Escape from the Cradle

In a dark corner of a laboratory, over a dozen ape-men were arguing intensely.

Finally, one young, sturdy ape-man stood up, waving his arms and shouting loudly.

The ape-men nearby gathered around him enthusiastically, mimicking his gestures and shaking their hands vigorously.

They gestured at their wrists, then dispersed.

That night, many ape-men managed to stain strips of cloth red with their own blood and tied them around their wrists.

A massive storm was brewing.

Elsewhere in the Cultivation Department, the scene was one of song and dance.

An ape-man named Hei Zi was lying comfortably on a mat. He was obese, and the hair on his face and head had mostly fallen out, making him look even more gluttonous.

Around Hei Zi were several wooden fruit platters filled with fruit.

Two young female ape-men were by his side. He held one in each arm, letting them peel the fruit and feed it to him.

Further away, dozens of ape-men gathered together.

They had come to seek help from Hei Zi.

"I said it before! Listen to the gods! The gods will protect you! Do not think about defying the gods!"

Hei Zi raised his fat arm and roared.

"Only half of the people will die! Follow me, and you will be among the half that lives!"

With nowhere else to turn, the dozens of ape-men had no choice but to believe Hei Zi's words to save their own lives.

Under Hei Zi's guidance, they knelt and kowtowed one by one toward the center of the Earth Realm Base, hoping to beg for a chance at survival before the so-called gods.

Hei Zi rubbed his chin. In truth, he did not know why the higher-ups had ordered the killings, but he had to ensure his own survival first.

He had many loyal ape-men under his command; when the time came, he would have them sacrifice themselves in the name of the gods to get him out.

If he filled the gods' requirements with the corpses of his subordinates, he believed the gods would understand and spare his life.

Many other ape-men were searching everywhere for the Ancestral Deities, but the Ancestral Deities only left them one message:

"The Ancestral Deities will save you! Do not run around, wait here first!"

Then, the slaughter began.

Small robots drove the ape-men into the Detection Room to check their physical and intellectual qualities, then killed the weak ones one by one.

The bloody, tragic sight shocked the ape-men.

This was no longer the home they relied on for survival, and the small robots were no longer their caretakers.

Those monsters were going to kill them!

The ape-men went mad.

But the small robots controlled all the switches in the Earth Realm Base, and the ape-men could not escape at all.

They jumped and shrieked in a frenzy.

"Do not panic! The Ancestral Deities said they are preparing. They will come to help us, and when that time comes, we can charge out together."

The one speaking was Shu Zi. Not long ago, the three Ancestral Deities had gathered him and the other three hundred core members of the Anti-Divine Protection Faction to tell them a hopeful piece of news.

The Ancestral Deities were determined to defy the Heavenly Dao for their sake and save them from its grasp.

Therefore, under the arrangement of the Ancestral Deities, the three hundred core members of the Anti-Divine Protection Faction were divided into six groups, each remaining at the hubs of the six major districts of the Cultivation Department.

Shu Zi was deeply worried about Xiao Hua and his son left in the residential area, but every ape-man around him had given up on looking after their own kin for the sake of the escape plan.

They were all brave.

Suddenly, a loud, resonant voice echoed throughout the base.

In the center of the Cultivation Department, amidst a blinding golden light, the figures of the three Ancestral Deities rose slowly.

They were now using the latest biological-mechanical hybrid prosthetic bodies. The texture was almost identical to a human body, but their performance was exceptionally powerful; they could fly, and their combat strength was terrifying.

"Heavenly Dao, you should not slaughter mortals. Today, I, Dong Yao!"

"Xi Yuan!"

"Li Huo!"

"As the gods who protect the Human Race, we will surely save the entire Human Race today!"

As their words fell, the locks on the laboratory doors throughout the Cultivation Department clicked and swung open!

The three Ancestral Deities called out to the ape-men on the ground:

"Quick, now is the time!"

Shu Zi gripped his stone knife tightly, turned back, and shouted, "Follow me, charge!"

