Ocean Empire, the God's Second Descent

Kingdom of Atabia.

The entire world had entered the terrifying Dead Sea Era with the Great Flood.

The surviving people lived within the Ark of Refuge. They scarcely dared to venture outside at will.

Meanwhile, the King of Atabia within the refuge marveled at the wonder of multicellular life. He constantly attempted to compile genetic code and improve the refuge arks.

What terrifying speed could be achieved when billions upon billions of engineers, a population far exceeding Earth's, studied this single biological gene sequence together? What had once been merely a crude vessel with several oars—flagella and fins—

now underwent rapid iterations. With the vast emergency food supplies Ning Guochang had left behind on the iron racks, life was evolving at breakneck speed.

These arks gained the optical perception of mites, twenty-four taste receptors, and sixty-five ion receptor genes. They could now sense the outside world.

And to assist their operation, they developed various unconscious nerve cells and muscle cells within themselves. These intricate structures helped control the entire ark.

Inside the hull.

"How marvelous!" a Single Cell bacterium exclaimed, waving its flagella.

"Originally, controlling a single ark required at least tens of millions of engineers. Now, only a few hundred engineers need to pilot it from within!"

"No, our civilization is exploding! Soon, a single engineer sitting in the pilot's seat will be able to control an ark!"

These Single Cells shouted.

These Creator Gods of the primordial age still had no idea how terrifying the significance of their deeds was.

When a bacterium, a Single Cell, donned this gigantic exoskeletal mech and controlled the whole fish from its cockpit, did it not itself become one of the fish's nerve cells? Did it not become the fish's very brain?

Yet civilization continued its explosive surge.

The engineers quickly achieved one-person ark control.

Thus.

Under the engineers' DIY modifications, every fish they built had a different structure: shark-shaped, ocean giant-shaped, kelp-shaped, crab-shaped, snail-shaped, octopus-shaped—every bizarre form imaginable existed.

In the ocean, billions upon billions of primordial fish existed almost simultaneously, like the flourishing spectacle of the Cambrian explosion, where animals of countless phyla thrived side by side.

Time continued to race forward madly!

"Once civilization stops evolving, it begins to perish!"

"The evil Outer Gods are watching us from beyond the heavens, waiting for us to stop!"

Within the national palace, the King of Atabia's voice rang out passionately from atop his throne.

This Single Cell bacterial emperor sounded the war horn for the next stage of civilization. "We cannot keep building arks and living in the ocean forever. We must rebuild the land!"

Thus.

To resist the chaotic Evil Gods beyond the heavens, the world's engineers sent countless fish swimming through the ocean, forging tectonic plates and piling up earth into an unprecedented continent—Mu Continent.

This was a miracle among miracles.

A great civilization had built a new wonder.

And some of these fish would return to land.

After overcoming the Great Flood disaster inflicted upon them by the Evil God, the Kingdom of Atabia became even more determined to resist the colossal Evil God beyond the heavens.

They were clever, rigorous, and bursting with ambition. They had never ceased moving forward!

And the greatest Emperor of Atabia, wise and mighty, devoted himself even more to advancing civilization. He said:

"Build the land, but the seawater remains dead water. All ark engineers must record this passage of Divine Script and write it into the arks. It will allow them to break down seawater and feed from it."

Survival of the Fittest; the adaptable survived.

Within the alcoholic environment, fish that could break down alcohol finally appeared. Their vessels no longer needed to fear an energy shortage.

Countless fish swam through the Alcohol Ocean, breaking down alcohol, obtaining thermal energy, and discharging water.

They were like the greatest cleaners, purging the vile environment and returning nature to its most beautiful age.

These fish drank alcohol. If raised in fish tanks outside, they would probably become novel pets—or perhaps invasive species, turned into beer fish in China.

Splash, splash~~

The concentration of the Alcohol Ocean began to dilute, returning to true seawater.

The entire kingdom erupted.

