Setting Sail into the Mythological Era!

"Pound the medicine, feed the octopus."

"Pound the medicine, feed the octopus."

In the dream, within the harbor, Zhu Zhengwei kept repeating this simple, crude experimental process.

The Qi Consumption Method was the first, most straightforward path he had pioneered. In essence, it was a process of "consuming soul energy to strengthen one's own spiritual power."

Only in this four-dimensional world did soul energy permeate heaven and earth in the form of qi.

"So here's the question: back then, Zhang Zhi accidentally ate a hundred servers by himself, amassed a huge amount of soul energy, and his spiritual power became terrifying, making him a long-lived one. What about this octopus?"

"Just feed it a hundred, two hundred, three hundred."

Zhu Zhengwei kept experimenting.

But he quickly discovered something.

The octopus's body capacity was very, very small—it was full after just three server units of energy.

Yet how could Zhu Zhengwei be satisfied?

Keep pouring!

Pour until it's dead!

The cost-effectiveness of this approach was extremely low.

He found that after spending over a dozen server units, he only squeezed the capacity from 3 to 3.1.

But Zhu Zhengwei didn't care about that. After all, his supply of servers was now abundant, nothing like the scarcity before.

Clack, clack, clack, clack!

As he pounded the medicine, Zhu Zhengwei was utterly focused, enduring the solitude.

"Huh?"

"Wow, did I also enter this pharmacy scene? The architecture, the harbor ships—it has a fantasy epic vibe."

"There have been so many of these sleep scenes lately. The dev team's slacking off."

Clack, clack, clack, clack!

Pounding the medicine.

"Wow, this ASMR sleep aid, the sound of pounding medicine is so nice. I'm about to fall asleep."

"Come and favor me quickly."

Clack, clack!

Pounding the medicine.

"Ah, so good, so good!"

"This is the thrill I need! Handsome guy, faster, faster! Ah~~"

Even as he pounded the medicine, his ears were filled with a torrent of bizarre, blasphemous, unnameable, illogical, mysterious, and terrifying whispers from the countless plants.

"It seems that making the Longevity Potion also requires enduring astonishing side effects—terrible spiritual contamination," Zhu Zhengwei murmured to himself.

After a long while, he had harvested another two hundred units of energy from the chives, squeezing the octopus from level 3.1 to level 3.9. With nearly four units, the octopus underwent a violent mutation.

Zhu Zhengwei sensed the octopus's cells becoming active, saturated with soul matter.

Hungry!

Hungry!

Hungry!

A maddening hunger surged from the octopus.

Zhu Zhengwei fed it a massive amount of food.

"Just as I thought!"

Zhu Zhengwei couldn't help but smile.

As he had imagined, animals basically had no "brains," so it was easy to penetrate their minds.

"Their physiques are starting to be nourished by soul energy, becoming stronger!"

Zhu Zhengwei could clearly sense this.

But the side effects were also obvious:

Because they had no brains, they remained beasts.

Even though Zhu Zhengwei had chosen the octopus—renowned in the animal kingdom as the most miraculous creature with nine brains and three hearts—it still wasn't particularly bright.

An octopus has one main brain and eight auxiliary brains, one in each arm.

Plenty of brains, but the quality was too low!

In the following years, Zhu Zhengwei switched to other biological templates for cultivation, launching soul injection experiments and pumping them full of "qi."

Crabs, conches, tuna.

Their upper limit was even lower—only 0.6 soul units. Even if they broke through that limit and their qi filled their entire body, they'd still only reach 0.8 units.

"As I thought, my first impression was right."

"They're even dumber than octopuses!"

"But I can't pick dolphins either—their intelligence is too close to humans, and the bottleneck is huge. I have to stick with the middle ground."

That day, Zhu Zhengwei kept breeding octopuses in the tank, studying their body structure.

Over the years, Miss Zhong's dark-skinned girl had grown up. She sent her younger brother to school at the academy, and he did well, gradually lifting the family out of poverty.

"Is this... a giant octopus? Such a huge octopus!"

Miss Zhong stared at the tank and noticed all sorts of anomalies.

She watched the writhing octopus, its slithering tentacles, and suddenly felt a strange sensation—a longing to be wrapped up, devoured, to bask in the warm embrace of its limbs.

It was a kind of magical allure.

As if a being of immense soul power was drawing in weaker souls.

"Be careful. That octopus is very dangerous."

Zhu Zhengwei was sorting medicinal herbs and revealed that he was a biologist from the Bronze Country, who had obtained texts from the Old Civilization and was conducting a special biological experiment.

She believed him.

The bits of fishing knowledge Zhu Zhengwei casually shared helped their family strike it rich, and they began hunting tuna.

Ten years passed. In just a single decade, their family amassed a fortune.

They controlled several independent shipping routes, commanded a large crew of sailors, and became one of the wealthiest noble families in the entire Ghost Country.

They built Tuna Pointer Clock Towers one after another, standing tall above the ocean, glowing faintly to guide the way and tell passing travelers the time. The people in the ports called them the "Tuna Family" and the "Ocean Clock Family."

Their lineage expanded rapidly, and they adopted the Tuna Pointer Ocean Clock Emblem as their family crest.

Grateful, they provided Zhu Zhengwei with ample funding for his research.

Zhu Zhengwei now had a laboratory on a secluded island.

Civilization turned like pages on a calendar, flipping one after another.

New Era 0271.

The Stone Light Emperor Changshou was assassinated and vanished without a trace. The entire nation erupted in chaos.

