Creation

Huang Si's daily routine was very regular: he went to bed early and got up early, slacked off at work, and went home after work. He ate all three meals at the company cafeteria or bought some groceries to cook at home.

Aside from his family and a few particularly close friends, Huang Si didn't interact much with people. So the only unusual thing he could think of was the blank notebook he'd found today.

Where had he put it?

He thought for a moment. It should be on the living room table, right?

With that in mind, Huang Si got up and walked into the living room, then reached across the table, feeling around for the leather-covered book.

Where was it?

Oh, here it was.

The moment Huang Si's fingers touched the soft leather cover, brilliant light suddenly filled his entire field of vision.

The blinding light flooded everything. Huang Si's eyes had been in the dark for too long and couldn't adjust to such brightness, leaving him unable to see a thing.

He reflexively shut his eyes, but the light still shone through his eyelids, making them ache. He had no choice but to shield them with his hand.

In the midst of all that light, Huang Si's body trembled slightly, then he froze like a statue.

Information surged into Huang Si's mind like lightning.

Huang Si felt as if his head were about to explode. A terrifyingly vast amount of information occupied every corner of his thoughts in an instant, then forced itself into his memory, as if cramming knowledge into him.

The wave of information surged through Huang Si's mind again and again, as though trying to cement itself in his memory. The process left him drenched in cold sweat and so miserable that he nearly passed out.

It seemed to sense that Huang Si's mind was on the verge of collapse, because the transmission of information stopped.

After a long while, when his eyes had gradually adjusted to the brightness, Huang Si opened them.

A glowing book had appeared before him.

The light radiated evenly from the entire book. It was so bright that it almost seemed to exert pressure.

He knew it was a book, rather than the notebook he'd initially thought it was, because the book had just told him so in its own way.

So Huang Si now "knew" that it was a book.

Its name was "Creation."

Besides that, Huang Si had acquired another piece of knowledge.

He could create things.

What did it mean to create things?

Huang Si felt the memories that had just rolled through his mind like a steamroller sinking slowly out of sight, as if vanishing underwater.

An instinct told him he needed to do something to bring them back.

Since he had no idea what else to do, Huang Si started fiddling with the only glowing thing at hand: the Creation Book.

Two more raised characters had appeared on the book's cover: "Creation."

After opening its leather cover, Huang Si saw that words had appeared on the once-pristine white pages.

He lifted the book. A few words were written on the first page in regular script:

Owner: Huang Si.

Huang Si turned to the second page.

But it was still blank. There was nothing on it.

He kept flipping through the book, but every page was blank. As he did, he noticed something strange: the pages seemed to go on forever. He flipped through them one by one, but after a long while, the thickness of the book on either side had hardly changed. If he randomly slipped his fingers in and flipped through, the pages would turn, but the book was full of blank paper, with no page numbers. No matter how many times he flipped back and forth, its thickness remained unchanged.

Huang Si flipped to the back cover. It was blank paper, joined to the leather cover at the side.

This book really didn't contain a single bit of extra information.

Still, the room was quite bright now. He no longer needed to keep turning on his phone's flashlight. The Creation Book glowed on its own, illuminating the entire living room. Even the kitchen and balcony were visible.

Huang Si set his phone on the table and sat down, feeling the book with his hands.

Since he couldn't find any answers in the Creation Book itself, Huang Si tried hard to recall what had just been crammed into his mind.

Creating things?

Making objects?

How?

As soon as he wondered about it, the relevant information surfaced in his memory of its own accord.

What should he make? How about a piece of bread?

As if by instinct, Huang Si focused his attention slightly, then fixed his gaze on his right hand, resting at the edge of the table.

In that instant, Huang Si clearly felt that he was using his mind to control some kind of power.

Then he gathered that power slightly in the space above his right hand.

A yellow-and-white slice of bread suddenly appeared in midair, then landed perfectly in Huang Si's steady right hand.

He'd really made a slice of bread!

At the same time, Huang Si noticed that the power he'd clearly felt had weakened, as though some of it had been used up.

Huang Si hurriedly held the bread up to his face, wanting to see how it differed from ordinary bread.

A closer look left him speechless. The difference was enormous!

At first glance, it looked a lot like an ordinary slice of bread, with its yellow-and-white coloring and similar shape. But the bread Huang Si had conjured out of thin air looked strangely unreal, like a picture from a cartoon.

That was right: its colors were extremely plain, with sharp boundaries and no blending at all. The whole slice was hard, without any soft, airy holes. He couldn't even squeeze it.

Huang Si raised the slice to his nose and sniffed. Yep, it had no smell at all.

