Not only did those mechanical eyeballs fall one after another…

Those Sun and Moon People players who lost the support of their mechanical eyeballs could not maintain their bodies with just the mechanical watches!

Thus, one by one, the bodies of the Sun and Moon People rapidly transformed into mechanical shells, cracks appearing everywhere, and very soon they shattered into pieces!

If it had been the Jiang Ye of the Grand Auditorium timeline, who experienced the auditorium incident…

he would have found this scene unbearably familiar!

Because the buzz-cut youth who stormed into the auditorium had his mechanical eyeballs suddenly fly out of control in the exact same way…

as if they were being sucked away by black little fish.

After that, the mechanical bodies, deprived of eyeball support, shattered into pieces…

At this moment the scenes unfolding on the Sun and Moon People players were identical to what had happened to the auditorium buzz-cut youth!

The only possible difference was—

the buzz-cut youth’s mechanical eyeballs flew up into the sky.

But the mechanical eyeballs of this batch of Sun and Moon People players were falling down into the earth!

They fell pair by pair, sliding along the “pores” of that scalp-like ground in the Forest of Oddities, drilling into the earth and disappearing!

And as those mechanical eyeballs uncontrollably plunged down…

Chen Cang’s attempt at enforcement naturally ended in nothing.

At the same time, with a large number of mechanical eyeballs falling into the ground, the scalp-like surface of the land began to tremble slowly!

The tremor was not large, but it felt like something was burrowing up out of the soil…

At this moment Chen Cang was audacious enough.

Relying on the Protagonist Halo, he actually strode several meters toward the source of the movement.

As the distance closed, through the mist-blurred sight he finally saw clearly—

Three youth-like players lay collapsed on the ground with terrified faces, hands covering their eyes as if enduring excruciating pain…

And behind those three youths lay a large pile of shattered mechanical fragments on the ground!

Besides that…

Chen Cang saw at a glance an extremely bizarre existence!

At first glance it looked like a watch.

But at the ends of the watchband on both sides, each was connected to a mechanical eyeball!

Those two mechanical eyeballs, like the ones that had just uncontrollably fallen into the ground, seemed to be drawn by some force, as if they were about to burrow into the soil.

However, the watch they were attached to held the pair of eyeballs back.

In the end the eyeballs only pressed tightly against the “pores” of the scalp-like ground…

While the watchbands and the dial remained floating in midair.

But…

Chen Cang could plainly see that—

the connected watchbands and the floating dial looked strange…

The two watchbands had lengthened and become slender, coated with a layer of mist.

And the dial, which had originally been a flat disc, could be seen “bulging.”

The “disc” gradually swelled into a “sphere”…

Even within that foggy sphere, it seemed something else floated!

At first Chen Cang thought it was some weird thing evolved from the hands of the watch.

Until—

as the two watchbands slowly merged into a longer single band.

As the presence floating in the misty sphere became increasingly distinct…

Chen Cang couldn’t help but internally exclaim!

Because when he looked again at that so-called “sphere”…

he inexplicably got the feeling… “Is that thing a placenta?!”

The critical question… was this really just a feeling?!

Jiang Ye, still wearing the “Cheng Lin” wristwatch, naturally understood better than Chen Cang—

this sudden and inexplicable mutation was evidently the result of the experiment from 100 minutes ago finally producing results! 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

And that Sun and Moon Person used as a lab rat actually randomly triggered a “rebirth effect” under the influence of an SSS-grade Luck talent!

Yes, Jiang Ye strongly suspected that this change was caused by the legendary “rebirth state”!

This “rebirth state” had caused the Sun and Moon Person to undergo a violent transformation after the 100-minute near-death period ended!

It even directly caused all the surrounding mechanical eyeballs to “lose control” and fall into the ground…

Of course, the mechanical eyeballs’ “loss of control” might be understood in another way.

According to the rules of the Sun People world—

“Newborns” naturally occupy the apex of the power pyramid.

Therefore, it follows that all mechanical eyeballs would obey the commands of this “power apex.”

So, to assist the birth of the “newborn”…

the mechanical eyeballs did not “lose control” randomly and fall into the earth.