All the powerful searched for the Stone Light Emperor Changshou's whereabouts, desperate to obtain the "Power of Kingship."

The two elderly emperors of the Bronze Country and the Seaside Ghost Country secretly traveled to the Slave Dynasty, using their "qi" to sense the Stone Light Emperor Changshou's trail, hoping to steal the "Power of Kingship" from the Slave Dynasty.

New Era 0275.

A shocking piece of news spread across the world.

The Bronze Emperor and the Ghost Country Empress had their whereabouts exposed in the Slave Kingdom and were ambushed by thousands of elite Slave Dynasty imperial troops.

"How dare they!"

"Such audacity!"

"That Revolutionary Mortal—he had already calculated that the two emperors would come in secret! He abandoned the search for the Stone Light Emperor Changshou long ago and chose to expend all his strength, setting up an ambush at the border ahead of time, swinging the Scythe of God Slaying a second time when no one expected it!"

"Who could have imagined!"

"Who would dare to think such a thing???"

"Mad! Absolutely mad!"

"How could he? He dared to challenge three Wind Swallowing and Qi Consuming mortal gods in a row!"

"This is the first man in human history to raise a blade against all gods and demons!"

"As expected of the Slave Dynasty—we are witnessing history again! An even crueler tyrant is rising!" someone shouted, denouncing him as a worse tyrant who showed no respect for the gods, and urged the two nations to send troops to eliminate him immediately.

But others sighed, recognizing the terrifying brilliance of his strategy:

"This is advancing by retreating! The Slave Dynasty is battered by storms right now—the perfect time for the other two nations to invade. But he used this ambush, which no one could have predicted, to curb their offensives. The two wounded elderly emperors will return home to find their own factions eyeing them like tigers. With the precedent set, those factions may not hesitate to slay gods themselves. The two sovereigns will have to appoint new successors early. Though they seethe with hatred, they won't have the energy to send troops against the Slave Dynasty!"

"Brilliant! Such a brilliant move! History always plays out like this—in times of chaos, heroes always emerge."

Zhu Zhengwei clapped his hands and laughed, listening to the evil plants whispering in the lab. He recalled the calm face of that middle-aged traveler—an ordinary mortal, yet so bold—and couldn't help but remark, "He actually ambushed two big ones, hitting them by surprise without any regard for martial honor. A real pro at setting up a honey trap. He's got experience."

Zhu Zhengwei finally learned the middle-aged traveler's name from the mouths of the people: Chong Dao.

A phrase from the Old Civilization's books?

Repeat the Same Mistake?

He didn't know if it was a mockery of the mortal world or carried some deeper meaning.

New Era 0283.

The three nations were battered by storms, all facing a time of transition between old and new.

In the harbor, the Tuna Clock Family seized the opportunity to rise, becoming a wealthy noble house.

New Era 293.

The Ghost Country Empress took her own life.

She passed the torch of civilization to the next generation—the "Crown" transferred to a little girl.

"The New Civilization begins from the Three Hundred Empresses of God, inherited through the hands of the Ghost Country. This is God-given Power, the God-given Great Power of Civilization. We are the true orthodoxy of the Mortal World!"

"Civilization and history are already the past; civilization and history are still the future."

The little girl wailed as she held the old woman's corpse.

She swallowed wind and consumed qi, dotted her Tear Mole, bore the Crown upon her head, and shouldered that weight.

Zhu Zhengwei watched the outside world but did not pause his own experiments.

"New progress!"

He discovered that, after long-term cultivation, the Giant Octopus had finally entered Secondary Development.

The octopus's body swelled continuously, growing to half a meter in size, but it only possessed the simple intelligence of a small dog—and then it developed no further.

"But is this it?"

Forty years had passed. Zhu Zhengwei tried various methods to stimulate it.

He found that no matter what, it was at best a somewhat more powerful Fierce Beast Octopus.

Qi endowed it with a terrifying physique, and in terms of combat power alone, it was no weaker than those "Blessing Shamans," yet it remained simple-minded.

"Is this the price?"

Zhu Zhengwei murmured, setting down the reagent in his hand.

"Normal humans: qi in the mind, terrifying intellect, but weak bodies."

"These animals: qi in the body, terrifying physiques, but simple minds."

The two were opposites.

Zhu Zhengwei was somewhat unwilling, but after many attempts, there were no results.

He had hoped to succeed!

Because in reality, his own qi was also concentrated in his mind, never descending below the neck—his body was fragile!

He was like that Stone Light Emperor Changheng, possessing powerful mental hypnosis abilities, yet his body was laughably weak. If someone got close, he could be easily stabbed to death.

Qi could not circulate through the entire body!

This seemed to be the threshold on the path of cultivation, the true difference between the mortal and the Extraordinary Creature.

"What a pity."

Zhu Zhengwei sighed.

He released the crabs, conches, tuna, and octopus into the sea, letting them reproduce on their own.

"Though it wasn't a success, Extraordinary Creatures have still emerged. The road is walked step by step. The initial design of extraordinary races has appeared; the seeds have been sown. Now I just wait for the era to change on its own."

Zhu Zhengwei gazed at the vast ocean, knowing this was only a beginning.

"Well then, the experiment is over. It's time to leave."

That day, Zhu Zhengwei quietly departed, leaving behind the Astonished Tuna Clock Family and a woman who had delivered meals to him every day.

The woman found a medicinal herb left for her—a gift.