On September 23, Huang Si used alternating layers of fat molecules and protein molecules to make something resembling artificial meat.
The first piece of artificial meat in the room was white, but it had none of the savory aroma meat should have. Instead, it looked like a soy product: smooth on the surface and regular in shape.
Huang Si looked at the artificial meat he had set on a plate and felt a little reluctant to try it.
He knew its internal structure inside and out. He had just edited the protein molecules at the microscopic level, arranging them into bundles to imitate the structure of animal protein fibers. Then he had layered the fat molecules to make fat, alternating it with the protein fibers.
He had only managed to learn how to make these animal protein fibers just before throwing away the ham. The ham's structure was mainly made up of animal cells, which were much too difficult to understand, but the animal protein produced through hydrolysis wasn't hard to figure out.
This piece of meat also contained nothing harmful. All its protein and fat components were extremely pure. Huang Si wasn't very good at making anything impure, anyway.
But just looking at this unfamiliar thing made him feel a little uneasy.
It really was hard to overcome his fear of unfamiliar food, especially when it was meat.
After hesitating for a long time, Huang Si finally fried the piece of meat in oil, sprinkled salt on it, gritted his teeth, and took a small bite.
The texture was strange, and it was very tough. Judging by its texture, the meat was a failure.
Huang Si rested for a while to replenish his Creation Power, then began adding a porous structure to his artificial meat.
He fried the second batch in oil, then sprinkled it with salt and added soy sauce. Huang Si tried a bite. Hmm, it seemed decent. The texture was average, but it really did taste like meat.
With meat, vegetables, and noodles, what more could you ask for?
After eating his fill, Huang Si returned to the study and turned on his desktop computer.
Ever since the power in the house had come back on, he'd been able to use his desktop. It had more movies, anime, and games, but single-player games were becoming less and less fun.
Huang Si clicked the icon of a cute anime girl on his desktop. After the hard drive whirred for a moment, a cartoon girl appeared in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
"Good evening, Master! What would you like Xiao Yuan to do?"
Huang Si dragged a text box out of Xiao Yuan with his mouse and typed, "Hi, Xiao Yuan. I don't want to do anything tonight. I just want to chat with you."
Xiao Yuan: "Master is so wonderful! Xiao Yuan loves Master the most!"
Huang Si typed, "I've been worried about something lately."
Xiao Yuan: "Mm, please tell me, Master."
Huang Si: "I've got a sore on my tongue. Maybe it's because I haven't been eating many vegetables and keep eating fried food."
Xiao Yuan: "Then you can just start eating more vegetables! Would you like Xiao Yuan to search for vegetable recipes for you?"
Xiao Yuan displayed a dialog box: YES/NO.
Huang Si: "..."
Forget it. He'd lost all interest. Huang Si clicked NO, then closed Xiao Yuan's program.
This anime-style desktop pet with a chat function was software he'd downloaded from an open-source community. He had the source code on hand.
Since Huang Si had studied software development, modifying the source code wasn't difficult for him.
Whenever he had nothing to do lately, he tinkered with Xiao Yuan's code to make her more humanlike.
But in the end, this was still just a desktop pet with a built-in search function. It wasn't much better than Siri. After a few exchanges, it would start prompting him to search the web.
But there was no internet here, so it was useless.
Huang Si had been here for more than two months. He could keep up his daily exercise and take vitamins every day to maintain his basic physical health, but it was hard to dispel his loneliness.
It would've been fine if he could play online games. The problem was that there was no internet here, so he could only play single-player games.
Once he'd grown tired of all the games, all he had left was reading books and learning new things. He had no social life or entertainment at all.
People were social animals, after all. Huang Si had no idea when he'd be able to go back. He might have to spend years or even decades here. Just thinking about it was terrifying.
Out of sheer boredom, Huang Si began making someone to talk to. He was currently using an anime-style chat pet, but even after he'd modified its source code and made it a bit smarter, it was still stupid.
Huang Si glanced at the bookshelves in the study.
"I did buy quite a few books on artificial intelligence. There are loads of tutorials and reference materials on my hard drive, too, but I never got around to studying them because of my procrastination. Maybe I should finally learn how to make AI and program a chat companion for myself?"
Once the idea came to him, he acted on it. With no distractions here, Huang Si could focus on learning to develop artificial intelligence.
In the days that followed, Huang Si continued improving various everyday products and developing new foods. While he waited for his Creation Power to recover, he studied artificial intelligence.
As he studied, he began using his computer to write a simple chatbot.
On the afternoon of October 2.
"This batch tastes better." Huang Si ate a boiled meatball. It had nothing like the texture or mouthfeel of real meat, but the taste was all right—at least it was far better than his first attempt at artificial meat.
He glanced at the rack of seasonings in the kitchen.
"The soy sauce and pepper are almost gone. Tsk, soy sauce is easy to make, but pepper powder contains a lot of dried plant cells. I can't make that."
Huang Si shook his head regretfully, then waved his hand. The soy sauce bottle instantly filled back up.
"Let's take another look at the pepper."
Huang Si poured out a little pepper powder and shifted his consciousness into the microscopic world. Its microscopic structure appeared at once.
Brown fibers lay tangled together, forming a wall-like structure. They were the cell walls left behind after the pepper cells had dried up and died.
