Chapter 50 - 49: White Swan
The Sheep-headed Man remained standing in a daze, completely unaware of what was about to happen.
The transparent liquid on the ground began to slowly flow back, creeping up the Sheep-headed Man’s body.
The liquid began to bore into the Sheep-headed Man’s body, bonding with its flesh.
’The Prophet of a Hundred Faces must have realized long ago that the Sheep-headed Man was also a Theseus Cell lifeform, so it wants to graft it, too.’
Mo Ling frantically began teleporting the transparent liquid, trying to salvage the situation.
But there was too much of the liquid, and most of it had already bored deep inside the Sheep-headed Man’s body.
From Mo Ling’s perspective, the liquid had even penetrated the Sheep-headed Man’s brain and was now boring its way toward the Red Rope Worm within.
’This is bad.’
’If the Sheep-headed Man is successfully grafted, the Prophet of a Hundred Faces will become more powerful than ever before.’
’A lifeform that can transform into any creature and is completely immortal will be unleashed upon the world.’
’No one here will be a match for it.’
The Sheep-headed Man finally seemed to feel something, and it began to clutch its head.
The transparent liquid on its body vanished, having fully entered the Sheep-headed Man.
At this moment, Mo Ling once again felt a wave of powerlessness wash over him.
In his despair, a question suddenly occurred to Mo Ling.
’Would the Red Rope Worm allow its host to be grafted onto another organism?’
’If this process prevents it from finding the mother worm, it should try to stop it, right?’
At this point, Mo Ling could only hope the Red Rope Worm would evolve an ability to resist the grafting.
However, the flesh of the Sheep-headed Man’s body began to slowly dissolve into transparent liquid.
’It’s over.’
Although he didn’t know what stage the grafting had reached, this phenomenon clearly showed the Sheep-headed Man was merging with the Prophet of a Hundred Faces.
The Sheep-headed Man lowered the hands clutching its head. Its eyes were vacant; it had clearly entered the grafting state.
Mo Ling’s mind raced, desperately searching for a solution.
’The Red Rope Worm?’
’There’s no reaction. I can’t count on it.’
’The Ugly Duckling Phenomenon?’
Suddenly, a flash of inspiration broke through Mo Ling’s despair.
He quickly maneuvered the Block, searching the Temple.
A moment later...
’Found it!’
A Flesh Race Person, pinned under a stone block, barely breathing.
It was the only living Flesh Race Person. If not for the faint rise and fall of its chest, Mo Ling wouldn’t have even noticed it.
He selected a piece of flesh from the Flesh Race Person’s arm and immediately teleported it into the Sheep-headed Man’s brain.
A crimson stain spread.
It was like a drop of ink on paper.
In the Sheep-headed Man’s brain, which was already full of the transparent liquid, a piece of solid, liquid-free flesh suddenly appeared.
This solid flesh expanded rapidly, forcing the transparent liquid out of the Sheep-headed Man’s brain.
As the solid flesh continued to spread, the Sheep-headed Man gradually began to regain consciousness.
It touched its head, looked at its torso that had turned into transparent liquid, then extended a chainsaw and cut the liquefied part of its body away.
Its body then healed itself, all traces of the liquid gone, replaced by solid flesh.
Mo Ling quickly teleported the severed liquid into the Block, annihilating it instantly.
More liquid was forced out of the Sheep-headed Man’s body, and Mo Ling worked in tandem, eliminating it piece by piece.
He flew above the Sheep-headed Man’s head, watching the escaping liquid intently, not letting a single drop get away.
The Sheep-headed Man seemed to realize the Block was helping it. It even gathered the remaining liquid and held it up to the Block.
After the liquid’s invasion, the Sheep-headed Man seemed to have grown much smarter.
The last bit of liquid morphed into a small creature and tried to escape, but the Sheep-headed Man caught it on the spot.
It held the small creature up to the Block, and Mo Ling teleported both its palm and the creature away.
A chunk of the Sheep-headed Man’s palm was now missing, but it didn’t seem to care, simply continuing its search for any stray drops of transparent liquid.
More of the liquid tried to seep into the ground, but with Mo Ling watching intently from above, it had nowhere to hide.
Finally, thanks to Mo Ling’s efforts, all of the transparent liquid had been teleported and annihilated.
The mighty Prophet of a Hundred Faces vanished without a sound.
The Sheep-headed Man lifted its hoof and looked down. Seeing that no more transparent liquid was dripping from its body, it became very happy.
It then walked over to the rack it had been holding earlier and picked it up.
The rack had been smashed to pieces during the battle, leaving only a few wooden poles.
There were no suitable vines in the Temple to tie the rack back together.
But the Sheep-headed Man’s intelligence seemed to have greatly improved.
It extended a chainsaw from its arm and actually carved the ends of the fallen poles into mortise and tenon joints.
It fitted the poles together, once again forming the familiar asterisk-shaped rack.
It then pulled several chains from its body and used them to secure the rack.
It then happily held up the asterisk-shaped rack, seemingly pleased with its newfound knowledge.
The Sheep-headed Man then walked under the Block, raised the asterisk-shaped rack, shook it a few times, and bleated.
Then, it planted the rack firmly into the ground.
The Sheep-headed Man rushed over to the fleeing leader, grabbed him, severed his limbs, and chained him to the asterisk-shaped rack.
It was the same familiar, Vitruvian Man-style binding.
After the Prophet of a Hundred Faces vanished, the remaining Transparent Race People didn’t dare draw the Sheep-headed Man’s attention, watching its actions in terror.
The feathers sealing the Temple began to dissipate and wither.
The Transparent Race People who had been standing by their leader scrambled out of the Temple.
The Sheep-headed Man didn’t stop them, instead continuing to torture the leader.
All the while, it kept bleating up at the Block above.
Mo Ling could understand the strange abyssal tongue, but he couldn’t make out what the Sheep-headed Man was trying to say.
’Perhaps it’s just making meaningless noises.’
But he could sense there was no malice in the Sheep-headed Man’s bleating.
It seemed the Sheep-headed Man knew the Block had saved it.
Meanwhile, Mo Ling felt a sense of relief at his own decisive action.
He had simply made clever use of one property of the Ugly Duckling Phenomenon.
The property of transforming into a similar organism.
Mo Ling guessed that the researchers must have had a reason for naming it the Ugly Duckling Phenomenon.
In Andersen’s fairy tale, it wasn’t until the ugly duckling saw the beautiful swans that it truly realized what it was.
And the Sheep-headed Man’s origin is Theseus Cells.
The only thing similar to a Theseus Cell... is a normal cell.
That is the Sheep-headed Man’s "beautiful swan."
Mo Ling’s act of teleportation was to make the Theseus Cells inside the Sheep-headed Man realize their true nature.
In that instant, the Theseus Cells would begin transforming into normal cells.
Once all of the Sheep-headed Man’s cells had transformed into normal cells, the Prophet of a Hundred Faces’ grafting would naturally fail.
Because the grafting only works on a Theseus Cell Life.
The cell transformation had only been a hypothesis on Mo Ling’s part. His action had been a true, all-or-nothing gamble.
Fortunately for him, Mo Ling had won.
The mighty Prophet of a Hundred Faces had truly been forced out of the Sheep-headed Man’s body by an absolute biological principle.
The moment the ugly duckling became a beautiful swan, the Prophet of a Hundred Faces’ fate was sealed.