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"...is it pregnant?" Sun Xiaowu couldn\'t resist asking upon seeing the monarch-grade lifeform\'s distended belly.

Zhu shook her head. "I considered that possibility, but there\'s no sign of life within the lifeform\'s body."

Zhang Lie himself stepped forward to have a closer look at the strange monarch-grade lifeform. Within its body was a fearsome strength beyond the likes of a monarch-grade lifeform, but even so, the lifeform hadn\'t managed to break through. It was as though there were some impermeable barrier preventing its evolution.

Zhang Lie had no idea how to deal with such a situation, either.

"Is it a restriction of the very realm itself...?" That was Zhang Lie\'s conclusion.

The special lifeform looked to be in great pain, its body stretched far beyond what was ordinary or normal.

Glowing light pulsed across its belly.

Zhu asked, "Zhang Lie, do you have any idea what to do?"

Zhang Lie shook his head. "I don\'t have a clue, either. If its condition hasn\'t improved by the time I return next, it might be time to kill it."

The special monarch-grade lifeform lying on the ground keened in agony, but Zhang Lie ignored it. After all, the reason he was rearing these lifeforms was to consume them. The reason he had allowed the monarch-grade lifeform to continue growing was to see if it could evolve beyond monarch-grade. Since its growth had stopped, there was no need to keep it alive any longer.

"Let\'s slaughter the other monarch-grade lifeform, then."

Zhang Lie: a disaster-grade lifeform

Techniques: Rippling Walk (pinnacle), Three-Wave Crescendo (pinnacle), Calm Waters (pinnacle), Fists of the Silent Sea (pinnacle), The Boundless Blade (pinnacle), Eclipse (pinnacle), Syzygy (pinnacle), Ninesoul Dragonblade (pinnacle), Blade of the Heavens (pinnacle)

Genes: Basic, 160; Mutated, 150; Superior, 150; Peak, 150; Disaster, 100; Monarch, 45

Soulshards: White Grub (superior), Blood Ant (superior), Potbellied Toad (mutated), Eternalspring Cocoon (superior), Dragonwolf (superior), Moonlight Wyrm (peak), Golden Roc (peak), Dragonwhale (disaster), Mistmeld Clam (disaster)

[You successfully killed a monarch-grade titanspawn crab. By consuming the flesh of the peak-grade titanspawn crab, you may receive one to ten monarch gene fragments.]

[For consuming the flesh of a monarch-grade titanspawn crab, you received one monarch gene fragment. Current total: 54]

[For consuming the flesh of a monarch-grade titanspawn crab, you received one monarch gene fragment. Current total: 55]

Upon consuming the newly evolved monarch-grade lifeform, the members of Team Zenith patted their bellies in satisfaction. They had obtained ten more monarch gene fragments, and their strength evolved once more.

Yang Ze said, "Right, Captain, there\'s something wrong with the high-dimensional space around here."

Sun Xiaowu frowned. "What? Why?"

Yang Ze replied, "The reason none of you can sense anything is because you don\'t have sufficient facility with space—and because that instability hasn\'t spread to the shallower layers."

Zhang Lie asked, "What problem?"

"Rather than describing it myself, it\'d be better if we went straight to the source."

Yang Ze modulated his own energy as he opened a portal to a deeper layer of space. He had managed to train and refine that ability further; as long as he were able to enter a deeper layer of space than his opponent, he would never lose.

Yang Ze\'s mastery of this ability was still relatively weak, however, and it had taken him twenty whole minutes to create such a portal. That said, it was a significant improvement over what had happened last time.

The thirteenth layer of space was filled with cracks, which the will of the third realm was steadily repairing.

Entering that space caused Li Qianlin, who was relatively weak, to experience a bout of discomfort. Noticing this, Zhang Lie immediately stabilized the surrounding space with genetic energy.

Panting, Yang Ze called out, "The problem is on a deeper layer of space. Let me rest for a moment."

After ten minutes, Yang Ze created another portal, this time to the fifteenth layer. Upon witnessing what had happened to the fifteenth layer of space, Zhang Lie turned serious.

There was a huge hole in the fifteenth layer, one that had resulted from the king of chaos\' explosion. Space was continuing to collapse around that hole, as though it were a whirlpool leading to the depths of primordial chaos.

The same problem was plaguing the deeper layers of space.

Zhang Lie felt a headache starting to form. "That king of chaos—he\'s left us with a huge problem!"

Sun Mengmeng murmured, "After all these days, the problem seems to have worsened..."

Li Feng tutted. "What has the will of the world been doing? Is it skiving off?"

Zhang Lie shook his head. "No, the will of the third realm can\'t fix this issue."

"What do you mean?" Yang Ze asked.

"If the will of the third realm were whole, it would have been able to patch up this hole in mere moments. However, what the king of chaos failed to recognize was that the fragmentary nature of the will of the third realm left it incapable of even fixing a hole of this magnitude at all.

Sun Xiaowu grumbled, "So we have to clean up his mess?"

Yang Ze seemed very worried. "We can\'t just let this hole propagate..."

Zhang Lie squinted. "Given the rate at which the will of the world is repairing the hole and the rate at which it\'s expanding, by the time the will of the world fixes the shallow layers, the 24th layer of space will have collapsed entirely.

"What will happen in that case?" Sun Mengmeng asked.

"Space will collapse..." Yang Ze replied.

Zhang Lie continued, "These deeper layers of space aren\'t located above the three thousand worlds, nor below them. Rather, they exist nowhere and everywhere—they\'re the foundation of space, as well as their barrier. Once these deeper layers collapse, there\'ll essentially be a sinkhole that forms, destabilizing the shallower layers. The entire third realm might end up being destroyed."

Li Qianlin cried out in panic, "Zhang Lie, is this something you can fix?"

Zhang Lie sighed. "Unfortunately, I have no such ability."

Yang Ze mirrored his sigh. "To be able to repair high-dimensional space... this is something that requires exceptional accomplishment in spatial manipulation. Perhaps the king of chaos might be able to manage it, but it\'s not something I can do anything about."

Sun Mengmeng\'s face was serious. "Zhang Lie, Captain, given the circumstances, I believe that the best course of action is to notify the highest authority Hong Tianqi immediately, then to activate the emergency evacuation order in the third realm to send the third-realm hunters back to the Milky Way. We can re-evaluate once everyone has evacuated."