This Text Adventure Game is definitely poisonous-Chapter 956 - 453 The Weakness of the Divine Beast

Late at night, inside the pet shop’s study, Lin Xue was diligently researching the log before her by the light of a lamp.

The journal penned by the Black Clothed One was not written in the standard Star Spirit Language, but in some ancient script similar to it, comparable to the difference between Mandarin and dialects, which presented considerable difficulty for Lin Xue’s translation efforts.

Fortunately, Vivian was right beside her, and such obscure texts were no trouble for her.

With Vivian’s help, the decryption proceeded smoothly.

"... This unknown creature, separated from the body of the Fool, named by the Fool as ’Divine Beast,’ generally appears as cotton-like tufts and possesses fluidity similar to a liquid. It can silently hide within the human brain, influencing an individual’s cognition and behavior by controlling their consciousness. It uses the human body as a placenta to quickly nurture new offspring and, once the young are formed, spreads into other Fools’ bodies..."

The above is an excerpt from page ten of the journal.

In the pages before this, the Black Clothed One had already conducted nine experiments on a Fool parasitized by the Divine Beast.

The journal is essentially composed of accounts from one experiment after another. Each experiment is recorded with a specific number, interspersed occasionally with summary explanations like this one.

Lin Xue flipped to the last few pages and discovered that the Black Clothed One had conducted a staggering total of more than nine thousand seven hundred experiments!

"Experiment number 13... Test target of Divine Beast parasitism, test subject: Titan... Test result: failure..."

...

"Experiment number 14... Attempted to let the Titan absorb a Divine Crystal, transforming it into a divine creature, repeated the parasitism experiment, test result: still failed, conclusion: the Divine Beast cannot parasitize Titans!"

...

"Experiment number 27... Testing the Divine Beast’s parasitism on sprites... Test result: failure... Divine Beasts cannot parasitize sprites..."

...

Lin Xue didn’t have time to look through each process in detail and could only focus on the results.

The Black Clothed One’s first few hundred experiments were primarily testing the parasitic range of the Divine Beast.

The Black Clothed One had carried out extensive testing on various species from the Star Spirit World and ultimately concluded: no ordinary Star Spirit World creature that has never contacted any divine power will be parasitized by the Divine Beast.

However, when divinity was injected into a creature’s body, species with a high resemblance to humans such as the human race, sprites, vampires, and werewolves were all successfully parasitized by Divine Beasts, whereas other intelligent species like titans, sprites, and goblins still would not become targets even when infused with divinity.

Furthermore, the species that could be parasitized all had one thing in common: they were precisely those that could be utilized by the Fool to masquerade as their skin!

It was hard to believe this was just a coincidence.

Thus, the Black Clothed One ultimately concluded, "The Divine Beast is specifically targeting the Fool; they are the nemesis of the Fool and must be a divine punishment for the Fool’s transgressions!"

As for the Black Clothed One’s clearly subjective conclusion, Lin Xue didn’t pay much attention—after all, even the divine race itself had been annihilated by the Divine Beast. How could such a creature possibly be created by the divine to counter the Fool?

Moreover, the Fool was not a species that existed naturally but transformed from the human race, theoretically, all original inhabitants of the Star Spirit World could potentially morph into Fools.

Therefore, to say the Divine Beast specifically targets the Fool is not accurate. It is more likely that this creature specifically targets the divine race, and the emergence of the Fool is merely the process of mortals gradually transforming into divine beings.

Because every Fool holds the potential to transform into a divine being, they are ’implicated’ and identified by the Divine Beast as a target for attack.

"In conclusion, the true condition for parasitism by the Divine Beast is not determined by species, but whether a creature is attempting to ’approach’ divinity,"

Lin Xue wrote down this conclusion on paper.

In this sense, Divine Beasts are more like a world’s ’immune mechanism,’ aiming to eliminate all divine beings and prevent the emergence of new gods from mortals.

As long as mortals stay orderly, stick to routine, and live their lives in the Star Spirit World, they will not trigger their enmity; conversely, once a mortal oversteps their bounds and attempts to approach divinity in any way, they will immediately become a target for elimination!

This is also precisely why the Black Clothed One and the Wizard Association are so averse to the Fool, striving to delineate boundaries from the Fool and demonizing them, because once someone becomes a Fool, or even wishes to become one, they might attract the attention of this dreadful creature.

Lin Xue shook her head and continued reading.

The subsequent experiments finally began to study the characteristics of the Divine Beast itself.

"Experiment number 754, testing the parasitic pathways of Divine Beast..."

"Experiment number 1246, testing the intelligence level of Divine Beast..."

"Experiment number 4211, testing the survivability of Divine Beast in non-parasitic conditions..."

...

Lin Xue patiently flipped through the experiment accounts, occasionally jotting down useful information on paper.

This was a significantly complex task, and even with Lin Xue’s speed reading which skipped many details and focused only on conclusions, it still took nearly a day and a half to finally finish flipping through the entire journal.

Shutting the last page of the journal, Lin Xue sighed and then looked at the paper next to her, now densely covered with handwritten text.

At this moment, the paper had a total of more than one hundred sixty entries, all points she recorded during the review process.

Of course, most of these were trivial conclusions, and there wasn’t much information that could actually be helpful in the current situation.

