now! You’re gonna get rich!”
Ashley finally clocked it: the Insect House was basically a graphics card factory. Toss in a corpse, get a Brain-Flowering Fruit, ready to use.
“Calm down. New products need ages to verify stability. What if it glitches—shifts form, loses function—racks up lab damages? I’d face massive claims and go bankrupt.” Ashley shook her head.
Moreover, she sensed computing power was crucial.
Complex flesh-neural edits, gene-lock keys, spirituality-flesh-supernatural triangles—all hinged on it.
She should build her own mining rig, not sell cards to others—unless it was leftover slag.
—
Outside the city, First Agricultural Base.
Ashley blew smoke into the burrow with a blower. Gradually, four or five smoking spots emerged in the fields.
Cat-sized Mutant Violent Rats burrowed out, only to have Sasha pounce and clamp their necks!
Sasha ground her tough beak slowly. Rat Rat’s cervical vertebrae cracked horrifically, tongue lolling long—done for.
Ashley had long noted the main rat tunnel exceeded half a meter wide, its entrance polished round by friction. Definitely a wild-boar-sized Violent Rat King lurked below.
Whoosh!
A mass barreled out against the smoke!
Ashley tossed the blower aside, her tender white fingers clamping its throat tight!
The giant rat chomped air. Momentum sent girl and beast tumbling across the fresh-plowed field, flinging clods of dirt!
The Violent Rat King’s maw split nearly to its throat. It wrenched its powerful neck, drool stringing and splattering, crisscross fangs filling the mouth—enough to gut an adult in one bite!
The skirmish looked thrilling, but the rat king got one-sidedly dominated. Its narrow jaws were helpless against leverage; pinch the tip, and it couldn’t open.
Ashley toyed with it awhile before casually throttling the beast. She dragged its finger-thick tail toward the rodent pile.
“Gah gah!”
Sasha crowed joyfully, seeming fully recovered.
The rats went into the Insect House, converted to fruits, forming a “rat-style” graphics card array for the computer.
“Absolutely killer!”
Blackfoot Loli’s tests showed that even at half power, each Mutant Violent Rat fruit packed over twice an ordinary monkey brain’s compute—and there were 57 of them!
Fusion and neural editing for the Super Intelligent Body and Undying Potion finished in just ten minutes.
Ashley eyed the beaker holding about half a liter: a mercury-like but dull, lightless metallic liquid. With a thought, it writhed, climbing her finger to sheath her entire right arm.
Fingers as blade: the Metal Lifeform molded along the tips into a triangular edge with textured blood grooves, fluid-sword style—extending and contracting unpredictably on swings, maxing a one-meter cleaving radius.
For defense, it cloaked chest and abdomen in supple soft armor, impervious to bullets.
“Higher uses include shaping into mechanical exoskeletons for jumps and sprints, or extending microfilaments to pick complex locks,” Little Black Feet explained from the side.
