Lin Yuan didn't lose himself in the pleasure of his new strength. He eagerly sank his consciousness back into his Divine Domain.
The time-flow indicator on the domain panel showed that three full years had passed inside.
The sight before him gave his heart a jolt.
The once-empty, lifeless basin had been utterly transformed.
At its center, the dark-red [Abyssal Blood Pool] still churned and bubbled.
Around it, four military settlements had risen, built from enormous scorched rocks and black carapaces.
Population data flickered on the light screen.
[Kin: Petrified Goblin]
[Population: 800]
With the blood pool suppressing pain and repairing their bodies, and the mutant cockroaches providing a high-pressure combat environment, the Petrified Goblins' reproduction and survival rates had reached terrifying levels.
The original sixty survivors had ballooned to eight hundred.
Even more exciting was that these goblins were no longer beasts that could only wave wooden clubs around.
They had developed distinct troop roles.
To the camp's left stood three hundred sturdy goblins nearly two meters tall. They held giant cockroach backplates more than two meters high as shields.
An unmistakable heavy front line.
To the right, four hundred slightly leaner, tougher goblins carried sharp three-meter bone spears honed from cockroach forelimbs.
The remaining hundred had fashioned crude slings from thick insect tendons. Fist-sized chunks of scorched rock soaked in venom hung at their waists.
They were no longer lowly cannon fodder, but a disciplined, formidable wasteland army.
Lin Yuan nodded in satisfaction.
Before he could examine their attributes closely, however, the Divine Domain Terminal's screen began flashing a piercing red.
Beep! Beep!
[Warning! Your Divine Domain's ecological chain is facing total collapse!]
[Warning! Kin nutrition is severely imbalanced. Current caloric intake cannot sustain physical expenditure!]
[Alert: The Ash Worm species has gone extinct.]
[Alert: Mutant Blackrock Mushroom stocks have fallen below critical levels. Extinction imminent.]
Lin Yuan frowned and looked toward the farm area below.
It was a catastrophe.
The once-flourishing carpet of Blackrock Mushrooms had been eaten down to the roots. Even the soil underneath had been turned over.
To fill their stomachs, goblins and cockroaches had scoured the wasteland of nearly everything edible.
Eight hundred berserkers, conditioning their bodies at high intensity and burning through vital blood every day, consumed an astronomical amount of food.
The goblins had eaten the Ash Worms like snacks, nests and all.
Spore Mushrooms and cockroach meat could fill a stomach, but provided very few calories.
It was like making heavy infantry perform extreme weighted training every day, then feeding them nothing but boiled cabbage.
Their bellies were full, but their muscles received no nourishment. Their vital blood was being depleted instead.
"Shit." Lin Yuan rubbed his aching brow. "Took a step so big I split my balls."
This was the cost of mass-producing an army.
He had forcibly matured in three years an ecosystem that ordinary gods would develop slowly. Now every hidden logistics problem had exploded at once.
He needed an alternative, high-calorie food source immediately.
Lin Yuan disconnected from the domain and opened his eyes.
Conventional energy-rich crops wouldn't survive in a wasteland. Whatever could survive had no nutritional value.
After a moment's thought, a face came to mind.
He opened his terminal's contacts, found his homeroom teacher Lei Yan, and pressed Call.
The connection went through quickly. Lei Yan's sharply defined face appeared in the holographic projection.
He sat at his desk, holding a cup of strong tea, his brows slightly furrowed.
"Lin Yuan?" His voice was low. "Calling at this hour? Something wrong with your domain?"
As far as Lei Yan knew, a commoner student who started with an F-rank wasteland was lucky to survive the first few days.
A call now probably meant all his kin had died and he wanted to ask about a mortal's logistics career.
"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Lei." Lin Yuan looked composed, his voice unhurried. "There is a problem with my domain's ecological chain."
"I used some loan money to buy a fast-breeding mutant beast as food. Its population got out of control and ate every plant in the domain."
He paused, then reached the central question. "My kin population has grown quite a bit, and their daily energy requirements are huge."
"I'd like your advice. In an extremely hostile environment, is there a way to quickly solve the food problem for high-consumption kin?"
Lei Yan's teacup stopped in midair.
The expression on his scarred face froze for two seconds.
He looked Lin Yuan's holographic image up and down. His gaze gradually changed.
Uncontrolled reproduction? A growing kin population? High energy requirements?
Those terms together meant the student hadn't given up on himself. He had actively introduced a foreign species to create an ecological struggle.
Lei Yan set down his tea, undisguised approval in his eyes.
He knew Lin Yuan was a fallen hero's orphan, raised by a disabled veteran.
In this age of family connections and resources, drawing a wasteland was a death sentence for a poor child.
Yet Lin Yuan's eyes held no despair or resentment. Only the calm determination to find a way out.
Good kid.
"Conventional farming won't save your wasteland." Lei Yan leaned forward, resting his hand on the desk, and went straight to the heart of the problem.
"With an environment that hostile, forget natural agricultural production. What you need is a 'flesh factory.'"
Lin Yuan's gaze sharpened. "A flesh factory?"
"Exactly." Lei Yan nodded. "The military is stationed on the Abyssal front, and logistics routes get cut all the time."
"Feeding hundreds of thousands of high-grade kin every day takes an astronomical amount of supplies."
"To solve that problem, the military developed a mutant plant called the [Abyssal Carrion Tree]."
His fingers tapped the desk as his speech quickened.
"It needs neither sunlight nor clean water. Bury dead monsters or unwanted flesh beneath its roots, and it will digest them quickly, producing a constant supply of high-calorie flesh fruits."
"They look like tumors and taste like rotten rubber, but they're filling. And they contain a terrifying amount of biological energy. As long as there are corpses, the tree keeps producing."
Lin Yuan's heart raced.
In future battles, enemy corpses could feed his kin.
War sustaining war. A perfect closed loop.
"But this is military-controlled material. You can't buy it on the market." Lei Yan changed tack and looked at him. "As it happens, I have a Carrion Tree branch decommissioned from the front."
"I was going to study its battle damage. Since you're so motivated, I'll let you have it for a thousand faith points. Half sale, half gift. Interested?"
"Yes. Thank you, Teacher."
Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Yuan transferred one thousand faith points through his terminal.
Clean, decisive, no dawdling.
Lei Yan paused at the instantly updated balance, then laughed heartily.
"Didn't even haggle, did you? Seems you've been busy these past few days. All right, I'll send it through the delivery channel right away."
The call ended.
Three minutes later, space rippled in Lin Yuan's bedroom.
A sealed alloy box wrapped in layer upon layer of sealing runes hit the floor.
Lin Yuan stepped forward and threw open the lid.
At the bottom lay a dark-red mutant branch as thick as an arm. Veinlike patterns covered its surface.
Its broken end was still writhing faintly.