The Doorway

It took Elizabeth a full forty years to finish receiving 4.1 billion years of memories. Chen Changsheng directly used the Web of Conspiracy to skim through the important memories, but even so, it took him decades to gain a rough impression.

Within Elizabeth's 4.1 billion years of memories, Chen Changsheng really did find several issues that interested him. It turned out that when life first appeared on Earth, there had been a miraculous place in the deepest part of the ocean. Even Elizabeth had been unable to damage it in the slightest.

However, because too much time had passed, Chen Changsheng had no way to determine its exact location from the memories. But he could clearly see that the mysterious place was a quest bubble. Its style was more familiar to him than anyone else—it was the quest interface he had arrived through.

Chen Changsheng called this quest bubble the Doorway because he felt that he could return to his original world through it.

Chen Changsheng wanted to find the Doorway as quickly as possible. Although he had developed very well in this world, he still wanted to return to his original world... There was nothing like a wanderer's longing for home.

The Umbrella Corporation had also made great strides during the ten years Chen Changsheng spent in seclusion digesting the memories. The Neuro-Bug Strategist Corps he had envisioned had been fully established as well. Hundreds of thousands of brain bugs were distributed throughout the world, each managing part of Chen Changsheng's Umbrella Corporation.

Through the mysterious connection between the viruses, the brain bugs formed a vast web covering the world, monitoring the entire planet from everywhere.

But they only watched. Chen Changsheng had no intention of involving himself in humanity's current schemes and betrayals, nor did he have the time. Chen Changsheng now had a huge family business, but with his commoner's mindset, he truly found it difficult to manage such a vast enterprise.

The biochemical experiments conducted on various small islands in the ocean had also yielded results. One island after another, each with its own unique ecosystem, stood in the ocean like brilliant stars.

Like Elizabeth, Chen Changsheng had also imposed a restriction on the Blacklight Virus on these islands: Blacklight infectees could not survive in water for long and were extremely repulsed by seawater.

Manhattan Island had become a famous adventure hub where adventurers from around the world gathered. After Chen Changsheng announced the recipe for the Elixir of Life, adventure groups from every corner of the world flocked to Manhattan Island to hunt zombies and obtain their precious Zombie Spinal Cords.

Because large-scale destructive weapons would shatter the zombies, leaving adventurers with nothing of value, most mercenaries who came to Manhattan Island used light weapons for hunting. But those light weapons were no match for the creatures that had evolved on Manhattan Island and possessed overwhelming abilities.

In recent years, the Umbrella Corporation had gradually released some Enhancement Potions, preventing ordinary humans from falling too far behind in their evolutionary competition with the Bio-virus.

Evolution required back-and-forth progress. One-sided crushing could not be called evolution. Chen Changsheng was also afraid that humanity would be crushed all at once.

Those enhanced once by the Umbrella Corporation were called Level 1 Enhancers. The Umbrella Corporation could enhance each person ten times. Level 10 Enhancers possessed abilities far beyond those of Hunters and were the dream of every mercenary in the world.

However, reaching Level 10 required the spinal fluid of at least a thousand Hunters, and the processing procedure was extremely complicated. Clearly, this was not something ordinary people could gather.

Only countries on the level of the Five Permanent Members possessed a small number of super soldiers enhanced to this level. A soldier enhanced ten times could fight Alex one-on-one, but these soldiers lacked Alex's strange abilities.

Alex continued living on Manhattan Island. Although his sister had already left the island to work for the Umbrella Corporation, she still came to visit Alex from time to time.

Alex also hunted Hunters on Manhattan Island every day, selling the Hunter spinal cords to the Umbrella Corporation in exchange for the things he needed.

It was not that Alex did not want to leave. Elizabeth's genetic restriction was simply too powerful. Mercer had no way to learn how to swim...

The area around Manhattan was illuminated by fire-control radar twenty-four hours a day. Not even a bird could fly out. As for the several bridges, they were heavily guarded by the Umbrella Corporation's enhanced soldiers. It was not that Alex could not defeat those Level 10 Enhancers one-on-one; he simply could not withstand being mobbed.

As expected, the island nation became a testing ground for biological weapons. America's godfather only felt that zombies were a good thing: their spinal fluid could yield Longevity Substance, while their remaining flesh and blood could catalyze new Hunters. Hunters could in turn yield Enhancement Fluid and produce super soldiers. The whole process was practically perfect.

As for the island nation, who was that? Was it worth anything? It was not my own son. Without America's support, the island nation seemed to have returned to the Mythological Era recorded in its legends.

Nowadays, mythological creatures flew everywhere across the island nation, and all kinds of superhumans ran rampant. No one knew whether this was good or bad for the island nation's people. The Blacklight Virus had strengthened not only the animals and plants native to the island nation, but humans as well.

With no US Military riding on their heads and defecating, and no army possessing powerful destructive weapons to suppress them, Japan quickly returned to the Warring States era, with all kinds of small city-states standing side by side.

In the apocalypse, humanity was never the stronger side. All kinds of bizarre creatures evolved all kinds of bizarre abilities. Humanity's advantage lay in intelligence, but in nature's evolution, humans could not be said to be ahead of the other creatures.

Willow Tree and Elizabeth each occupied a large island in the island nation. Following Chen Changsheng's orders, the two viral aggregates created powerful individual organisms and waged offensive and defensive wars. This was preparation for the future.

