Because time flowed differently, by the time Huang Si had finished brushing his teeth and put the toothbrush back in its cup, Xiao Ke had already reported the results of the plane survey.
Xiao Ke said, "I've reviewed the footage from every location the planes passed over. There were no signs of humans."
Huang Si couldn't help thinking how wonderful Xiao Ke was. All he had to do was sit there like an incompetent ruler and give orders. Xiao Ke would handle things on her own and even make her own judgments.
Ten hours of flight footage, from eight planes, and every last detail had to be checked for signs of humans. If Huang Si had to watch it all himself, he could have fainted on the spot.
Still, ten hours at eight hundred kilometers per hour meant they had surveyed an area with a radius of eight thousand kilometers. And they still hadn't found any humans? Could it be that there were no humans on this planet?
Huang Si frowned. "Are there any humanlike creatures, such as apes? Or have you seen any particularly intelligent life-forms?"
Xiao Ke replied, "There are apes, but unlike the apes that the master's account of Earth's history identifies as human ancestors, the apes here are more primitive and lack higher intelligence. As for more intelligent life-forms, none have been found yet. I can have the two small robots carried by the planes continue exploring."
"All right. You can handle the rest. I'll think about what to do."
After ending the call, Huang Si felt a little disappointed.
There weren't any humans in this world? How boring.
He didn't think he was guilty of human chauvinism at all. He was human, and of course, as a social animal, he wanted more people like himself around.
Huang Si held out his right hand. Creation Power gathered, and a plant with tiny pink flowers appeared in his palm.
It was a flower from the Green World, where it grew in abundance. It had no value as food, but when it bloomed, it was especially beautiful.
Huang Si had previously asked Xiao Ke to bring him many biological samples from the Green World. Of them all, only this flower—which he'd named "Dreamy Flower"—was so beautiful that he couldn't bring himself to kill it right away.
Back then, Huang Si had analyzed the Dreamy Flower's composition and recorded it in the book.
Now, with his soul stronger than ever, his consciousness could analyze something as small as a Dreamy Flower in an instant and record its structure.
However, just like the bacteria he'd created before, the Dreamy Flower generated by Creation Power was dead from the very beginning.
Huang Si still couldn't create living organisms on his own.
It was like so many myths and legends: only a true god—the Creator—had the privilege of creating life. No matter how powerful or advanced humans became, they couldn't truly unravel the mysteries of life.
The Dreamy Flower lay in Huang Si's hand, its delicate petals slowly drooping.
All its cells had already died. It could only gradually lose moisture and wither.
Huang Si shook his head and tossed the dead Dreamy Flower into the Dark Space.
"Life really is a miracle of the universe."
Huang Si understood his own situation perfectly. He was merely an ordinary human who'd happened to acquire Creation Power. Even now, his body was still that of an ordinary person, vulnerable to aging and decay. He could survive only by relying on the Creation Book's built-in backup and rollback functions.
The Creation Book, Creation Power, and his own existence as a living being—as a human—were all surrounded by endless mysteries waiting to be explored.
Huang Si fell into a brief spell of confusion.
In theory, he could develop cloning technology in the future, make multiple copies of himself through science, and send them to the Green World to rule it.
But he didn't want to do that.
A world populated by nothing but his clones was too terrifying.
Huang Si thought for a long time before contacting Xiao Ke.
"How can intelligent native life evolve in the Green World?"
Xiao Ke didn't answer right away this time. She was silent for six seconds before replying, "Master, I can't answer that question."
Six seconds there was almost half an hour in the Green World.
Huang Si could imagine Xiao Ke using nearly all her processing power and still failing to find an answer. He sighed softly. "It's fine. I'll think about what to do."
Several days later in the Green World, Xiao Ke changed the operational focus of several departments.
She directed all their efforts toward helping the Biology Department develop a way to accelerate the evolution of intelligence in Green World organisms.
That was Huang Si's order. If there was no intelligence in this world, then he would find a way to create it.
Life held endless possibilities.
October 2024.
An energy storm raged through the Dark Space.
Huang Si had already had the small robots and network equipment evacuated from the Dark Space, so none of the devices near the house had been damaged.
But the small robots and charging robots sent to explore farther into the Dark Space were inevitably swept away by the storm.
Fortunately, anything swept away by the storm ended up in the Green World. Huang Si had set up a net there, so the robots would fall into it, and he could bring them back.
However, the robots battered by the storm were mostly unusable. Those caught in the fringes were crushed into heaps of scrap metal, while those hit directly by the storm's core were almost all annihilated on the spot, reduced to elementary particles.
