The Evolution Cube Metamorphoses Again

The unknown energy seeped into Lu Yuan's body, flowing into the Evolution Cube.

He watched as a ghostly blue radiance began to flicker across the Cube's surface — growing brighter with every passing moment.

**BOOM.**

A thunderous reverberation rang through his mind.

The Evolution Cube stopped spinning. It stood perfectly still, pouring out an intensely brilliant ghostly-blue light that enveloped everything along his Gene Chain. White mist churned and roiled through the space around it.

From the innermost reaches of his body, a profound, deeply pleasant warmth surfaced. His physical form felt sublimated — elevated beyond what it had been — and his Gene Chain had undergone a transformation.

Within the ghostly-blue radiance, the Evolution Cube grew another size larger. Stars seemed to flicker within it, lending it an air of profound, unfathomable mystery.

Lu Yuan felt the surge of renewed strength and let a quiet smile curve his lips.

The Evolution Cube had completed its metamorphosis.

It had absorbed the unknown energies from tens of thousands of Aberration Entities — and now, with the additional absorption of the Soul-Devouring Orb's unknown energy, the transformation was finally, fully complete.

Information flowed from the newly metamorphosed Cube.

The evolutionary effects applied to Gene Armaments and Spiritual Items bonded directly to his Gene Chain had been enhanced to a significant degree.

Exactly how significant, he wasn't entirely certain — but it was definitively beyond Sovereign Grade.

Furthermore, Gene Armaments, Talismans, and Spiritual Items that were *not* bonded to his own Gene Chain could now also be evolved.

However, the process differed considerably from evolving bonded items. For non-bonded items, the Spirit Crystal cost would be several times higher — in some cases, up to ten times as much.

Even so, Lu Yuan was elated.

*Some items, once evolved to extreme quality, are worth exponentially more than ten times their original value. The math still works out.*

The one remaining unknown was the evolutionary ceiling for non-bonded items — how high could they actually go?

He suspected the cap might be somewhat lower than for bonded items. After all, the Evolution Cube was fundamentally anchored to his own Gene Chain; items directly bonded to it would naturally be cheaper and easier to evolve. The difference in Spirit Crystal cost made that much obvious.

Even so, he was more than satisfied. *Perhaps I can leverage the Evolution Cube to generate substantial resources.* Given sufficient raw materials, the evolved items should easily recoup the cost of the process.

For truly precious materials, of course, he'd rather keep them for himself — the last thing he wanted was to sell evolved items to hostile factions like the Gnolls and have them turned against humanity.

A new idea was already forming in his mind: what if he evolved the Enhanced Spirit Power Gene Fluid? His cultivation speed might climb again.

*Worth experimenting with when the opportunity arises.*

All in all, the benefits of this metamorphosis were extraordinary.

Lu Yuan was thoroughly satisfied.

Just as the metamorphosis concluded, he sensed several auras descending rapidly from above.

He glanced up. It was Sha Jian, Maika, and several Gene Warriors he didn't recognize — all of them Battle King Rank.

When they took in the devastation spread across several kilometers, every one of them went rigid.

*This goes far beyond Battle King Rank destructive power. Even among Battle Sovereigns, only the very strongest could manage something on this scale...*

They spotted Lu Yuan floating in the air. No opponent remained. Before him drifted a single, tiny orb.

Sha Jian and Maika exchanged a glance — reverence surfacing in both their eyes — and flew toward him immediately.

"Elder Lu! Are you all right? We came as fast as we could."

Lu Yuan looked at Sha Jian and noted that the deference in their expressions had deepened considerably since their first meeting.

He smiled. "I'm fine. There was an aberrated human here — I dealt with him. This is what he left behind."

He gestured toward the Soul-Devouring Orb.

Alarm rippled through the entire group. Sha Jian stared at the scorched ground, his voice coming out dry and tight.

"E-Elder Lu... was this aberrated human Battle Sovereign Rank?"

Lu Yuan nodded. "Yes."

Every person present drew a sharp breath. Fear flickered behind their eyes.

"Thank you for your intervention, Elder Lu! If you hadn't come... Yali City would have suffered catastrophic losses."

A Battle Sovereign — not one of them could have stopped it.

Lu Yuan smiled. "It's my duty. This is what I'm here for."

"Your dedication honors us, Elder Lu!"

Then Sha Jian turned his gaze to the Soul-Devouring Orb, his expression troubled.

"Elder Lu, this Aberration Entity — what exactly is it?"

Lu Yuan's eyes narrowed. Something grave settled in his gaze.

"An S-grade Aberration Entity. The Soul-Devouring Orb."

"S-grade?!"

The outcry was instant, collective. They stared at the Orb with unconcealed horror, a chill running through every one of them.

