Chapter 1 An Expedition

An expeditionary fleet cruised in a sub-dimensional world, passing through space-time rifts one after another.

The bizarre and magnificent scenery outside the window flashed past Harrison's eyes as he stared intently at the star chart. Coordinates of one sub-dimension after another lit up, charting the fleet's course. Behind him, the other crew members performed their duties.

The adjutant stood beside him, pointing at the star chart and whispering, "Along this route, we will cut into the area actually controlled by the World Tree. Although His Excellency Black Star has slaughtered the World Tree's dependents, causing gaps in their internal defenses, it is still very dangerous for us to go deep."

"I know, but only by going deep into enemy territory can we find the World Tree's main body. How can we gain anything without risking our lives?" Harrison replied without hesitation.

The adjutant pursed his lips and couldn't help but say, "Sir, why do you have to work so hard? With your relationship with His Excellency Black Star..."

"Alright, don't say such things again. I don't need your persuasion."

Harrison didn't even raise his head.

The adjutant smiled wryly.

*Do you think I care about you? The main thing is, if you shrink back, we can take advantage of your connections and go back to rest...*

The adjutant's tone was helpless. "I think we'll be giving ourselves away for nothing."

"If prayer were useful, what would we need an army for?" Harrison replied casually.

"If prayer were useful, what would we need an army for?"

The adjutant muttered quietly.

Harrison glanced at him, just about to say something, when suddenly he felt a tightness in his heart, frowned, and abruptly looked out the window.

"Something's not right..."

"What's wrong?" the adjutant asked curiously.

"I feel uneasy," Harrison said in a low voice.

"...Quick! Charge the weapons, prepare for battle!"

The adjutant and other crew members panicked and immediately shouted for the fleet to enter battle readiness.

They couldn't afford not to take it seriously. The last time Harrison felt uneasy, the expeditionary outpost was wiped out. In their eyes, Harrison was a jinx. Whenever he had a headache or fever, it meant they were all going to be unlucky.

Harrison looked warily at the radar screen, but there was no abnormal response. The uneasiness in his heart gradually dissipated, and his brow relaxed.

"Could it be a hallucination..."

Harrison was puzzled and shook his head. Since nothing was detected, he wasn't sure if his feelings were wrong.

"Sir, don't scare us!"

Hearing this, the others secretly breathed a sigh of relief, their faces full of helplessness, thinking it was just his warped sense of humor.

The expeditionary fleet quickly disappeared along the space-time rift. After they left, a translucent figure emerged in this sub-dimension. It was Helaian.

"An exploration team from the three major civilizations..."

Helaian looked in the direction the fleet had disappeared, her expression changing several times, but in the end, she did not take action.

During this period, she had been searching for suitable sub-dimensions to add the snake-killing agent, and occasionally encountered troops from the three major civilizations.

Because the World Tree currently had no need to steal intelligence, she did not attack. Anyway, there were other World Tree dependents to deal with these people. She didn't want to alert the enemy and expose herself, as her own mission was more important.

However, the expeditionary forces were also useful to her. Based on the routes of some fleets, combined with the mother tree's sensing of the Hub Snake, Helaian had screened out some areas where the Hub Snake might be frequently active, as well as some sub-dimensions likely to be chosen as food by the Hub Snake, and added the snake-killing agent to all of them.

This time was no exception. Helaian silently activated space magic, found the traces of Harrison's fleet's passage, and flew towards their path. Soon, she arrived at a sub-dimension of bizarre rocks, where violent radiation dust storms formed tornadoes connecting the sky and the earth. There was no sign of life in the entire dimension.

"This place is not bad."

Helaian nodded. As far as she knew, this kind of sub-dimension, which did not give birth to life but had different substances, was exactly the kind of food that the Hub Snake preferred. Pure energy-type sub-dimensions were not liked, perhaps because of the taste. After all, it was crunchier to gnaw on substances.

She ejected the snake-killing agent and watched it blend into the sub-dimension, then left with teleportation magic, searching for the next target.

...

Half a month later.

The King of the Boundless led the Hub Snake through the sub-dimensional world, with dense mechanical troops guarding them, like a dark cloud carrying them.

Passing through one sub-dimension after another, everyone would stop for a while to observe the Hub Snake's reaction. If the Hub Snake didn't start eating, they would continue to the next place.

Although all sub-dimensions were food, the Hub Snake wouldn't stuff everything into its mouth. After all, its appetite was limited, and it needed time to digest after eating. Eating too much would make it full.

As long as it wasn't extremely hungry, the Hub Snake would only start eating when it encountered a sub-dimension that suited its taste. As the saying goes, it's easy to go from frugality to luxury, but difficult to go from luxury to frugality. It didn't need to find food itself, so its taste was getting pickier and pickier.

After a while, everyone arrived at a sub-dimension of bizarre rocks. The Hub Snake immediately twisted and turned, taking a liking to this food. Regardless of others, it began to feast on the spot. The white mist on its body spread out, and wherever it passed, substances were crushed and devoured.

Seeing this scene, the King of the Boundless and the mechanical troops retreated to the side, not disturbing the Hub Snake's feeding.

