Chapter 136 A Curse from Millennia Ago

In Odis’ view, the most critical hurdle in his research to boost agricultural and pastoral yield was figuring out how to induce mutations in plants and animals within a controllable scope.

High-ranking Beyonders of the Church of the Earth Mother might well be capable of increasing grain yields, perhaps even making a single stalk of wheat sprout multiple ears, but such an ability undoubtedly came at a price, or at least carried side effects… after all, Sequence 2 of that Pathway was called Desolate Matriarch.

Just judging by the name, it had nothing to do with ‘increasing’ yield; if anything, it seemed poised to do the exact opposite.

To Odis, this had everything to do with the fundamental impact that Beyonder influences exerted on living organisms. During the First Epoch and Second Epoch, the direct consumption of Beyonder characteristics had affected living beings in a manner remarkably akin to fierce, unadulterated radioactive contamination.

Whoever could endure the ravages of that contamination could wield those Beyonder powers to a certain extent, even rising to become beings on par with the eight Ancient Gods of the Second Epoch. And those who couldn’t would simply lay down and drop their loot and gear.

The Potion System could be considered a method devised to neutralize this radioactive contamination. Most Potions operated on the principle of fighting poison with poison: the Beyonder characteristic drove a person toward loss of control, while the supplementary ingredients crippled them halfway.

In the end, two negatives made a positive, successfully completing the advancement.

As for why rituals became mandatory from Sequence 5 onward, their primary purpose was still to stabilize the Spirit Body because because at Sequence 5 and above, the Potion began corroding the Spirit Body. It was a mutation and radiation on an entirely different plane.

The effect of the supernatural on the Beyonders themselves was mutation, and their effect on the outside world was much the same, simply extending one’s own radiation to the surroundings through Beyonder powers.

Therefore, Odis’ purpose in studying the creatures of the Forsaken Land of the Gods was to find a baseline for the impact of the supernatural on living beings.

Because of the chaotic nature and uncertainty of the Extraordinary, it was virtually impossible to derive standardized units of measurement like degrees Celsius, meters, or kilograms for the degree to which it affected organisms.

However, its influence certainly had limits. For example, the impact of Sequence 7 could never exceed its tier, just as Odis could not currently craft the scrolls that could only be acquired upon reaching the level of Sequence 6, Scrolls Professor.

In other words, while such an influence was uncontrollable, there was always a certain threshold.

The first step was to find this threshold, and only in the second step would he study and make use of it.

Soon, Odis dissected that bizarre fish. To his surprise, the fish’s internal structure was very simple; most of it was just an empty cavity, with some remnants of food inside that even he could not identify.

After searching carefully, he finally located the strange fish’s internal organs, but they were absurdly small. He could not even find an obvious heart, intestine, or similar organs, but only a few rudimentary lumps, none of which could be distinguished as any particular organ.

This left Odis somewhat perplexed.

‘Did supernatural influence cause such a fundamental transformation in this fish? Had its viscera even atrophied to such an extent that it no longer possessed the characteristics of a fish at all?’

He had also conducted a certain amount of research regarding that Cataclysm at the end of the Third Epoch.

In his view, the fall of the Ancient Sun God exerted a profound, lasting impact on the ecological and natural environments of the entire earth, with the Forsaken Land of the Gods suffering the greatest impact: sunlight could not reach it, the sky was blanketed in dark clouds, and lightning struck everywhere.

This was because the Ancient Sun God had undergone the Accommodation of so many Uniquenesses that, to a certain degree, He already represented the underlying Order of the world.

His fall was equivalent to reshuffling that fundamental Order.

However, the Ancient Sun God did not possess the Beyonder characteristics of a Planter or an Apothecary, so His direct impact on living beings at that time was mostly outright death.

The creatures that survived in the Forsaken Land of the Gods had only mutated to varying degrees over the long years that followed.

The fish before Odis must have mutated gradually over time, but the extent of its mutation defied all imagination.

He recalled that many humans in the Forsaken Land of the Gods had turned into monsters.

If one were to dissect those monsters, Odis believed that organs like hearts and lungs would still be found. Even if misshapen and grotesque, and even if their functions had diverged drastically, the general structure should still remain.

But the internal structure of this fish completely defied all of his prior expectations.

Next, he noticed that the fish actually had no eyes! The only part of its head that resembled a fish in any capacity was that mouthful of fangs.

Suddenly, a bold hypothesis struck him, and he immediately went to look up information on the Central Simulator.

He soon discovered that the strange fish’s internal organs bore a striking resemblance to the internal structure of certain flatworms, such as the well-known planarians and pork tapeworms.

Odis cross-referenced them meticulously, finally confirming that the ‘strange fish’ before him was most likely a mutated blood fluke!

He glanced at the meter-long fish, then back at the data describing a blood fluke’s length, which was a mere 1 to 3 centimeters.

‘This mutation is absurdly huge!’ He thought to himself.

But the facts were undeniable; the mutation really was that immense! Odis reattached the dissected ‘fish skin’, intending to conduct a more detailed study when time permitted.

Next, he turned his gaze to those true blood-sucking insects that could drink sugar water…

At this point, if someone told him these creatures had evolved from paramecia, he would believe it.

