Two Mass Extinctions

"Plankton has appeared in the sea. Mother Nest, begin setting Gene Locks to limit the size of the spore organisms!"

Xu Zhi frowned and silently issued the command.

The orchard was only so large. It was impossible to let them evolve into anything too big.

The memories of the previous Mother Empress had also shown that evolving gigantic bodies was the wrong path.

There was no need to deliberately enlarge the Zerg. Maintaining the original small size of insects was the correct evolutionary path. The smaller the body, the easier it was for a qualitative transformation of energy to emerge.

Their bodies stopped expanding.

From then on, the normal species in the Sand Table would be even smaller than ordinary ants. That was what true insects—the Zerg—should be. Even the largest species, if they evolved to the level of dinosaurs, would not grow larger than a cat.

An insect the size of a cat was already an astonishing thing.

And a hundred-mu Sand Table was equivalent to a small province for miniature ecological creatures the size of tiny ants.

On the afternoon of the sixth day, the Paleozoic Era ocean, which had spent the previous five days as single-celled life, finally underwent a drastic change. Multicellular organisms began appearing in the seawater.

In just a few minutes, it felt to Xu Zhi like watching an accelerated nature documentary. In the artificial ocean of that pond, new plankton species were constantly born and died within seconds, giving rise to the next generation. Before long, patches of strange aquatic plants of all kinds drifted across the pond in the orchard.

Xu Zhi had originally only wanted to try tossing single-celled organisms into the ocean and letting them evolve into species. He had not expected them to be this fierce. "Ten thousand years accelerated into one day. It has only been six days, yet after sixty thousand years of evolution, the single-celled organisms in the sea have evolved into marine plankton, forming a super-ancient Paleozoic ocean similar to the Cambrian Explosion at the end of Earth's Phanerozoic, five hundred million years ago. These Zerg spores are insanely powerful."

Xu Zhi knew nothing about Earth's evolutionary history.

But he could naturally return to his room, turn on his laptop, search online, and frantically cram Earth's evolutionary eras, the origins of species, the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian. After all, Earth could serve as a reference.

"But night is about to fall. My greatest concern is beginning—the Sand Table world is about to be destroyed."

He looked at the artificial ocean in the yard, then raised his head toward the darkening sky. Dusk cast its final lingering glow into the corner by the wall.

Cell division and evolution had been accelerated ten thousandfold. He had compressed ten thousand years into one day, meaning five thousand years of daylight and five thousand years of night.

Now that darkness had fallen, it meant the long five thousand-year day had passed, and an endless night lasting another five thousand years was about to begin.

Sunlight was the source of all things. These newly born aquatic planktonic plants would lose photosynthesis and wither away directly.

Sure enough, the moment night fell and sunlight vanished, a violent change appeared in the seawater.

Vast swathes of aquatic plants withered and sank to the seabed, losing their lives. Under the night sky, the sea resembled a dead ocean, utterly devoid of life.

"The first mass extinction in my evolutionary era has begun. I didn't expect it to come so quickly."

Xu Zhi took a deep breath.

He had looked up the information online.

Over the course of long evolutionary eras, Earth had experienced five horrific mass extinctions, from the birth of single-celled life and the evolution of multicellular organisms to the proliferation of all kinds of Paleozoic species. The most famous, naturally, was the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Sixty-five million years ago, Earth's former rulers—the dinosaurs—were wiped out, and eighty percent of animals died.

Earth's first mass extinction, however, had actually been the End-Ordovician Extinction more than four hundred million years ago.

That had happened because temperatures plummeted and sea levels fell, damaging Earth's marine ecosystems and directly wiping out eighty-five percent of marine species at the time.

The difference was that his Sand Table had not suffered this extinction for the same reasons as Earth. Night had arrived, suddenly bringing an endless darkness lasting five thousand years. The sun had abruptly disappeared, causing his first great species extinction.

Earth was a massive planet, home to countless species competing through survival of the fittest. It possessed tremendous resilience; even mass extinctions could be endured.

But things were different here. The environment was too small.

Logically speaking, even if the pond ocean were filled to the brim, there would only be tens of millions of organisms. According to Darwinian Evolution, such a small population base was not enough to evolve a new organism adapted to the environment.

"But these are highly adaptable Zerg single-celled organisms—spores. They can survive even on barren planets. There's no reason they can't survive here."

Xu Zhi took a deep breath, feeling somewhat excited and uneasy.

He waited quietly. Moonlight spilled into the yard, and half an hour passed over the lifeless ocean filled with plant corpses. Then, suddenly, a faint blue emerged from the water's surface.

It was a blue plant the size of an ant, with the delicate shape of a leaf.

Having lost direct sunlight, this plant chose to aim the source of its photosynthesis at the moon, whose light was extremely faint, and thus barely managed to survive.

After successfully enduring the first wave of mass extinction, the plant grew, developed, and died within seconds, like footage on fast-forward.