Seeing the Hub Snake eating happily, the King of the Boundless sighed inwardly.

"It's becoming more and more troublesome, this is too hard to endure."

The King of the Boundless succumbed to Han Xiao's lewd power and unwillingly became the Hub Snake's breeder. Even though his lifespan was almost infinite, the thought of the breeding career continuing for decades made him feel like life had given him a heavy hammer, his balls aching as if they were about to crack... although he didn't have this organ.

The most terrifying thing was that Black Star still had three embryos. When they all hatched, wouldn't that be four times the happiness for him, the breeder?

Moreover, Black Star would definitely force the Hub Snakes born later to have little snakes, one giving birth to two, two giving birth to three, and three giving birth to all things, descendants without end...

Oh, my life! When will these days end?!

The King of the Boundless seemed to see his bitter future and shivered.

Just as he was lamenting his fate, the Hub Snake, which was eating, suddenly stopped, twisting frantically, collapsing mountain after mountain, behaving extremely painfully, as if someone had suddenly shoved a spoonful of mustard into its mouth while it was eating.

"What's going on?"

The King of the Boundless was shocked and hurried up to control the Hub Snake, and many mechanical troops quickly surrounded it.

However, the Hub Snake, which was being controlled by everyone, was still struggling desperately, like a lively fish being pressed on a chopping board.

Youzu quickly scanned the Hub Snake's vital signs and said grimly, "Something's wrong. The Hub Snake's vitality is rapidly withering. An unknown compound has spread in its body, like a gene toxin specifically targeting it. It has already caused irreversible damage, and the damage is still expanding. It should have been ambushed!"

"Are there enemies nearby?" The King of the Boundless was shocked and immediately released all his senses, but found nothing.

"Our detection radar can't find anything either. I've already called the Overlord, he'll be here soon."

As soon as Youzu finished speaking, a light lit up beside him, and Han Xiao teleported over.

"What's the situation?"

Han Xiao immediately saw the Hub Snake's abnormal condition, his expression changed slightly, and he unhesitatingly injected the Hub Snake with a needle. The panel immediately popped up with combat information.

At this time, the Mechanical Apostle Youzu and others greeted him, apologetically saying, "Sorry, we were unknowingly ambushed by the enemy. This is our dereliction of duty, please punish us, Overlord..."

"Alright, step back for now."

Han Xiao didn't have time to pay attention to them, waved his hand, and frowned as he looked at the panel information.

In the Hub Snake's status bar, there was a negative status of [Severe Poisoning], which introduced a gene toxin specially formulated by the World Tree, targeting only the Hub Snake race. Once it entered the body, it would cause a chain of genetic sequence breakage, completely irreversible, causing the Hub Snake's health to decline at a rate of 1.5% per second, and its maximum health to shrink at a rate of 0.5% per second.

He released his senses and scanned around, not detecting the presence of outsiders. He asked about the process just now and roughly guessed how the Hub Snake was poisoned.

"Good fellow, directly tampering with the food, and actually hitting the jackpot by accident, what kind of luck is this..."

The corner of Han Xiao's eye twitched.

There were so many sub-dimensions, and the Hub Snake's choice of food was random, but it happened to win the grand prize. What was the probability of this, was physics even a thing?!

Could it be that so many mascots can't slightly dilute my heaven-defying luck?

Han Xiao secretly slandered, seeing the Hub Snake's health dropping sharply, he took out a tube of Aurora's potion and injected it into the Hub Snake's body. It immediately took effect, and the health immediately recovered.

However, the effect of the poisoning status did not weaken, and it was still hanging in the attribute bar. Although the health was full, the upper limit was still constantly decreasing.

Seeing this, Han Xiao gave the Hub Snake several more injections of Aurora's potion. The health recovery was just as fast, but they couldn't clear the poisoning status this time.

"This toxin is a bit powerful..."

Han Xiao's eyes narrowed slightly.

Given him some time, he could try to crack it, but with the blood loss efficiency of this toxin status, it would only take 200 seconds to clear the Hub Snake's health limit. This time was not enough.

"Alright, let's take the opportunity to experiment with the previous idea."

Han Xiao's heart moved, and he used [Life Transition - Virtual] on the Hub Snake that was suffering.

Now that he had three embryos in his hand, with the cost of trial and error, he originally wanted to experiment on the newborn cubs, but he didn't expect this Hub Snake to have an accident, so he simply tried this idea directly on it.

The Hub Snake's body flashed with streams of data and slowly began to virtualize, and its pain quickly began to diminish. The World Tree's toxin targeted biological genes, and at this time, the Hub Snake's life form began to transform, gradually becoming immune to the toxin's effects.

In this process, as the Hub Snake's body was virtualizing, the toxins in its body also automatically precipitated out, condensing into a drop of black-green liquid, suspended in mid-air.

Seeing that the situation had stabilized, Han Xiao raised his hand and sucked over this drop of toxin, squinted his eyes slightly, and unhesitatingly activated [The Bold Explorer].

"Although I'm not afraid of this kind of method, since you dare to send someone to come here to do tricks, I can't let you run away easily."