He slowly raised his left hand, covered in dark gold lines. The tiny marks on his palm now burned like a branding iron, transmitting increasingly intense throbbing vibrations that echoed the massive mass before him! It was as if the core of the enormous "mother tree" was frantically calling out to the mark on his palm through some invisible connection!

There is no way out.

The last trace of hesitation in Pei Du's eyes was replaced by frozen determination. Without further hesitation, he took a step forward, ignoring the ferocious wooden spikes on the throne. Those spikes, sharp enough to pierce alloy, actually recoiled slightly as if in fear the moment they made contact with his dark gold-patterned skin!

He sat down steadily. A cold, iron-hard touch penetrated the torn clothing. The rough wood grain and the slippery moss were remarkably clear.

Then, he raised his extremely hot left hand and pressed down on the moss-covered concave area in the center armrest of the throne without hesitation!

The palm covered with dark gold patterns, with those burning and throbbing marks, pressed heavily on the sticky and slippery moss layer in the center of the Throne of Thorns!

laugh--!

It was like pressing a red-hot iron into cold grease! The moment of contact, a piercing sound, like cold water poured into a scalding frying pan, erupted! The thick black moss and sticky bacterial plaque covering the throne's armrests, at the touch of Pei Du's scorching palm, seemed to have met their nemesis, instantly emitting a thick, pungent, burnt smoke! The slippery moss withered, carbonized, and peeled off at a visible rate!

Hidden beneath the moss and fungus was an extremely complex, deep, seemingly naturally formed, and profoundly mysterious wood grain depression! The shape of that grain... surprisingly bore a faint resemblance to the dark gold marks on Pei Du's left palm! It was as if they were different rubbings of the same original mark!

At the moment when Pei Du's palm perfectly matched the depression in the wood grain—

boom!!!

An indescribable torrent of will, so vast it froze Pei Du's soul, surged down his arm, along the invisible bloodline, like billions of dormant volcanoes erupting simultaneously, crashing into the core of his consciousness! It wasn't a sound, not an image, but an utterly pure, cold, vast, and imbued with the simmering power of countless years... a sense of existence!

Pei Du's molten-gold pupils instantly lost focus! The dark-gold lines covering his body, like an overloaded circuit, suddenly erupted with an unprecedented, almost blinding light! He felt his tiny consciousness, like a small boat on a raging sea, instantly engulfed by this torrent emanating from the core of the "Mother Tree," a mixture of the twisted wills of billions of plants and the remnants of ancient star cores!

Countless extremely chaotic fragments of information exploded wildly in his mind like the Big Bang!

Icy cold! Absolutely icy cold! Even colder than the freezing cold of the Nullifier's beam! It was the chill of the deathly stillness of the universe at its birth, before everything had even formed!

Sticky! Endlessly sticky! Like drowning in the depths of a slowly decaying green ocean of billions of plant juices!

Pain! Soul-tearing pain! Billions of lives forcibly merged, twisted, polluted, wailing in decay yet unable to die, eternal torment!

Hunger! A hunger that devours everything! It comes from the most basic, most primitive, most chaotic, and insatiable devouring instinct in life!

And... a faint, almost imperceptible, yet tenacious calling... a calling! The source of that calling was the very essence of the power represented by the mark on his palm! Cold, pure, supreme! Like a cold star guiding the way in the dark universe!

In the center of this chaotic, painful, and starving torrent of will, Pei Du's icy will, tempered by the Eternal Star Core, clung to the last shred of clarity like a stabilizing force. Deep within his molten-gold pupils, a glimmer of icy golden light flickered and compressed frantically! With difficulty, as if moving a limb in the depths of a thousand-meter-deep ocean, he tried to perceive and comprehend the fragments of information contained within this vast will.

The fragments sink and float and collide in the rapids:

[…Cradle…Experimental Site…Sector G-7…Life Fusion…Failure…Contamination…]

[…Sample…Stellar Core Fluid…Codenamed “Source Blood”…Injected…Rejected…Out of Control…]

[…Abandoned…dumped…sealed…]

[…gathering…pain…hunger…the mother tree…is born…]

[…Source…same origin…calling…return…]

Buzz——!!!

Just as Pei Du struggled to capture key fragments like the "Source Blood" and the "Cradle Experimental Field," an even stronger, clearer resonance erupted without warning from the depths of the drop of Star Core Blood within him! This resonance didn't emanate from the chaotic will of the Mother Tree, but rather... from the very depths of his own bloodline! Like the mark on his palm, the Source Blood within him was completely activated by the remnants of Star Core contamination similar to those at the Mother Tree's core, and it began to actively respond to the cold call from the source!

The dark golden lines covering Pei Du's body suddenly glowed brightly! It was as if a layer of cold golden flame had ignited on his body! That light was no longer just a manifestation of defense or strength, but also carried an indescribable, icy majesty that towered over the chaotic will of the wasteland! A higher level of oppression... derived from the source of blood!

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

She had been standing in the back, her dark green eyes fixed on the green vines of the Throne of Thorns. Suddenly, she let out a short, painful groan! Beneath her pale skin, covered in the veins of bark, the dark brown lines suddenly glowed brightly, as if scorched by a red-hot iron! An instinctive fear of a higher being, rooted deep in her blood, and an irresistible sense of submission, instantly spread through her body like an electric current! She stumbled back involuntarily, her dark green pupils suddenly shrinking to the size of a needle tip in extreme shock and disbelief!

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!