Miracle

The words displayed on the Virtual Panel did not appear all at once.

After the first line surfaced, a long while passed before the second line was typed out. After another pause came the third.

During that time, Lin Tuo did not leave the Old House. He merely moved over a stool and watched the changes in the Sandbox with patience and curiosity.

Over those five hundred million years, the entire Sandbox experienced countless sunrises and moonsets. Daylight and darkness simulated by the Sandbox revolved without end, light and shadow shifting endlessly.

Because the entire landmass was so elementally simple, even such an immense stretch of time did not make Lin Tuo's observations too difficult.

Nor had those five hundred million years truly been "without change," as the log described.

Though there were no signs of life being born, several tectonic shifts occurred during that period. Volcano after volcano erupted, magma spread, and volcanic ash billowed up to blot out the sky and smother the sun.

Rivers gave off pale, misty vapor, which then turned into rain.

Some hills rose, while some plains collapsed.

The entire continental mass was lifted higher, changing the distribution of the rivers as well. At the four edges of the Sandbox lay vast expanses of ocean.

Precisely because there had been so many changes, Lin Tuo did not find watching it tedious.

"Does the log think nothing without life is worth recording..." Lin Tuo grumbled helplessly, then turned his gaze toward the ocean and noticed that the once-clear seawater seemed to have grown somewhat murky.

In the fifth hundred million years of the evolving world, the earliest simple life forms were born in the ocean. Yet just as their populations began to spread, they were forced to halt because of changes in the world's climate.

The Great Glaciation had arrived.

As this brief line appeared in the Operation Log, Lin Tuo discovered that a Blizzard had actually begun sweeping through the skies above the barren Sandbox.

Because of Time Acceleration, the entire Sandbox quickly turned snow-white.

The temperature plummeted.

The whole continent grew frigid. Mountains, rivers, and earth were buried beneath thick ice, and even the sea seemed to have frozen.

"Whew, that's cold." A chill rushed straight at Lin Tuo's face, though in the heat of summer, it actually felt rather nice.

"There are glacial periods in the Sandbox too?" Lin Tuo was somewhat surprised. In his eyes, the world inside the Sandbox was fundamentally different from reality, and its starting point was different as well.

In Earth's early days, it was said to have been a molten sphere covered in magma, only gradually cooling afterward.

Yet the continent in the Sandbox had possessed soil and water from the very beginning. Therefore, its evolutionary process should have been vastly different from Earth's, at least in his view.

Yet who would have thought... it had glacial periods too.

The Great Glaciation lasted one thousand eight hundred and forty-three years. Then the climate gradually warmed again. Melted snow nourished the entire world, temperatures rose, the oceans thawed, life's evolution resumed, oxygen levels in the air increased, and algae spread through the seas.

After another while, new words clattered onto the Virtual Panel.

Lin Tuo saw the cold within the Sandbox beginning to recede. The ice-covered land began to thaw, vast lakes and marshes appeared, and rainfall became frequent.

The ocean gradually turned green, signaling the growth of plants.

"Plants developed this quickly? Mm... the plants are beginning to climb onto land." Lin Tuo watched with keen interest as green began spreading from the ocean toward the continent.

Based on his limited biological knowledge, he guessed this was probably the process of gymnosperms transforming into angiosperms.

Unfortunately, those plants were simply too tiny to observe. Lin Tuo had no microscope at hand and could not take samples. He did dig out a magnifying glass, but it was of little use.

So he simply gave up.

As plants began appearing in the Sandbox, the intervals between new lines in the Operation Log began shortening, and the flow of time seemed to slow somewhat.

Of course, for life outside the Sandbox, the difference in flow rates remained astonishing.

"It's already this late?" When Lin Tuo raised his head again, he found that the light inside the room had already dimmed. Outside the Old House, the sun was slanting westward. Without realizing it, he had spent an entire afternoon observing.

Yet the Sandbox was still in the age of "plant reproduction."

"Looks like animals won't evolve anytime soon." Lin Tuo made an estimate, rose to his feet, then sighed helplessly. "I was planning to clean the house this afternoon, so what exactly did I end up doing?"

With a sigh, he consoled himself that most of the rooms had already been cleaned. There were basic quilts and clothes, and the water and electricity bills had always been paid, so living here would not be a problem.

The only troublesome thing was food.

After thinking it over, Lin Tuo decided that for the time being, he would eat in the town at the foot of the mountain or order takeout.

"Time for dinner too." Glancing at the sky, Lin Tuo locked the door of the Old House, left the Martial Arts Hall, and hurried down the mountain road toward town with the setting sun at his back.

By evening.

Li Mountain was draped in brilliant sunset clouds, and even the town beneath it, viewed from afar, seemed to possess a touch of anime-like charm.

This was the place where he had grown up.

Lin Tuo felt a surge of emotion in his heart. For no reason at all, he felt nostalgic, and his feet unconsciously carried him toward a snack shop he had loved back in school.

Yet the moment he entered town, he sensed that something was off. Along the roadside, several townspeople had gathered together, holding phones and talking excitedly, their faces filled with mysterious astonishment.

