The Northern Wasteland. The edge of the Ancient God Battlefield.
This was a forbidden zone for the living, a graveyard forgotten by the gods.
The wind howled like a pack of invisible, rabid dogs, tearing through the air with a shriek sharp enough to split rocks. Every snowflake was a microscopic saw blade, carving pale scars into the frozen earth. Above, the sky was a sickly grey-white, looking down like the dead eye of a giant fish—cold, indifferent, watching the ants struggle below.
In this hellish environment, let alone flesh and blood, even a golem cast from steel would be frozen into a pile of scrap metal within hours.
"Haa... Haa..."
A rough, wheezing sound, like broken bellows, struggled to be heard against the storm, only to be instantly shredded by the wind.
Qing Shi, the current leader of the Green-Pattern Goblin Tribe, a mutated variant standing 2.5 meters tall, was dragging his feet through the snow like a collapsing mountain. The double-layered monster-hide coat he wore was now tattered, revealing purple, frostbitten skin underneath.
He was hungry. Too hungry.
The burning sensation of his stomach walls grinding against each other had vanished three days ago. Now, there was only a deep emptiness, as if his very soul had been hollowed out. The cold slipped through the gaps in his armor like countless ice needles, piercing his marrow and freezing the little blood he had left.
Every step was a challenge to his physiological limits.
"Can't find anything... absolutely nothing..."
Qing Shi's green eyes, once bright as emeralds, were now covered in a layer of dead grey.
He had come out to find food. For Jin Pan, the old yellow-patterned butler who was always calculating rations. For Hong Yu, the red-patterned warrior who wielded a great axe but was now too weak to lift it. And for the dozens of clansmen huddled in the leaky camp, waiting for him to return.
But this place was too clean. Despairingly clean.
Let alone snow rabbits or low-level magical beasts, the wind had scraped away even the most cold-resistant moss.
"I... can't go back..."
Finally, the massive body that could once withstand the charge of a Tier-3 beast reached its limit.
The connection to his legs severed. Qing Shi's knees gave way, and he crashed down like a crumbling pillar.
THUD!
His heavy body slammed into the snow, kicking up a cloud of white dust. The cold snow buried his face. Strangely, Qing Shi didn't feel cold anymore. Instead, a weird warmth began to wrap around him—the final flashback of a life about to be extinguished.
"This is fine..."
In this moment of dying consciousness, the thought in the honest giant's mind wasn't fear.
If I die here... the tribe will have one less mouth to feed. I eat too much... If I'm gone, the saved rations might keep Little Stone and the others alive for two more days...
Darkness surged like a tide, ready to swallow his final consciousness.
However, right at the boundary between life and death, time seemed to freeze.
The roar of the storm vanished. Replacing it was a sound he had never heard before—a buzzing noise, like electricity flowing through high-voltage wires.
Zzzzzzt—
Immediately after, an indescribable pressure descended.
Qing Shi struggled to prop open his heavy eyelids.
He saw a miracle.
A translucent human figure, glowing with a faint blue light, was floating quietly three meters in front of him, defying gravity. The blizzard passed right through the figure as if it were a phantom, not disturbing a single snowflake.
The figure had no facial features. Its entire body was composed of countless streams of flowing code and runes. It was looking down at him—not with the pity of a god, but with the critical, precise gaze of a craftsman evaluating raw materials.
"What a perfect biological vessel."
A voice that sounded neither male nor female, but carried a strange metallic texture, bypassed his eardrums and exploded directly in the depths of Qing Shi's mind:
"Bone density is five times that of a normal goblin. Muscle fiber strength comparable to a beginner magical beast. The genetic lock is crude, but the potential is astounding... It's like a nuclear reactor built for war."
The glowing ghost—or rather, the observer from a higher dimension, Shi Dian—floated around Qing Shi's massive body. The data streams in his eyes spun rapidly, performing a final assessment.
"A pity. The reactor has no fuel and is about to shut down."
Shi Dian sighed. There was regret in his voice, but also the excitement of a plan about to succeed.
"Are you... the Reaper?"
Qing Shi's lips moved weakly, his voice thin as a thread. "Take me away... but don't eat my meat... it's sour and tough... not tasty..."
"Reaper? That low-dimensional conceptual creature isn't qualified to be mentioned in the same breath as me."
Shi Dian smiled—an arrogant smile of one who held the truth. He floated to Qing Shi's frozen forehead, extended a finger made of pure spiritual energy, and tapped it gently.
"Hey, big guy. Do you want to eat until you're full?"
This simple, even absurd question struck Qing Shi's chaotic brain like a bolt of lightning.
Qing Shi's pupils, which had begun to dilate, suddenly contracted. It was the most primal instinct of any living being.
"Eat... where... is food..."
He struggled to lift his head, his fingers clawing two bloody trails in the snow, like a drowning man grasping at a straw. "Give me food... please... I'll do anything..."
"I have no bread, and no meat soup. Low-level chemical energy can't save you now."
Shi Dian's voice carried a temptation like a devil's whisper:
"But I have a technology. A technology that will let you evolve, to transcend this damn food chain."
"As long as you nod, I can turn your stomach into a nuclear furnace that devours everything. I can turn your skin into alloy armor that no blade can pierce. I can replace your nerves with fiber-optic circuits that transmit at the speed of light."
"The wind, the radiation, even this damn cold—they will all become your 'food'. You will become a mobile fortress, an unsinkable ark."
Qing Shi didn't understand furnaces, alloys, or fiber optics. His brain was burned out by hunger. But amidst the complex terms, he caught one core meaning—
No more hunger.
And no more snatching the last bit of leftovers from his brothers' mouths.
