The Essence of the Soul

On September 23rd, Huang Si used alternating layers of fat and protein molecules to create something resembling artificial meat.

The first piece of artificial meat in the room was white, yet it lacked any of the aroma expected of meat; instead, it resembled a soy product, with a smooth surface and a regular shape.

Huang Si looked at the artificial meat resting on the plate, feeling a bit of resistance.

He knew the internal structure of this piece of meat like the back of his hand. He had just used his Creation Power to edit protein molecules into bundles at the microscopic level to mimic animal protein fibers, then layered fat molecules into a fatty layer, and finally mixed them with the protein fibers.

He had learned how to create these animal protein fibers with great difficulty before throwing away his ham. Although the structure of ham was primarily animal cells and far too complex to grasp, the hydrolyzed animal proteins were not difficult to understand.

This piece of meat contained no harmful components; all the protein and fat ingredients were incredibly pure. Huang Si didn't really know how to make impure ones anyway.

However, looking at this strange object still made him feel a bit uneasy.

Overcoming the fear of unfamiliar food was truly difficult, especially when it came to meat.

After hesitating for a long time, Huang Si finally fried the meat in oil, sprinkled it with salt, gritted his teeth, and took a small bite.

The texture was bizarre and extremely tough; the meat was a failure in terms of mouthfeel.

Huang Si rested to recover his Creation Power, then began adding a loose, porous structure to his artificial meat.

He fried the second batch of meat in oil, seasoned it with salt and soy sauce, and took a bite. Hmm, it seemed passable. Although the texture was average, it definitely tasted like meat.

With meat, vegetables, and noodles, what more could he ask for?

Having eaten his fill, Huang Si returned to the study and turned on his desktop computer.

Ever since power was restored to the house, he had been able to use the desktop. It had more movies, animations, and games, but single-player games were becoming increasingly boring.

Huang Si clicked on an icon of a beautiful anime girl on the desktop. After the hard drive whirred for a moment, a cartoon girl appeared in the bottom right corner of the screen.

"Master, good evening! Is there anything you would like Xiao Yuan to do?"

Huang Si used his mouse to drag an input box from Xiao Yuan and typed: "Hey Xiao Yuan, I don't want to do anything tonight, I just want to chat with you."

Xiao Yuan: "Master is the best! Xiao Yuan loves Master the most!"

Huang Si typed: "I have a worry lately."

Xiao Yuan: "Mm, please tell me, Master."

Huang Si: "My tongue has been blistering lately, probably because I haven't been eating enough vegetables and keep eating fried food."

Xiao Yuan: "Then Master just needs to eat more vegetables from now on! Would you like Xiao Yuan to help you search for vegetable recipes?"

Xiao Yuan displayed a dialog box: YES/NO.

Huang Si: "..."

Forget it, the mood was gone. Huang Si clicked NO and closed Xiao Yuan's program.

This 2D chat desktop pet was software he had downloaded from an open-source community, and he had the source code on hand.

Because Huang Si had studied software development, modifying the source code wasn't difficult for him.

During this time, he would tinker with Xiao Yuan's code whenever he was bored to make it more human-like.

But this thing was still just a desktop pet with a built-in search function; it was no better than Siri. After a few sentences, it would start suggesting web searches.

But there was no internet here, so it was useless.

Huang Si had been here for over two months. He could stick to his daily exercise and take vitamins to maintain basic physical health, but the psychological loneliness was hard to dispel.

If he were playing an online game, it might be fine, but the problem was that there was no internet here, and he could only play single-player games.

After getting tired of all the games, all that remained was reading books and learning knowledge; there was no social entertainment at all.

Humans are social animals, after all. Huang Si didn't know when he would be able to return. He might have to spend years or even decades here; the thought was terrifyingly long.

In his extreme boredom, Huang Si began to create his own conversational partner. He was currently using the 2D chat pet, but even with the source code modified to make it smarter, it was still quite stupid.

Huang Si glanced at the bookshelf in the study.

"I actually bought quite a few books on artificial intelligence in the past. There's a pile of tutorials and materials on the hard drive, but I kept procrastinating and never learned them. Now, why don't I just learn to write AI myself and code my own chat partner?"

He acted on the thought. With no distractions here, Huang Si could focus entirely on learning how to program artificial intelligence.

In the time that followed, Huang Si worked on perfecting the development of various daily necessities and new foods, while using the time spent waiting for his Creation Power to recover to study AI technology.

As he learned, Huang Si began using his computer to write a simple chatbot.

On the afternoon of October 2nd.

"This one tastes better." Huang Si ate a boiled meatball. This meatball lacked the texture and mouthfeel of real meat, but the taste was acceptable—at least much better than the artificial meat he had made at the beginning.

He glanced at the seasoning rack in the kitchen.

"The soy sauce and pepper are almost gone. Tsk, soy sauce is easy to handle, but pepper contains a large amount of dried plant cells; I can't make that."

Huang Si shook his head with some regret, then waved his hand, instantly refilling the soy sauce bottle.

"Let's take a look at the pepper."

Huang Si poured out a little pepper powder and pulled his consciousness into the microscopic world. The microscopic structure of the pepper powder appeared instantly.

Brownish fibers were arranged in strands, forming a wall-like structure; those were the cell walls left behind after the pepper cells had withered and died.