The bread was so shoddily made that it looked as if it had stepped out of a cartoon—or like a resin model. It looked completely fake.

→

It had failed.

But Huang Si had created something on his own for the first time.

Huang Si closed his eyes and sensed the changes inside his body.

A kind of power had come into being within him, and it had the ability to create things. Beyond that, Huang Si still didn't know what the power could do.

But if the bread looked fake, was this power actually any use?

Could it be that he hadn't thought it through properly and had made a fake slice of bread because he'd created it carelessly?

Huang Si set the slice aside. The fake bread even made a crisp sound when it tapped against the table.

That left Huang Si speechless. Who would believe it if he said a slice of bread made a clacking sound? It was fake beyond belief.

Next, Huang Si planned to make a second object. He thought about what he knew well. How about starting with something simple? No, it also had to be easy to check for authenticity.

After thinking for a moment, Huang Si decided to use something nearby as a reference.

He opened the Creation Book and touched its smooth, white pages. Then he focused his attention on the empty tabletop.

Paper.

First, Huang Si pictured the paper's shape, color, material, and texture in his mind. Then he guided the power inside him, gathering it over the tabletop in an instant.

A white sheet of paper appeared out of thin air above the table, then drifted down onto it.

The paper's incredibly natural descent delighted Huang Si. It seemed he'd succeeded this time!

He quickly picked it up.

"Ow!"

Huang Si dropped the paper straight onto the table, then put his finger in his mouth and sucked on it.

As soon as he picked it up, the edge of the paper had somehow sliced a small cut in his finger.

Luckily, he'd let go quickly. Otherwise, he might have gotten a nasty cut.

What had happened this time? Huang Si frowned as he examined the white paper on the table. A bead of blood sat on its edge, making him wince.

By the bright light of the Creation Book, Huang Si finally saw the truth: the paper was absurdly thin.

He took a tissue from the box on the table and wiped the saliva and blood off his finger. Then he gently pushed the tissue toward the edge of the paper.

The tissue was cut in two.

Huang Si gaped. The paper was thin and hard, with an edge like a blade. It sliced through anything it touched.

He ran to get a clothes-drying pole, then tried to see if the paper could really cut through metal.

But the pole successfully crumpled the paper. The paper failed to cut through the metal.

It seemed that although the paper's edge was sharp enough to cut his finger, it still wasn't as hard as metal.

Huang Si stared at the two bizarre objects he'd created and felt speechless.

What even were these things? And this dangerous paper—he didn't dare pick it up now that it was crumpled. Even if he used a metal object to carry it away later, he couldn't just throw it out carelessly. What if it sliced through the trash can?

What else could he make? He'd try something even simpler.

Huang Si went to the kitchen, found a glass, and picked it up.

He had a vague feeling that he wasn't making objects by relying on the book itself. Rather, the book had given him this ability, and he created things with the power generated inside his own body.

Would using up this power harm his body? Huang Si didn't know yet. But there was nothing better for him to do right now, so he could only take things as they came.

He turned the tap by the sink. Sure enough, no water came out.

But some water remained in the sink.

Huang Si touched the droplets in the sink. There wasn't enough.

He opened the thermos and poured some water into the glass.

It was water he'd boiled the night before, so it had long since cooled. Huang Si carried the glass, with its shallow layer of water, back to the living room.

He set the glass on the table and stared into it.

Water. This should be the easiest thing to create and the hardest to get wrong, right?

And there was already water in the glass! If he copied that to make more water, surely he couldn't get it wrong?

Huang Si stared hard at the water in the glass, thinking, I have to remember its structure and what it looks like. Right, water is made of water molecules, and water molecules are...

Suddenly, Huang Si felt the world around him rushing backward.

No—the things in front of him were rapidly growing larger!

The glass expanded to an infinite size in an instant, then vanished completely.

When Huang Si came to his senses, a string of bubble-like things had appeared before his eyes.

An incredibly wondrous scene was unfolding in front of him.

Some round spheres drifted about, connected in groups of three.

Everywhere he looked, he saw these spheres, stretching almost endlessly into the distance.

The three spheres in each group were closely connected, but there was a slight gap between the groups, allowing them to move freely.

Huang Si tried to see them clearly, but their edges were strangely blurry.

Even so, he could just make out that in each group of three, two spheres were slightly smaller and tinted a faint green, while the middle one was larger and tinted a faint yellow.

The spheres floated, moved, and spun before him.

"These are water molecules!"

As someone with a background in science and engineering, Huang Si hadn't forgotten everything he'd learned in high school and college. He quickly realized what he was looking at.