One day, while Huang Si used the worldwide network to survey different places, he noticed an ape-man running outside a thicket.
Huang Si checked the relevant records and found the ape-man's number and name. He was called Hei Zi. Very clever, he knew how to use the sun's position to determine direction. At last, he had found his way back, and he was running toward the base with all his might.
Huang Si silently watched him through the omnipresent network.
Hei Zi fled through the jungle in a wretched state.
He had endured countless hardships and eaten everything edible along the way. His hands and feet were rubbed raw and bleeding, but he still fought to make his way toward the base.
At last, Hei Zi collapsed on the gravel-strewn ground. Though he was in an utterly wretched state, his eyes remained fixed on Earth Realm Base.
Malnutrition, injuries, and blood loss had left the ape-man with very little vitality.
His life was quietly ebbing away amid this desolate wasteland.
Huang Si sighed. His consciousness descended before Hei Zi and made the air vibrate:
"Why are you trying so hard?"
A glimmer suddenly appeared in the ape-man's nearly hopeless eyes. With difficulty, he forced a few words from his hoarse throat:
"Go back there. Food. No need to... starve."
Huang Si fell silent for a moment, then asked, "You can find food in the thicket, too. But if you go back, you might not even survive the journey. Is it worth trading your life for food?"
The ape-man struggled on the ground and twisted his head, trying to see who was speaking to him, but it was no use. Huang Si's consciousness had descended into this space, making the air vibrate to produce a voice, but he had no physical body.
He couldn't see anyone, yet a strange feeling stirred in his heart.
A savior.
This person could surely save him.
So he summoned the last of his strength and cried, "Please... let me go back. I... love... there."
Love?
Huang Si didn't understand what he meant. To figure it out, he used Creation Power to produce medicine and bandages to stop the bleeding and bind Hei Zi's wounds. Then he called over a group of little robots to carry the ape-man back to the base.
Huang Si had hoped Hei Zi would give him an answer after eating his fill and resting, but perhaps the ordeal had affected Hei Zi too deeply. Not only did he spend all day eating and drinking, quickly growing fat, he also acquired a lazy streak.
In fact, the ape-men at the base had always been very lazy, since Xiao Ke had little robots distribute the food and supplies they needed each day.
If they could get food without working, why work at all?
So, at first, the ape-men had nothing to do and barely even paid attention to their AI teachers.
That was why Huang Si later changed his approach. Instead of giving the ape-men food directly, he established a Planting Zone within the Earth Realm and had them gather food themselves.
At first, the ape-men had all been too lazy to go. They only went to pick food in the Planting Zone when they realized they were about to starve.
But they were inefficient at gathering, and the plants often scratched their hands. The ape-men complained, so Huang Si had the three AI teachers show them how to make tools.
Huang Si had truly gone to great lengths for the ape-men. It had taken more than 1,350 years of effort to get them to where they were today.
Hei Zi had originally been chosen by Xiao Ke and sent to an outside ape-man tribe because he was exceptionally intelligent and had good language and logical reasoning skills. The hope was that he would become an enlightener and change the entire tribe.
But things hadn't gone as planned. Not only had Hei Zi fled and returned, after Huang Si rescued him and brought him back to the Earth Realm, he recovered from his injuries and became even less ambitious.
He even lazily enjoyed food that should have gone to other ape-men while shamelessly claiming that he was a heaven-chosen ape, rescued by the gods, and thus deserved a lofty status.
—He reaped without sowing and considered himself superior.
To be fair, they had held a farewell ceremony for him to encourage him before sending him to the outside tribe. At Huang Si's instruction, Xiao Ke had organized it, and the AIs had offered their blessings in the name of the Ancestral Deities.
But then he came back.
And he'd been brought back by robots.
This had undeniably elevated Hei Zi's standing among the ape-men, making him seem mysterious and noble.
After that, he shamelessly demanded that other ape-men gather food and offer it to him. In return, he would protect them as an ape favored by the gods.
There were about ten thousand ape-men in the Cultivation Department, but only three Ancestral Deities.
The Ancestral Deities couldn't be with the ape-men all the time. They were bound to be absent sometimes.
Compared with the lofty Ancestral Deities, a fellow ape-man blessed by a god was much easier to understand.
So, although many ape-men despised him, plenty were taken in by his words and willingly offered him food, letting him exploit them.
And when he realized no one was going to stop him, this returning ape-man even demanded that several young females stay by his side as his exclusive mates.
When this first showed signs of happening, Xiao Ke had wanted to throw the disobedient ape-man into the Planting Zone to work. But Huang Si stopped him.
In Huang Si's view, this case was worth observing.
It was the beginning of a monarchy and a class system.
Throughout Earth's history, monarchs had often relied on all kinds of deception to gain power over the people. They might claim to be the children of gods, or say that Heaven had granted them their authority. In any case, the ancient Chinese title "Son of Heaven" and the Western concept of "the divine right of kings" were much the same sort of thing.