At Battle King Rank, they all understood the threat hierarchy of Aberration Entities. S-grade corresponded to Battle Emperor-level dangers.

Lu Yuan nodded. "I'll be taking this Aberration Entity back to Headquarters. Don't worry."

He paused, then added, "One more thing — do any of you recognize this person?"

He tapped the air with one finger, and a Spirit Power image materialized before the group — the face of the brown-haired man.

Sha Jian and the others looked at one another. Each shook their head.

Lu Yuan's eyes narrowed slightly. Then he smiled. "This was the individual who wielded the Soul-Devouring Orb. Look into him — find out who he was. He most likely vanished before the Aberration phenomena began. Investigate his movements in the days before his disappearance. Did he make contact with anyone unusual?"

"Understood!"

Sha Jian answered without hesitation.

"Good." Lu Yuan kept his tone easy. "The situation here is essentially resolved. I'll wait for my team to handle the Soul-Devouring Orb. In the meantime, go reassure the civilians."

"We'll leave it in your capable hands, Elder Lu."

Sha Jian and Maika bowed. The other Battle King warriors — likely representatives of Yali City's major families — opened their mouths as if to speak, but they caught the pointed looks Sha Jian and Maika exchanged and thought better of it. They offered their farewells and turned to leave.

On the way back, one of the elder warriors turned to Sha Jian.

"Director Sha Jian — was that Lu Yuan? The one who holds first place on the Prodigy Rankings?"

A middle-aged man followed up. "Right — Director Sha Jian, you called him 'Elder Lu.' Does that mean Lu Yuan has actually joined the Night Watchmen? I thought he was based in the Imperial Capital. What's he doing in Yali City? Was he sent here to handle the Aberration incident?"

A satisfied gleam crossed Sha Jian's face. He smiled.

"He is our newest Honorary Elder. He came to Yali City specifically for this Aberration incident."

He exhaled slowly, equal parts admiring and shaken. "Thank goodness it was Elder Lu who was assigned. I never imagined the Aberration had reached Battle Sovereign Rank. That was genuinely terrifying."

Maika nodded beside him. "Agreed. All this time, the Aberration kept such a low profile — we assumed it was Battle King Rank at most. To think it had escalated to something that dangerous. If Elder Lu hadn't been here, the losses would have been devastating."

The elder who'd first spoken shook his head in disbelief. "But who would have expected it... Didn't Elder Lu only disappear from the Prodigy Rankings a few days ago? That should mean he just broke through to Battle King Rank. Freshly broken through, and he's already fighting at Battle Sovereign level? That's simply terrifying."

"No question. And I can't begin to guess what genes he's engraved — but did you see it? That scorching heat, like the surface of the sun. Whatever Transcendent Gene that is, it's nothing ordinary."

The group departed, still murmuring among themselves.

Meanwhile, Franming's team arrived at Lu Yuan's location.

The sight that greeted them — sword scars carved across several kilometers, craters a hundred meters wide dotting the landscape in every direction — sent a visible shudder through all of them.

"All of this... Elder Lu made *all of this*?"

Franming looked faintly dazed. The others stared with wide eyes.

From the air above, Lu Yuan spotted Franming's group approaching. He gathered a sphere of solar radiance in one hand and wrapped it around the Soul-Devouring Orb, which trembled against his hold but couldn't break free. He descended, orb in tow, and landed in front of them.

Franming and the others instinctively dipped into a slight bow. "Elder Lu."

Their eyes briefly flicked to the Soul-Devouring Orb hovering beside him.

"What's the containment procedure for an Aberration Entity?" Lu Yuan asked.

"Is that the Aberration Entity from this mission?"

Franming reached into his pack and produced a black metal box, handing it to Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan placed the Soul-Devouring Orb inside, sealed the lid, and stored it in his Battle-mark Space.

A brief silence settled over the group. Then Xue Wang couldn't hold it in any longer.

"So, uh... are we actually done? The Aberration incident is really over? We're heading back?"

The others looked equally lost.

They'd handled plenty of Aberration incidents before. A fast resolution still took over a month; a slow one could drag past a year. Never in any of their experience had they arrived and finished within the same day.

The efficiency was genuinely beyond comprehension.

Lu Yuan smiled. "Head back and get some rest. There are still a few loose ends."

The brown-haired man's identity still needed confirming. And then there was Tang Fei.

Through his Shadow Clones, Lu Yuan could see that Tang Fei had crossed paths with Sha Jian and Maika on the road and been brought back with them.

Tang Fei's reaction at the office earlier had made it clear — the man knew something about the brown-haired man. There was no way that expression had been nothing.

What remained unclear was whether Tang Fei was the one who had given the brown-haired man the Soul-Devouring Orb in the first place. And if he wasn't, was he still connected to whoever was?

