After the mass extinction, the Insect Ape race was still barely hanging on, huddled in small local tribes rather than spread everywhere, which made it easier for Xu Zhi to secretly modify the Sand Table's terrain a second time.
He picked a spot, poured in Cow Dung Chicken Dung and water, mixed in some dead branches and rotten leaves, and began turning it into fertile, decaying mud. In the future, as microorganisms fermented, methane would form, and it would completely become a sticky swampy bog.
He directly placed this "Evil Eye" creature inside to survive.
There was no competition here.
No matter how weak it was, it could reproduce and survive in great numbers. He had already given it the environment to develop. As for whether it could become the first non-intelligent monster on this Sand Table land, something like the Evil Eye from the Cthulhu Mythos, that depended on itself.
Even if it failed, Xu Zhi would lose nothing. It would merely mean that an extra species had appeared on this land out of nowhere. In fact, if it failed, it was highly likely to go extinct.
After all, its eyeball made up two-thirds of its body. It supplied so much nutrition to that eyeball, yet it served no purpose. Naturally, it would be eliminated by other species. Nature was incomparably cruel.
The next morning, Xu Zhi continued lounging around with his legs crossed, leisurely eating an apple in the yard. With nothing better to do, he performed a solo comedy routine for himself:
"I'm telling you, working behind closed doors really is useless. Other people can actually bring me surprises—like this bizarre mutant, the Big Eye Monster. Sometimes, I truly hate myself for not being stupid enough, which makes me seem so out of place among them. It's hard for me to evolve such freakish species."
As he joked, he looked toward the little Sand Table and was shocked to discover that the entire Evolution Sandbox was full!
It had reached the population limit he had set for the Sand Table: one hundred spores surviving and evolving inside.
The Sand Table had a population cap of one hundred.
One hundred people was not much. Xu Zhi had never intended to let many people in. It was merely a niche, casual Sand Table for people to provide him with inspiration.
It was not as though he was actually letting them play a game for their entertainment, so why make it so large? Yet Xu Zhi had not expected it to become so popular. In just one day, the Sand Table's server was already full.
Curious, he searched online. The earliest related post had come from a single thread that had ignited the internet.
The post was titled: "Black Technology! The Most Realistic Simulation Game, Full Real-World Sensory Experience, the Most Hardcore Casual Sand Table Game in Chinese Gaming History—'Spore Evolution.'"
At first, after reading the post, everyone called it clickbait. What era-defying masterpiece? Anyone who understood Virtual Reality VR Technology knew it was just a gimmick; the technology was nowhere near mature.
But despite the criticism, there were still people willing to be the first to try it. One after another, they logged in—and then everything exploded.
They came back and left comments under the post:
"It's real! It's terrifying! You can actually feel things! What kind of alien technology is this?! I'm hyping this game to the heavens!"
A crowd of people immediately cursed them below, calling them paid shills.
Then someone could not resist testing it out. The result was that they too fell in, never to return. The cycle continued. Before long, players began posting screenshots from the game and the bizarre failed creatures they had evolved, completely setting everyone off. But soon, people discovered that only one hundred closed beta accounts could be registered. Any more than that could not log into the game.
"There are only one hundred closed beta testers."
Countless people were heartbroken, envious, jealous, and resentful.
The first wave of players who had successfully logged in secretly celebrated, thrilled beyond belief.
They had been staying up all night since yesterday, obsessively playing this era-defying game. Early that morning, the first "Spore Evolution" guide and closed beta review was posted and pinned to the front page of the game forum.
"Hello, everyone. I'm 'Mount Akina Speed.' I also made the previous post. I was fortunate enough to be the first to discover this era-defying game that had received absolutely no promotion. Now, I'm here to give it a simple review! First, the point everyone cares about most: does it really have all five senses? My answer is yes! The realism is absolutely, absolutely not fake! I guarantee it with my character—it felt like truly being in a second world. I have no idea what kind of Black Technology it uses.
It even has pain settings. I set mine to one hundred percent, and I discovered that dying felt so damn intense that I convulsed! The moment I took off the VR Glasses in real life, my entire body was drenched in cold sweat, trembling and spasming.
I never planned to experience that again in my life. This is the first terrifying aspect of the game, so players, take note. Next, I'll talk about several more horrifying parts and continue doing my best to talk you all out of playing! First of all, this game is a casual survival Sand Table game. It calls itself casual, but it's actually unbelievably hardcore. When you first log in, there's no face customization or race selection like in traditional online games. There is only one option: begin the life of a spore. You might not believe this, but when you enter the game world, everything is black. You have to evolve eyes before you can see the world. It's fucking realistic!
