Shepherding Humanity

Chronic illness, the torture of chemotherapy, and the death of his parents have made Xu Zhi feel physically and mentally exhausted. He had even begun to wonder if there was any point to his boring life. But now, in his final days, he suddenly found something that truly interested him.

The study of Evolution.

“We were companions in dying. The great queen has gone on ahead and soon I’ll follow in her footsteps. But before that, I’ll use her power to build an evolutionary sandbox in the yard and spend my final days enjoying myself.”

He laughed, "This almost feels like the sandbox game, Minecraft.”

Xu Zhi brought out the dusty tricycle that had been tucked away in a corner. Panting like a bald old man, he exerted his body which had been hollowed out by chemotherapy to pedal into town. He spent 30,000 to 40,000 yuans from his savings, and brought back home a bunch of landscaping equipment. Back in his courtyard, he happily started to prepare.

The area he chose for the sandbox was not large, and was only about 100 square meters.

With garden hose and hoe, he shaped small mountains of soil, fresh water rivers, caverns, and various other geographical features.

He then took out the high-temperature eductor he had purchased, and grilled the entire area inch by inch, getting rid of all potential flora and fauna so that Earth’s existing life forms would not affect the evolution of the Tyranis spores…

Getting rid of the microorganisms would have been difficult, but was thankfully unnecessary. They would only end up being assimilated by the Tyranis spores and evolve into new species.

Finally, he started working on the ocean, the origin of all life. In the center of the sandbox, he dug a large pond with an area of 40 square meters, and poured in the salt he bought, with the salt to water ratio the same as that of seawater.

However, a difficult problem presented itself.

This was not a round planet, but a square sandbox with a surface area of 100 square meters. The basic structure of this realm was one found in ancient Chinese myths:

"The Sky is Round and the Earth is Square."

"The mythical land, huh?" Xu Zhi scratched his head. His body has deteriorated from illness, and it took a week of difficult labor before he could finish setting up the 100 square meters sandbox. That morning, he commanded the Tyranis Hive to begin mass producing spores, which he deposited into the ocean in the center of the sandbox.

Evolution began.

He instructed the Tyranis Hive:

"Accelerate cell division by 10,000 units!"

Accelerating by one unit turned a day into a year.

Accelerating by 10,000 units would make one day of the affected life forms equivalent to 10,000 years… But it was still unknown whether new species could be born under such conditions or if it was possible to recreate Earth’s Cambrian explosion in such a humble sandbox.

After all, the timescale was too different.

This miniature world was located in Xhu Zhi’s yard, and in the heavens above, the passage of the sun and moon could not be changed. One day becoming the equivalent of 10,000 years meant that this miniature world would have a 10,000 years day and night cycle, with 5000 years of daylight and 5000 years of nighttime.

An eternity of darkness followed by sunlight, alternating every 5000 years, what kind of species would be born in this uniquely harsh environment?

On the first day, the pond in the center of the sandbox showed no signs of change. The water remained so clear you could see the bottom of the pond.

The next day, the sandbox remained quiet.

The third day. Silence.

The fourth day. Nothing happened.

Finally, on the fifth day, plankton started to appear in Xhu Zhi’s ocean, and the water became visibly cloudy.

On the sixth day, to a visible extent, the plankton began to evolve, turning into green plankton-like life forms the size of fleas. The green color of life began to spread throughout the man-made ocean, filling it with vitality.

"Mother Hive, start setting genetic locks on the spore-born organisms to limit their size!"

Xu Zhi frowned, silently giving out instructions. The yard was only so big, he could not allow them to get too large.

Although according to the long evolutionary history of Earth, at this early stage, all organisms were either planktons or microbes and it was not possible for larger species to appear, it was better to be safe and sorry and impose limits in advance.

Also, the Tyranis Queen had warned him that evolving to become larger was the wrong path to take.

There was no need to deliberately increase the size of the Tyranis. Maintaining their original small body size was the correct way to evolve. The smaller the body, the easier it was to produce qualitative changes in energy.

Their size was now locked.

From here on, true to their insect heritage, the ordinary Tyranis species inhabiting the sandbox would not be any larger than ants. The largest species, even if it evolved to the level of a dinosaur, would not be bigger than a cat.

An insect the size of a cat was already quite extraordinary, and a 100 square meters sandbox would be the equivalent of a small province for ant-sized creatures.

Later in the sixth day, the great upheaval finally began.

A long evolutionary journey of almost 3.8 billion years was condensed into the first six days, and on the dawn of the seventh day, this world’s equivalent to the Cambrian explosion began!

Plankton grew and multiplied in great quantities within the ocean. After they had taken over the entire ocean, they started fighting each other for space.

Xu Zhi felt like he was watching an ecological documentary on fast forward. In just one day, on that plot of land, various life forms were born one after another. They grew, matured, aged, and then died, giving birth to the next generation; all in the span of a few seconds.

The seawater became extremely murky.

Large patches of aquatic plants of all kinds floated on the ocean currents.

"But it's getting dark, and with that, I worry that this world is about to be destroyed…"

He looked at the miniature world in his yard and then looked up to the darkening sky. The last light of dusk left a faint afterglow in the corners of the yard. The blood red sun was falling from the horizon, an ominous portent of the coming apocalypse.

Accelerated cell division and evolution was in the end not the same as natural evolution. He had condensed ten thousand years into one day in reality, which meant 5,000 years of daytime and 5,000 years of night.

During the 5,000 years of night, these newborn aquatic plants wouldn't be able photosynthesize and would inevitably die.

Unless, they evolved to be able to photosynthesize at night.

Early night-time.

There was a dramatic change on the ocean’s surface. The flourishing plants could not receive sunlight as they grew, and in just a few seconds, they wilted and died, sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Vast swaths of green sank to the bottom of the sea.

The night was devoid of life. Only a dead sea remained.

"The first extinction event has begun… I didn't think it would be that fast." Xu Zhi took a deep breath. During evolution’s long epochs, the Earth has experienced five extinction events, the most famous naturally being the Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction which had ended the era of the dinosaurs. At that time, eighty percent of all animals on Earth had died.

The first extinction event was the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction

A sudden drop in temperature lowered the sea levels, which led to the destruction of Earth's marine ecosystem, directly exterminating 85% of the ocean species of the time.

Unlike what happened on Earth, his sandbox world’s first mass extinction was caused by the loss of direct sunlight. The arrival of the night suddenly plunged that small world into five thousand years of darkness.

"Hold on, my courageous spores!!!"

Xu Zhi sat quietly beside the courtyard, looking at the ocean in front of him, "My dear world, don't die just because you have no sunlight. You’ve only started evolving aquatic plants…”

Earth was a huge planet, in which billions of species followed the survival of the fittest. The ecosystem was resilient enough to survive even extinction events.

His sandbox was different, the environment was too small.

Truthfully, even if the aquatic plants had filled up the pond, there were only hundreds of thousands of them. According to the Darwinian theory of evolution, a new species that would be better adapted to the environment could not evolve from a very small sampling of life forms. But Xu Zhi was still full of hope, those plants had evolved from Tyranis cells which were terrifyingly adaptable!

He waited quietly.

The pallid moonlight spilled down on the courtyard. After about half an hour, a pale blue color started to appear on the dark ocean surface, which previously was only littered with dead plants.

A new species had been born…

Soaking in the moonlight, the newborn plants started to photosynthesize!

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