Third Mass Extinction

The immense flood poured down from the summit of the towering heavens like a magnificent white waterfall, surging onward and drowning the mountains, rivers, and earth.

"What terrifying power."

"In an instant, a Great Flood capable of destroying the world descended."

On the deck, countless merchants, nobles, commoners, and slaves sighed in shock.

They were the kindest people, the ones who understood harmony best. God had sent down the flood to cleanse the sinful land. The savage, the cruel, the guilty, and the disrespectful would all be swallowed by the flood.

This day, when the Great Flood destroyed the world, came to be known as Disaster Day. Utanapishtim, the last afterglow of the Sumerian Civilization, led the remaining Sumerians aboard the ark onto the final Noah's Ark, fleeing the Great Flood.

In an empty corner of the ship, Akad, the historian appointed to record the Sumerian Civilization, paused slightly. Holding a quill pen, he collapsed onto the deck in utter disarray, still immersed in the image of that great deity.

"Our world is round above and square below. Our world was created by God in only seven days. What immense power that is."

Akad's hands trembled, his aged tears cloudy.

He began silently filling in the seven days of God's creation according to his own imagination. Raising his pen, he wrote the final passage of the Sumerian Civilization's epic, Genesis, concerning the seven days in which God created the world:

On the first day, God said, 'Let there be light,'

and there was light. God separated the light from the darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night.

On the second day, God said, 'Let there be air to separate the waters,' and there was heaven.

On the third day, God said, 'Let the waters under heaven gather in one place, so that dry land may appear.'

Thus, water and dry land were separated. God called the dry land continents, and the gathered waters oceans.

On the fourth day, God said, 'Let there be lights in the heavens to distinguish day from night.'

Thus, the sun and moon began alternating in cycles. In this world, day lasted fifty years, and night lasted fifty years.

On the fifth, sixth, and seventh days, heaven, earth, and all things were complete. God rested, and on that day, he bestowed blessings upon the preceding six days.

In the days that followed, people treated this historian's fantasy as truth. During that Great Flood, it was as if the God of Creation had truly stood before mortals and explained in detail the seven days of his creation.

But why would God lower himself to explain in detail to insignificant humans how he had created the world? Yet people preferred to believe the story in Genesis, which recorded the seven days in which God created the world.

In the story, God rested on the seventh day of creation. People called that legendary day Rest Day, the holy day, and it became a custom of this land for people to rest on that day as well.

Boom! The Great Flood descended from the sky.

Buildings were washed away, collapsing like block fortresses, while the traces of the Sumerian Civilization were swept into the ocean.

Xu Zhi rinsed everything for quite a while. Only after confirming that nothing had been missed did he stop the High-Pressure Water Gun, quietly switch it off, put it away, and return it to the storage room, where he placed it on a wooden rack.

This meant another complete reset.

The Insect Apes' endless slaughter and excessive reproduction had nearly caused the Sand Table to collapse. Now, with only one pair of every species left in the entire Sand Table, the ecosystem would eventually recover to what it had once been.

Hopefully, after this, they would learn to be wary and stop being so brutally savage and reproducing excessively.

The Sub-Brain said from beside him, "Even if you did not destroy them, they would have destroyed themselves anyway. They would eat up and wipe out every species before perishing themselves. By then, the Sand Table would merely suffer enormous losses. It would be better to welcome rebirth now."

Xu Zhi let out a long breath. "I'm not as fragile as you imagine. I don't need comforting. I just feel a little upset."

The Sub-Brain continued, "As an Insect Nest Queen who has bred countless citizens and races, you are the great Creator. You should become accustomed to the rise and extinction of countless races, rather than sighing over them."

Veins bulged on Xu Zhi's forehead as he corrected it. "I'm a man, not an Insect Nest Queen."

"There is no need to say more. They are all spores you bred one by one..." The Insect Nest Sub-Brain was about to defend its argument.

"Stop!! Anyway, family planning for the Insect Apes is very important." Xu Zhi immediately cut it off. Sitting in a chair outside the courtyard gate, he silently nibbled at the fruit he had just peeled, taking occasional bites. "Tomorrow, I'll go into town and buy another two pounds of fruit. Stomach cancer... I need to treat my stomach better."

After a long time, he picked up the black notebook and began recording some things in it.

"This is the era of giant beasts. I originally wanted to call this era the Beast Cretaceous Period, corresponding to Earth's Cretaceous Period, the age when dinosaurs lived, since it was filled with gigantic animals and beasts. But since the Sumerians recorded it in Genesis, then fine. This era will simply be called Genesis."

On Earth's timeline, the corresponding era was the "Late Cretaceous Period Mass Extinction," when a meteor fell from the sky and destroyed the dinosaurs.

But here, a flood fell from the sky and destroyed the giant beasts and Insect Apes. In my evolutionary history, it would be called the "End-of-Genesis Mass Extinction."

After organizing his thoughts, he turned past the Dark Martial Era, Light Martial Era, and Newborn Era, then opened the fourth page. He wrote the words Genesis, the fourth era, and gave this period of history only a brief account: Genesis. The emergence of intelligent species. The intelligent ape race developed tribal city-state civilization, drove out the giant beasts, and became the rulers of the era. Yet they were cruel and violent, intolerable to heaven. A Great Flood descended and destroyed all living things. The third mass extinction began, wiping out ninety-nine percent of all life.

After recording the third mass extinction, Xu Zhi went to sleep.

The next morning, he got up, washed his face, and brushed his teeth. He suddenly felt a terrifying, boiling power spreading through his entire body. Startled, he hurriedly put aside what he was doing and began studying his bodily structure.

"This power is..."

Xu Zhi looked at himself in the mirror.

His previous height had somehow increased by several more centimeters, reaching a full 1.83 meters. The contours of his face had also become gentler and more handsome, giving him an elegant, profound air.

His physique was robust and solid, resembling the perfect build of a Greek sculpture, a model's body. Yet once he put on clothes, he did not look like an overly muscular man.

"Muscular without clothes, slim in clothes."

Xu Zhi felt that his physique, the full and streamlined muscles throughout his body, was already comparable to that perfect Hero King, an epic-level hero.

It was too perfect.

"Is this the power fed back to me by the third mass extinction? Compared to the first two, it is countless times stronger. I feel like I'm already comparable to some top athletes."

Xu Zhi clenched his fist, feeling explosive power brimming within it. Unable to stop himself, he murmured, "My physical fitness has improved far, far too much."