"Wonderful! Our king has broken the Evil God's curse! We can return to our former environment!"

They wept tears of joy. In this age of apocalyptic eruption, they had suffered beyond measure, able only to live in refuges while endless deadly smog lay outside.

Poisonous gas filled the air, preventing them from remaining outdoors for long.

In this era of apocalyptic disaster, they dearly missed the beautiful age before the Evil God unleashed the Great Flood, when heaven and earth were clear, the air fresh, and green waters and mountains spread far and wide.

"King!"

"King!"

Someone cried out, "The King's radiance shall cover the earth!"

Others shouted endlessly, "We are constantly growing, our genes compiling and advancing! One day, every Atabian among us shall become a new Giant God!"

On land, the Emperor of Atabia, with his grand talent and sweeping vision, continued researching multicellular evolution.

After entering the new age of civilizational explosion, his goal was not merely fish.

This emperor began constructing an enormous ark upon Mu Continent, coiled like a great serpent. It was the Central Refuge and, at the same time, the kingdom's Central Research Institute.

Countless genius engineers would clash minds within the great serpent and kindle the spark of life.

Soon, with the aid of billions upon billions of engineers, the Emperor of Atabia finally completed the first edition of his foundational civilizational work, Four Creation Characters. Its opening words established the eternal three great truths:

[First Truth: All life in the world is built from four fundamental characters.]

[Second Truth: Life is a book. The long chain of genes is a line of writing in that book, using four Divine Scripts arranged in sequence to write the structure, form, traits, abilities, color, and size of that life.]

[Third Truth: So long as we understand the arrangement of these characters, we understand Creator Mysticism. The Atabians will open the gate of life within the realm of truth and completely enter an age of omnipotent glory.]

Having evolved fish from Single Cells, they naturally possessed their own scientific achievements.

This book thoroughly classified and summarized the microscopic kingdom of life's current knowledge and understanding of genes.

At this moment.

Within the royal palace.

The King of Atabia sat quietly upon his throne.

He was no longer a simple humanoid Single Cell. He had become a multicellular organism.

His original Single Cell had become a thinking head, with a body of eighteen cellular joints attached beneath it.

And the head of this Single Cell had vaguely taken on the handsome contours of a human face. His entire form below had also become like a wax statue, possessing an exceptionally smooth beauty of the human body.

Upon the throne, this handsome gelatinous humanoid wax-statue lifeform sighed softly. "This is my new form."

"Congratulations, Your Majesty! Congratulations, Your Majesty!"

"Your Majesty, the Atabians have begun to take on the shape of gods!"

Countless ministers below spoke fervently.

Though they claimed they would defeat that Creator God, deep within their hearts, their racial inferiority also made them yearn for and revere the Creator God's human form.

Otherwise, they would not previously have tried to investigate the Creator God's appearance, having billions upon billions of citizens crawl across Its body and measure out the shape of a god before transforming themselves into humanoids.

Back then, though these Single Cells possessed intelligence, their technology could not keep up. They had merely made a self-deceiving imitation: a simple humanoid form consisting of one cell with four flagella stuck into it.

Of course, they had also discovered that this two-handed humanoid form was the best shape among all living things for making tools. It suited engineers like them perfectly. No wonder it was the most majestic and mysterious god-shaped organism.

But now.

After enduring the Great Flood, their great sovereign had unexpectedly drawn ever closer to that form!

He had even formed a face and physique, with sharply defined muscles.

The King of Atabia looked at his subjects and said leisurely:

"There is no need for envy. This Life Blueprint book for this structural form will be distributed to you. You need only evolve according to the blueprint."

"I hereby announce! We Atabians shall undergo a second evolution of our body forms. From Single Cells, we shall completely become multicellular lifeforms and possess the form of gods."

At that moment, the entire palace erupted.

"Why worship gods when we Atabians shall become gods ourselves!" Countless officials and citizens cried out, leaping into the ocean and piloting themselves as fish through the sea.