Their descent into the ground might have been following the “power” rule, aimed at greeting the birth of this “newborn”…

And this “newborn”…

currently looked exactly like… an even younger-than-newborn placenta!

Inside the fog-shrouded “sphere” there faintly floated a round creature slowly stretching its limbs…

And the watchband connecting the “sphere” to the earth looked, at this moment, like the “umbilical cord” between mother and infant!

So from this perspective…

the “mother” of this “newborn”…

seemed to be the land of this misty Forest of Oddities, the giant scalp-like ground…

the earth mother…

the newborn connected to the umbilical cord…

For a moment, Jiang Ye felt an indescribable shock rise in his heart.

His Guiwen clone, because the mechanical bodies of the Sun and Moon People had shattered, had to return to Chen Cang’s body again.

He couldn’t help but sigh that Chen Cang’s Protagonist Halo was truly outrageous…

A situation that would be almost certainly fatal to ordinary Moon People players…

He actually did nothing and survived purely by luck!

Jiang Ye even started to suspect slightly—

maybe the SSS-grade Luck effect alone was insufficient to randomly produce a “rebirth state”?

Only when stacked with Chen Cang’s Protagonist Halo did the lab rat randomly obtain the “rebirth state,” and this extremely rare “rebirth state” broke Chen Cang’s seemingly inevitable death?

It was indeed quite possible.

After all, during the prior experiment the three Sun People used two SSS-grade Luck Sun and Moon People for the test.

Now, only one had randomly produced a “rebirth state.”

It really looked like—

the appearance of this “rebirth state” was not only the result of the SSS-grade Luck effect.

More crucially, it also had Chen Cang’s Protagonist Halo backing…

So in that sense, the Protagonist Halo’s effect… might be even stronger than the so-called SSS-grade Luck!

Actually it wasn’t hard to understand.

From a conceptual standpoint the two words “Protagonist Halo” are inherently more powerful than “Luck.”

Chances are high that it is a more advanced form of existence than mere “Luck”…

While Guiwen Jiang Ye’s mind reeled at this, he soon witnessed even more of the Protagonist Halo’s might!

He saw the umbilical cord connecting the “newborn” and the earth continuously lengthen…

That umbilical cord, in appearance, astonishingly began to resemble the Forest of Oddities’ Hair Trees!

Chen Cang’s vision was limited, but relying on the Protagonist Halo’s effect he daringly climbed along that umbilical-cord tree which was endlessly rising into the sky…

He even couldn’t help but mutter inwardly to Guiwen Jiang Ye:

“This is amazing! Don’t you think each Hair Tree’s top might be connected to a ‘placenta’?”

“People in this era supposedly get stronger the younger they are…”

“So maybe those ‘placentas’ are like super-powered Tang Sanzang meat, eat them and you gain immortality or ascend on the spot?”

“…”

Jiang Ye did not know how to answer at once.

But he had to admit, Chen Cang was quite a character…

When it came to the taboo of “eating placentas” his tone was filled with expectation and excitement.

As if, if eating placenta truly made you stronger, he would not hesitate to do so…

But in fact, it turned out the placenta-like prize was not meant for him.

As Chen Cang struggled up the ever-lengthening, thickening umbilical-cord tree, he suddenly seemed to sense something, his eyes flashing bright.

At the same time, the toad tongue he had earlier forcibly pulled out suddenly extended from his mouth again, lengthening continuously…

Like a nimble long snake, it wound its way up the umbilical-cord.

With the help of that long snake, Chen Cang’s climbing speed increased.

He looked like a light-footed hero from a martial arts drama, lightly touching the umbilical-cord tree with his toes and leaping upward!

Of course, it would have been nicer to ignore that the thing helping him fly was the tongue protruding from his throat…

Soon, Guiwen Jiang Ye, riding Chen Cang’s flight, pushed through the mist and saw clearly—

what had been a fist-sized “placenta” had swollen to two or three times larger than an ordinary pregnant woman’s belly…

At that size, without the mist blocking sight, from the ground it truly looked like a round moon hanging among the branches…

Placenta…

pregnant belly…

moon…

This made Jiang Ye recall his absurd female pregnant clone.

