Attack

A great spread of delicious dishes was brought over. The taste was naturally not bad—at least, not bad by this world's standards—but... Li Qi always felt that something was missing.

He still preferred food that was more "natural," rather than this sort of molecular cuisine loaded with artificial seasonings, where ingredients were pulverized, mixed with all kinds of compounds, and turned into entirely new flavors.

It was not that there was anything inferior about artificial compounds. It was simply that, in Li Qi's taste, food made this way lacked depth.

One had to understand that ingredients had not been born merely to be eaten.

The essence of every ingredient was to exist, to survive.

They were life.

The allure of life lay in its wonder—in the unimaginable, the beyond imagination, yet also the reasonable. The origin of every species, the birth of every life, whether as vast as a planet or as tiny as an ant, was equally miraculous.

Their origins were complex and mysterious. Every form of life had struggled against and adapted to complicated environments before evolving into what it was. Every life was extraordinarily precious; every birth of life was a miracle.

By some accidental chance, amid a pool of murky death, the flame of life that conquered the world might be ignited, eventually evolving into complex life.

Countless currents of qi flowed without rest through billions of double helices, like an engine. Matter was pumped from mitochondria, and thus the curtain rose.

From paramecia to multicellular organisms, then the evolution of sexes, division, programmed death, mitochondrial incorporation, aerobic metabolism, adaptability, immunity and disease, aging and death—through death, life gifted new life to new life.

This gift of life could be traced back, generation after generation without interruption, to who knew how many billions of years ago: