Bai Cangshu Parasited

The cold, viscous life force was completely different from the blazing life force possessed by the Life Furnace of D45 World.

They were like the two extremes of ice and fire. One was vibrant, blazing life; the other was a collection of negative creations born from an abyss of deathly silence, cold and viscous, carrying a "life force" that sought to assimilate and dissolve all existence.

Bai Cangshu’s body had long been comparable to a humanoid dragon or Titan. It was a special form that allowed him, in human shape, to possess a terrifying physique surpassing countless races, and one that had once broken through the limits of a vessel.

The resentment accumulated by Symbiote Dragon Grendel over millions of years seemed to find some relief within this blazing body.

The so-called Living Abyss was a primordial dark energy entity that had existed before the universe was created, representing the concepts of Anti-Life and chaos within the multiverse.

Although this Symbiote Dragon Grendel could not compare to All-Black the Necrosword, forged by Nal, the God of Symbiotes, from the Living Abyss—a terrifying symbiote capable of killing members of the Celestials—

Grendel itself had been formed from a torn-off fragment of the abyss. In other words, it too possessed the properties of the Living Abyss.

That was precisely why Bai Cangshu valued it.

Bai Cangshu clenched his fists, feeling the cold, chilling force continuously pouring into his body. His flesh cells retreated in defeat, and his life force seemed to be dissolving, leaving behind a deficit.

This loss of life force far exceeded the scope of what regeneration could resolve. It was damaging the foundation of this body.

Yet Bai Cangshu did not resist. A violent consciousness began to emerge in his mind, along with countless flickering images.

The veins all over Bai Cangshu’s body gradually bulged. Red lines from ruptured blood vessels spread across the surface of his flesh, but they were soon replaced by black symbiote tissue.

"Ha…"

Bai Cangshu exhaled a breath of turbid air. The powerful force immediately halted the cold seawater rushing back in, as though it had struck an immense wall of pressure.

Bai Cangshu had extensive experience with erosion, infection, and even Body Snatching. He would not panic like others did.

Thus, even though his body looked as though it had reached its limit and was about to collapse, he remained calm, as if he saw everything clearly.

His will showed not the slightest sign of weakening.

He was merely waiting. He was waiting for the complete Symbiote Dragon to enter his body!

He wanted to use this creation from the opposite pole of life to complete his shattered Life Ladder and further liberate the essence of his life!

In truth, that was also the main reason he could abandon the increasingly chaotic battlefield in New York and come here.

In his previous mission worlds, Bai Cangshu had rarely taken the initiative to leave the Main Mission behind to uncover hidden world rewards. Even in the Jujutsu Kaisen world, discovering the Mount Tai Imperial Lord Ritual had merely been an incidental result of investigating the cause of Tokyo’s destruction.

He was not a reincarnator like White Face or Heaven’s Will, the kind inclined toward exploration and developing the plot. He preferred using pure violence to break through the Main Mission and seize his gains from it.

But the Marvel World was simply too vast, with an astonishing number of "good things," to the point that even someone as greedy as Bai Cangshu could not resist using the Heart of Slaanesh on White Face to empty out all manner of "knowledge" from the other man’s mind.

"Urgh—"

Bai Cangshu let out an unconscious roar. It was proof that the other will in his mind was growing stronger and stronger.

Grendel was a terrifying symbiote capable of possessing even members of the Celestials. Bai Cangshu had never thought he could resist its parasitism.

He continued to experience the sensation of another will trying to suppress and erode his own, the feeling of the flesh within his body being parasitized by another, colder and more peculiar kind of flesh.

Bai Cangshu’s vision went black. His sight had been stripped away, likely because his optic nerves had been parasitized or damaged. The next moment, his hearing began to vanish as well.

Bai Cangshu blinked and felt as though he had appeared in a pitch-black void.

Everything around him was silent. There were no signs of life, nor was there any cosmic starry sky.

Bai Cangshu kept looking around. He even anticipated whether an eye might open within this void and then kill him.

But there was nothing. This place seemed to be a void where life did not exist, true chaos.

Humans always believed they liked quiet, but in truth, they could not endure absolute silence.

Every environment you considered quiet still contained some sound: your breathing, your heartbeat, the faint chirping of cicadas, the soft rustle of wind passing through treetops…

All the sounds humans received, even unconsciously, formed a special rhythm and echo.

It was precisely because those sounds existed that humans had another clear proof of their own existence.

From a philosophical perspective, a person’s self was actually an existence validated by self-confirmation: the I.

That I needed to be observed in various ways before it could become concrete.

Through sight, humans could observe what I looked like;

Through hearing, humans could observe my voice and position;

Through touch, humans could receive feedback from I interacting with the world…

Based on all this, I could exist.

A human who lost all sensation and could no longer observe himself would, just as a person who lost hearing would inevitably and gradually lose the ability to speak, completely lose his self.

Because he could no longer observe or anchor the existence of I.