*I need to keep watching Tang Fei. I still don't understand the full nature of his relationship with the brown-haired man. If there are others behind him, moving on Tang Fei prematurely might flush out whoever's hiding in the shadows and put them on high alert.*

Lu Yuan felt a dull pressure beginning to build behind his eyes.

*This is getting complicated. I can't investigate this alone — I need the full machinery of the organization behind this.*

He'd wait until the brown-haired man's background was confirmed, then decide from there.

Franming's team all nodded at his words. "Understood."

"One more thing," Lu Yuan added, a thought occurring to him. "We need to seal that door first and bring it back with us — it counts as an Aberration Entity too."

He glanced in the direction of one of the craters.

He led Franming's team to the crater's edge. At the bottom, the perfectly ordinary-looking wooden door lay flat on the ground — completely unscathed despite the surrounding obliteration.

*Right... I should be able to absorb the unknown energy from this Aberration Entity as well. I couldn't do it earlier — maybe because the door was open?*

Lu Yuan and the team descended into the crater. He pressed burning solar radiance against the door's edge and swung it casually shut.

With a solid **thud**, the door closed — and immediately began to shudder, straining against his grasp with every ounce of resistance it could muster. It wasn't nearly enough.

Franming moved with practiced efficiency, producing a set of black restraining ropes and winding them tightly around the door.

At that moment, a pulse of unknown energy flowed from the door into the Evolution Cube within Lu Yuan's body.

His eyes lit up. A smile spread across his face.

*Got it. Absorbed.*

The instant the unknown energy entered him, the door's frantic struggling went perfectly still.

Lu Yuan studied it with mild surprise, his thoughts drifting back to the incident with A39.

*So the unknown energy really is fundamental to these Aberration Entities.*

What that energy actually consisted of remained a mystery. He put the question aside and tucked the thoroughly bound door into his Battle-mark Space.

The group returned to the Night Watchman branch headquarters.

The building blazed with light. People were cheering — some had even started an impromptu celebration.

Listening in, Lu Yuan quickly pieced together that Sha Jian had already spread word of the Aberration's elimination. The branch staff had been under crushing pressure for weeks on end; the news had broken something loose in all of them.

Sha Jian, Maika, Tang Fei, and the other senior officials were all present among the crowd.

When Lu Yuan's team walked in, the cheers surged louder.

"Elder Lu Yuan!"

"Elder Lu Yuan!"

"Elder Lu Yuan!"

The senior staff moved forward to welcome them. Sha Jian smiled.

"Elder Lu, these people have been under tremendous strain. When they heard the Aberration was dealt with, they simply... couldn't hold it in. Please don't take it badly."

"I understand completely," Lu Yuan said with a smile.

Tang Fei wore a broad grin. "Elder Lu's strength is something else — and your methods! You found the Aberration Entity we'd been searching for all this time and wrapped everything up so effortlessly. How did you manage it?"

"A minor trick," Lu Yuan replied lightly. "I just didn't expect the Aberration Entity to be so reckless — making a move on my subordinates the very moment I arrived."

Tang Fei laughed. "That thing genuinely had no idea what it was walking into."

Lu Yuan felt the Evolution Cube stir inside him. His easy smile didn't waver.

*Quite the performer. This is a completely different act from what he put on back in that office.*

He turned to Sha Jian. "Any news on the brown-haired man?"

"We've already tasked the city governance office with the investigation. Detailed information should be available by tomorrow."

"Good."

Gillian's gaze was warm and soft. "Elder Lu — now that the Aberration is cleared, shall we share a drink to celebrate?"

The others perked up with similarly hopeful expressions.

Lu Yuan found it hard to refuse. He smiled and nodded. "All right, then."

The following morning, Sha Jian arrived at Lu Yuan's door bright-eyed and visibly energized despite the previous night's festivities, his face alight with excitement.

"Elder Lu, we've found information on the person you asked about."

He projected a file into the air between them.

Lu Yuan read through it.

The brown-haired man's name was Xiu Mu Xize — an ordinary resident of Yali City, not even a Gene Warrior. At twenty, he'd lost both parents in a traffic accident and had lived alone ever since. He drifted between odd jobs, was now thirty-five years old, had never been in a relationship, had never started a family, and spent his free time playing games. By all appearances, he had been entirely content to live out his days that way.

Then, a little over three months ago, Xiu Mu had simply vanished. He hadn't even called in to the shop where he worked odd jobs — he simply walked away and disappeared, until Lu Yuan found him the previous night.

Beyond the basic profile, the file contained movement records and surveillance footage from the weeks before his disappearance.

Every piece of footage showed Xiu Mu alone. No notable contact with anyone. His daily movements were entirely routine. Nothing unusual surfaced anywhere.

Lu Yuan frowned.

*As I suspected — tracing whoever gave him the Soul-Devouring Orb is going to be genuinely difficult.*