Huang Si extended his Mental Force Field more than a kilometer, but the gale kept scattering it, allowing it to stretch about two kilometers at most.
The wind howled through his Mental Force Field, and Huang Si used it to observe the gusts passing through.
His observations grew more precise. He could see the raging energy slice through his Mental Force Field like blades, but the field wasn't damaged. Instead, it split into bundles.
His mental force unraveled into countless fine threads in the wind. That reduced the wind pressure they had to bear, making them more resilient than a single, unified Mental Force Field.
Huang Si used his consciousness to organize the threads. Maintaining tens of thousands of them at once placed a heavy burden on him.
That many threads could exist only because he wasn't using them for anything. They simply endured the storm and passively split apart.
If he tried to actively use all those fine threads for something, he wouldn't be able to maintain this state. They would collapse on the spot.
He could now endure the storm in the Dark Space for more than an hour. It still hadn't ended, but after withdrawing from it, he recovered much faster than before.
A while later, as Huang Si's mental threads danced in the wind, he sensed a small robot being blown toward him. It tumbled toward the Ring.
Without thinking, Huang Si instinctively sent out some threads to catch it.
Without the storm, he could easily have pulled the small robot back with his mental power. But the wind was strong, and it kept trying to blow the robot away while also battering his Mental Force Field.
As the two forces struggled against each other, the small robot was already being torn to pieces by the wind.
"Can't I protect it...?" Huang Si tried to keep the small robot from being blown away, but the wind simply tore it apart.
He couldn't help challenging the storm. "I refuse to believe I can't save it."
Huang Si could freely adjust the shape and direction of his Mental Force Field. Now he gathered the threads cut apart by the wind. Some held the battered robot in place, while the rest struggled to form a mass in front of it, blocking the wind.
The wind sliced through his mental threads again, but under the direction of Huang Si's consciousness, they reconnected and continued shielding the small robot.
"I've blocked it... I can keep going." Huang Si gritted his teeth and held on.
But the energy storm's penetrating force was terrifying. And inside its vortex, the wind didn't blow in a fixed direction; whirlwinds often erupted without warning.
Huang Si had only just managed to block the storm when a vortex came spinning toward him like a spiked cog. In an instant, it tore a huge hole in his Mental Force Field, and he could no longer hold on to the small robot.
The robot's remains tumbled away into the distance.
"Come... back!" Huang Si sent his severed mental threads racing downwind.
But in the blink of an eye, the small robot had already reached the Ring.
Huang Si's mental force had stretched thirteen hundred meters. The storm had weakened it considerably, and his connection to its farthest end was hanging by a thread. It was on the verge of snapping altogether.
"Almost got it."
Though he was extremely cautious under normal circumstances, as long as his life wasn't in danger, Huang Si would go all out when he was close to accomplishing something. Now his Mental Force Field was only a little short of the shattered robot.
Ten meters, eight meters, five... Huang Si braced against the storm's cutting force and strained to reach the small robot with the very end of his mental force.
Whoosh! The storm finally swept the small robot in front of the Ring, and it vanished inside.
Huang Si failed to pull back in time. His Mental Force Field slammed straight into the Ring's portal.
In an instant, Huang Si's face turned deathly pale, and he nearly collapsed on the spot.
If he had to compare it to something, it was as if his soul had slammed straight into an iron wall.
The Ring could transmit matter, but not pure mental force. Huang Si deeply regretted trying to headbutt his way through a storm and an iron wall.
The pain of that moment made his Mental Force Field instinctively retract at once. He was done playing with the storm.
Once he'd calmed down, Huang Si checked his soul and found that it had indeed been badly injured. He estimated it would take five days to recover.
He'd previously wondered if he could stay where he was and send his consciousness through the Ring to explore the other side.
But his Mental Force Field could reach only a little over a kilometer, not far enough to reach the Ring.
So he'd taken advantage of the storm to try it out, only to get a huge surprise from the Ring. He'd truly gotten his head caught in a door...
It seemed that staying in the house while sending his consciousness to another world wouldn't work.
Huang Si wondered if he would have to go to the Green World in person.
He shook his head. It sounded far too dangerous. Forget it.
The Dark Space alone was frightening enough. Huang Si had never once taken his body out of it.
The food in the Green World was delicious, but if he went there, what would happen to the Creation Book? Should he bring it along? What if he lost it? What if something happened? What if he went there but the book couldn't, and he couldn't use it? What if he accidentally fell to his death over there and couldn't come back to life?
So Huang Si had no intention whatsoever of going there in person. He stayed seated at home, steady as a rock.
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