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Chapter 187: Sudden Change

His body felt as if it were constantly expanding, his thoughts radiating without limit, and the speed of his contemplation increasing exponentially.

Aided by the Spirit particle information flow, Bai Mo felt as though he stood in a higher dimension, scrutinizing and overlooking the entire world.

His other existing abilities also seemed amplified infinitely. His telekinesis could grasp stars above and tear atoms below; his energy absorption could instantly extinguish volcanoes and flatten earthquakes; his clones were boundless, a single person becoming an entire race; his Heavenly Net revealed the river of history, knowing all the past... At this moment, he was no less capable than an omnipotent deity.

Bai Mo decided to test whether this sensation was an illusion or reality. So, he gently tapped into a wisp of his energy absorption ability.

Immediately then, with him at the center, the temperature within a ten-kilometer radius plummeted by nearly fifty degrees Celsius. All personnel previously patrolling the experimental grounds and animals active outside suddenly froze, their kinetic energy entirely stripped away in that instant.

“Enemy attack!” The well-trained security team, despite trembling in the sub-zero temperatures, immediately sounded the alarm and readied themselves for battle once they reacted.

“Can we, mere ordinary soldiers, truly handle an enemy capable of altering the heavens?” Many whispered inwardly, doubt creeping into their hearts.

Meanwhile, the heat from the surrounding air swiftly began to compensate for the localized deficit. The intense convection between cold and warm air currents whipped up a furious gale at their interface.

It was dining time at the Blood Clan cultivation base on the first level. All the fresh blood instantly froze into icy shards, splattering their faces with frozen slush.

“My hand...” Endless energy surged wildly toward him, but as a consequence, his body's right hand had completely vanished.

“To dabble in power that doesn’t belong to me, at the cost of my very life.” After losing a hand, Bai Mo completely calmed down, no longer actively using this infinitely elevated ability.

“My powerful thoughts and microscopic perception—these passive abilities cannot be shut off. They are constantly incinerating my very existence. In other words, I am now in a race against death with my own life.”

Every second at this moment felt incredibly precious. In each instant, he cycled through tens of thousands of thoughts, continuously using what he knew, along with new information perceived by his divine sense, to deduce the precise method for his next step.

Hovering between life and death, he, for once, fought with all his might, unleashing his full potential.

Drawing upon the sensation of having once been possessed by a Ghost King whose life level surpassed his own, and combining it with his other thoughts, he found a truly viable path.

Bai Mo desperately wanted to shout in excitement, but half a second prior, even his vocal organs had been incinerated within this body.

“Condense!” After silently uttering the word, the remaining parts of his body gradually emitted an even more dazzling light, beginning a microscopic restructuring.

Without any discernible reason, Bai Mo suddenly became aware of a special substance representing 'him,' continuously forming within his fractured Life Field, using fragments of it as raw material amidst the intense light.

“This is truly ‘me’?” Such a sensation suddenly struck him. This remaining bit of substance was his true self, while the long-haired husk beside him was merely an external clone, not at all the original body he had once believed it to be.

Just as he was gradually adapting to this idea, intending to sublimate his original body in the same manner, a sudden, terrifying change occurred!

More horrifying than the so-called Five Declines of Heavenly Beings described in novels, he discovered that the genes of his remaining body were collapsing in an instant!

Within all his cell nuclei, the double-helix DNA automatically unravelled into single strands, then, like a queue of lemmings leaping off a cliff, their bases detached one by one.

After losing their DNA strands, the RNA that relied on DNA transcription also ceased to exist. The protein production lines immediately ground to a halt, and almost all life-sustaining reactions became impossible to continue.

“I didn’t expect... to be tripped up by such an unforeseen accident. This body’s vitality can only last a few more minutes; any further breakthroughs are impossible now.”

With matters having come to this, he could only helplessly terminate his self-immolating breakthrough experiment. The seemingly omnipotent and omniscient sensation receded like a tide, leaving him with an immense feeling of emptiness.

But just as Bai Mo was about to abandon his rapidly deactivating original body and continue existing as a small mass of undefined substance, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

Of course, at this moment, he hadn't yet considered why he, having lost his brain structure like a ghost, could still perform all kinds of complex thoughts.

“DNA is specific to me; this mass of substance also possesses the specificity of the ‘I’ concept. Can I use this ‘I’ to replace DNA, to regulate the body’s various activities, and maintain this body’s vitality?”

Unless absolutely necessary, he didn't want to abandon this body, even if only a sliver of hope remained. Countless novels had taught him that rashly forsaking one’s original body was akin to severing one’s own path to future cultivation.

Time was extremely pressing. With this idea, Bai Mo immediately, by instinct, controlled “himself” to disperse, entering into each individual cell, attempting to take over the previous work of the genes.

When everything could be accomplished through the body’s innate instincts, requiring no thought whatsoever, the incredibly complex tasks and peerlessly precise coordination within countless cells went entirely unnoticed by anyone; everyone simply took it for granted.

Only when everything had to be done personally did he discover that the required computational load was truly terrifying. Nearly forty trillion cells within his body, each one needed attention.

At first, he didn't truly believe he could complete this task; he was merely trying, like a drowning man clutching at the last straw.

“I can't even control protein synthesis, yet I dared to claim microscopic control over my body?” Bai Mo realized that his previously self-proclaimed high-precision control over his body was nothing but a joke in the face of this.

Because the number forty trillion was simply too despair-inducing. Currently, perhaps only a supercomputer could handle this level of computation.

Yet, unexpectedly, this substance constituting “himself” seemed inherently a substitute for genes. It actually succeeded in taking over their roles and responsibilities, automatically continuing all life-sustaining activities without occupying Bai Mo’s own thoughts.

“‘I’ became the gene itself?” After everything stabilized, he began to summarize this breakthrough experiment.

“The experiment itself should be considered largely successful. My life essence has changed; even if this body, possessing Bai Mo’s appearance and abilities, were utterly destroyed, the core ‘me’ would not perish.”

“But the sublimation of my original body was still unsuccessful; it is currently in a state of sustained vitality.”

“Does this count as achieving a Nascent Soul, after which the physical body is no longer a necessary condition for existence?” He suddenly thought of this.