Ultragenic Warlord

Chapter 280: A Startling Enhancement

The longer it took Zhang Lie to absorb the disaster-grade genetic energy, the longer he would suffer the pain carving away at his body, but his desire for life ultimately triumphed over that pain.

After the initial onslaught, Zhang Lie found, to his surprise, that he was slowly acclimating to the sensation. After an interminable period of time—perhaps a moment, perhaps several days, or even a few months—Zhang Lie finally regained sensation over his body.

His arms, which had swollen to the size of pig's trotters, finally went back to normal. Disaster-grade genetic energy still ran rampant throughout his body, but its might had been considerably reduced.

The seven-colored energy from the refinement process was also finally able to enter Zhang Lie's body. Where it went, Zhang Lie felt a palliative coolness that reached all the way to his soul.

As he regained full consciousness, Zhang Lie recalled that he was undergoing the refinement process for ascending to the second realm. He immediately began to direct control over that process. It was something every hunter had to experience while ascending to the second realm, and represented a summary of sorts of a hunter's accomplishments in the first realm.

The refinement energy would allow the gene fragments that a hunter had amassed within the first realm to permeate throughout the hunter's body, elevating a hunter's status on a fundamental, genetic level.

Every ascension would be accompanied by a refinement process, and this boon was what motivated hunters to ascend. Zhang Lie was undergoing such a process, but his had clearly exceeded the limits of what would be considered ordinary.

Zhang Lie hadn't undergone this process intentionally; instead, he had been forced to do so because of the strength of the gene fragments in his body. Indeed, his strength was even starting to distort the laws of the first realm.

Of course, this wasn't something that Zhang Lie knew at present; he had no clue just how outsized an impact his presence in the first realm was causing to the will of the dimensional world.

The refinement process continued. From Zhang Lie's perspective, the most important thing here was to refine a high-quality set of genetic armor.

He immediately retrieved the disaster-grade lifeform's outer shell from his soulspace.

Under ordinary circumstances, those who passed through the refinement process would have their status of life elevated in accordance with the highest-grade gene fragments they had accumulated.

A hunter who had maxed out his superior gene fragments would be the equivalent of a superior-grade lifeform. The benefits afforded to such a hunter would clearly be greater than that to a hunter who had only maxed out his mutated gene fragments.

The difference between such hunters was massive, not only in terms of their status of life, but also in terms of the quality of genetic armor they were able to produce. This was why Yun Bing and Chu Feng had refused to ascend even after maxing out their mutated gene fragments.

No one wanted to lose out from the very beginning. The first realm possessed the lowest difficulty of all the realms, and it would be foolish to give up an opportunity to acquire gene fragments easily.

Zhang Lie didn't know just what status of life he would be granted.

After all, no hunter had ever been his equal in terms of the gene fragments collected in the first realm, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he had exceeded the limit of what was humanly possible.

When Zhang Lie extended his will into his soulspace, he was dumbfounded by what he had found. His soulspace, originally the size of a small duck pond, had evolved into a massive lake. Within that lake, Zhang Lie saw the soulshards he had amassed, along with a white-colored wyrm.

A soulspace was where hunters kept their soulshards; a first-realm existence would only have a soulspace the size of a small pond, which would be able to hold at most ten or so soulshards.

That Zhang Lie's soulspace had expanded tenfold meant that he would be able to make use of ten times the soulshards that an ordinary hunter could. He could barely imagine what collecting and simultaneously using the effects of a hundred soulshards would be like.

Just what had caused this sudden expansion? Was it the disaster-grade genetic energy, or the refinement energy from his ascension? Even in his past life, Zhang Lie had never heard of such a phenomenon.

Given the pressing importance of constructing his genetic armor, however, Zhang Lie couldn't afford to spend more time thinking about this.

He would be able to investigate this phenomenon after the refinement process; what he needed to do at present was to condense a suit of genetic armor. He began to purify the crystalline armor of the disaster-grade lifeform, which would require infusing the refinement energy and his own genetic energy into the material.

Zhang Lie's attention turned to his genetic core, but his eyes bulged upon seeing it anew.

There were two more transformations visible within the core of [Ninecarp Transformation], one a giant turtle whose shell bore five tablets with mysterious runic inscriptions on them, and the other a qilin-like lifeform covered with dragon scales.

Had... his framework evolved twice over?

Caught within the recesses of pain, Zhang Lie had focused singularly on his framework. He had expected significant advancement as a result, but certainly not two whole evolutions. The third transformation's winged tiger had become the fourth's dragonturtle, and subsequently the fifth's qilin.

Zhang Lie couldn't help marveling at the potency of the disaster-grade genetic energy. Just from the advancement to his framework alone, he felt that the mind-shattering pain he had experienced was worth it.