Three Levels

"Success!"

Huang Si felt a surge of delight. At last, the mini-processor experiment had succeeded. This was the first mini processor he had designed and built himself, intended mainly for use in automated mechanical arms and robots. It could be said that this was the starting technology for all future automated machinery.

Having completed a major project, Huang Si decided to get something to eat and drink, then take a break.

After a little water and some frying of sweet pancakes, Huang Si took the opportunity to check on his condition. He seemed to remember that he had leveled up a while ago, and then the Creation Book had given him a fragment?

"Creation Power limit: 2,780. Recovery speed... 388?"

Huang Si let out a surprised sound. He no longer needed to measure his recovery speed by waiting. He knew the state of the power inside him like the back of his hand; all he had to do was pay a little attention to sense how quickly his Creation Power was recovering.

But a recovery speed of 388? Wasn't that ridiculous?

It now took him only five points of power to make a bucket of batteries.

That meant he could make a full 76 buckets of batteries with the power he recovered in an hour?

Huang Si imagined 76 buckets of batteries filling a room. Hmm, they could probably fill an entire living room and a kitchen. That much in just one hour was terrifying.

Also, with his recovery speed this fast, wouldn't his Creation Power easily reach its limit while he slept if he slept too long—more than eight hours?

Wasn't this just like a mobile game, forcing people to use up their stamina?

"Hm? Why have I started telling jokes? I haven't felt like this in a long time."

Huang Si smiled. He hadn't experienced this feeling for ages: the long-missed sense of calm, comfort, and happiness.

For nearly the past six months, his mind had been filled with distortion, madness, destruction, and darkness.

Now, it seemed he had made it through?

It was like climbing a mountain. Once you reached the top, if you hadn't truly broken down, you might actually feel lighter.

Even so, the result still astonished Huang Si.

His initial Creation Power limit had been only 100, and his recovery speed a mere four points per hour.

With a limit of 2,780 and a recovery speed of 388, he no longer had to scrape by. He could put more power toward experiments and mass production.

Huang Si thought about it. He felt as if he had stumbled into a mountain of treasure, so happy that it almost didn't seem real.

"Hm?"

Huang Si sensed that the Creation Book had a new entry, so he went to the living room and reached out—

The book plopped down from the top of the cabinet and landed right in his hand.

Huang Si: "...What the hell?"

After trying several more times, Huang Si finally understood.

His consciousness could now affect the macroscopic world!

In other words, he could move objects with his mind!

The ability was still unreliable, but it was already a huge improvement.

Because this was a real superpower. Huang Si thought all the things he'd done with molecules before were nothing by comparison.

Besides that, Huang Si could clearly feel that his perception had become sharper and his thoughts were many times faster than before.

Looking around his room, Huang Si even had the vague feeling that he could grasp everything happening inside it.

"Perception should be linked to the strength of the soul. After all, microscopic vision is part of perception, too."

After taking stock of his current condition, Huang Si opened the Creation Book.

The first page had changed slightly:

"Owner: Huang Si"

"Origin Acceptance: Bloom"

There was another line of small text beneath it:

"Soul Essence Level: Perceive"

Huang Si focused his attention on the small line, and immediately sensed that a page in the book contained a related explanation.

At a thought, the book flipped to that page on its own.

The page read:

"Classification of soul essence levels:"

"Beginning: A glimpse of the threshold; shaping objects."

"Bloom: Seeing clearly into hidden depths; moving the minute and passing through obstacles."

"Perceive: Comprehending the myriad things; commanding matter with the mind."

There was nothing after that.

Huang Si studied it for a while. He could more or less understand what Beginning and Bloom meant. "Seeing clearly into hidden depths; moving the minute and passing through obstacles"—wasn't that describing his ability to observe, affect the microscopic world, and penetrate objects?

As for the "comprehending the myriad things" part of the Perceive level, it wasn't that hard to understand either. Wasn't that the dramatic increase in his perception and mental sharpness that he'd just experienced?

The second half, "commanding matter with the mind," probably meant moving matter with his mind on a macroscopic scale.

Huang Si hadn't expected to jump two levels while on the verge of going mad, and even gain an Origin Fragment.

But according to the Creation Book's system, he should have received a third fragment when he reached the third level.

Still, something was strange. Huang Si turned to the page listing the fragments that had been issued. According to the Creation Book's records, there should originally have been seven fragments. He didn't know if there were seven levels, but whenever his soul strength reached a certain threshold set by the book, he would receive a fragment.

