Li Qing could currently roughly divide his civilization into levels.
1. Primary [Cellular Level] Evolution Pool:
Location: The test tube at his neck.
Range: Allowed the evolution of the most primitive Single Cell life.
Benchmark: Earth's Proterozoic Eon, the early stage when primitive life first appeared and organisms began to evolve.
2. Secondary [Insect Level] Evolution Pool:
Location: The laboratory before his eyes.
Range: Allowed the evolution of the most primitive small insects, plants, and primitive fish.
Benchmark: Earth's Phanerozoic Eon. It could even be narrowed down to the Cambrian biological Big Bang, when the variety of living things increased sharply and lifeforms of all kinds of insect sizes emerged one after another.
What about the tertiary evolution pool?
It corresponded to the enormous, complex lifeforms above insects.
In Li Qing's eyes, it could be compared to Earth's Triassic Period hundreds of millions of years ago. The lifeforms in it were all about the size of puppies and kittens.
This tertiary biological evolution sandbox required Li Qing not only to have money, but also to establish a force that could secretly protect it. Umbrella Medical Company would build a large laboratory for him and construct a "large-scale otherworldly space" to contain the evolution of their civilization.
As for the quaternary evolution pool—
It was part of Li Qing's distant plans. It would require an incomparably vast area of land, corresponding to the Jurassic Period.
Life would evolve into giant dragons and giant gods as enormous as Li Qing, trampling mountains and rivers and tearing apart river valleys!
The most terrifying and vast true Age of the Gods would appear.
"Right now, this secondary biological pool—the microscopic civilization in the laboratory—is already the limit of what I can control."
Li Qing stood outside the laboratory and watched the civilization of little people develop through the glass window.
"However, being perpetually restricted in size doesn't necessarily mean being restricted in technology."
"Without increasing their size, refining and perfecting their Life Structure may also be a powerful form of life."
Li Qing gazed at the glass window, deep in thought.
Beneath the World Tree,
the entire civilization continued to develop under the joint impetus of the church and the monarch.
They began compiling life and discussing their own consciousness.
To build brains for themselves to house their souls, the life engineers split completely into two sects because of their differing philosophies.
The "Holy Reason Sect" believed that the brain should be shaped like a holy dragon. They would connect the Single Cell brains of countless subjects into one network of neural cells, transforming them into a brain, and called it "Swarm Consciousness."
The "Human Reason Society" believed that the brain should follow proper conventions. The brain shapes of ordinary beetles and other natural lifeforms had their own logic; building a normal brain to house consciousness was enough.
A war of philosophies erupted completely.
In a vast circular city, an elegant, slender, ten-centimeter-tall giant female elf, about the size of a figurine, stood towering over the earth, her long hair falling over her shoulders.
This was a colossal experimental organism belonging to the church. If this ten-centimeter-tall lifeform truly succeeded, then a giant god of elves with human proportions could also be successfully recreated.
"We've created an elf's brain!" someone cried while looking up at the Giant Woman.
"We finally understand why God had us build this giant god blueprint. He was hinting that this elf would be the most convenient place to construct a biological brain structure!"
The leader of the Human Reason Society shouted, staring fanatically at the colossal elf.
If Li Qing heard this, he would slap them to death on the spot.
I told you to build a giant elf blueprint, not to research how to add a brain to it.
Even slacking off, they made it sound so righteous. They had secretly diverted part of their efforts into researching the brain inside it. No wonder their progress was so slow.
But beside them,
the leader of the Holy Reason Sect approached. Looking at the enormous elf, he let out a mocking laugh:
"You think the head of this bloated monstrosity can extend your lives?"
"If we made every ordinary person's brain that large, could the world hold them all? Would there be enough resources?"
Everyone fell silent. It was an obvious problem.
For a ten-centimeter giant to have a one-centimeter brain, if the hundreds of billions of ordinary people on the ground were all like this, filling the entire world with brains would not provide enough space.
"This can work!"
The leader of the Human Reason Society said furiously, "We can continue researching and make the brain smaller."
After all, humanity's first computer had been as large as a house. But with the improvements and optimizations of the modern age, a phone could now possess terrifyingly powerful computing ability.
Their first-generation brains were huge, but in the future, they could be developed to the size of an ordinary ant's brain, or even smaller.
"But do we have the time?" the leader of the Holy Reason Sect asked with a smile. "I admit that your path has boundless potential in the future, but we're already out of time."