He retrieved a blood-sucking insect from the glass jar and proceeded with the dissection as before. With his prior experience, Odis quickly identified the corresponding organism: mosquito larvae, or wrigglers.

Their size had also increased drastically, and they were capable of moving on land, but they appeared to have lost the ability to mature into adults. Pressing on with his momentum, he went to examine the plant that had sprouted tentacles.

It turned out to be a mutated castor bean plant.

“No wonder it’s so toxic.” He muttered.

The tentacles of this ‘mutated castor plant’ were extraordinarily peculiar; their suckers closely resembled those of animals. Odis manifested a microscope and prepared a sliced section for observation.

Soon, he discovered an extremely bizarre phenomenon: the cellular tissue of these suckers was actually a mixture of animal cells and plant cells!

Had a discovery of this nature been made back in his original earth, it would have undoubtedly made massive headlines. After all, one learned the distinction between animal and plant cells as a teenager, yet here they were mixed together, serving a single castor bean plant!

Odis sighed in wonder: ‘There truly is no end to the marvels in a supernatural world!’

Finally, he prepared a slice of the Black Faced Grass’ leaf to inspect its cellular structure as well…

Under the microscope, these plant cells were not just withered; only a single layer of cell wall remained. The shell-like cell walls were completely hollow, containing nothing at all.

Just as Odis was about to lift his head, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. One of the cells didn’t appear to be empty.

He quickly went to search for it and soon located that specific cell. Within that cell wall sat a head. The head had soft facial features, a closed vertical single eye, and dark brown hair.

Odis instantly deduced that it was the head of a female Giant…

“A Giant’s head… inside a ‘cell’ wall?”

It sounded like an absurd joke.

At that moment, as if sensing Odis’ gaze, the head abruptly opened its closed single eye and stared back at him. Immediately afterward, it opened its mouth.

Odis’ Spirituality instantly flared with danger, and he sprang backward with great force, leaping at least 3 meters away, but the moment his feet touched the ground, an intensely vicious roar still tore into his ears.

Hearing the sound, he was immediately stricken with dizziness and a frantic restlessness.

Fortunately, with the protection of the Knowledge Moor, Odis’ discomfort swiftly dissipated.

He looked in the direction of the microscope and marveled once again: “The mystical world truly is full of wonders!”

Odis ventured that the female giant’s head was likely some kind of symbol of the Giant Queen Omebella.

He had once speculated that this Giant Queen must have died a miserable death, uttering the most malevolent curse before her passing.

Her remains had become the Grade 0 Sealed Artifact ‘Gift of the Land’, which allowed Black Faced Grass to grow in the City of Silver.

With Black Faced Grass as food, the City of Silver had managed to survive to this day, with most of its residents still not undergoing severe mutations. At the same time, this burdened every resident of the City of Silver with the curse of having to commit patricide or matricide to avoid becoming evil spirits.

Odis hurriedly destroyed the slice, realizing he was currently far too weak and that it was not yet time to study Black Faced Grass.

What needed to be dissected had been dissected, and what needed meticulous observation under the microscope had been observed.

Odis began writing his research report. He noted that the mutated schistosome (blood fluke) and the mutated castor had undergone far greater mutations than the mutated mosquito larva.

The mutated schistosome, in particular. Judging by its sheer thickness, it had practically crossed animal classifications and no longer possessed the characteristics of a flatworm.

But it was certainly no fish, either; the cavity inside its body had left a deep impression on Odis.

Though he lacked more specimens for observation, he guessed that the marsh where both the mutated schistosome and mutated castor were found had to possess something peculiar.

He considered trading with Little Sun for more intelligence on the soil surrounding the marsh to make further comparisons.

Next, Odis turned the microscope toward the bucket of soil and the bucket of silt. In that soil, the quantity of microorganisms was astonishingly high; moreover, they were hideous in appearance and seemed quite aggressive.

Utilizing the power of the Knowledge Moor, he Replicated the soil and conjured seedling cups. He first laid down a layer of soil, sprinkled a few wheat seeds, and covered them with another layer.

After watering them, he used the Central Simulator to accelerate the progression of time for these seedling cups.

Soon, the wheat in a portion of the cups sprouted, rapidly growing stalks and ears that were healthier and thicker than normal wheat.

However, the wheat in most of the seedling cups failed to sprout.

Odis dug in to look. The wheat seeds had vanished, likely devoured by those microorganisms.

He reached a conclusion: if one could not treat those microorganisms as nutrients, one could only be eaten by them.

Finally came the bucket of silt. Odis first examined it under the microscope, and upon finding its composition quite similar to the soil, he began conducting subsequent experiments on both simultaneously.

Those experiments included heating, freezing, dousing with alkaline water, dousing with acidic water, and so on… primarily to observe whether this earth possessed any differences from normal soil.

While waiting for the experimental results, he continued drafting his research report.

More than 10 minutes later, Odis suddenly noticed a faint glint in the container where the silt was being heated.

He stirred it with a glass rod, only to discover that at the bottom of the container, an exceptionally fine layer of crystals had actually formed!