Vol 23 17-1: Incomplete Instrumentality(I)
Standing in a prison, watching the outside from behind metal fences as men dressed in white looked at him with terrified yet expectant gazes...
Anesthetized and placed on the operating table. His body cut open for instruments to be stuck inside or parts of his organs to be taken out...
Countless books were forcefully instilled in his brain. Not learning it within the stipulated time would reward him with an electric shock. He felt like he was rather similar to those chimpanzees being trained to eat bananas in the data. They were locked up, researched, then electrocuted...
Kill these people? Nonono, kill all people, as long as they were a human... It would be better to kill all of them if there was the power...
And that genetic subject Chu Xuan. Why were his genes stolen to this country? Why were the genes imitated and optimised? He wasn’t Chu Xuan, so he had feelings, taste, smell and pain...
It was weak.
But, they were there.
The only thing he didn’t have was that legendary intelligence. Is that why he was treated like this? Why he was considered a failed product? No, nonono, it isn’t...
He found the chance. He obtained the self destruct code for the base. All that was left were the logical arrangements. Arranging his escape route and future. A new identity, one that could achieve a goal... Extinction of humanity. Kill them all, as long as they were a living thing called a human. These hideous... these vile... these...
Goodbye, my childhood.
Right, a name. The beginning of everything, whether a human’s identity or body. He had to stand above them all, and exterminate them. Why not Adam, the first human?
It would be the last human too.
Adam activated his Light of the Soul. A gentle light formed around him. For some reason, all of his memories thus far appeared in his mind, especially the ones before destroying the base. Those things that had been buried deep, deep down. Had he not forgotten them yet? He hadn’t thought of it for so, so long.
“Are these the memories that flash past before a human dies? The one that’s about to die is humanity, but human memories exist despite that. The part of me that’s human will die soon. All that will be left is that which is the ultimate lifeform. Isn’t that great?” Various memories flashed past Adam’s mind, until his Light of the Soul reached the alchemical formation. It all only took a few seconds.
All the surrounding people saw were him hesitating momentarily before putting his hands back.
In those seconds, the bodies of several around gave a violent shudder. Then, their bodies split apart, and countless tiny tentacles sprouted out from within...
Yes. These people had long since been infected silently and soundlessly by the super virus. At this moment, the weakest amongst them began to mutate.
Adam had just began the final phase of the Human Instrumentality Project. Although he noticed their abnormalities, he wasn’t able to divert his attention to consider anything. All he did was to wrap the Spear of Longinus in his Light of the Soul, and point the speartip at his chest. As people began to tremble around him, the spear slowly entered his chest. A feeling that wasn’t pain enveloped him. It was like the feeling of entering something. It couldn’t be said clearly, but if it must be described, it was the feeling of entering a new world, god’s domain, the tier of a higher lifeform, or... Dao!
“So that’s how it is. The world we’re in and all the various forms of life are just... The lifeform currently creating these worlds... Very soon, we’re going to meet.”
The Spear of Longinus had completely penetrated Adam. His original Light of the Soul turned into strands of light, floating behind him similar to ten pairs of wings. The strands of light didn’t randomly float around. They instead drifted towards the over ten people with high mental capacity. The first person wasn’t able to block it and ended up entangled within. He began to shout immediately, and fluctuations like Light of the Soul began to flow out of his body. The fluctuations were sent to Adam through the threads. At the same time, the alchemical formation began to shine, while becoming three dimensional and expanding. A three dimensional formation of light enveloped the warehouse. From the outside, an enormous formation of light faintly appeared at the top of the warehouse, which was becoming more obvious by the moment.
“That light...”
The people hidden outside the warehouse naturally immediately noticed the formation of light that was increasing in size and brightness. It had numerous and complicated runes and diagrams. The most obvious were thirteen diagrams that looked like an eye. Every eye had their own unique runes. There was also an obvious pair of wings behind the eyes. Apart from the circular diagrams these eyes took up, there was an incomparably enormous circle above. The entire formation was structured like the roots of a tree. At the bottom part, it diverged many times, each ending at the eye. And every root led up to a trunk. The giant circle was the center of the trunk.
All this, was the Tree of Life.
“This world... The first thing is to construct a setting when it comes to creating a world. Then, power levels, then the setup of living things. The most important thing is the history. Errr, an ordinary universe. The living things inside are slightly different from real life. The earliest lifeforms from the earliest days of Earth possesed great power. It was even earlier than the dinosaurs, even earlier than the giant insects. They were very powerful, but gradually vanished due to Earth’s environment changing. The rest either fell into a slumber or evolved. That’s for the most powerful lifeforms. The ordinary ones have a similar evolution to real life. Right, evolution... I’ll change the power levels slightly and make evolution the main power. The first stage, the second stage, for a total of sixth stages. The fifth is the peak, while the sixth... We’ll set this level as something that can never be reached. It can still attract readers and let them imagine and speculate. The setting, the sixth stage can break through the cage that is the world. As for where it goes... I haven’t decided yet.”
“Then history. The strongest lifeforms all vanished, slept, evolved or devolved. Like that, the world entered the era of the dinosaurs. Err, then, the first humans appeared. That was during the early to middle time period...”
These words appeared very abruptly, as if they had always been in every person’s mind. There was no sound, only meaning. Everyone all heard these words in an instant. But that was all. When the words got to ‘early to middle time period’, it vanished, as if everyone had somehow started hearing things in the instant before.