The Emperor of Atabia merely gazed on with emotion.

They had evolved from Single Cell spores into fish. It could be said that they had taken a great step forward in the history of biological evolution.

Yet unlike the entire nation's fervor, even after achieving such a majestic feat, he still felt no joy.

The more ignorant one was, the more arrogant one became.

The more one knew, the more one feared.

In secret, he had begun studying the secretly preserved blood of the Creator God, analyzing the four characters within It and dissecting the Giant God's structural blueprint. Only then did he discover how majestic and vast the power of gods truly was.

The genetic structure was so complex that he could barely comprehend it.

How marvelous.

It was simply too marvelous.

Even the Mite Behemoth—the monster they had previously found so difficult to conquer—possessed a genetic coding blueprint that appeared so primitive before the Giant God's coding blueprint!

The Creator God's structure was a miracle among miracles.

Billions upon billions of exquisitely simple yet densely arranged Divine Scripts formed an immense and complex structure of life.

The structures within a single cell alone exceeded those of their Single Cells by an unknown number of levels of biological civilization.

Their genetic chains were unlike their own, nakedly exposed. They were encased and protected by an outer nucleus. Moreover, every cell contained all manner of intricate miniature structures: mitochondria, centrosomes, ribosomes... none of which he could understand.

Whenever he observed them, he found them unfathomable and unbelievable!

"So this is a god. Is this a Higher Civilization's life structure? Is this the [Giant God Shell Blueprint] that gods wrote for themselves? Compared to the [Ark Shell Blueprint] we wrote for ourselves, it is simply..."

Upon his throne, he suddenly sighed. Looking at those engineers compiling arks, proudly showing off their creations and comparing who was greater, he found it laughable—utterly laughable.

Our life-cell creation technology was not worth mentioning before theirs.

And yet we were so proud.

However, he did not know that humans had not built themselves.

Unlike their artificial edited evolution, in which they imposed their own hearts upon Heaven's will, the human genetic blueprint was a natural crystallization nurtured by Earth over more than three billion years.

It was a miracle of life evolved through the mighty force of endless time. How could their engineering editing technology, developed for only a few days, possibly compare?

Yet at this moment, following the logic of his civilization's development, the Emperor of Atabia believed that the Outer Gods had begun just like them, as intelligent Single Cells that compiled their own evolution before eventually turning themselves into Giant Gods.

"The gods' civilization can construct such magnificent engineering... their technology surpasses ours by countless levels. It truly inspires longing."

Sitting upon his throne, this ambitious humanoid wax-statue ruler gazed far beyond the World Crystal Wall. He extended a finger through his forehead and stirred a DNA Sequence within his brain.

"The larger the body, the harder it is to control. We Single Cells find it so strenuous merely to control one ark alone, yet that Outer God civilization, also as tiny Single Cells, can effortlessly control gigantic divine shells. They are at least seven levels above us!"

He even believed that humans, like them, had a Single Cell as their true body doing the controlling.

"If possible, I wish to hold a true exchange with such an Evil God!"

A yearning suddenly arose in him, an intense thirst for knowledge. He yearned to communicate with this extraterrestrial Higher Civilization beyond the world, with the giants, and touch the exquisite, peerlessly beautiful structures of their creations.

"When will he come to destroy the world again? I wish to see him."

He suddenly rose from his throne and murmured, "To see the Evil Gods beyond the Chaos Crystal Wall! Their forms of life are inspiring."

As though answering his request.

Beyond the distant Crystal Wall, a sudden crack resounded, followed by a figure slowly appearing outside it.

Crack! A gigantic, icy eye gazed down from beyond the World Crystal Wall, its stare radiating a suffocating warmth.

A wave of consciousness arrived:

"Oh? It seems you are doing quite well. You Single Cell lifeforms have actually evolved into a kingdom of fish."

Starting tomorrow, there will be two updates a day.