The Age of Saints, The Elf Era!

Outside the world, Li Qing casually answered a Divine Oracle before silently sensing the newly born batch of integrated consciousness life.

This artificial secondary Awakening of theirs, just like the naturally occurring secondary Awakening of the Holy Dragon, allowed them to possess and observe from the shadows at any time, and to descend and control them whenever they wished.

"My control has completely improved at once."

Li Qing felt pleasantly surprised.

It had taken him a whole week to create one Vassal with a secondary Awakening.

Now, eight thousand had appeared all at once.

He could even secretly possess and "observe" these wise beings, using them as his eyes to more conveniently survey the entire world, switching between Vassal perspectives at will. It was simply incredibly comfortable.

"However, the population has become scarce. Let's see what they do."

At this very moment.

The era truly began to move forward.

In a sense, the previous eras were all incomplete and flawed.

They lacked brains.

Now, this was true complete life.

As new humans with secondary Awakening, each of them possessed a neural network life formed from forty thousand brain cells, forty thousand integrated consciousnesses. With himself as the main consciousness, their computing power reached an astonishing level!

Although it wasn't an exaggerated forty-thousand-fold increase in processing speed, it had improved several hundredfold. With such immense computing power, it brought a qualitative leap for them, the programmers, in compiling and writing tedious code.

Many programmers have had this experience:

Most of the time, it wasn't a lack of intelligence, but the sheer annoyance of writing line after line of code!

Now, they had perfectly solved this problem.

Looking at the decaying city, the Saint Positions outside the church spoke:

"There is no life left in the world, only us. The world is too desolate, all ruins, no vitality."

"We caused the destruction of the world, so let us create it."

"Yes, we've been researching brains all this time. The task the Lord gave us terrestrial saints was to study the Elf blueprints. Now it's time to finish."

Soon.

They found their current research incredibly easy.

"So simple!"

They laughed.

"Yes, we easily compiled a large segment of genetic sequences."

This leap in life, after igniting the sacred fire, was like upgrading from an abacus to a calculator. It was as if they were truly like gods, continuously creating, improving, and compiling the structure of Elves.

"They already have eyes, ears, mouths, and noses. For the next step, the Elf's method of nourishment will primarily use meat as energy, supplemented by radiation synthesis and photosynthesis, to maximize the absorption of solar energy and the natural power of sunlight."

"As for their size, let's set it to our previous human size."

"What about reproduction?"

"How about using the Tower of Babel technology?"

"Too slow. Creating them one by one is simply foolish."

"Why not have them be born on the World Tree? Modify the World Tree, have it bear fruit, and transform into Elves."

"Good idea."

"This World Tree is perfect."

The saints quickly gathered at the summit of the World Tree, continuously discussing and planning the future of the entire civilization.

If the biological cloning technology of modern Earth humans could still be seen in the previous era of building the Tower of Babel, now, with their increased computing power, they had already surpassed Earth humans by centuries.

Civilization had completely taken off.

The fourth day.

The saints finally completed this project that had been stalled for over half a month.

They created the first generation of rudimentary Elves. Although they were stiff and their skin was as hard as wood, they possessed eyes, ears, mouths, and noses.

They transformed themselves into these first-generation Elves and no longer used consciousness waves to sense the world.

For the first time, they heard the subtle sounds of the world.

For the first time, they smelled various scents, let out their own cries, and saw the colors of the world!

"We have become complete beings!"

They knew this was a historic turning point!

The seventh day of the new era.

Dissatisfied with the inefficient communication method of transmitting sound through their mouths, they began to create a brand-new genetic transmission technology:

Gene Storage.

Modern humans' code uses binary 0s and 1s to form all text, numbers, symbols, images, sounds, and videos, embodying all the world's information.

Then, they began to experiment with a quaternary gene language, represented by 1, 2, 3, 4, compiling, reading, writing, and storing information within DNA.

Three more days passed.

They succeeded again.

For them, who had mastered gene compilation technology, turning it into code was as natural as breathing.

They built the simplest language decoders for their own bodies. Their communication now involved merely touching each other lightly with a finger, injecting a strand of DNA. The recipient, through decoding, could then transmit images, movies, and information.

A light touch could transmit information.

This was already akin to the saints of myth.

"This is an ability only Saints can possess!" they communicated.

At this moment.

Their gene storage technology had matured, completely surpassing modern humans.

It's worth remembering that in 2017, George Church, hailed as the pioneer of first and second-generation gene editing technology and the father of genomics, used a similar method to convert binary digital language into DNA's four base languages, storing it in E. coli. After dozens of generations, the DNA was extracted and reassembled into an animation of a horse running.

At the time, this sent shockwaves throughout the scientific community.

Compared to silicon, DNA is the ideal carrier for data storage. The lifespan of typical physical storage devices is often less than 10 years, while DNA can preserve genetic information intact for over 100 years, consuming only one hundred-millionth of the energy of a flash drive.

Even more astonishingly, 1 gram of DNA could store 220 million HD movies.

And in 2019, Huawei announced the establishment of its Strategic Research Institute, which included research into DNA storage technology, aiming to break through the capacity wall with DNA storage's ultra-large storage space models and coding technologies.

In October 2022, just over a month ago.

A research team in Huaxia also achieved a breakthrough in biological storage technology, successfully storing 10 high-definition Dunhuang murals in DNA.

And now, their biotechnology civilization, from the start of their gene storage research to this point, has only taken ten days!

This storage technology was undoubtedly an essential foundational language for their biological civilization.

Outside the laboratory, Li Qing watched this scene, marveling in his heart:

"After going through a period of metamorphosis, they have begun a second civilization explosion."

"They are finally shedding the shackles of the barbaric era and entering the information age, with all sorts of outrageous biotechnologies, like those from myths, beginning to emerge."

Language is the foundation of civilization's development. Written records allow the wisdom of generations to accumulate, enabling descendants to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Humans recorded history on stone tablets, leading to the very origins of human civilization, with records spanning over five thousand years.

The Earth records history through geological strata fossils, leading to the initial records of biological evolution, with fossils spanning four billion six hundred million years becoming historical records.

And the civilization before them, using the quaternary language within their bodies, is recording history.

And this is merely their beginning.

Within this laboratory room, they began to transform once more into fervent civilized sages, pursuing truth, exploring the laws of the world, starting to replicate their own structures, and continuing to research their brains, constantly optimizing and shrinking the 1-centimeter embryonic brains they had before.

Unfortunately.

The first version of the Elves, equipped with these brains, still had rather low intelligence.

However, these scholars on the trees continued to walk joyfully in this created terrestrial world, observing these tribes, accepting the worship of their tribal citizens, and educating all beings.

They were enjoying the pleasure of Gods.

"The Tree of Life! It nurtured us!"

"The divinity of celestial creation often walks among mortals."

Some dull-witted Elves, accelerated in their growth, also entered the tribal era, fanatically worshipping the entire massive Tree of Life, the mother that birthed all spirits.