Coincidentally that pregnant clone’s name was… Jiang Yue.

While Jiang Ye’s mind was vaguely distracted, another long “tongue” shot from the depths of the Forest of Oddities, directly aimed at the skyward placenta!

The long tongue was a rotten cyan-gray, making Guiwen Jiang Ye immediately recall the stinking toad Chen Cang had pulled from his own throat earlier…

So…

a moon-eating toad?!

What the hell?! The Protagonist Halo worked again?!

The “moon-eating toad” that even the Mysterious Existence claimed to not understand…

Chen Cang really managed to touch one so quickly thanks to the Protagonist Halo?!

Jiang Ye couldn’t help but marvel again at the terror of the Protagonist Halo!

It seemed the Mysterious Existence had not chosen Chen Cang wrongly…

And Chen Cang’s suddenly shining eyes clearly sensed the moon-eating toad in advance!

The cyan-gray long tongue wrapped around the giant placenta in an instant!

The long tongue coiled round and round, directly covering the entire placenta under its coils…

Then, the long tongue that had wrapped the whole placenta tugged hard toward the depths of the Forest of Oddities it extended from!

Thus the entire giant placenta was yanked off the umbilical cord, severed completely from the cord’s connection!

Chen Cang’s quick reflexes let him, as the long tongue dragged the giant placenta away, extend his own tongue and wrap it around the placenta, so that he too was pulled along with the placenta by that enormous cyan-gray long tongue…

At that time Jiang Ye experienced a brief internal struggle—

if Guiwen Jiang Ye left with Chen Cang now…

then the two clones that had finally reunited would again fall into a state of “lost contact.”

But in the end Guiwen Jiang Ye remained parasitic in Chen Cang, going along with this “lost contact.”

After getting used to it, clone disconnection wasn’t such a big deal.

All clones perform their duties separately, exploring different places and events…

They would reunite eventually.

And such reunions would certainly yield more and richer information…

Thus—

with the giant placenta and Chen Cang pulled away by the cyan-gray long tongue…

the area of the Forest of Oddities where the three Sun People players had been calmed once more.

When that “newborn” was born just now, the three Sun People players’ mechanical eyeballs had been drawn into the earth.

But when the newborn placenta was carried away by the cyan-gray long tongue…

three pairs of mechanical eyeballs reappeared under the ground here.

They quickly returned voluntarily to the hollow eye sockets of the three Sun People players.

However, the mechanical eyeballs that belonged to the Sun and Moon People did not rise back up out of the earth…

The three Sun People players took a long time to recover from the shock of the incident…

Their adopted juvenile faces still showed clear terror.

After a long moment of doubtful glances, one Sun Person couldn’t help exclaiming:

“I just scanned it—”

“That guy’s called Chen Cang! His talent column has so many talents you can’t take them in at a glance!”

“And the most conspicuous is an SSS-grade Divine Assistance talent!”

“Besides that, in his skill column that’s also too full to see, there’s an SSS-grade skill called Protagonist Halo!”

“Protagonist Halo… So just now, could it have been his Protagonist Halo activating?! And we were the ones who suffered because of it…”

The other two Sun People looked visibly shaken.

After a while, the one wearing the face of “Cheng Lin” said in a low voice:

“Maybe because of his Protagonist Halo’s influence, our two experiments over the hundred minutes really randomly produced a ‘rebirth state’…”

“However, this ‘rebirth state’ doesn’t seem like a good thing!”

“At least, before it fully births from the ‘placenta,’ the ‘newborn’ seems unable to protect itself!”

“You saw it in your eyeballs too, right? The placenta in the sky was wrapped up and taken away by a cyan-gray long tongue…”

The other two Sun People nodded solemnly.

Only then did Jiang Ye realize that although the three Sun People players’ mechanical eyeballs had fallen into the ground, they still seemed to possess sight beyond ordinary people.

Their mechanical eyeballs saw the placenta being wrapped and taken by the giant tongue.

And when the eyeballs returned to the Sun People players’ sockets, that footage was synchronized to them…

Even more unexpectedly to Jiang Ye—

the one wearing his “Cheng Lin” suddenly mumbled out of the blue:

“Moon infant… moon-eating toad…”