The six teams, totaling over three hundred ape-men, took advantage of the doors being opened and rushed into the core hubs of the six major areas of the Cultivation Department.

Alarms blared throughout the Earth Realm Base.

"Warning! Warning! Base internal defense system failure!"

"Robot squads, mobilize immediately! Secure the base!"

At this tense moment, Hei Zi and many other ordinary Ape-men mistakenly believed they had found a hope for escape.

They scattered frantically in the direction they perceived to be the exit.

However, the Ape-men did not get far before they were intercepted by a swarm of small robots wielding weapons.

Thousands of small robots stood before them, armed with lasers, firearms, blades, and saws.

Many Ape-men, unable to halt their forward momentum, plunged headlong into the robots and were instantly torn to shreds.

The gruesome scene before them terrified the Ape-men, leaving them too afraid to advance any further.

Meanwhile, Hei Zi had long since waited with hundreds of followers at a location in the Cultivation Department closest to the perimeter wall of the Earth Realm Base.

Once the Ancestral Deities disabled all the security gates, Hei Zi hurriedly ordered four sturdy Ape-men to carry his mat, moving rapidly toward the outside of the base. Hundreds of his most die-hard believers followed closely by his side.

Having left and returned before, he naturally knew the fastest route to escape.

Before long, Hei Zi and his party were nearing the outer perimeter of the base.

However, standing before them were still rows upon rows of small robots.

Hei Zi knew these robots were there to kill, so he decisively ordered, "The time has come to prove your loyalty to the God! Charge! The God is watching you! Strike down these monsters! The God will not let you die!"

Some of the hundreds of die-hard believers hesitated, but there were still Ape-men who, oblivious to the danger, truly obeyed the order and charged forward.

Then, it was a one-sided slaughter.

Watching their companions perish at the hands of the small robots, even the most fanatical believers felt their courage fail. But at this moment, Hei Zi shouted from the back:

"That is an illusion! It is a test from the God! They are not dead! They have been taken by the God to live a better life! Everyone, charge!"

"Charge!" The believers rushed forward.

As for Hei Zi, he had his subordinates carry him away, slipping quietly through a side path he knew.

The four subordinates carried Hei Zi hurriedly through a small path, and the security gate at the end of the path had already been deactivated.

They passed through the gate and saw a vast wilderness outside.

Hei Zi cackled with wild laughter.

"Do you see! We are out! Those who believe in the God shall be rewarded!"

The four subordinates and the few clever followers who had escaped with him were deeply convinced by Hei Zi's rhetoric upon seeing that they had finally made it out.

They looked at the obese Ape-man with worshipful eyes, as if he were the incarnation of a Heavenly Deity on earth.

Inside the Earth Realm Base, in the Cultivation Department.

Shu Zi was responsible for Zone B. When he and his companions charged into the core hub of Zone B, they saw a room of immense size, roughly twenty Ape-men tall.

In the corner of the room stood a translucent stele, from which a golden light radiated.

This was the God's Stele that the Ancestral Deities had told them about! Break it, and those man-killing monsters would cease to function!

However, the stele was also guarded by thirty or forty small robots, though only half of them held weapons, as if they had been hastily assembled to defend the stele.

A slightly aged male Ape-man leaned in close to Shu Zi.

"Shu Zi, take your men and break the God's Stele. I and the other old ones will hold off the monsters!"

"That's right! Shu Zi, Luo Zi, you young ones go and strike the God's Stele!"

Another middle-aged Ape-man, holding a weapon, shouted with a smile.

"We are old and useless, but you are still young! You must survive!"

Without the need for discussion, the sixty-plus Ape-men automatically split into two groups in an instant, with the larger group raising their weapons and lunging toward the small robots.

The small robots opened fire, yet the Ape-men used their weapons and even their own bodies to block every attack.

Shu Zi looked at those familiar faces, watching their sturdy bodies splatter with blood before his eyes, and hot tears welled up in his sockets.

