Elephant Sitting Still

A miracle!

The moment he heard that word, Lin Tuo's expression shifted ever so subtly.

He lowered the volume a little...

In the video, the director first briefly recounted what his group had experienced before saying excitedly:

"...Even now, I still can't believe everything I saw.

If I hadn't experienced it myself... this, this is simply too surreal. The entire desert was covered up, and the roads were silently moved.

When it happened, we didn't even notice...

No script would dare write something like this!"

Behind him, the screenwriter standing in the corner of the frame seemed to want to speak, but ultimately said nothing.

It was obvious that none of them were emotionally stable.

The reporter immediately interviewed several of the lead actors, and most of them were in similar states.

The video soon ended. Lin Tuo silently opened the comments beneath the post and discovered that the number of replies was nearing one hundred thousand.

"It's actually ××! I never thought they were over there!!!"

"Come to think of it... could this be hype? Is Director Li's new movie warming up? What kind of genius came up with this publicity stunt?"

"...Have you ever seen the state media helping with publicity? Even if it were publicity, they wouldn't do it this way!"

"Seriously, could this really be some kind of alien technology?"

"What are you panicking for... The Earth's server just clipped through the map and bugged out... The tech department will fix it in a moment."

The top comments alone had hundreds of thousands of likes.

Lin Tuo silently opened several other apps on his phone and found, without exception, that nearly every platform was discussing this sudden trending topic.

After checking the trending index, he saw that the Taklamakan Desert Black Box had unsurprisingly shot to the top.

Even foreign media had been thrown into an uproar. Lin Tuo saw screenshots of several major overseas internet platforms, all discussing the "Huaxia Black Box."

Some doubted it, some feared it, some were curious...

"As expected..." Seeing this result, Lin Tuo found himself calmer than he had anticipated. Well, keeping his phone muted and letting it buffer for an entire afternoon had indeed been a wise choice.

"Watching the Black Box news too?" At that moment, the restaurant owner came over carrying the dishes. He set them on the table, glanced at Lin Tuo's phone, and casually asked.

"Yeah. No idea whether it's real or not." Lin Tuo put on a doubtful expression.

The owner was broad and stout, with tiny eyes and a kindly demeanor. Hearing this, he shook his head and said unconcernedly:

"It's probably real, but it has nothing to do with ordinary folks like us. Didn't they say experts have already rushed over? We can just wait for the results."

"That's true." Lin Tuo smiled, inexplicably feeling a little more at ease.

Yes. No matter how lively things became online, it had happened in a distant desert.

Most people were merely watching the excitement.

Life was hard enough already. Everyone was too busy keeping their own heads above water—who had the mood to worry about humanity's fate?

Shaking his head, Lin Tuo quickly finished dinner and bought a few daily necessities.

Before the sun set, he hurried back to Lishan Martial Arts School.

"Huh, the land area has recovered." When Lin Tuo returned to the Old House, he saw that while he had been eating, the water produced by the melting Great Glacier had slowly receded from the Sandbox.

The land area within the entire Sandbox had increased again.

Fifty million years passed. As the seawater receded, the former seabed became land. Algae and fern-like plants from the ocean were left exposed beneath the sunlight, dying in great swathes. Yet some ultimately survived, evolved, took root, and grew.

Like the plants, some simply structured invertebrate marine animals underwent a similar process.

Another ten million years passed, and vertebrate reptiles gradually appeared.

Calling forth the Virtual Panel with a thought, Lin Tuo saw that several new lines of text had appeared in the Operation Log.

Within the Sandbox, an ecosystem increasingly similar to Earth's environment had taken shape.

The Sandbox's perimeter was covered by vast seas.

Within that oceanic embrace lay an irregular stretch of land.

Greenery gradually increased across the land. As for the animals, they were still too small, making them rather difficult for Lin Tuo to observe.

"At this rate, observable animal populations should evolve by tomorrow morning." Lin Tuo calculated the time and silently made an estimate.

Considering that the ratio of time's passage would decrease as the Sandbox environment grew more complex, he felt his estimate should be accurate.

"Come to think of it, the world simulated by the Sandbox completely follows Earth's parameters, and the process of the world's evolution seems, deliberately or otherwise, to be drawing closer to the real world...

"That means what evolves in the Sandbox will most likely be humans as well... I just wonder whether dinosaurs will still appear."

Lin Tuo sorted through the information in his mind as he thought.

It was inevitable that the Sandbox World would draw closer to the real world. Sandbox evolution was not truly random, after all, so it was unlikely to evolve sentient beings different from humanity.

Even if an accident truly occurred, Lin Tuo would intervene. After all, whether emotionally or practically, humanoid life was more agreeable.

After confirming that the Sandbox was functioning well, Lin Tuo took advantage of the remaining daylight to repair the hole in the roof with some tools. Only then did he head into the Courtyard.

He switched on the light beneath the eaves, and the entire Training Ground was empty and bright.

The unexpected appearance of the Evolution Sandbox forced Lin Tuo to postpone the reconstruction of the Martial Arts Hall slightly. Fortunately, he had waited years already; a few more months made little difference.