Lin Xue picked up the paper and read it carefully, eventually circling six items.

First, after a Divine Beast enters a living body, it does not immediately complete the parasitism but requires a process that lasts about 3-5 hours.

The entire parasitism process is completed subtly and unknowingly to the host. By the time the host becomes aware, their consciousness and thoughts have already been completely occupied by the Divine Beast, leaving no chance for change.

Additionally, perhaps to perfectly disguise itself, the Divine Beast that has completed parasitism will show certain similarities with the host, possessing some of the original host’s memories, and exhibiting behavior and personality traits similar to the host’s prior state.

Second, when a Divine Beast is within a living body, it remains nearly invisible and undetectable by various scanning devices and abilities. Therefore, one cannot distinguish whether someone is parasitized until the host is dissected.

However, some individuals with sufficiently strong mental capabilities seem to be able to feel the ongoing parasitism before the process is completed.

Third, a Divine Beast exposed to the air will die quickly, and must be stored in special devices that simulate the human environment to remain viable.

After the host dies, the Divine Beast can still survive inside the deceased’s body for about an hour. During this time, if the host revives, they remain parasitized, so killing the host while they have a chance to revive is ineffective, as the Divine Beast will still be present after revival.

When the host is about to be killed, and there are other potential hosts nearby, the Divine Beast will activate a self-preservation mechanism. At the moment of the host’s death, it discreetly exits and enters another host, completing the parasitism anew.

Fourth, once a person is parasitized, a new Divine Beast larva will be born inside the body every one to three days. However, there is a limit to the number of larvae that can be stored in the same host body, seemingly proportional to the host’s size; in ordinary humans, there can be a maximum of two to three larvae. These larvae are deployed when the host comes into close proximity to other potential hosts, thus fulfilling the Divine Beast’s mission of spreading.

Fifth, and most importantly, based on the Divine Beast’s movement speed in the air and its survival time, the Black Clothed One determined the maximum effective distance for transmission of the Divine Beast—ten meters!

If the distance between two individuals exceeds ten meters, even if one of them releases a Divine Beast larva, the larva will die before it reaches its target due to exposure to the air.

Thus, theoretically, as long as all suspicious individuals are kept more than ten meters apart from each other, it would ensure that the transmission pathway of the Divine Beast is cut off!

"Ten meters, huh..."

Lin Xue looked at the last conclusion and let out a slight sigh of relief.

While ten meters isn’t very far, the problem is that to fight a Titan, usually a large group of people is needed, which leads to crowded positioning.

Moreover, since the Divine Beast has the ability to actively detach from its current host and parasitize the nearest other host, it cannot be guaranteed that a newly infected person won’t spread it to others shortly thereafter.

That means, when actually fighting with Titans, once a player has been infected by a larva spread by the Titan, everyone within a ten-meter radius becomes a risk target and must be isolated immediately to completely halt the spread of infection.

As for how to achieve this, Lin Xue didn’t need to think further; she simply had to release this information. She believed that with such detailed intelligence, the think tanks of various countries would have plenty of strategies to handle it.

With that thought, Lin Xue uploaded the documents to the City Lord group and tagged others, asking them to help spread it.

[Baron: ???]

[Blue Beard: Wow!]

[Son of Heaven: ...]

[Jiu You: Red Sickle Girl, is the information in this report... all true?]

[Red Sickle Girl: I can’t guarantee it’s 100% accurate, but there’s a more than 90% chance that it is.]

Lin Xue replied.

After all, the information was provided by the Black Clothed One, and although it’s not impossible that they might want to deceive the Fool by giving fake data, it’s unlikely. Considering the importance, if they really dared to deceive them, the Fools would retaliate fiercely against the Star Spirit World before perishing, and the outcome would surely be mutually detrimental.

[Son of Heaven: Amazing!]

[Solomon: Indeed amazing. This information is too important!]

[Sherlock Holmes: Boss is too powerful, now we can finally see a glimpse of hope through the disaster...]

[Jiu You: Alright, time is limited, everyone, hurry up and pass on the information!]

...

The City Lords briefly marveled and then immediately got to work without further ado.

Within just an hour, the report had been disseminated in various forms to every player currently fighting at the major Black Hole fronts.

...

At this time, under the Pacific Black Hole, tens of thousands of top players, gathered from around the world, were moving in small groups, urgently clearing the scattered Sea Beasts from the surface.

With Divine Arts and a sufficient number advantage, the previously fallen tens of thousands of Sea Beasts lost their threat instantly, being systematically defeated by teams of players. The number of Sea Beasts was visibly decreasing rapidly, with a third already cleared within a day.

On a distant small island, Son of Heaven and Blood Emperor, looking at the rapidly spreading latest reports in the group chat, also sighed in relief.

The importance of the report needs no mention; just the certainty of a ’ten-meter’ safe distance could potentially save countless lives in the future!

Even though it’s not easy to keep everyone ten meters apart in combat, there is now more leeway, reducing the necessity to resort to extreme fratricide.

If someone accidentally enters a danger zone in the future, there would be no need to fear immediate betrayal and killing by teammates. They could first isolate themselves to await observation. Only under these conditions would players dare to engage fully in the fight against the Titans.