Chapter 1 Time Rewinds Half an Hour

Time rewound half an hour.

Ju Tianfu, waking from his coma, met Cerberus, the Zerg Hive Lord, once again and reached an agreement with the latter.

Ju Tianfu would act as the Earth player representative, assisting the Zerg Hive in jointly dealing with the Desolate Lion.

In return, the Zerg Hive would guarantee the safety of Long Xiangbao Bian, Tsuchimikado Komachi, and other Zerg Hive captives, and return Ju Tianfu's freedom to him.

Of course, only a portion of his freedom.

Beneath the slender, gaunt, and ferocious Zerg Hive armor, only Ju Tianfu's exposed head was the original product.

Below his head, everything else was a living organ produced by the Zerg Hive.

Connected to Ju Tianfu's brain through neural circuits.

Ju Tianfu could control the Zerg Hive living armor as if it were his own body. In some ways, this Zerg Hive body was even stronger than his original one.

Because his Xuanming Divine Mark was behind his neck, he could still use Xuanming Divine Power.

Relying on his advantage as the main body of the Extraordinary Association's artificial god project, he could provide assistance.

But likewise, the Zerg Hive could use the thick cable connected to the back of the Zerg armor to terminate Ju Tianfu's current body at any time.

From the system detector's perspective, it was impossible to tell that Ju Tianfu was still a prisoner with only his head remaining.

In any case, as long as the fans believed that Ju Tianfu had not been captured and was still the last hope, the power of faith provided would be endless.

According to Zerg Hive Lord Cerberus, this was a "win-win"...

Although Ju Tianfu didn't feel that being chopped down to just a head and being coerced and exploited in various ways still qualified as a win-win.

"Ha—"

Ju Tianfu let out a low roar, causing the inclined ice wall to once again erupt with intense frost and freezing energy, temporarily freezing the surface of the giant tentacles.

The Mystery Society yielded to a higher level of mystery.

The Desolate Lion's divine power, at least for now, was not more advanced than the Xuanming Divine Power obtained by the Extraordinary Association from the Prisoner Demon Cave.

Moreover,

That tentacle didn't seem to have a strong connection with the Desolate Lion. The divine power contained within the tentacle itself was also constantly weakening.

"Alien players..."

The Desolate Lion let out a turbid, painful growl from its throat, "Do you also want to be my enemy?"

The Zerg Hive Tyrant did not answer but instead raised its long bone blade high.

Boom boom boom boom!

The heavy-armored Zerg soldiers behind the battlefield recklessly poured out firepower.

Various projectiles cut through the sky, bombarding the Desolate Lion's divine power barrier. Although they couldn't shatter the barrier, they caused considerable consumption, causing the barrier to continuously ripple and tremble.

"Die!!"

Enraged, the Desolate Lion extended more giant tentacles from its back, wildly waving and randomly lashing out at the surrounding players.

The Truth-Side, surrounded by astral matter shields, was only lightly brushed by a tentacle being strangled, and the whole person flew out horizontally, crashing heavily into the wall.

Balalaika's APS automatic pistol fired large bullets, disproportionate to the pistol's caliber, comparable to discarding sabot fin-stabilized armor-piercing rounds, hitting the tentacle.

Boom.

Accompanied by dazzling fire, a large piece of flesh was directly gouged out from the center of the tentacle, flowing with an amber-like viscous liquid.

Through the liquid, the white nerve ganglia in the middle of the tentacle could be vaguely seen.

Subsequent divine power poured in, causing the tentacle to heal rapidly. The wound on the tentacle recovered in the next second and continued to sweep over.

Ju Tianfu, connected to the cable in the back, did not leave. Standing on the back of the drill sandworm, he threw ice spears at the Desolate Lion.

The Zerg Hive Tyrant stepped on the back armor of the drill sandworm, leaped up, and slashed at the tentacle with its blade.

Hiss—

The bone blade, blessed with Li Ang's divine power, cut through the surface of the tentacle, temporarily suppressing its ability to recover.

This bone blade was manufactured by the Zerg Hive, incomparably sharp, and could cut iron like mud.

Most importantly, the bone blade was actually a living creature itself.

The nematocysts hidden in the blade could inject a vast amount of various toxins when cutting objects.

At the same time, it tore off the creature's muscle cells, transporting them to the sac-like organ at the handle of the knife, analyzing the composition and weaknesses of the opponent's cells, and urgently manufacturing targeted toxins.

The Zerg Hive Tyrant, having abandoned the limitations of the human body, had breakthroughs in overall muscle strength and life function.