They said that war was a tremendous driving force behind technological development, and this was indeed true. Under the catalytic influence of the war between the two super-virus aggregates, one super-creature after another, filled with the aura of mythology, was created.

Countless fleshy smoke towers constantly sprayed the Blacklight Virus into the sky, blocking satellite signals. No one could learn what was happening in the island nation through spy satellites.

Thus, the island nation could always detect scouts coming from across the ocean. Elizabeth and Willow Tree never cared about this; the two simply carried out their offensive and defensive war conscientiously.

The various abilities of the island nation's mythological creatures stunned the personnel from various countries who came to investigate. The island nation's development had indeed exceeded everyone's imagination.

Because countless Blacklight Viruses floated in the air, everyone knew only that the island nation had fallen. But no one could have imagined that this was what its fall looked like.

The island nation's residents, who were nearly wiped out, progressed alongside everything else. They evolved many interesting abilities as well. Those abilities protected them and gave humanity a sliver of hope for survival in the apocalypse.

Willow Tree's presence could be found in many parts of the world. It had infected and evolved countless plants. Greenery spread across the globe, carrying out massive amounts of photosynthesis every day and converting energy from the sun into Life Essence, which was stored in the underground network of roots for emergencies.

No one on Earth talked about global warming anymore. Forests and wild grass had even begun encroaching on human living space, while all kinds of mutated plants appeared one after another: rice with incredibly high yields, delicious fruits, corn that improved the human constitution, and so on. People throughout the world were suffering and enjoying themselves at the same time.

Elizabeth constantly obeyed Chen Changsheng's orders and conducted her own evolutionary experiments on the islands, creating only marine organisms she could directly control. Every organism Chen Changsheng had thought of or not thought of, whether scientifically plausible or not, was catalyzed into a prototype and tested.

After discovering the island nation's abnormalities, the other countries of the world also strengthened their research and control of biological weapons.

But because zombie spines contained substances capable of resisting aging, humanity still could not let go of them. Thus, some people would always secretly raise zombies to carry out unspeakable activities.

Biological weapons specially customized by the Umbrella Corporation also wandered through the vast ocean.

Chen Changsheng had always cherished the ocean, since water resources were precious as well. Elizabeth had also evolved several creatures in the ocean that could obey commands, capture fish, rapidly produce substances, and store them.

When creating deep-sea organisms, Elizabeth took inspiration from Chen Changsheng's brain-bug system and designed a set of insectoid control principles.

The brain bugs did not participate in combat. They had no combat ability but possessed extremely high intelligence, allowing them to plan and formulate battle strategies. The king bugs had no ability to think and were responsible only for relaying information, linking the broodmothers above to the soldier bugs below. They could command and coordinate, precisely controlling every insectoid.

Although this system had many flaws, it could accurately control every insectoid without causing unknown changes. Elizabeth therefore quite liked this method.

Through the mysterious communication method between the viruses, Chen Changsheng directly contacted Elizabeth, who was far away in the island nation, and asked her about the Doorway.

The inheritance was too ancient, so Elizabeth remembered only a rough outline. Fortunately, the Doorway seemed to be in the Pacific Ocean, not very far from the island nation. Elizabeth therefore took her insectoid army and began searching from the waters near the island nation.

It did not take Elizabeth long to find a Doorway hidden deep in the ocean. This Doorway was extremely miraculous—it was truly a mass of black-and-red light suspended in midair.

When Chen Changsheng walked before the light, a prompt appeared, stating that energy was required to activate the teleportation. No such prompt appeared for anyone else. To them, it was simply an ordinary bubble of light.

After devouring some fish, Chen Changsheng rapidly evolved organs that allowed him to breathe underwater, then quietly hovered nearby and observed the Doorway.

Chen Changsheng did not know what the Doorway required for charging, but specialized matters were best handled by specialists. The Umbrella Corporation had enough experts.

Chen Changsheng summoned a large group of specialists to study how to open the Doorway near it. Although these people could not see the prompt, they could use instruments to measure how the Doorway absorbed energy.

After a period of testing, the researchers discovered that the Doorway reacted to all kinds of energy. Whether electrical energy, Willow Tree's Bio-energy, or Elizabeth's Biomass, all of them could drive the Doorway to produce a reaction.

But they could only activate a reaction from the Doorway. To truly open it, they still needed an enormous amount of energy.

With the Umbrella Corporation's financial resources, Chen Changsheng directly built two enormous nuclear-powered generating ships and anchored them in the ocean near the Doorway, sending a constant stream of electricity into it through long cables.

Under the uninterrupted power supply from the oceanic nuclear power stations, it took more than half a year before the Doorway finally opened a large crack.

A great deal of white light emerged through the crack. This white light was so familiar, just like the light through which Chen Changsheng had traveled here.

After approaching the Doorway and sensing it, Chen Changsheng could clearly feel that passing through it could take him to two places. One was his original world. The other was an unfamiliar world filled with all kinds of unknown energies.

In any case, the Doorway was here, and Chen Changsheng could return to the familiar place at any time. Thus, he decided to explore the unknown world first.

After all, if he returned to the familiar place, Chen Changsheng had concerns. He would have no way to obtain enough energy to come back. But in an unfamiliar place, Chen Changsheng had far fewer reservations.

Once the Blacklight Virus emerged, viruses would float throughout the entire world, directly transforming the whole planet into a living organism. How much energy could it possibly lack?