[Ding... Analysis complete.]
A clear notification sounded deep within Ian's consciousness.
The speed was somewhat unexpected. Ian had originally thought that analyzing a mysterious existence with such a unique structure—one involving cross-dimensional information anchoring—would take a considerable amount of time. To his surprise, it took the Transmutation Tablet less than a few minutes to declare completion.
Subsequently, the Transmutation Tablet displayed the massive amount of parsed information directly before Ian's eyes.
First to appear was the historical data of the Transmigrator Group Chat. A long-buried history full of twists and turns slowly unfolded.
It turned out that the original group chat had almost no screening standards when recruiting transmigrators. It didn't care about personality; as long as someone was confirmed to be a transmigrator, they were pulled into the group. It was a chaotic yet vibrant era.
As the early transmigrators established themselves in their respective worlds and their strength grew rapidly, the group chat itself evolved, birthing many powerful functions that have since vanished. The speed at which those transmigrators increased their power—especially those who chose the paths of Evil Cultivation or Demonic Cultivation—could only be described as a thousand miles a day. The techniques they practiced and the powers they mastered often brought staggering destructive force in short periods.
Some clever transmigrators even developed techniques that allowed for rapid advancement without directly murdering their own kind. This held a massive appeal for many. After all, devouring the souls of one's own race or refining the flesh of fellow humans marked one as an Evil Cultivator to be hunted by all. But if one targeted alien lifeforms or demonic beasts, it transformed, in a sense, into a "righteous" act.
Resource plunder, survival of the fittest.
Later, the group welcomed an extremely special member. He had transmigrated to a massive cultivation world, possessing a heaven-defying comprehension cheat but also burdened by a blood feud. This man was a peerless genius with a resilient mind and insane creativity. Using his native cultivation system as a foundation, he fused the essences of numerous evil arts obtained from the group chat.
In the end, he created a brand-new technique that was both taboo and overwhelmingly powerful. This technique pushed "resource utilization" to the absolute limit. Upon encountering a cultivator, he could directly extract their lifetime's worth of cultivation, refine their body into nourishment, and swallow their soul to temper his own.
As his cultivation reached profound depths, the power became even more terrifying. Every tangible and intangible substance in the world could be forcibly refined into pure Demonic Qi for him to absorb. The soul essence of every living being in the universe, regardless of strength, could be stripped away and refined into Soul Energy to bolster his growth.
According to his deductions, in the final stage of the technique, the practitioner could even convert all energy, all rules, and all existence within the entire cultivation world into the most fundamental Demonic Qi to achieve self-perfection.
However, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. To increase his strength as quickly as possible for revenge, this brilliant transmigrator had absorbed the remnant souls of countless living beings before the technique was fully perfected. These mixed remnant soul intentions were like time bombs hidden deep within his soul.
When he attempted to break through to a brand-new, unprecedented realm he had pioneered, the hidden danger erupted. To forcibly enhance his comprehension to deduce the new realm, he spared no cost, consuming the source energy of several small worlds attached to the main cultivation world. This unprecedented comprehension combined with the extreme nature of his technique allowed his consciousness to touch a powerful, chaotic, and mad consciousness at the moment of breakthrough.
Immediately following this, the massive amount of remnant souls he had absorbed years ago—which had not been completely obliterated—erupted collectively as if receiving a summons. Between the internal and external strikes, a series of terrifying chain reactions occurred. His resistance against that mad consciousness grew weaker, and his sanity became like a candle in the wind.
Finally, he went completely insane.
His original consciousness was utterly crushed and annihilated. His body became a vessel and tool for that nameless, mad consciousness to descend into the mortal realm. After losing his mind, his power did not decrease but increased, becoming purer and more terrifying.
The first thing he did was completely drain his own cultivation world and all its associated planes, turning them into sustenance. Afterward, he divided himself into a multitude of clones. Leveraging the connectivity of the group chat, he spread like a plague, slaughtering his way toward other transmigrator worlds through the network signals.
It was a catastrophe that swept across the heavens.
Ultimately, the group chat allied with several powerful world wills and the surviving transmigrators. At a tragic cost, they barely managed to completely destroy the monster polluted by the mad consciousness. But during that long-drawn-out war, almost all transmigrators had been hunted to extinction by him. A vast number of innocent worlds were shattered, their source energy exhausted.
The group chat itself suffered heavy damage, reduced to a basic structural frame. It is easy to imagine that if that transmigrator hadn't completely lost his mind and been left with only destructive instincts, many more worlds and civilizations would have been utterly destroyed in that disaster.
That ancient war not only broke most of the group chat's functional modules but even caused the sliver of hazy consciousness that had originally birthed within it to dissipate completely. Today's group chat runs silently on basic system instincts.
Worse still, it was deeply tainted by the power of that mad consciousness during the final battle. This imparted a trace of dark and chaotic attributes to it. Many powerful worlds of the Order and Light sides instinctively rejected its approach. Currently, the worlds it can connect to and enter are mostly those naturally inclined toward darkness and chaos, or weak worlds with low power levels and incomplete rules.
Furthermore, its hazy instinct became incredibly cautious, never again daring to pull people in randomly. Before summoning a new transmigrator, it must conduct a screening evaluation. This is why most current members come from "grimdark" or high-risk worlds.
The broken functions, combined with the general danger of the members' worlds, caused the group chat to remain in a half-dead state for a long time. The number of members remained sparse, and casualties were frequent. This state continued until the group chat accidentally connected with Minecraft and was generously granted a sum of repair energy. Subsequently, Ian's joining brought unprecedented variables and vitality. This allowed the group chat to repair some functions and regain a bit of life.
Now, having finished the reading, Ian not only understood the entire past of the group chat but also successfully obtained the coordinate information of all transmigrator worlds that had ever been connected in the history of the group chat. More importantly, he gained a brand-new ability: to actively sense and locate new worlds where other transmigrators exist.
After sorting through this information, Ian couldn't help but feel a hint of emotion. That predecessor from the cultivation world was truly a peerless talent with demonic wisdom and an incredibly powerful cheat. It was a pity he ended up tainted by a mad consciousness and became a world-destroying demon.
'That so-called ultimate mad consciousness...'
Ian's thoughts shifted slightly.
'Could it be something like Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God from the Cthulhu Mythos? Or some multiverse-level Progenitor of Demons?'
Thinking of this, even with his current power, he couldn't help but feel a spark of curiosity toward that unknown domain.