Mu Yuan pulled a block about the size of a phone from the inner pocket of his coat.

Zhou Heng couldn’t make out what Mu Yuan did with it. The block suddenly projected a screen of light, more than half a meter wide and tall.

After flickering for a brief moment, a remarkably clear video began playing on the screen.

The setting in the video was revolting. The ground was crawling with countless unidentified insects, and five humanoid insects stood among them.

In the middle of the five humanoid insects was a human, bound hand and foot. The human made muffled cries, and the despairing pupils reflected a mind teetering on the edge of madness.

The antennae atop the five humanoid insects’ heads began to move. They conversed in an inhuman language for about ten minutes, unhurriedly. Then the strongest insect took a stone bowl containing a milky-white sphere the size of a thumb and approached the human with reverence in its eyes.

Then it shoved the milky-white sphere from the bowl into the human’s mouth.

The video fell silent for three seconds.

The first sound after those three seconds came from one of the human’s legs bursting apart.

The second came as the flesh in the human’s abdomen exploded.

Then came the third, the fourth, the fifth…

The humanoid insects watched in silence as the human who had swallowed the milky-white sphere was blown to pieces.

Once they were sure the human was well and truly dead, the strongest insect at the front waved a hand. Another human, bound hand and foot, was brought forward, and the insect dropped a milky-white sphere into their mouth.

Another feast of blood and flesh began.

The second human died in even more gruesome fashion than the first.

The insect waved again. This time, the next creature brought to the center of the video wasn’t human. Lions, tigers, humanoid creatures, unidentified animals—one after another, they were led to the chopping block, and not one escaped death beneath the wounds that kept bursting open across their flesh.

The video stopped after the thirtieth unidentified monster died.

Mu Yuan put away the phone-like device and smiled at Zhou Heng, adding a reminder.

“The insects must’ve fed you something too, right? Don’t bother doubting it. What they fed you was the same as the milky-white spheres in this video.”

Zhou Heng’s face turned grim. The boy asked in a trembling voice,

“Then am I going to…”

“…end up exploding like the people in the video?”

Mu Yuan could tell what Zhou Heng was thinking, so he reassured him.

“You don’t need to worry so much. Usually, within five seconds of a white sphere entering the body, a rejection reaction sets in, expelling all incompatible genes and bodily organs. The process takes no more than three minutes. If you’re still alive after that, it means you’ve inherited the Insect Mother’s entire genetic sequence.”

Mu Yuan held up three fingers.

“And it’s already been more than three hours.”

At that, Mu Yuan looked utterly baffled.

“You really are astonishing. In theory, unless an organism is a perfect copy of the Insect Mother, anything exposed to the Insect Mother’s powerful genetic sequence should suffer an extreme rejection reaction to some degree. But you haven’t had one at all.”

“That’s why I had to dissect you. Do you know what I saw?”

Zhou Heng immediately clutched his stomach. The foreign sensation of the surgical stitches there had become harder and harder to bear.

Mu Yuan paid no attention to Zhou Heng’s angry expression. His face alight with excitement, he said,

“Do you know what I saw when I opened up your abdomen? As your body absorbed the Insect Mother’s genes, it didn’t reject the human genes that didn’t belong to the Insect Mother. You’re undergoing extreme physical transformation, using a human body as your blueprint.”

“Among us Mutants, we classify this condition as a particular type of Mutant.”

Mu Yuan snapped his fingers.

“A Devourer.”

Zhou Heng, still clutching his stomach, froze. Confused, he asked,

“A Devourer?”

Mu Yuan nodded emphatically.

“That’s right. A Devourer. Just as the name suggests, this type of Mutant can consume certain things to improve their genes.”

“That also explains why you had no rejection reaction after the Insect Mother’s genes entered your body: you devoured the Insect Mother.”

“Congratulations, kid. As a Devourer-type Mutant, the first thing you devoured was the Insect Mother, an Upper-Tier Taboo Species. If you can grow stronger with the Insect Mother’s help, then even if you don’t reach the level of an Upper-Tier Taboo Species, you should have no trouble reaching Disaster Species level.”