"Really... is it possible?" Qing Shi mumbled, muddy tears mixed with ice crystals rolling down his face. "Everyone... won't have to starve?"
"Of course. Not just you. If your body evolves big enough, you can even pack your entire tribe inside your body to protect them."
Shi Dian revealed his dagger, throwing out the final chip:
"But there is a price. There is no free lunch in this world."
"The price?" Although Qing Shi was simple-minded, he had the intuition of a beast.
"I want your body."
Shi Dian's voice turned cold and solemn, like a judge passing a sentence. "I want the highest command authority of this vessel. Your soul will step back to the second line and become the First Mate. In other words—I am the Captain, you are the Ship. We coexist."
It was a slave contract. Selling freedom for survival.
Qing Shi fell silent.
He struggled to turn his head, looking deep into the snowstorm. In that direction lay a broken camp, and clansmen waiting for him. If he died here, that camp would become a tomb within three days.
As long as they can live...
So what if I become a demon's puppet?
"TAKE IT!!!"
Qing Shi squeezed his eyes shut and used his last ounce of strength to roar from the depths of his soul: "TAKE IT ALL!!! JUST GIVE ME POWER!!!"
"Deal."
No hesitation. No paper contract. On the soul level, intent was the highest form of binding lock.
BOOM—!
A blinding blue light exploded on the snowfield. Shi Dian's phantom body instantly dissolved into countless streams of golden data, flooding into the dying body through the contact point on Qing Shi's forehead.
Pain.
Excruciating pain.
It felt like countless red-hot knives were drilling into his brain, cutting and reconnecting every nerve. Memories churned; the soul vibrated.
Under the violent impact of the soul fusion, memories belonging to the "Observer" Shi Dian flashed through Qing Shi's shattered mind like a carousel—
...
[Memory Playback]
A few hours ago. Outside the world. The Grey Pattern Clan's Hidden Base — The Dimensional Gap.
There was no wind, no light, no time. Only endless streams of blue data washing through the void. A tall grey tower floated silently; it was the holy land of the Grey Pattern Clan, and also the prison that had held Shi Dian for a hundred years.
"These cowards..."
At that time, Shi Dian was just a bored ghost floating at the top of the tower.
He had transmigrated to this world countless years ago. Without a body, he could only live as a parasite in this tower. To pass the maddeningly long time, he acted like a greedy apprentice, stealing all the spatial magic and phase theories the Grey Pattern Clan was so proud of.
Until today. He decided to execute the "Jailbreak Plan" he had plotted for a century.
In the memory, Shi Dian's transparent hand passed through layers of restrictions and reached for the independent storage compartment at the tower's core.
There lay a dusty grey pouch.
[Item 099: God's Pouch] [Description: A "Creation Engine" left by an ancient god. Grants highest authority to connect to higher dimensions.]
"What a waste..."
As Shi Dian touched the pouch, no alarm sounded. Utilizing his mastery of phase shifting, he took the pouch and merged into the void like a drop of water in the ocean, dashing resolutely toward the dangerous material plane...
...
"Is this... where you came from?"
Back on the snowfield, in the center of the storm.
The fusion was complete.
Qing Shi, who should have frozen to death, opened his eyes again.
Those eyes were no longer muddy green. The left eye remained Qing Shi's emerald green, but the right eye had turned into a ghostly electric blue, with data streams flickering faintly within.
[System Notification: Dual Soul Fusion Complete.] [Host: Shi Dian / Qing Shi (Symbiote)] [Race Assessment: Mutated Green-Pattern Goblin (Lord Rank)] [Phase 1 Modification Started... Energy Circuits Rebuilding... Pain Receptors Shielded...]
BOOM!
A shockwave of dark green energy erupted, shattering the ice for a hundred meters around.
Qing Shi's fallen body began to twitch violently. But these were not the spasms of death—they were the spasms of reconstruction.
It was pain, and it was rebirth.
CRACK! CRACK!
The sound of bones exploding rang out like firecrackers. The thick fur he had grown for warmth began to fall off in large clumps. Replacing it was layer upon layer of dark green exoskeleton—hard as insect carapace and gleaming with a cold, metallic luster. These plates grew and locked together at visible speeds, forming a set of natural [Exoskeleton Armor].
Inside his body, the massive stomach grew to digest rough food collapsed, folded, and hardened under the pressure of spatial laws and Shi Dian's "Industrial Blueprints." It transformed into a [Bio-Reactor Core] glowing with a faint blue light.
The surrounding blizzard seemed to be pulled by a magnet, rushing madly into his body, greedily devoured by the core and converted into pure energy.
One minute later.
The wind howled again.
But this time, when the knife-like snowflakes hit the brand-new, three-meter-tall dark green body, they left no marks. Instead, they made crisp metallic ting-ting sounds before being absorbed into the armor like water into the sea.
In the center of the snow, the beast slowly stood up.
He—or rather, "They"—took a deep breath of the freezing air.
[System Self-Check Complete.]
A voice that mixed electronic synthesis with a beast's low growl rang out in the silent forbidden zone, carrying a terrifying pressure.
"This feeling..." Qing Shi's consciousness marveled in his mind as he looked at his massive, armored palms. "I'm not hungry... I feel like I could punch through a mountain! Is this what... being full feels like?"
"This is just the beginning, First Mate."
Shi Dian's voice responded coldly in his mind, carrying a hint of mockery:
"Now, let's go back. Let's give those short-sighted fellows a little... 'shock' from industrial civilization."
The beast turned around.
THUD!
A heavy footstep landed, cracking the frozen earth.
A carnival regarding the "Fourth Disaster" was about to begin.