Lin Yuan studied the gray sphere hovering above his palm.
It was no bigger than his thumb, giving off a cold, weighty glow.
The instant his fingertip touched it, he sensed the rhythm of a pure law.
This was the essence of a concept forcibly stripped free. It had neither physical substance nor impurities.
He looked down.
Across the three hundred thousand square kilometers of scorched earth, the hundred Gray Goblins had stopped screaming.
They no longer had the strength.
Poison gas poured down their airways and ravaged their internal organs. The cracked, searing ground beneath them burned their skin open.
Several of the frailest had rolled their eyes back, limbs jerking unnaturally as blood-streaked foam spilled from their mouths.
The divine academy's textbooks explicitly classified goblins as "nonrecyclable garbage."
Cowardly, weak, tiny-brained, and extremely short-lived. Apart from eating anything, they had no redeeming qualities.
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Even someone destitute would tighten their belt and save up for Kobolds when raising an army early on.
"But what happens if I put garbage in a wasteland, then patch it with a law?"
A sharp gleam flashed through Lin Yuan's eyes.
Without hesitation, he willed it done.
His Divine Domain panel automatically deducted one hundred faith points to serve as an energy medium.
He spread his fingers, crushing the [Stoneskin] sphere in his hand.
Talent activated—Creation Extraction: Trait Bestowal!
The sphere burst into a hundred gray streaks of light.
They cut through the ash-filled sky and plunged into the dying Gray Goblins below.
The mutation began at once.
"Kree—GAK!!!"
All hundred Gray Goblins sprang from the ground and clawed at themselves.
Their skin transformed before his eyes.
The sickly green surface shriveled as its moisture was drained away in an instant.
Great cracks spread across it like a dried riverbed.
From deep within those bloody fissures, a gray-black, rocky outer layer erupted, rapidly covering their entire bodies.
Bones lengthened. Muscles swelled. Sickening cracks filled the air.
Five short minutes later, the transformation was complete.
Silence fell over the scorched earth. A hundred entirely new creatures stood upright.
Their small bodies, formerly less than a meter tall, had grown by over thirty centimeters.
Their limbs were thick and powerful, their bodies covered in hard plates of gray-black rock armor.
Even the battered wooden clubs in their hands had gained a rough stone coating, becoming heavy petrified flails.
They gulped down the poisoned air.
No coughing. No poison blotches.
Their hard stone skin insulated them from the searing ground and the corrosive mist.
A light screen opened within Lin Yuan's consciousness.
[Log: Your kin have undergone an unknown beneficial mutation following interference by a higher-order law!]
[Log: Race renamed—Petrified Goblin.]
[Log: Racial grade advanced to—3-star Black Iron!]
Lin Yuan immediately opened his kin's detailed attribute panel.
[Race]: Petrified Goblin
[Grade]: 3-star Black Iron (Low Tier)
[Traits]:
1. Wasteland Adaptation: Immunity to weak toxins. Greatly reduces the adverse effects of high-temperature environments.
2. Stoneskin Armor: Skin becomes rock-like. Physical defense increased by 300%.
Staring at the last line, Lin Yuan let out a long breath.
Kin grades followed a rigid hierarchy.
In the textbooks of this world of gods, that hierarchy was exceedingly strict.
Black Iron, Bronze, and Silver were the low tiers. Gold, Platinum, and Diamond were the middle tiers. Transcendent, Epic, and Legend were the high tiers.
Each major grade was further divided into one through nine stars.
To advance their kin, gods either had to let them breed for generations within a Divine Domain and gamble on the vanishingly small chance of a natural bloodline mutation, or spend astronomical sums of faith points on high-grade [Bloodline Cards] to feed them.
Ordinary Gray Goblins barely qualified for 1-star Black Iron. Advancement was out of the question.
Yet a single trait extracted from a piece of junk had broken that barrier, raising them directly to 3-star Black Iron.
Below him, the Petrified Goblins recovered from the pain of their transformation.
They felt the strength inside them, and the hostile environment that could no longer hurt them.
Dim-witted as they were, they instinctively understood one thing.
This was divine grace.
Thud. Thud.
A hundred Petrified Goblins fell to their knees on the burning earth. They raised both hands overhead and frantically knocked their foreheads against the ground toward the sky.
"Great Lord!"
"Praise Your mercy!"
Their fervent cries echoed across the wasteland.
Invisible threads of pure white faith rose from their heads and gathered deep within Lin Yuan's consciousness.
He hovered above them, looking down at his reborn creations.
His heartbeat quickened. His blood raced.
At last, he understood what was truly terrifying about the unique SSS-rank talent [Creation Extraction].
No limit on uses.
No upper ceiling.
Today he could give goblins [Stoneskin]. Tomorrow, he could give them [Berserk], [Reproduction], [Immense Strength], and [Bloodthirst].
With enough resources, he could stack traits without end!
Layer by layer, he could turn the universally acknowledged dregs of this world into titanic beasts capable of punching stars apart.
So what if he had started with a wasteland?
A wasteland full of stitched-together monsters could overturn the entire sea of stars.
After that surge of excitement, Lin Yuan quickly reined himself in and regained his composure.
He checked his mental condition. His temples ached faintly.
Extracting and bestowing traits consumed tremendous amounts of mental energy.
Faith points were an even greater concern.
Bestowing those hundred traits had cost one hundred points. His welfare balance was now nine hundred.
If he wanted more kin, or higher-grade conceptual traits, he would need mountains of faith points and an unending supply of "raw materials."
Where could he get materials?
With a thought, Lin Yuan withdrew his consciousness from his Divine Domain.
He opened his eyes in his dim bedroom.
The old wall clock ticked monotonously.
Raising his left hand, he opened the Deity Terminal on his wrist.
Iris recognition passed.
He logged into the Pantheon Trading Network, which spanned all of humanity's star regions.
A light screen projected into the air.
Brilliant, top-quality resource cards scrolled across the home page, dazzling to behold.
[Elven Mother Tree Seed]—Provides pure natural laws. Price: 300 million faith points.
[Platinum-Grade Miniature Elemental Volcano Card]—Alters Divine Domain terrain and greatly strengthens fire-type kin. Price: 90 million faith points.
[Angel Rebirth Pool]—A very small chance of hatching troops with Gold-grade potential. Price: 150 million faith points.
Lin Yuan glanced at the balance in the upper-right corner of his terminal: nine hundred faith points.
Expressionless, he swiped away those temptations to a life of crime.
Everyone wanted good things. For him, even looking was a waste of time right now.
He opened the advanced search options.
Amid the dense selection of filters, he scrolled straight to "Junk" at the very bottom.
His fingers tapped quickly across the virtual keyboard, entering several keywords:
[Abyssal Battlefield Remains]
[Cannot Be Purified]
[Unknown Curse]
[Worthless Scraps]
The world of gods had fought the Abyssal Void for tens of thousands of years.
Gods fell every day. Countless monsters were slain as well.
The spoils recovered from those battlefields were innumerable.
But the Abyssal presence was extremely contaminating.
The corpses of many high-grade monsters, and many damaged divine artifacts, had been deeply corrupted by the will of the Abyss.
Purifying them required the intervention of powerful gods, at a cost far exceeding the items' own value.
If someone simply threw them into a Divine Domain without purification, the Abyssal presence would gradually contaminate the land, drive its kin into madness and mutation, and ultimately collapse the domain.
That was why the trading network called such items "malignant growths."
Useless to keep, yet a shame to throw away.
Most were disposed of as garbage.
But to Lin Yuan, they were an inexhaustible treasure trove waiting to be mined.