Ultragene Warlord

around, the disaster gene fragments affected not just his body, but also his mind and mental energy.

The multicolored light drifted toward his head and soulspace, seeping into a different dimension entirely.
Zhang Lie ’s head pulsed as though it were about to explode.
He clutched his head and keened as he rolled on the ground, barely able to retain a sliver of consciousness.

As the disaster gene fragments forever changed his mind, they sapped at his consciousness.

Were it not for Zhang Lie ’s expanded soulspace and soul refined for two mortal lives, his consciousness might have winked out from this blow alone.
Who knew what would happen then? Perhaps his mind would be replaced by something alien or other; perhaps he would no longer be himself.

Zhang Lie tried to suppress the disaster-grade energy with the strength of his soul, but even that had startlingly little effect.
After all, the weakest part of a human body was the brain.
As his brain swelled with energy, Zhang Lie ’s thoughts turned to mush; he was unable to string together a train of thoughts.
He felt as though his brain was like a balloon, which had been forcibly inflated to twice its maximum capacity.

His brain cells gorged themselves on the energy, knowing that they would be destroyed if they didn ’t, evolving as they approached a threshold.
This was a slow, arduous, grueling process, one that Zhang Lie gritted his teeth and struggled through.

His skull and bones might have been fortified, but what of his brain? Mists, illusions, and hallucinations appeared before Zhang Lie ’s eyes as his will was dragged into layers of dream.
He thought he could see different worlds, different skies, in just the blink of an eye.
His body was surrounded by a mysterious energy that translated him between reality and illusion.

Zhang Lie journeyed into many different worlds.
One was his past life, an alternate reality in which he hadn ’t died and was continuing to struggle under adversity; another was a world without genetic lifeforms, an Earth that hadn ’t been invaded by aliens.
Yet another was a pile of ruins and rubble.

With each blink of his eyes, he took on a different identity in a different place.

In time, he learned to break out of these illusions, to distinguish truth from reality.
With enough willpower, he could remind himself that he was trapped in an illusion, no matter how relaxing or calm that illusion might appear at first glance.

And each time he escaped from a world of dreams, his headache grew more subdued, and the multicolored mist around him diminished.
As he kept honing his willpower, his soul and soulspace absorbed the mist and grew larger.

As the mist around him vanished and seeped into his body, perfectly intertwined with the solar energy that formed his own core, Zhang Lie felt his body ’s condition improve bit by bit.

When at long last the pain vanished in its entirety, Zhang Lie sat up and opened his eyes.
Multicolored light shone within, as splendid as fireworks in the night sky, as radiant as a bonfire, causing the sea and sky ’s natural beauty to pale in comparison…