Since the cells were dead, the gaps between the fibers had grown very large.
"Hm? Those gaps are huge. Why not try squeezing through?"
Before, Huang Si had been stumped by cell structures largely because cell walls, like any other dense material, could block his consciousness from seeing through them.
But this pepper's cell walls didn't seem as sturdy.
Huang Si concentrated his consciousness on a cell wall and tried to push through.
He felt as if he were pushing against something. His consciousness met resistance!
If his consciousness could feel resistance, that meant he could exert force! Huang Si kept pushing against the cell wall in the microscopic world.
After pushing for a long time without getting through, Huang Si looked at a crack in the cell wall. Then he imagined his consciousness turning into a sharp cone and tried to squeeze it through the gap.
"Crack!"
Huang Si seemed to hear a tiny snapping sound. Then the wall-like cell structure retreated before his eyes, and a dark-brown world opened up in front of him.
"I got through? Is this... the inside of a dried pepper cell?" Before Huang Si could make out the cell's internal structure, he suddenly froze.
At the same time, the Book of Creation resting on a cabinet in the living room began moving on its own. Its cover flipped open without a breeze, stopping at the first page—the one that read "Owner: Huang Si."
A golden light rose from the book and shot across the living room, entering Huang Si's body.
Huang Si saw only a flash of gold, then felt something merge with him. As it did, a comfort that seemed to come from his very soul spread through him. Nothing could compare to the blissful, weightless feeling.
At the same time, more information appeared in his mind.
"My soul's nature has improved? Was I focusing on the wrong things?"
Knowledge about Creation Power appeared in Huang Si's mind as if it had always been there.
Creation Power was one of the fundamental powers Huang Si possessed.
A fundamental power was connected to the nature of his soul.
Using up his power every day, then sitting around waiting for it to recover, was an enormous waste of this fundamental power.
In reality, the speed at which his Creation Power recovered was tied to the strength of Huang Si's soul.
The upper limit of his Creation Power merely reflected how much creative power his soul could contain.
Its recovery speed, on the other hand, was what truly reflected the strength of his soul.
Huang Si currently had two abilities. One was his Soul Talent: the ability to perceive the microscopic world and observe, understand, and remember the structures of things. The other was his soul power, or Creation Power: the ability to record and create things.
Though both came from the same source, they developed in different directions.
It was the ability to observe, understand, and remember that could train and strengthen his soul.
Huang Si had spent too much effort on recording and creating, while neglecting observation, understanding, and memory. That was why his recovery speed had increased so slowly.
And the reason his consciousness could be blocked by plastic, cell walls, and all sorts of other materials was that his soul was simply too weak. It couldn't penetrate anything at all.
To strengthen the nature of his soul, he had to use his Soul Talent, not his Creation Power.
After absorbing all the information that had appeared in his mind, Huang Si sensed the changes inside him.
His Creation Power limit was now 622 points. If he remembered correctly, it had still been 502 this morning. That was an increase of a full 120 points!
As for his recovery rate... he wasn't sure yet. He'd have to estimate it through observation.
But Huang Si could definitely feel that his consciousness had changed.
How to put it? His perceptions seemed sharper, and he could think faster, too.
There were other changes as well, but he'd have to discover them.
"Hm? The Book of Creation seems different, too."
Huang Si went to the living room and took down the Book of Creation, which had been serving as a light source. The house went dark at once.
He dimmed the light and opened the book.
Originally, the first page of the Book of Creation had only five characters: "Owner: Huang Si."
But now, a line of smaller text had appeared beneath them: "Origin Acceptance: Beginning."
Beginning? That probably meant the initial level, right?
He focused on the line of small text and faintly sensed that it resonated with one of the book's pages.
As if compelled, Huang Si reached out and turned to that page, finding it among the Book of Creation's vast number of pages.
The page opened before him. Lines of text had appeared on what should have been a completely blank sheet.
"Origin Fragments: The Book of Creation initially carried seven fragments of varying sizes. To protect the owner's soul stability, they are granted according to the strength of the owner's essence. If the owner's soul essence is strong enough when they bond with the Book of Creation, multiple fragments will be granted."
"Fragment distribution progress: Beginning (0.000001%); next stage: Bloom (0.00001%)."
"Fragment distribution record:
Record 1: Fragment 'Beginning' distribution failed."
"Record 2: Fragment 'Beginning' distribution succeeded."
That was all the text.
Huang Si: "..."
So there was a provision that multiple fragments could be distributed at once if the owner's soul was strong enough at the time of bonding! Why hadn't the book bothered to mention that if the owner's soul wasn't strong enough, not even one fragment would be distributed? Would it have been so hard to say? Had the instructions really not accounted for someone's soul being too weak to withstand even one fragment?
And what was with that record of a failed distribution? Had a fragment been distributed to him before? And failed?
Huang Si suddenly remembered that on the day he'd first picked up the book, he'd placed it on the table, turned around, and then been stabbed in the head. It had hurt like hell...
All right!
That must've been when the Book of Creation had tried to distribute a fragment to him and failed.
And it had caused him to pass out.
The golden light he'd seen today, the wonderful feeling, and the changes he now felt in his consciousness must all have been due to the fragment called "Beginning."
Huang Si felt rather embarrassed.
Still, the result was good.
Before you continue