Because the cells were dead, the gaps between the fibers had become very large.

"Hmm? Such a large gap. Should I try squeezing through?"

Huang Si had been helpless against cellular structures before, largely because cell walls, like any other dense structure, blocked his consciousness from observing them.

However, the cell wall of this peppercorn did not seem that sturdy.

Huang Si tried focusing his consciousness on the cell wall and pushing inward.

He felt as if he were pushing against something; he sensed resistance in his consciousness!

The sensation of resistance meant that he could exert force! Huang Si continued to push against the cell wall with his consciousness at the microscopic level.

After pushing for a long time without success, Huang Si glanced at the crack in the cell wall again, then imagined his consciousness becoming a sharp awl and drilled toward that gap.

"Snap!"

Huang Si seemed to hear an extremely faint breaking sound, and then, the wall-like cell wall receded in his vision, revealing a deep brown world unfolding before him.

"I got in? Is this... the interior of a dried peppercorn cell?" Before Huang Si could clearly see the internal structure of the cell, he was suddenly stunned.

At the same time, the Creation Book resting on the cabinet in the living room moved without wind, its cover flipping open automatically to the first page, the one that read "Owner: Huang Si."

Then, a golden light flew from the book, instantly crossed the living room, and drilled into Huang Si's body.

Huang Si only saw a flash of golden light, and then he felt something merge with him. As they fused, a sense of comfort originating from his soul spread out; nothing could be more ethereal than this.

Meanwhile, more information appeared in his mind.

An improvement in soul essence? My direction of effort has been wrong?

Knowledge related to the Creation Power appeared directly in Huang Si's mind as if it had always been there.

Creation Power was an essential ability Huang Si currently possessed.

So-called essential abilities were those related to the essence of his soul.

Spending all his energy every day and then sitting around waiting for it to recover was a massive waste of his essential power.

The recovery speed of Creation Power was actually linked to the strength of Huang Si's soul essence.

The upper limit of Creation Power only reflected the soul's capacity to contain it.

The recovery speed of Creation Power was what truly reflected the strength of the soul essence.

Huang Si currently had two abilities: one was his Soul Talent, the ability to perceive the microscopic world, which allowed him to observe, understand, and memorize the structure of things; the other was his soul power, or Creation Power, the ability to record and create things.

Although both originated from the same source, their development directions were different.

Only the ability to observe, understand, and memorize could train and improve soul strength.

Huang Si had spent too much effort on recording and creating, while being relatively lax in observing, understanding, and memorizing, which was why his recovery speed had improved so slowly.

Furthermore, the reason his consciousness was blocked by plastic, cell walls, and various other substances was that his soul was simply too weak; it couldn't penetrate anything at all.

To improve the strength of his soul essence, he had to use his Soul Talent, not his Creation Power.

After absorbing the information that had appeared in his consciousness, Huang Si felt the changes within his body.

His current Creation Power limit was 622 points. If he remembered correctly, the limit had been 502 points this morning. Had it increased by a full 120 points?

As for his current recovery rate... he wasn't sure yet; that would have to be estimated based on his own observations.

However, Huang Si definitely felt that his consciousness had changed.

How should he put it? It felt sharper, and his thinking speed was faster.

Other aspects remained to be discovered.

"Hmm? The Creation Book seems to have changed too."

Huang Si went to the living room and took down the Creation Book, which was acting as a light source, causing the house to instantly lose power.

He dimmed the light and opened the book.

The first page of the Creation Book originally only had five characters: "Owner: Huang Si."

At this moment, a line of small text had appeared below it: Origin Acceptance: Beginning.

Beginning? That probably meant elementary level, right?

His attention lingered on this line of small text, and he faintly felt that this line resonated with a certain page in the book.

As if guided by a mysterious force, Huang Si reached out and flipped through the book, finding that page among the vast number of pages.

The page spread out before him, and lines of text appeared on what should have been a blank page.

"Origin Fragment: Initially carried by the Book of Creation, there are seven fragments in total, varying in size. To protect the owner's soul stability, they are distributed according to the owner's essential strength. If the owner's soul essence strength is sufficient when binding the Book of Creation, multiple fragments will be distributed."

"Fragment distribution progress: Beginning (0.000001%), next progress: Bloom (0.00001%)."

"Fragment distribution record:

Record 1: Fragment 'Beginning' distribution failed.

Record 2: Fragment 'Beginning' distribution successful."

There was no more text.

Huang Si: "..."

So there was a setting where if the owner's soul strength was sufficient during the binding process, multiple fragments could be issued at once! Why couldn't this book have just mentioned that if the soul strength wasn't enough, not even a single piece would be issued? Was it that hard to say? Did the default instructions really not consider that someone's soul strength might be too low to withstand even one piece?

And this record of failed issuance—had it tried to issue fragments to him before? And failed?

Huang Si suddenly recalled that on the very day he picked up this book, just after he set it on the table and turned around, his head had been pricked—it hurt like crazy...

Fine!

It seemed that was the time the Creation Book had tried to issue a fragment to him, but failed.

It had even resulted in him passing out instantly.

As for the golden light he saw today, the comfortable sensation, and the changes in his consciousness he felt now, those must have been the work of the fragment named "Beginning."

Huang Si felt quite embarrassed.

Still, the result was good.