It was already three in the afternoon when Li Qing returned to his room.
He did not work out at this time as usual, nor did he turn on his computer to check the view counts and comments on the second video.
Instead, he stayed at home and once again watched the scene inside the laboratory through the camera.
At this moment.
The flames had already gone out.
After all, there had not been much oxygen inside.
But the life forms had not been burned to death completely, because that giant had frantically summoned all his subjects to hide inside his body.
And to withstand the scorching flames, the giant had put on an exoskeleton, becoming the Armored Giant.
Immediately afterward.
He became a white-bone armored giant. After serving as a refuge for the giant god to evade the flames, he faced the next disaster:
An oxygenless environment far more terrifying than the flames!
The giant evolved again. His skin began to turn green and woody, and he started becoming a tree person, carrying out photosynthesis to supply oxygen to all living beings in the world.
"Impressive."
Li Qing smiled. "There have always been underwater plants inside, producing plant cells. That isn't surprising."
"He changes with the environment like Ditto—turning into an exoskeleton to resist flames, then into a plant to produce oxygen. Is he going to lead civilization to survive?"
A trace of regret suddenly appeared on Li Qing's face. "No. He's going to die."
Even a layman like Li Qing, who had only recently begun studying genetic engineering, knew.
This disabled person, who panted even while walking, struggled to twist open a bottle cap, and needed to lie in a hospital bed at all times, had successfully resisted this terrifying apocalypse of fire. What was the side effect of unleashing such enormous physical potential?
Paying with his life.
Cause of death: genetic collapse.
The world was balanced.
When you were a single cell, you were equivalent to a tiny program of a few megabytes. You could encode it freely and evolve it at any time into a simple lactic acid bacterium, yeast, E. coli, termite mushroom, or bolete mushroom. Naturally, there would not be any major problems. After all, the structure was simple, and the underlying code could be seen at a glance.
But now, you were equivalent to a large life form with several hundred gigabytes of genetic code. How could you dare to alter the underlying code recklessly? Were you not afraid of creating countless bugs?
There was even a famous saying in programming circles: If the code runs, don't touch it!
The same applied to life.
At present, every life form on Earth was a magnificent and intricate creation. The reason they did not suffer genetic collapse was that they had taken the most stable forms forged through billions of years of evolution on Earth!
Great Emperor of Atabia knew this as well.
Otherwise, he would not have first simplified the underlying code, retaining only a simple primitive life form of muscles and bones while discarding eyes, ears, mouths, noses...
The more structural functions one forcibly crammed in, the harder it was for life to remain stable!
He had originally planned to evolve those features step by step later—eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
But what about now?
This newborn infant of his, a newly born disabled person who struggled even to twist open a bottle of mineral water, had forcibly tried to save the world and rescue his people...
He had gritted his teeth and added a pile of chaotic genetic structures. It was like cultivating two or three kinds of internal energy at the same time. Going berserk and suffering cultivation deviation was inevitable.
And did he not know that he would die?
He knew.
But he had not abandoned his people. He could kill them himself, but if someone told him to kill them, he would refuse!
The apocalypse had ended.
"Ah-ha, the fate he gave me—I stubbornly refused to follow it." The Great Emperor of Atabia had already transformed into a vast, majestic life form with green skin. He was a tall, slender, handsome, aloof male figure, draped in long hair like willow branches, with pointed ears and striking features, as if he were a towering elven god.
At this moment.
His genes were collapsing.
His genes were like a tangled ball of thread, impossible to sort out. The civilization's hundreds of billions of engineers could not find a solution, nor could they reverse the process.
"His Majesty, your genetic collapse has begun. The plant-cell structure and animal-cell structure are interfering with and repelling each other. They're fundamentally incompatible."
"Damn it! Even after we used a chimeric structure, we still can't reduce the side effects?"
"This is happening too quickly! He's merely a newborn juvenile god, weak to the extreme. He shouldn't be this chaotic. If he grew properly, then even if these structures coexisted in his body, this wouldn't happen..."
"The optimal solution at present is to let the plant cells take complete control and become a tree entirely..."
"His Majesty!"
"His Majesty!"
Messages arrived one after another.
Great Emperor of Atabia knew clearly that he was going to die.
And the contribution he could make for future generations before his death was complete treeification.
He would transform into a colossal tree reaching the heavens, providing oxygen once more to this oxygenless world and nourishing all living beings of future generations.
"That's enough. At the very least, this was my choice, not a choice made for me by the gods in the heavens."
The giant Atabia smiled.
This vast giant, whose height reached countless tens of thousands of zhang, shook the earth with every step. Crossing mountains and rivers, he held a group of microorganisms in his hands and said:
"So what if I die? Using my life to provide precious data on divine life for those who come after is also worthwhile. The death of a pioneer is only right and proper."