But the record showed: "All remaining fragments missing"?

It seemed he would have to get by on his own from now on. Huang Si shook his head. It was a small matter.

It was already April 29, 2020.

Huang Si stopped worrying about the fragments and continued with his various research projects.

The greatest benefit of his stronger soul was that it made his research much easier.

For instance, he could finally try to analyze biological cells.

Now, all Huang Si had to do was stand still and focus, and he could keep track of anything happening within roughly two or three meters of him.

He could sense disturbances in the air, water evaporating, and even bacteria reproducing.

Speaking of bacteria, Huang Si had to be grateful that he hadn't completely eradicated them when he used the UV lamp back then.

Otherwise, aside from him, there wouldn't be a single living thing in the room now.

Huang Si could observe his own body and freely examine any structure, including his blood vessels, organs, and subcutaneous tissue.

But unless he read the enormous imprint directly from the Creation Book, he couldn't copy or record any of it—not himself, nor fragments of him like his hair or blood.

This might have been related to the Creation Book's permissions. As the book's owner, Huang Si was probably considered a single, indivisible entity within it, so it wouldn't allow parts of his body to be recorded.

That left only the bacteria that had already been in the room as subjects for study.

Once he noticed this, Huang Si made a nutrient-rich culture dish and caught the airborne bacteria one by one, raising them in it.

With his current consciousness, seeing and catching bacteria was easy. One thought was enough to grab a bacterium with an invisible force.

As for the bacteria naturally living on his body, he'd captured and imprisoned all of them except the E. coli.

After that, he occasionally took some out to observe and try to copy.

Bacteria were fragile, and Huang Si's soul was now too powerful. His precision, on the other hand, wasn't enough.

At first, he tried to penetrate the culture dish with his consciousness, but nearly wiped out every last bacterium by accident.

After that mistake, Huang Si continued to carefully cultivate the remaining bacteria. When he experimented later, he only used a portion at a time and left the rest to keep reproducing.

On May 3, 2020, Huang Si worked out the structure of bacterial DNA and RNA. After recording it, he could copy bacterial DNA with a single thought.

On May 6, Huang Si pulled back a little in the microscopic world and watched the double helix he had completely straightened with his mind.

A strand of DNA was actually very long when straightened. It had taken Huang Si considerable effort to fully analyze it with his mind.

At a thought, an identical DNA strand appeared.

He watched the strand as the bonds between the two strands broke apart under his control. Then, with a gentle mental cut, he snipped off a section.

Next, Huang Si broke part of the other DNA strand and attached the single strand he had just cut off.

Joining chemical bonds was harder than breaking them. In living organisms, enzymes usually handled this. But Huang Si still didn't understand how enzymes worked, so he had to do it himself.

After several failures, Huang Si finally succeeded in splicing the DNA.

"Nice. I feel like I'm already a graduate student in bioengineering."

The breakthrough in DNA cutting and splicing meant that Huang Si could modify an organism's genes.

However, there wasn't enough data, and the research was too difficult. At present, Huang Si had no idea what specific genes did.

But his abilities weren't for show. His mind could directly analyze an entire DNA strand.

Bacteria reproduced so quickly that he could replace a strand whenever he wanted, then observe how the bacteria grew.

And if a bacterium had a hereditary disease caused by a genetic defect, Huang Si could directly compare the data for the two homologous DNA strands in two bacteria and see exactly what differed.

June 1, 2020.

"Another failure. What exactly am I doing wrong?"

By now, Huang Si could analyze the entire structure of a bacterium. Nothing escaped his sight, from its cell wall and flagella to its cytoplasm, various organelles, and the most complex part of all, its nucleus.

But he had discovered something very strange.

He could record the bacterium's makeup and make a copy of it.

But the moment the copy appeared, it was already dead.

In theory, Huang Si could now reproduce a bacterium perfectly, right down to the atomic level.

He had even restored himself from a backup before, and he hadn't died. So why did the bacterium die?

Huang Si thought about it, then reached out and killed the original bacterium he had used to make the copy.

But the copied bacterium didn't come back to life.

Huang Si frowned. Why was this happening? He could record it, but the copy was dead from the moment it appeared. Was it related to consciousness, spirit, or soul? Did bacteria have souls, too?

This approach had led nowhere.

Huang Si had wanted to use bacteria as a starting point and develop an entire chain of biological evolution, but now that path was completely blocked. The bacteria he had on hand could only reproduce by dividing in the ordinary way.