"...You heard, right? The Black Box over in the desert has been confirmed."

"Seriously? Isn't it just a rumor..."

"Who knows? Watch the evening news. They might mention it..."

The town did not have many people, and Lin Tuo only caught a few snippets. But when he reached the shop, he found that even the diners inside were discussing terms like "Black Box" and "desert."

"Has it already spread? Did the Sandbox I created really affect reality?" Lin Tuo forced himself to look unconcerned as he ordered dinner.

Then, feeling uneasy, he took out his phone and turned off silent mode—he had deliberately avoided looking at it all afternoon.

The moment he flicked the switch, a rapid string of notifications sounded from the phone.

The lock screen was densely packed with message alerts. Apart from a few junk texts he received every day, nearly all the rest were group chat messages.

When he opened the app, his eyelid twitched. Nearly every group chat he was in had come alive, and the ones at the top had already reached 99+ messages.

New messages popped up every second. It was just about dinner time, so people in the group chats were especially free.

He casually opened one group chat, where the discussion was in full swing.

"...Look at the latest news I forwarded. The state media has spoken!"

"Damn, that settles it once and for all. Weren't there still people stubbornly saying it was fake footage and fake news?"

"But this... is just too unbelievable, isn't it? The entire Takk Desert was just covered up like that? Without a sound? I still can't believe it..."

Lin Tuo silently refreshed the group chat, his expression gradually becoming complicated.

Though he had anticipated it long ago, when he truly saw the impact he had caused, he still found it difficult to remain calm.

Just as he had guessed, the news had ultimately spread.

He exited the group chat, opened Weibo, and tapped the trending list. As expected, Lin Tuo found that the top trend was "Takk Desert Black Box."

A quick glance showed that related topics took up nearly half the entire list!

When he opened it, Lin Tuo was startled to see that the topic had already surpassed one billion views!

Naturally, there had to be a huge amount of inflated traffic in that figure. But even so, reaching such a scale in only a few short hours was enough to show that the topic of the Sandbox had completely taken over the internet.

In this era, the speed at which hot topics spread was truly terrifying.

Suppressing the turbulent emotions in his heart, Lin Tuo looked at the post ranked at the very top.

#Takk Desert Black Box#

According to the National Astronomical Observatory: At approximately 3:17 this afternoon, a mysterious, irregular "Black Box" suddenly appeared above the Takk Desert, enveloping the entire desert.

Four desert highways, along with some facilities and personnel, were also moved beyond the desert by a mysterious force... Relevant agencies have confirmed the authenticity of the news and urgently organized an Investigation Team to head there.

The public is asked to remain calm and not spread or believe rumors...

After quickly skimming the news, Lin Tuo let out a quiet breath.

That was right.

Everything was exactly as he had imagined.

After he activated Creation Mode and selected the great desert, an anomaly had indeed occurred in the uninhabited desert region of the country's northwest, on Earth, in reality.

That so-called "irregular Black Box" was the Isolation Shield of the Evolution Sandbox.

And a change on this scale could not be ignored even in such a remote place. It exploded across the internet in a short time, stirring up a tremendous uproar.

He opened an attached video from the news report.

Lin Tuo saw that the footage had been filmed outside a city.

Vehicles were parked all over the highway, creating a chaotic mess as people came and went.

The backdrop was a pitch-black "wall" that filled the entire frame.

The cameraman even quickly panned through several angles, clearly conveying to the viewers the sheer size and grandeur of that "wall"—or rather, the Sandbox shell.

In the video.

A female reporter holding a microphone stood beneath the Great Wall, facing the camera and speaking with excitement.

"...As you can see, I am currently located in the northern part of the Takk Desert. Beneath my feet is National Highway 318... Just a few hours ago, it was not here at all...

"Yes. According to satellite measurements, the entire highway has been shifted a great distance northward by a mysterious force..."

"And this wall behind me, whose edge is almost impossible to see with the naked eye—the Great Wall—is the outer shell of the Black Box that has enveloped and obscured the entire Takk Desert!

"We do not know what material it is made of. In fact, through observation, we can see that its surface is extremely smooth and exceptionally sturdy. It is clearly not made of any common material..."

When the video was filmed, perhaps because the Black Box had blocked out the sunlight, the wind nearby was extremely strong.

As a result, the reporter had to shout throughout her report, while the wind occasionally swept up her hair.

After briefly introducing the surroundings.

The camera turned, and the microphone was suddenly thrust toward a group of people nearby.

Lin Tuo immediately found several of them vaguely familiar, and he quickly recognized them as a domestic film crew. No wonder... he had seen them in television dramas before.

"Director Li, I heard your production crew was among the earliest witnesses to discover and report the anomaly. Could you tell us what happened?"

Used to appearing on camera year-round, the group looked especially comfortable facing it.

Even so, their expressions were tense, as though they had yet to fully calm down.

"This is a Miracle!" In the video, the director had none of his usual calm composure. He raised both hands excitedly, stared brightly into the camera, and declared each word distinctly:

"A Miracle that will shake the entire world!!!"