The giant's face was utterly unconcerned. "The people on the ground cannot become giants on par with gods in a single step. I had long since resolved to die. Besides, I have already become a giant god once in this magnificent world. I have no regrets."
"I have become the past. You still have a future. I hope that after I am gone, you will continue to resist the injustice of fate and complete the great exploration of life's evolution."
Great Emperor of Atabia suddenly laughed again as he gazed toward the Crystal Wall.
"I still have one wish. I want to make one final attempt. I still want to see what the world outside looks like!"
He kicked aside a pile of cans, picked up an iron bar from the storage rack, and began spinning it against the Crystal Wall. "Our flesh-and-blood bodies currently have limits. But what if we use this special material?"
Drilling wood to make fire.
Sizzle!
The green elven giant god held a long metal rod and spun it, as if an enormous deity from ancient mythology were wielding a divine weapon and breaking through the barrier of this world.
"Even this won't work!!!"
Great Emperor of Atabia suddenly became like a madman.
He gripped the iron rod and kept spinning it, again and again.
He maintained the same movement, the same rhythm.
This was the war between a mortal like him and the gods—his final obsession.
Like Kuafu from that unyielding ancient myth, he drank water when thirsty and ate meat when hungry. But the collapse of his body left him unable to take in any energy at all. His movements grew slower and slower, and afternoon turned into dusk.
"Waaah..."
Countless sages of Atabia wept so hard they could not make a sound.
Everyone knew clearly that their spiritual leader was about to fall, and that the kingdom named after this great man—Atabia—was also heading toward total destruction.
Atabia was different from them.
He was different from all the sages.
He had been born standing at the summit of the world.
His wisdom was peerless, his talents had never been seen in all the ages. He had even leaped beyond the civilization's level, built the Tower of Babel, and nearly created a true giant god to confront the world beyond!
Crack.
The god slowly rotated the sharp blade in his hand, growing slower and slower, like an old man.
Suddenly, the entire world rang once more with the dirge of the Church of the Suffering:
"Raging rain shall collapse into floods~~ Purple clouds shall cover the earth and become an abyss~ Ruins shall raise a towering pagoda~ Bones shall be covered in flesh~ And I shall return to the heavenly god, suffering in the lake of fire for the righteous upon the earth until I become eternity..."
The music sent him on his way.
The towering Tower of Babel had been destroyed by the Outer God and become a towering giant tree.
Crash!
When the golden afterglow of evening shone in from outside.
Amid the genetic collapse of the ancient-era elven giant god, his hand stopped moving at some unknown point, and his entire body completely transformed into a tree.
Before dying, he still maintained the handsome statue-like posture of drilling wood to make fire. He became an enormous wax statue from the ancient era, and then his skin was gradually covered by bark, turning into a verdant, sky-reaching ancestral God Tree.
"The power of the gods is truly fascinating." The tree person's face was completely submerged beneath the bark.
"The king has fallen, the ringleader has been executed. The Atabia civilization is completely finished."
Li Qing put on his blindfold, closed his eyes, and left the room.
At last, the dust had settled, and he finally had the courage to go outside for dinner.
Li Qing withdrew his gaze, his expression filled with emotion. "Atabia, you yearned for the power of the gods. How could I not yearn for it as well?"
There are worlds beyond the world. Compared with the vast universe, we are incomparably small and pitiful.
Your civilization was only beginning to sprout, so you yearned for mysterious beings like us. But the scale of our civilization was no more than a drop in the Vast Sea. The universe was simply too magnificent.
That madman Atabia had chased after the truth of life until his final moment, exploring the limits of the world. This left Li Qing both deeply moved and shaken.
Would he, one day in the future, also walk Atabia's path amid countless civilizations, pursuing the truth and future of the world and the ultimate evolution of life? Would he die upon the path like Atabia—or reach its end?
After dinner, he walked along the streets beneath the evening glow.
Li Qing looked at the ordinary giant humans one after another, feeling as if lifetimes had passed.
When he watched the death of his strongest opponent, Li Qing felt no exhilaration of victory, only immense shock.
The ordinary humans who could be seen everywhere on our streets had required the efforts of tens of millions of trillions of lives in their civilization, yet they had never even stood on the same starting line as us and become giants.
Li Qing suddenly thought, "Perhaps he was another Pangu. After Ning Guochang, he too fell, transforming into a world tree that nourished the entire world—creating heaven and earth. When one whale falls, all life thrives."
Or perhaps, this was the perfect way to avenge Ning Guochang.
Before you continue