He left the laboratory and returned to his home several dozen meters away.
The autumn wind outside the window was bleak and desolate.
His home was more than a two-hour drive from the city. It was quite remote, and the area outside looked empty.
In a huge bonsai planter in his room, Li Qing planted the seed in the soil and watered it. Under the effect of the Growth Code, the plant broke through the earth at a visible speed and sprouted.
Li Qing began pouring in water, along with various nutrient solutions.
The first section of the spine quickly grew out.
Then, at a rate of one tower level every half hour, it was 3D-printed upward, rising section by section!
"Ripening Technology is even faster than specially bred fast-growing white-feathered chickens. It's just like those advertisements for some brand of pig feed—growing fat and strong at lightning speed."
Li Qing looked curious.
Recently, he had been frantically making up for his lack of biological knowledge.
The fastest-growing things in nature were mostly insects, but the overnight growth of certain fungi and mushrooms could also make you question your entire understanding of reality. Of course, the most outrageous were certain bee larvae, whose body weight could increase a hundredfold in a single day.
And in just one afternoon,
the spine began growing a skeletal framework, becoming a white-bone Tower of Babel—a delicate twenty-six-story pagoda towering above the ground.
At this stage, the spine's data could be modified freely and fine-tuned.
The Tower of Babel Technology was still an extremely useful experimental-subject detection technique. It constructed the main framework of the spine while continuously observing and recording its growth.
But now, all the parameters had already been set for him. Li Qing no longer needed to input data into the Tower of Babel and adjust it.
Beneath the windowsill where bright sunlight streamed in,
"We can wait a day or two." Li Qing's expression was perfectly calm. Sitting before this growing skeleton, he watched a book with great care.
Because he read so quickly that his gaze barely lingered, he was not afraid of anything going wrong.
The book was called The Selfish Gene.
Its ideas were fascinating.
"Every living organism is a survival machine controlled by genes. For the purpose of self-preservation, genes constantly manipulate individual organisms into performing all kinds of actions, doing everything possible to preserve the continuation of their own genes—even if it means going through fire and water."
Li Qing's gaze swept continuously across row after row of words.
Between the lines of this book, he felt a profound resonance. He sensed a grand, tragic, and icy-cold history of evolution.
Weren't these selfish genes, manipulating their organisms as survival machines, the individual intelligent Single Cells within these life machines that constantly replaced their exoskeletons?
These genetic Single Cells were alive and conscious. They manipulated their bodily machines, and were currently manipulating the magnificent, turbulent course of evolutionary history.
When he reached the end, he closed the book and let out a long breath, gently stroking the elf's skull before him.
The scenes described inside—the evolutionary history of civilization on a planet—were so enthralling that they filled him with longing!
Compared with the vast evolutionary history of our planet, which unfolded over tens of billions of years, how insignificant were individual human beings?
Normally, a finite life could never witness an infinite history of evolution.
But now, he possessed the ability.
He had enough power to personally deduce the future biological eras thousands or billions of years from now, to evolve all this vast and magnificent wonder, and look down upon one species after another being born and dying out.
Li Qing stood up and returned the book to the shelf. His eyes began to gleam. "But does the evolution of life have an end?"
"Based on what we currently know, life clearly has limits."
"Or rather, the Carbon-based Life on Earth has limits."
Boom!!
Li Qing suddenly punched the steel plate beside him. The steel plate did not move in the slightest, while several bones in his hand cracked.
He shook his hand. His bones itched as they healed.
"Reality isn't a movie."
"Flesh and bone can run fast and jump high, but they can't dodge bullets. No matter how powerful their regenerative ability is, they ultimately can't withstand a steel torrent or scorching magma."
He looked at the surveillance footage on the tablet before him. An unusual light bloomed in his eyes as he gazed at the World Tree.
"Lovely Immortal Gods, I hope you can give me the possibility of delightful surprises, and let me see what a pile of flesh and bones can accomplish."
"I have no more biological knowledge left to offer you as a reference. You have already stepped into an era whose future I can no longer understand."
Longing flickered in his eyes, and a trace of gentle laughter curved his lips.
"Let me see whether Carbon-based Life can have bones harder than carbon steel!"
"Let me see whether muscles can rival the toughest, most elastic advanced rubber, and whether your strength can become the Hulk from the movies—or even the dragons, qilin, and Immortal Gods of mythology."