The jet holes buried throughout the Tyrant's body could rapidly ventilate, erupt flames, provide thrust, and assist the Tyrant in making high-intensity maneuvers, narrowly avoiding the Desolate Lion's tentacle strikes.

A group of players swirled around the Desolate Lion like flies.

Divine power, holy flame, sea waves, curses...

All kinds of skills poured towards the Desolate Lion, but they still failed to truly tear open its body.

"There were noises, thunderings, lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent,"

The Zerg Hive Tyrant cut open a tentacle with one blade, continuously stomping its feet on the wall to regain its balance, and charged towards the Desolate Lion again.

Its complex mouthparts trembled slightly, emitting a turbid sound, "And I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

The Zerg Hive Tyrant's words seemed inexplicable in the current environment.

The Truth-Side was shocked to the core, instantly realizing that

This was the content of the first volume of the comic *When the Stars Return*, hidden inside the lost world mecha beasts.

"What are you, saying?"

The Desolate Lion also noticed the abnormality of the Zerg Hive Tyrant. Its tentacles smashed down, shattering the wall and forcing the Zerg Hive Tyrant back.

"Volume One,"

The Zerg Hive Tyrant uttered in a turbid whisper, "Submarine Fire."

As mentioned before, the comic plot structure of *When the Stars Return* was relatively simple. The protagonist was an elderly cowboy or pastor (appearing as a pink-skinned humanoid) driving a red convertible.

And a clownfish.

In the content of volumes one to eleven,

The pastor drove the clownfish on a post-apocalyptic highway resembling a nuclear war wasteland, with a voice-over narrating the significance of fire to civilization in a rambling manner.

The two "people" drove to a remote town in the style of the *Fallout* series to exchange fresh water resources for gasoline.

Unexpectedly, the town was attacked by a motorcycle gang. A group of merfolk thugs broke through the city gates and massacred the town.

The pastor, wearing a trench coat, a hat, and a cigar in his mouth, recited scriptures from the sacred texts while using two revolvers, throwing knives, and his fists to smash all the merfolk thugs.

The pastor declined the precious gasoline provided free of charge by the town mayor, insisting on exchanging it for fresh water, and continued his journey with the clownfish.

This world was originally prosperous and developed, but the scarcity of energy led to war. Under nuclear weapons, civilization was wiped out. A small number of residents struggled to survive in scattered settlements, and the wilderness was full of genetically mutated monsters, mutant humans, and slave-trading groups.

The pastor had been searching for the legendary "Stars" that could provide infinite energy and restore order to the doomsday.

During the journey, the two "people" encountered various dangers, witnessed the goodness and ugliness of human nature, and gained a deeper understanding of each other.

In the eighth volume, the pastor finally found a clue to the Stars, went to a friend's house, entrusted the clownfish, who was both a child and a friend, to his friend's robotic computer widow, and embarked on the journey to find the Stars alone after obtaining weapons and equipment.

He came to an underground military base built before the nuclear war in the shape of an inverted pyramid, faced the bizarre mutated monsters inside, and finally discovered the information about the Stars in the research center.

It turned out that there were no Stars that could provide infinite energy. The "Stars" were just a scientific research project of a military power of the previous era - exploring the mutation potential of organisms under the radiation of an alien meteorite.

The abominable creatures in the underground base, as well as the mutated monsters near the surface, were all the result of alien meteorite radiation.

The severely injured pastor suffered a serious blow and was surrounded by distorted monsters in a closed laboratory, losing hope of fighting.

However, the clownfish led the surface residents who had received the pastor's help during the journey, carrying weapons and equipment, and rushed to this place to rescue the pastor.

Under the siege of distorted monsters, the crowd retreated while fighting, and finally came to the lowest level of the military base, where they saw the so-called "alien meteorite," a giant stone tablet placed in a deep pit and engraved with unknown characters.

In the ending of the twelfth volume,

The crowd was trapped underground by distorted monsters.

The pastor, who was originally going to destroy the stone tablet, manually activated the stone tablet according to the experimental records of the previous era.

After bidding farewell to the clownfish for the last time, the pastor walked into the radiation range of the stone tablet, undergoing irreversible mutations, becoming some kind of indescribable giant life form.

While killing the distorted monsters in the underground base, it also brought everyone out of the surface.

"The amber-like energy is not a mineral resource, but a bio-energy."

The Zerg Hive Lord said in a low voice to the Desolate Lion, "What you are connected to is not a native deity,

But a starfish with extremely mutated genes, capable of producing infinite energy, receiving the faith and worship of the natives of the lost world for thousands of years, and spontaneously generating divine power."