Gathering

Xu Zhi had no intention of deliberately crushing their spirits. He was only thinking about how to make full use of these free intelligent laborers, have them work for him, and evolve the species of the Myriad Realms.

When he stepped outside, Chen Xi had already stopped her electric scooter at the entrance to wait for him. "What's so interesting about farming all day? Dating a pretty girl is what's interesting."

"Farming can ease my mood and cure cancer." Xu Zhi answered absentmindedly. "Girls aren't as interesting as farming."

"Come on, go have some fun with me. It's my high school reunion," she said.

The two rode out of the County Town and arrived at a relatively quiet street in Tongcheng. There was a mid-range restaurant on the corner, not located in any particularly bustling area. After all, they had only just started university, so none of their classmates had much money.

They went up to a large private room on the second floor. As soon as the door opened, they saw a group of energetic young men and women gathered around three or four tables, eating and chatting. The moment Xu Zhi entered, the entire room erupted in screams.

"Who's this? Did he walk into the wrong room?"

"So handsome!"

Xu Zhi awkwardly rubbed his nose.

Only then did Chen Xi step out from behind Xu Zhi. She was immensely satisfied with the explosive reaction. "This is my boyfriend, Xu Zhi. I told everyone about him in the group chat already, didn't I? He's super handsome!"

Look at you showing off.

Xu Zhi looked helplessly at the smug Chen Xi.

Once he and Chen Xi sat down, quite a few girls gathered around them. They were Chen Xi's high school roommates and close friends, all chattering as they examined Xu Zhi without the slightest bit of restraint.

"He really is so handsome! Xiao Xi, where did you find him? Don't tell me he's a model? Or does he work for an entertainment company?"

"His features are so handsome and defined, like he's mixed-race. But he's not flawlessly perfect either—still within the realm of humanity. Yet he has such presence. The more you look at him, the better-looking he gets. The more you look, the more charming he is."

Ahem, ahem.

Xu Zhi hurriedly coughed twice. Were girls these days all this bold? Was there really such a generation gap? Though he was being intensely scrutinized, he remained rather unfazed, sitting quietly where he was. He knew that coming to this reunion with the girl was all so she could show off.

Although he had adjusted himself back to his previously astonishing physique and appearance, the essence of living things was evolution. After three mass extinctions, he had cast off too much clutter and too many useless, discarded genes. He had already moved toward the form of perfect life.

"That's right, that's right, he's my boyfriend." Listening to the envy in her friends' voices, Chen Xi beamed with pride. As she ate with the girls beside her, she bragged extravagantly about how good Xu Zhi was to her and spun all sorts of fanciful tales about their love story from childhood to the present.

"So he's a senior from several classes ahead of us in high school. A student at a prestigious university, and he used to work for a foreign company."

"You two were childhood sweethearts, and he's five years older than you. No wonder so many boys chased after our Class Flower Chen, but you never paid them any attention."

It seemed this girl had quite a few admirers. Several boys with unfriendly expressions came over to toast him. Xu Zhi accepted every drink offered, smiling as he drank with them.

He remained very calm.

After working outside for several years, he had seen plenty of human treachery. The few boys before him had no serious ill intent. They had only just entered university and were still fairly simple-minded; they merely wanted to get him drunk and make a fool of him.

But with Xu Zhi's current body, getting drunk was naturally difficult.

After dinner, they went singing.

Inside the private room, everyone's enthusiasm for Xu Zhi gradually faded. Three or four boys who had tried drinking with him had been knocked out by Xu Zhi and were lying around the room, faces flushed as they babbled nonsense. No one else dared challenge him to drink.

The girls sang while some of the boys played on their phones, some chatted, and some watched livestreams.

Xu Zhi had also been sitting quietly on the sofa, playing on his phone while waiting for Chen Xi to tire herself out so he could drive her home. But when he casually glanced at several boys beside him, he could no longer remain calm.

The livestream they were watching was of the game "Spore Evolution."

"Wow! This is insane! There really are limitless possibilities. I've watched this streamer take the same route, yet different species appear with every evolution." A boy sitting on the sofa held his phone and sighed enviously. "It must be some kind of supercomputer like AlphaGo, evolving everything in real time."

"This player is too stupid! I'd be better than him. I really hope they launch an open beta." Another boy joined the discussion, gesturing animatedly at the video. "I want to be a single-celled organism too and evolve creatures. Being able to experience the fully realistic sensation of evolving your own species—the pain, vision, and touch are all there. It's practically a second life."

"Impossible. Some experts analyzed it, and it probably won't have a large-scale open beta. There's no way too many people can be online at once." Someone sighed helplessly. "Virtual reality—a world that realistic—would require an enormous amount of computation. Every species is random, and it also needs huge amounts of real-time evolutionary computation. There are probably several supercomputers maintaining the sandbox game, so it's likely a niche game. It can't support too many players, or the calculations would crash."

Clearly, this mysterious hardcore sandbox game had recently become wildly popular across the internet. Its technology was simply too terrifying—virtual reality, random evolution. Some people had tried to investigate its origins, but they could find nothing at all.

In reality, the issue they mentioned about the number of players it could accommodate did not exist at all!

Because this was not a virtual world, but a real one. It did not need servers to simulate evolution. They were genuinely turning into single-celled organisms in Xu Zhi's yard and evolving species through spores.

The number of players depended solely on Xu Zhi's will.

He simply did not want too many people coming in to play his game when there was nothing substantial for him to gain.

"This game is way too hardcore. If you ask me, those hundred players are all terrible! They've made a bunch of malformed freaks and are completely wasting this game. Professionals should be doing this." A student nearby said he studied natural evolution, his face full of envy, jealousy, and resentment. "If I were playing, I'd definitely evolve professional-grade species."

Let professionals do it? Xu Zhi was slightly startled. The words woke him like a revelation.

He had already thought of what he should do. Coming out with the girl this time to relax had truly not been in vain.