While Li Qing was sighing with emotion, the computer suddenly chimed.
He received a web link to a trailer:
Call of Cthulhu
--An epic blockbuster that will shake the world and blow your minds!
Two months had passed. Naturally, he had not been idle. He had signed the contract and received the money.
That dubbed, picture-narration blockbuster was about to be released.
The speed could only be called average.
After all, the visuals were already complete; only the post-production dubbing and editing remained, along with all the procedures required to get it into theaters.
Although he had never intended to make money from it and had sold the rights outright, Li Qing still clicked on the promotional video as a viewer:
[Wow, this is absolutely incredible! The visuals in the trailer are even more magnificent than the previous footage!]
[Exactly, exactly! It looks like it really happened! Every Sea Clan Warrior has the lower half of a marine beast and the upper half holding a trident. The epic visual style is just too amazing! The visuals alone are worth the ticket price!]
[Holy crap! Didn't you notice? The most outrageous part is the bird's-eye wide shot. Tens of thousands of warriors are storming the city, and every single one moves differently! Every fighting motion is so perfectly logical, as if each one were controlled by AI!]
[And the church's holy knights, the emperor, and the wall guards—too realistic! I seriously suspect this is a vast, fantastical Sea Clan Otherworld! I'll go watch the movie and come back to prove it!]
[You idiots above, this is AI-generated art, understand? If I'm stupid enough, everything is superstition and everything is mythology! You actually think it's an otherworld? I'll perform a handstand while shitting myself.]
Li Qing scrolled through the comments on the movie trailer one by one and found them rather amusing.
The next day.
Early in the morning, Li Qing saw a spine sticking out of the soil in the large flowerpot, with a skeletal frame curled up on top of it, hugging its legs.
The skeleton was brown.
Its surface was covered in fine, intricate circuit-like patterns, resembling a peach pit.
This elf was the latest version of the technology—the third-generation elf, the Peach Tree Elf.
In other words, a treant made from a peach tree.
That skeleton really was made of peach wood, like a peach pit, only without the glossy sheen of one polished over time.
A thin skeletal membrane, like plastic wrap, enveloped the entire Tower of Babel, forming an exquisite, shapely, semitransparent white wax figure. It resembled a beautiful chrysalis, with flesh clearly visible weaving itself together inside.
Li Qing observed it curiously for a while.
Its internal structure was still simple!
It did not even have complicated organs such as intestines and a stomach. Its interior was more like the structure of a tree. No wonder it was a treant.
The third day.
A flawless, completely naked elf girl grew out of the spine. Hugging her legs, she curled up on the ground, radiating the sweet fragrance of peaches, like a humanoid Peach Tree Elf.
Her luxuriant hair consisted of slender, silky willow branches. Occasionally, a strand bore a few scattered emerald-green leaves, and they could even be woven into a leafy crown. Her ears were pointed, her figure long and perfectly proportioned, and her appearance exceptionally handsome, carrying the aura of nature.
Li Qing took one of her slender, jade-green hands.
Unlike humans, her skin was cold to the touch, resembling that of cold-blooded lizards and snakes, while her flesh was remarkably soft, like peach flesh, with the sensation that juice would seep out if it were squeezed with even a little force.
"The true body is a wooden skeleton."
"The flesh and skin covering the outside are merely a camouflage layer. The flesh is too fragile. A few simple strenuous movements can damage the skin and make the fruit-flesh fall away, exposing the skeleton. But its regenerative ability is extremely strong."
"It's practically a giant humanoid peach grown on a tree! The peach flesh is the blood and flesh, and the peach pit is the skeleton! In terms of unarmed combat, it's weaker than an ordinary man, barely comparable to a monkey from Mount Emei. Its strength is far too lacking."
"But paralysis toxins were built into it. It can spray out pollen, which is its only means of self-defense."
Li Qing did not find it strange. Being able to create an artificial lifeform was already quite fascinating.
It truly resembled the elves of mythology, with all kinds of divine abilities—things he was completely incapable of creating at present. This civilization's explosive development would need at least another month, or perhaps two?
"But this elf is quite beautiful. You can question their technology, but you can't question the Immortal Gods' architectural aesthetics. Just look at the Tower of Babel—you'll understand. It's an exquisite work of art, crafted with astonishing skill."
"But let's wait a little longer. By evening, the final stage will be completely woven, and I'll add the last piece—her brain."
Before you continue