This nothingness and chaos would destroy a human before long.

"Warning! A powerful life response has appeared beneath the four-thousand-meter ice layer below Lake Vostok!"

"Contact headquarters immediately!"

"Contact who?! S.H.I.E.L.D. has already…"

Within the hidden observation outpost, several former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents exchanged looks. They were like people forgotten by the world. Whether it was the internal chaos and crisis within S.H.I.E.L.D. or other changes,

none of it had anything to do with them.

They had already grown accustomed to monitoring this special observation point, which had never shown any reaction. But today, something had truly changed here. It broke their routine, yet for a moment, they did not know how they should respond.

Then, the blip on the radar grew larger and larger, while the sonar began to emit explosive bursts.

A powerful sense of danger surged through them. The group swiftly prepared to evacuate, only to see a sight they would never forget the next moment.

The enormous floating ice of Lake Vostok, frozen solid for centuries, exploded apart. A figure, wrapped in a massive black shadow, shot into the sky.

The enormous black shadow twisted as though it had no end, still being continuously pulled up from The Deep.

Broken golden radiance and Runes emitted a power the agents could not comprehend. Yet in the sky, that black shadow continued to coil and circle, transforming into a colossal entity like an enormous dark cloud that stretched across the skies above Antarctica.

"What… is that…?"

Roar!

The icy sea began to split apart. An invisible shockwave swept outward indiscriminately, and the frozen sea surface shattered. Lake Vostok seemed as though it were about to thaw, its ice layer breaking apart completely.

The twisting black shadow in the sky finally warped and burrowed into the man’s body bit by bit.

The man’s long black hair spread in every direction like the claws and fangs of a demonic dragon. Strange black and scarlet tissue began to appear over his body.

Symbiote Dragon Grendel was a powerful symbiote that did not need to rely on parasitism. By itself, it was sufficient to devour civilizations and kill gods.

But after being gravely wounded millions of years ago by a god wielding Mjolnir, then sealed beneath kilometers of frigid Antarctic ice for a million years, its vitality had long fallen to an extremely low level.

Thus, when it sensed a body containing intense life force, Grendel instinctively began to parasitize it.

It wanted to devour this body, restore its own vitality, and then… devour the entire world!

Bai Cangshu’s body seemed as though it were about to burst apart. His body expanded once more to roughly three meters tall, entirely black, taking on the distinctive state of symbiote possession.

His face had already begun to mutate. Grendel was not Venom. It was a truly evil creation, a symbiote that devoured all life and light.

At this moment, it only wanted to kill this extraordinarily tenacious individual.

It had dragged that thing into its Living Abyss, yet even so, this tiny creature still had not lost its will.

Therefore, Grendel decided to completely devour its body.

An intense force of suction and digestion appeared. As though sensing danger, Bai Cangshu’s body reacted the next instant. Scales shimmering with radiance began to emerge across his flesh, even separating the symbiote tissue from his skin.

Radiant Flame also ignited across Grendel’s tissue. Though it could not inflict much damage, it made Grendel feel a stinging pain.

It hated flames.

Crackle—

A faint sound of electricity arose, and Grendel seemed to recall the thing it hated most in its life.

Lightning!

The combination of lightning’s power and high-frequency sound waves reminded it of that damned Asgardian god.

Grendel’s enormous head extended from Bai Cangshu’s body, as though an excessively huge tumor had grown from the surface of Bai Cangshu’s body.

It looked down at the tiny creature beneath it, whose flesh had been eroded and melted away in places but whose entire body gleamed with scales, and clearly sensed it.

It was not dead. Its will was returning!

A will that would not be lost even after being cast into the Living Abyss?!

Bai Cangshu’s face was completely covered by symbiote tissue, to the point where he could barely even control his own muscles.

He looked at the vast darkness still before him, the seemingly endless chaos and abyss, and felt an incomparable familiarity.

It was like an infant returning to its mother’s womb, like a fish returning to the sea.

He did not feel uncomfortable. Nor did he feel unable to anchor or observe himself. On the contrary, Bai Cangshu sensed a grander world and greater power.

It was as though an uncultivated wilderness lay before him.

"This is practically… my Paradise… Ha~ Hahaha… Hahaha!"

"Ha!"

In the midst of his extreme exhilaration, Bai Cangshu suddenly bellowed. The ions that had already gathered around him and an even more immense force field reacted simultaneously.

It was as though lightning burst from Bai Cangshu’s body. The terrifying brilliance stole everyone’s sight in an instant.

The fleeing agents actually felt as though the world had become completely dark. The light was too intense, causing their optic nerve signals to distort and begin reversing light and darkness, black and white.

The next instant, powerful electric currents erupted as well, and the twisted magnetic field seemed to be violently propelled in a single moment.

World-Shaking Thunder Roar—Full Power!

Crackle—Boom!

A terrifying explosion erupted with overwhelming force above Antarctica, centered on Bai Cangshu.