His biological brain was complete, and the Mechanist had arrived. Shen Cong looked around him, and a wistful feeling rose in his chest. From now on, he was cut off from his old-world self for good.

In essence he was still human, but in practice he was already a new species.

He breathed in.

Oxygen was drawn into his lungs, which had already turned to metal, and exchanged there with his blood-gold. The oxygen-carrying blood-gold flowed through his vessels to every part of his body, seeped into his cells and drove all kinds of complex chemical reactions. More than 50 percent of that blood-gold flowed toward his biological brain.

When the blood-gold entered his biological brain, the points of light in his brain absorbed the oxygen. Then came strange, unfathomable changes that produced even brighter sparks of thought.

These days, his biological brain used even more blood-gold and oxygen than his original brain had.

His whole body was like a highly compressed machine-processing plant, running all kinds of reactions every moment. These reactions were already completely different from those of organic life. They were more like inorganic metal mimicking organic life.

Firestarter Spirits were thought to be the most primitive form of metal life.

Through mimicry and evolution, they would develop intelligence and leap to a higher level of life.

And the mutation of Earth's living things was a process of contamination. Left alone, they would probably evolve into beings like Firestarter Spirits.

But the mystery of nature gave life all kinds of strange possibilities.

Shen Cong had not evolved into a Firestarter Spirit the way the theory guessed. Like many other evolved individuals, he had developed the Firestarter Spirits' mimicry ability early. He mimicked directly as he evolved, carrying his own original form and tissue structure along with him.

Just as he had once suspected, his state of life was a hybrid.

Hybrids usually have an edge. At least for now, he was a step beyond the Firestarter Spirits. His biological brain could perfectly control particle-grade Activity waves, a huge advantage over the crude Superbrain. And plundering Superbrains was…