"Besides, digesting and assimilating Aether needs to be put on the agenda as well." Lin Tuo tried sensing his body and discovered a faint vortex coiled within his lower abdomen.

By now, he understood that Aether had to be digested.

Only part of the Azure White Qi drawn into his body through the Sandbox had fused with his cells, tendons, bones, and flesh... That energy would enhance his body.

Put in more mystical terms, it was a process of "tempering."

The remaining Aether, which had not truly been absorbed, was still stored within his body and could be called upon—for example, condensed into illusory weapons as before.

It could also be fed to the Store to purchase more area for Observation Mode.

After thinking seriously about it, Lin Tuo decided that for now, he would focus on "tempering" his body and achieving evolution on the level of life itself. As for methods to accelerate "tempering and digestion"...

Based on his earlier experience training in the Training Ground, he felt that traditional body-tempering methods could speed it up.

"However, with my current physical condition, basic exercise methods won't have much effect anymore. I can try something more difficult."

Standing at the doorway, Lin Tuo rolled up his sleeves and looked at the balanced, powerful lines of his arms beneath the light. An idea came to him.

That night, Lin Tuo did not stay up late. He went to sleep early in the bedroom beside the Sandbox Old House.

The night passed without incident.

At dawn the next morning, while the morning light was still faint, Lin Tuo was already awake. After washing up simply, he pushed open the door to the neighboring Sandbox Old House.

According to the System Log, he now knew that his judgment had been correct.

"Large Animals have appeared." Lin Tuo stood beside the Sandbox, looking down at the vast land with delight.

After one night, the continent had become lush and verdant. Snowy mountains, plateaus, basins, river valleys... varied terrain was scattered throughout it, along with stands of primeval forests.

When Lin Tuo manually adjusted the flow of time to 1:1 and bent down to blow away the clouds overhead, he startled a flock of birds. Crying out, they flew up from deep within the woods.

Boom! Lin Tuo cautiously tapped the ground with a finger, causing the land to tremble. Since he controlled his strength, it did not become a major earthquake.

Even so, many animals in the forest cried out in alarm and fled toward the plains.

Most were tiny, only vaguely recognizable as feline- or canine-like creatures.

A smaller number were much larger and stood out clearly.

"Is that... an Elephant? Uh, or a similar species?" Lin Tuo looked down in surprise at a short-haired species resembling elephants. They ran over the land in herds, kicking up clouds of dust.

Curiosity rising, Lin Tuo thought for a moment, then reached his right hand into the Sandbox and carefully pinched up an "Elephant" running at the rear of the group.

Outside a certain city in northwestern Huaxia, beyond the Isolation Shield known as the "Great Wall."

It was early morning, and sunlight had just risen over the eastern horizon.

Yet at a temporary station beside the national highway, the place was bustling with activity.

Cars were parked in the distance, their roof-mounted searchlights still on.

The researchers who had arrived one after another during the previous night had gathered here, and by now, a temporary research station had already been set up.

Strange Sensors connected by cables were carried up Fire Ladders and installed along the surface of the Great Wall.

At the base.

Inside the Military Green Tent, the screens of several Computers glowed brightly atop temporary tables as they analyzed data.

Compared to the clamor outside, this place was especially "quiet."

Because the incident had erupted so suddenly, the relevant equipment arrived only belatedly after the first group of experts had reached the site.

After discussing the matter in a meeting, they had decided, out of caution, not to use force to try to open the Great Wall for the time being. Instead, they chose to probe it with professional instruments.

Yet they had found nothing so far.

Suddenly, at that very moment, several devices sounded alarms at once, while intense Sound Wave Curves appeared across the Computer screens!

"There's a signal!"

"An unexpected signal! Hurry!"

The operators, already exhausted from staying awake all night, jolted upright and shuddered. Then the young man who had first noticed the anomaly shouted at the top of his lungs.

"What happened?"

"What signal?"

Several people immediately rushed into the tent from outside. All were dusty from travel, and leading them was an elderly man with graying temples who appeared to have only just arrived.

"Academician Zhou..." A researcher abruptly stood up. Surprised by the man's arrival but aware of the urgency, he immediately said anxiously:

"Vibrations! A faint vibration signal just appeared inside the Black Box! It has already... disappeared!"

Far away on Li Mountain, Lin Tuo naturally knew nothing of this.

Even though he had already softened his movements, the vibration caused by his tap against the earth had still been detected.

Unfortunately, this was destined to be a discovery that would yield no results from analysis.

At this moment, Lin Tuo was studying the "Primeval Elephant" slumped in his palm with great interest.

The moment he had carefully picked it up, it had already been intensely frightened.

After being removed from the "Isolation Shield" and brought before his eyes for observation, the poor elephant's eyes widened in terror. It went limp as mud and lost control of both bladder and bowels.

It let out a mosquito-like "roar," then... closed its eyes.

Operation Log:

Six hundred and fifty-seven million, four hundred and eighty thousand years into the world's evolution, the first Sandbox life-form faced reality directly, then... fainted.