"What do you mean? We don't have enough time?" the leader of the Human Reason Society asked.
"Do you remember our soul-pain experiments?"
The leader of the Holy Reason Sect said, "After these days of research and secretly conducting human experiments again and again, with civilians suffering brain death one after another, we determined the lifespan of consciousness."
"Only two months."
"That's right. Without a brain, like a ghost possessing a Single Cell, even if the body is transformed into something immortal, our consciousness will dissipate after two months."
"And now, after surviving for more than a month through one mass extinction after another, all of us have less than a month left to live."
Everyone in the Human Reason Society fell utterly silent.
If that was true, then death was at their doorstep. They truly had no time to research a natural, normal brain.
They had to be like the holy dragon.
Take a shortcut and become an Integrated Consciousness brain if they wanted to survive.
"In one month, our entire civilization will die. If this gets out, all the people will panic, go mad, and riot, won't they? We're all going to die!"
The leader of the Holy Reason Sect said, "I hope everyone keeps today's matter confidential! At the same time, rather than letting everyone die, we should sacrifice most of them, eat their brains, and let a small portion of us survive."
The people on the other side fell silent for a moment. Under the terror of death, the leader of the Human Reason Society asked directly, "How many must we kill?"
"At minimum, each person must kill twenty thousand. Ninety-nine percent will be wiped out."
The other leader replied, "We've discovered a way to control an 'Integrated Consciousness brain.' As long as their consciousness weakens and they approach death, we can devour and fuse with them.
"And we discovered that after transforming into the kind of composite, multi-element brain structure possessed by the holy dragon, our computing power increases dramatically.
"You all understand what this means for an engineer's research, don't you?
"We will become the true Creator Saints!
"I'm calling this power, which transforms the wisdom of individual cells into a collective wisdom-cell lifeform, 'igniting the Sacred Fire and condensing the Saint Position.'"
They had originally wanted to call it the God Position—the Creator Gods.
But they feared that God would punish them, so they called it the Saint Position instead, a rank of the holy dragon.
"Specifically?" the leader of the Human Reason Society asked. "We can't slaughter All Living Beings. If we add pain-sensing emotions to everyone's brains, torture their consciousness until it weakens, and then fuse with their brains, God might punish us."
But the leader of the Holy Reason Sect said, "We've already found a method. We won't add painful neurons to them. I observed that when those armored beasts eat, they secrete emotions of excitement and happiness.
"As engineers, we're responsible for evolving the bodies of the people. We can add the emotional neurons of gluttony to their bodies, making eating feel pleasurable.
"The people on the ground will lose themselves in that pleasure of gluttony. Their consciousness will fluctuate violently and remain excited for a long time, causing the lifespan of the possessing spirits to age rapidly. They will die on their own."
The principle was very simple.
A solitary ghost with a calm consciousness could live for a long time. But if that solitary ghost grew excited and fluctuated intensely every day, its soul would naturally scatter much faster.
"I see. Eating causes the body to respond with pleasure?"
The leader of the Human Reason Society was somewhat surprised. He said:
"I think there may be other emotions as well. Let's search for them. Perhaps there are six or seven kinds. Add them all to their bodily structures and let them lose themselves in paradise, excitedly consuming their consciousness at tremendous speed."
"Yes. We'll lure the hundreds of billions of living beings on the ground into secretly eating the Forbidden Fruit and losing themselves in this paradise of carnal desire. Our most elite engineers will ascend to the summit in Lost Paradise. Twenty thousand new humans will ignite the Sacred Fire and achieve the Saint Position."
"They won't truly die, either. Not a single wisdom cell of the civilization will perish. Every subject who declines will become part of our brain consciousness and help us become Perfect Humans!"
In the end, they reached an agreement on a Perfect Human Plan to survive.
This conversation was barely recorded in later generations, because it was the greatest, most horrifying mystery in history. Everyone who knew this part of history was doomed to die.
This was the true origin of the Creator Gods and the Seven Deadly Sins in history.
They had not been born gods at all. They had once been the cleverest ordinary humans among humanity. In paradise, they ignited the Sacred Fire, slaughtered all the mediocre commoners on the earth, and used them to complete their Integrated Consciousness brains. In the end, they completed the transformation from humans into gods and took the first step toward eternity.
When the gods appeared, the Seven Deadly Sins appeared alongside them.
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