I'm Trapped in the Block

Despair was etched on the old man’s face. He looked at the members of the team beside him, his expression filled with apology.

"I shouldn’t have brought you here. I have no sway over the will of my people."

A nearby soldier was still confused. "But the Prophet Hundred Phases hasn’t attacked us. We should be fine, right?"

"You just aren’t its target. Once it eliminates its primary objective, it will come for you," the old man explained. "The Prophet Hundred Phases is a secret of the Transparent Race. The leader won’t let you leave."

He sighed helplessly. "When the Hundred Phases appears, all flesh is destroyed. That is the rule."

"What exactly is that thing?" the soldier asked, still confused.

"They are our ancestors." The old man’s words were stunning.

Then, the old man began to recount the origin of the Prophet Hundred Phases.

...

A long time ago, when the immortal things first came to this world, the Transparent Race People resolved to drive them out.

They blocked the cavern exit, killing every member of the Flesh Race that entered their world.

The Transparent Race People also discovered that if they threw the immortal things back into the cavern, the cavern itself would devour them.

Thus, the Transparent Race People believed they had found a way to expel the immortal things.

But their good fortune was short-lived. Soon, immortal trees began to appear throughout the Underworld.

They sprouted in inexplicable places and were indistinguishable from the native plants of the Transparent Race, making them difficult to identify.

These plants seized the growing space of the native Transparent Race flora.

By the time the Transparent Race People discovered their world was overrun with these plants, it was already too late.

The plants were everywhere, already intermingled with the vegetation of the Transparent Race.

Furthermore, small animals of the Flesh Race suddenly appeared everywhere and began to attack the creatures of the Transparent Race. Their own small wars erupted in every corner of the Underworld.

The Prophet ordered his people to hunt and cull the Flesh Race’s flora and fauna.

The Transparent Race People were not numerous. Guarding the cavern already took up much of their manpower, and now they had to take on these tasks as well, leaving them stretched thin.

The crisis thus worsened. Their culling speed simply couldn’t keep up with the infiltration rate of the immortal things.

Large creatures began to enter this world, and even the Transparent Race People came under attack.

Giant Flesh Race insects and strange beasts forced the Transparent Race People away from the cavern entrance.

But the disaster was far from over.

One day, the sapient beings of the Flesh Race arrived.

The Prophet called them the Flesh Race People. The moment they arrived, they declared war on the Transparent Race People across the entire world.

With their strong bodies and unique ability to fly, the Transparent Race People were no match for these powerful outsiders and were driven back to their villages.

To combat this, the Prophet came up with a plan.

He would consolidate all the power of the Transparent Race.

The Prophet discovered that Transparent Race People could assimilate the powers of other Transparent Race creatures for their own use.

To this end, they began hunting other Transparent Race creatures, cutting off their limbs and grafting them onto their own bodies.

As long as a limb was grafted quickly enough, the transparent fluid in their bodies would fuse the new limb to the Transparent Race Person’s body.

The Prophet formed a squad and called it the "Hundred Phases."

Every Transparent Race Person within the squad had grafted onto themselves the power of other Transparent Race creatures.

The Prophet led from the front, grafting the most creatures onto himself.

The Hundred Phases Team began their counterattack on the Flesh Race. Using the unique abilities of various strange beasts, they gained the upper hand in the war.

At last, the weak Transparent Race People had the power to fight back against the immortal things.

During the struggle with the Flesh Race, the Prophet also discovered that their transparent fluid could infect pregnant Flesh Race creatures, causing their offspring to be born as members of the Transparent Race.

This discovery was exhilarating.

If they could turn all the immortal things into members of the Transparent Race, the disaster would end!

So, during the counteroffensive, the Hundred Phases Team infected Flesh Race creatures while simultaneously grafting all sorts of powers.

However, just as the Hundred Phases Team was routing the Flesh Race, something unexpected occurred.

Some of the Hundred Phases soldiers went mad.

They had grafted too much power, causing them to develop beastly traits. At first, it was just a decline in intelligence, but eventually, they could no longer distinguish friend from foe and began to attack indiscriminately.

The war was at its height; stopping the grafting was out of the question.

So the Prophet devised a cruel solution.

He had the members of the Hundred Phases Team kill their maddened comrades and graft them onto themselves.

"As long as we keep grafting, the power will exist forever!" As he said this, the old man’s expression twisted.

The Hundred Phases soldiers who underwent repeated grafting grew even more powerful, their combat methods more savage. After a battle, the field would be littered with mangled flesh and gore.

Not only that, but the Transparent Race People discovered that the Hundred Phases soldiers had become addicted to grafting and were beginning to lose control of their lust for slaughter.

They sought to reacquire abilities they already possessed. For them, destroying the immortal things was no longer the main goal.

Acquiring power had become all that mattered.

The creatures of the Transparent Race also suffered mass slaughter at the hands of the Hundred Phases Team.

Furthermore, countless Flesh Race creatures were penned up and bred, serving as raw material for the infection process.

Gradually, the Flesh Race People migrated into the depths of the Underworld, but the Hundred Phases Team had already gone completely rogue.

They killed more and more of the Transparent Race.

Moreover, as the repeated grafting continued, the number of soldiers in the Hundred Phases Team dwindled. Those who remained, however, became exceedingly powerful—utterly unstoppable.

The Hundred Phases soldiers were no longer the Guardian Gods who protected the race and drove out disaster; they had become a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the Transparent Race People.

Fortunately, the Hundred Phases soldiers were no longer satisfied with grafting weak powers. They began a civil war, killing their own comrades.

After a massive war among the Hundred Phases, only one of them remained.

This single Hundred Phases being had grafted the power of the entire team, making it the most terrifying of all.

That is the being now known as the Prophet Hundred Phases.

The absurd civil war had also depleted the Transparent Race of its people and resources, forcing them to retreat and hole up in their small villages.

While the original Prophet still had a shred of consciousness, he placed restraints upon himself, giving the Transparent Race People a way to control him.

He then had the leader at the time imprison him beneath the village, to be released only when the village faced a crisis.

Every subsequent generation of leaders guarded the secret closely, ensuring as few of their people as possible learned of the Prophet Hundred Phases.

Moreover, these leaders knew well the terror of the Prophet Hundred Phases and held this power in fearful reverence. They were almost always unwilling to use it, afraid of becoming traitors to their race.

Grafting, too, became a taboo within the race.

The old man sighed deeply. "But this current generation’s leader uses the Prophet Hundred Phases’ power often and always has war on his lips."

"That Flesh Race spy was also created by this leader using the power of the Prophet Hundred Phases, in order to find the hiding place of the Flesh Race People deep in the Underworld."

"But I never expected that, by some twist of fate, it would be discovered by that Sheep-headed Man."

Mo Ling was utterly shaken after hearing the tale.

’So that’s the legendary story behind the Prophet Hundred Phases,’ he thought. ’No wonder its abilities always seemed so complex.’