The center of Bo Ao City lay deathly still.
An hourglass-shaped tower hovered in silence.
Black slurry dripped through the hourglass, radiating an utterly alien, terrifying aura.
Mist swirled around it—a unique form of soul matter that wound around the tower like a nebula, shimmering with color.
Within those soul particles, countless forms of life played out like slides, shifting beyond prediction.
Anyone watching could peer into the Three-Dimensional World and witness the birth and extinction of billions of species.
The Hourglass Tower was no simple hourglass. Its interior was complex, filled with layer upon layer of filters. It looked more like a gambling machine.
The black slurry was, in fact, made up of miniature black holes.
Every drop that fell marked the birth of a species somewhere in the universe. As it descended, it continually evaporated. It might vanish before reaching the next layer, marking that species' extinction.
Drop after drop fell like tiny balls, colliding and destroying one another or getting caught on a layer.
Disease, slaughter, volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, meteorites, sudden environmental changes, and countless other calamities acted as filters. Most of the rapidly falling slurry evaporated back into energy and rose to the top of the hourglass.
Only when a drop reached the pool at the bottom and sent ripples across its surface had that species secured its future, never again to be driven extinct by nature.
Yet the drops crowded together at the bottom, devouring one another and forming clumps of every size.
Those clumps, too, might eventually disappear and rise back to the top.
The cycle went on. The slurry pouring from above seemed inexhaustible, while the pool below never filled.
This was Bo Ao. He had long since ceased to be bound by the form of a living creature. Like a living natural