(When I saw this, I already realized that this free Sand Table game, which claimed to be the top choice for casual players, was not simple.) In the game, we are spores, the leaders of a race, and we can control our race's evolution. But if the 'king' we control dies, no matter how large the population is, it is useless—we will exit the game.
Worth mentioning is that this game's Virtual Reality experience is terrifyingly realistic. Whatever creature you evolve into, you gain that creature's real sensations. For example, if you become an insect, you have all the sensations of an insect!
The first species I evolved was a Big Eye Monster. Its eye was enormous, and I discovered that my field of vision was enormous too—the super huge kind. The second time, I evolved compound eyes, eight pairs of eyes. Guess what I saw? The world through compound eyes! It was so damn real!
It was absolutely insane!
In this game, we can completely experience the worlds and perceptions of other species. I think that if I can evolve into a dragon, I'll definitely be able to fly and experience the thrill of being a dragon, soaring through clouds and mist.
But my longest run so far only evolved to become an amphibian. A bizarre Big Eye Monster left the ocean and did not even last five hours of game time.
And once you die in this game, you can only make a new account.
That's right! This is the second hardcore feature that drives players away!
Unlike other games, where death comes with a respawn point, you only have one life. Once you die, you can only make a new account and respawn! You turn back into a spore, and all the 'levels' and 'structures' you evolved before are gone! It's so damn hardcore. It actually has no traditional save-and-reload feature at all! It does whatever it wants and does not care in the slightest about driving players away!"
The third hardcore feature is that this game has no so-called guides at all!
So don't expect me to write a guide either. I once tried to follow the same method as before, intending to evolve another Big Eye Monster, but I ended up evolving a different species—the one with compound eyes. This perfectly conforms to a view in evolution theory: the appearance of every life-form in evolutionary history is a unique miracle.
Even if you follow exactly the same environment and process, you might become an entirely different species because of a tiny butterfly effect. I do not know how it was designed, but this game feels like a real evolutionary world, with real materials and infinite possibilities!"
"Also, the game's setting is incredibly interesting. Beside the mountains, rivers, vast oceans, and seas where us spores live, there resides a hazy divine giant tens of thousands of feet tall. We evolve at the entrance to the giant's yard. He often sits on a wooden chair in front of his enormous house, peeling fruit and quietly reading. We evolved spore creatures can secretly approach him, even crawl onto him. Once, when I was a giant eyeball, I wanted to get closer to look at him, but he stepped on my 'king' and killed it, so I exited the game. A whole bunch of Big Eye Monster underlings were still left there. Without my control, they should be extinct by now.
Personally, I suspect he is a background character in the Sand Table game!
Maybe he is set to be invincible, or maybe he is a BOSS that we can challenge later after evolving into the strongest species. Anyway, it's especially interesting. We are like insects evolving in a giant's yard. One final sentence: this is the most hardcore game in history! Hardcore in every way! It drives players away so badly! But it's also so much fun!
High freedom, infinite possibilities, one hundred percent virtual sensory experience—it feels like a real world. It's fun as hell! I'm hyping it to the skies!
Honestly, my current goal is to survive for a long time, escape the fate of constantly dying and starting over, evolve into a powerful species that can truly establish itself in the entire ecosystem, and perhaps even evolve into the apex predator at the top of the food chain! Then I want to evolve into the legendary dragon and develop a dragon race. This is every Chinese person's dream, right?! It's so intense! Then I'll fly over to that guy peeling apples in the yard and shit on his head!! So intense! It feels like my life has reached its peak! As for guides, there really aren't any, brothers! If you want to play, go read Origin of Species and all kinds of professional books. Knowledge is power! I only managed to evolve all kinds of organs after reading them. Students studying biology-related fields, you're going to be amazing in this spore game! I won't say more. I only came out to write this guide because my head hurt after playing for too long. Now I'm going back in for another round. This time, I'll definitely survive longer. I'm addicted, you know!"
Shit on my head? Xu Zhi smiled faintly when he saw that. The last species that dared provoke me like that, calling me bald—do you know what miserable state they are in now?! Xu Zhi silently added another grudge to his little notebook. Brother, we'll settle this score later. He had completely forgotten that he had just mocked the man for being an idiot. At most, this was merely returning the favor.
Before you continue