Hei Zi himself was clever, too.
He knew he was a fraud, and that before the truly divine Ancestral Deities, he was as easy to expose as a leaf on a parasol tree.
So he was careful to avoid the three Ancestral Deities in everything he did, acting only in secret.
Besides enjoying the benefits provided by the other ape-men, Hei Zi was also doing everything he could to find the god who had treated his injuries and sent him back to the Earth Realm.
Unfortunately, no one knew that this god existed. Even the three Ancestral Deities seemed never to have mentioned him.
Hei Zi was convinced that this god truly existed. If he could find him, he would surely become a true member of the god's chosen people.
Huang Si, the one who had set all this in motion, only occasionally spared a little attention to check on Hei Zi.
For now, this ape-man was still somewhat useful.
Huang Si saw that, thanks to the ape-man's tireless efforts, the ape-man community had begun to split apart.
Where there was oppression, there was resistance.
Ignorance often went hand in hand with awareness. While many ape-men obeyed Hei Zi without question, willingly doing his bidding and paying him tribute, others remained clear-eyed and hostile toward him.
These ape-men had gathered around a young male ape-man named Shu Zi.
They not only disbelieved Hei Zi's claim that he was favored by the gods, but also hated his greed and wickedness.
As time passed, the roughly ten thousand ape-men living in the Earth Realm gradually split into three groups.
Hei Zi's Divine Protection Faction, Shu Zi's Anti-Divine Protection Faction, and the Neutral Faction, which sided with neither.
Of course, the ape-men might not have had a concept of factions. Huang Si had simply given names to the undercurrents stirring among them.
At present, the Anti-Divine Protection Faction had the fewest members, while the Neutral Faction had the most.
After all, wise individuals were few. Most ape-men were content to go with the flow. As long as their interests weren't harmed, they didn't care.
The Anti-Divine Protection Faction had tried to complain to the Ancestral Deities, but the deities had told them, "Don't pay attention to those people."
Then the Ancestral Deities had left the matter alone.
The members of the Anti-Divine Protection Faction were helpless. All they could do was repeatedly proclaim among the ape-men that the Ancestral Deities were the only three true gods, and that all the other so-called gods were false and could not protect them.
Seeing that the Ancestral Deities weren't interfering, Hei Zi became even more brazen and took the opportunity to spread the crooked doctrines he had made up about divine protection.
In truth, the three Ancestral Deities felt helpless. They couldn't speak openly. Even though they knew the person who had rescued Hei Zi was Huang Si, they could neither say so nor intervene, because Huang Si had strictly forbidden it.
Time went on, and influence needed time to settle in.
Huang Si waited for the right moment.
Four days later by Earth's reckoning.
Three and a half years had passed in the Green World.
Earth Realm, Cultivation Department, Zone B.
A female ape-man sat on a tree stump, playing with the young ape in her arms.
After many generations of evolution, the dense fur that had once covered the ape-men's bodies had gradually receded, leaving their skin smooth. Aside from the thicker fur on her face, the slightly denser body hair, and her darker complexion, this female ape-man no longer looked all that different from a human on Earth.
The female ape-man had the important responsibility of teaching and raising her young. The little one was nearly two years old. Though still very young, it already seemed quite clever.
Now, with its mother's guidance, it could even babble along as she spoke.
The female ape-man gazed at the child in her arms, her face warm with affection.
The laboratory was small, so only a few ape-men lived there. Six or seven of them moved about in small groups.
They seemed free, but in fact they couldn't leave the laboratory. Only at the fixed time for gathering each day were they assembled by little robots and taken together to the Planting Zone for their routine work.
This female ape-man had lived in such an environment since she was little, and she was used to it.
Besides, she now had a mate.
Her mate was named Shu Zi, a strong male ape-man who was currently working to whittle a stick.
He would eventually fit the stick with a sharpened piece of stone to make a primitive stone knife, which would help them gather food later.
The Ancestral Deities had taught them how.
The Ancestral Deities—especially the great god Xi Yuan, who watched over the ape-men in their zone—were true, benevolent gods whom they would revere for generations.
The Ancestral Deities had changed many rules, transforming their lives.
For example, the ape-men were still occasionally forced to mate. But if young ape-men fell in love with one another, they could ask the Ancestral Deities to bless them and become mates of their own choosing. Afterward, they would no longer be forcibly taken away to mate against their will.
This young couple was together in just that way.
They had decided long ago that they wanted to be together, so they had kept trying to plead with the Ancestral Deities. Whenever one of the deities passed by, they would both kneel and beg desperately. At last, one day, the Western God Emperor Xi Yuan heard their request and bore witness for them.
At the time, Xi Yuan had pointed upward and said, "With me as your witness, Heaven's Dao will acknowledge your union."
They occasionally heard the term Heaven's Dao, too. Though they didn't really understand it, they were so grateful that they kowtowed to the deity again and again, committing his words firmly to memory.
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