He and the other young Ape-men did not hesitate, striding forward to charge at the stele.

"God's Stele, shatter!"

Stone knives, stone axes, and various other weapons swung down upon the stele.

However, they were instantly repelled by a shockwave.

The transparent stele did not bear a single mark!

Ignoring the pain in their vibrating hands, Shu Zi and the others struck the stele with all their might again.

Once, twice, three times.

The stele still showed no signs of cracking!

How could this be? Shu Zi and the others were filled with despair. They had thought that by charging into the core of the Heavenly Dao as the Ancestral Deities described, they could save their kin, but why couldn't they break it?

In the other five major zones of the Cultivation Department, the same situation unfolded. Just as the Ape-men were falling into despair, the Ancestral Deities suddenly took action.

Xi Yuan's figure flashed, and she had already flown above Zone B.

She looked down at the blood-soaked Core Hub Zone, a complex expression flashing in her eyes.

"Don't panic, let me handle this."

Great Deity Xi Yuan raised her hand, and a blindingly bright yellow light shot straight down from her palm, piercing into the interior of the transparent stone stele.

A dull thud echoed from within the stele, and then, the light emanating from inside it suddenly extinguished.

"Quick! Hack at the stele!"

Great Deity Xi Yuan commanded.

Shu Zi and the others immediately swarmed forward, hacking at the stele with all their might.

This time, it worked.

The stele emitted a crisp cracking sound and began to crumble under the Ape-man Tribe's assault!

After helping them, Great Deity Xi Yuan immediately headed to the next area.

The ape-men continued to hack away until the stele was finally reduced to a pile of fragments.

Once the stele shattered, the small robots that had been moving suddenly all came to a halt.

"We succeeded!"

"We won!"

The ape-men wept with joy, then carried their injured companions out of the room one by one.

Inside the Earth Realm, the small robots stood by like clay statues, while the ape-men found their respective relatives and friends, helping each other as they hurried to escape.

The three Ancestral Deities guarded them throughout the entire process, until all the ape-men had left the confines of the Earth Realm and reached the nearby wilderness and forests.

When Dong Yao, Xi Yuan, and Li Huo returned to the Earth Realm, Huang Si notified them to come to the warehouse to collect some items.

By this time, since there were no longer any living ape-men inside the Earth Realm, the small robots no longer needed to play dead; they each picked up cleaning tools and began to clear away the remnants of the battle.

As soon as Dong Yao and the others entered the warehouse, they saw that Huang Si had appeared in his prosthetic body for once; he was sitting on a warehouse beam, legs crossed, watching the situation inside the base.

Seeing the three enter the room, Huang Si pointed to the mountain of items: "Here, medical kits for you all. I knew you were worried about too many casualties, so I made a batch. They work on all major and minor injuries; the instructions are packed inside, read them yourselves."

Dong Yao and the others bowed in gratitude.

Although the Ape-man Tribe had suffered heavy casualties in this battle, and the Earth Realm was now littered with the corpses of ape-men, Dong Yao and the others were quite worried about the severely injured survivors.

Xi Yuan had even suggested going to the Biology Department to ask their eight other colleagues who were engaged in scientific research for help; they were experts in life sciences and would surely know how to treat the wounds.

Fortunately, Huang Si had already provided a solution.

Killing and then saving—Huang Si himself didn't really care. To him, using animals for experiments, killing ape-men, or choosing not to kill but to save them instead, didn't make much of a difference; they were all just links in the evolution of a species.

The steles, the small robots, the notifications, the slaughter—it was all just a play.

Huang Si had merely used his Creation Power to temporarily create six transparent steles, then asked the three AIs to cooperate, and finally used his mental power to crush the stones himself. That was all.

His primary goal was to have the Ape-man Tribe within the Earth Realm return to nature.

But since the three AIs were not particularly keen on truly killing or injuring too many, Huang Si simply went with the flow, incidentally allowing the Ape-man Tribe to owe these three a massive debt of gratitude.