It began evolving rapidly, generation after generation. Survival of the fittest drove it to madly adapt to the nighttime environment. Diamond-shaped and disk-shaped forms appeared, spreading across the surface like lotus leaves in order to absorb moonlight from the sky above the yard over a wider area.

Another hour passed.

As the only marine species in the Sand Table, the aquatic plant Xu Zhi had named "Blue Moon Grass" had gone through tens of thousands of generations of evolution and begun forming various branches.

Some had angular edges, some were slender, some oval-shaped; there were deep-sea types and shallow-sea types. At this point, it had even developed into two differentiated species.

One portion of Blue Moon Grass continued evolving to absorb moonlight, increasing the efficiency of converting moonlight.

Another portion of Blue Moon Grass actually began turning carnivorous, preying upon other Blue Moon Grass. They too absorbed moonlight and emitted a faint glow, luring other Blue Moon Grass to drift over before devouring them.

Seeing this, Xu Zhi marveled at the tenacity and wonder of life, at survival of the fittest. "Having endured the first mass extinction, this sole surviving aquatic plant has actually developed its own diverse civilization in the ocean of night."

He found a black notebook, picked up a pen, and recorded the evolutionary process of the Sand Table. "Why not record the countless eras of my Sand Table's evolution according to Earth's calendar of eras? Earth's Cambrian saw a biological explosion and became the era in which all Earthly life originated, leading to dinosaurs, humans, and all kinds of ferocious beasts. But the biological explosion here is facing five thousand years of darkness. Let's call it the Dark Martial Era."

In high spirits, he opened the first page of Genesis in the black notebook and wrote the first line:

Dark Martial Era. Heaven and earth underwent a sudden change; the sun set and the moon rose. The world fell into five thousand years of prolonged darkness. Ninety-nine percent of marine life went extinct. Only Blue Moon Grass survived by absorbing moonlight, becoming the sole surviving species. It flourished immensely in this dark ocean, and Blue Moon Grass became the ruler of this era.

He looked at the pond called the Sea of Life and silently anticipated, "According to Earth's biological evolutionary history, the ocean is where all life originated. Marine plants appeared first, and after they continued reproducing, marine animals followed. What kind of marine animals will the Zerg cells evolve into?"

He did not sleep all night and waited until dawn.

The seventh day had finally begun!

But animals did not begin evolving on the seventh day as Xu Zhi had expected. Instead, another terrifying mass extinction arrived—because the sun had risen.

The moment the sun rose, all kinds of Blue Moon Grass flourishing in the nighttime ocean rapidly withered.

Having received only weak moonlight at night, they were suddenly exposed to such intense direct sunlight that they seemed to be burning, sinking one after another to the seabed.

In an instant, Blue Moon Grass began going extinct on a massive scale once more.

"The second mass extinction has erupted so quickly. They had only just survived for a short while. This is simply too tragic."

This was the fall of life.

Over the long eras of species evolution, measured in hundreds of millions of years, countless species were born and went extinct. That was the vast epic of a planet.

The journey of life evolving from spores was long and magnificent, yet in just a few hours, it displayed countless flourishing ages and declines before Xu Zhi's eyes, bringing him an immense and indescribable shock.

By afternoon, a trace of blue gradually revived among the withered plants.

It was a star-shaped Blue Moon Grass. It too had undergone a mutated evolution, successfully escaping this mass extinction. It transformed beneath the scorching sun, achieving Rebirth Through Fire.

To better adapt to the intense sunlight, it began reproducing generation after generation.

Within just a few minutes, countless generations died, were born, and reproduced. Its blue gradually deepened, slowly turning purple-black. In the end, it formed a patch of mysterious blackish-blue, five-pointed star seaweed.

It possessed beautiful, mysterious, balanced five-pointed leaves that could expand and contract.

At night, it spread its five points flat across the sea surface, enlarging the area through which it absorbed moonlight. During the day, to avoid the harsh light, it contracted more than half its body and became a flower bud.

It was somewhat like a mimosa.

Mass extinction meant destruction, but it was also an opportunity for weak species to rise.

There was no longer any species in the entire ocean competing with it for living space. It rapidly reproduced again, producing various offshoots that filled the ocean with vibrant life.

"Endure five thousand years of blazing sun and five thousand years of darkness."

"Under five thousand years of sun and moon, you are the sole survivor among countless species. You have endured blazing sunlight and deep darkness. You are a true hero, so I'll call you Purple Zhao Grass." Xu Zhi smiled, silently picked up his pen, and opened the second page of the black diary.

He continued recording the second mass extinction event to erupt in the evolutionary history of his biological era:

Light Martial Era. Heaven and earth underwent a sudden change; the moon set and the sun rose. A scorching sun hung in the sky for five thousand years. Blue Moon Grass, the ruler that had endured the Dark Martial Era, began going extinct on a massive scale. Among them, Purple Zhao Grass, a weaker branch of Blue Moon Grass, unexpectedly rose to prominence and became the leading protagonist of this era.