"I'm the answer?"
Li Yao mumbled to himself. "Does the almighty 'Supreme Emperor' not know who he is, where he comes from, and why he was born?"
"Yes, the man who was known as the 'Supreme Emperor' in the myths and legends of later generations and left countless bizarre and absurd legends was just a passerby who was lost in the sea of stars, a man who spent his entire life searching for the answer. Unfortunately, until the end of his life, he did not know the significance of the creation of himself or even the entire civilization of mankind, as well as our … mission that may have been delayed for billions of years."
The gravekeeper's voice was filled with desolation, clumsiness, and helplessness.
As the information flow rippled and surged, the illusions in the surroundings also became clearer.
It was like going back hundreds of thousands of years to the time when the Pangu civilization had just discovered the primeval relics and established a large cutting-edge laboratory here.
"Supreme Emperor … My memories began from a tiny embryo."
The gravekeeper's voice became lower and lower, like the ravings in a dream. He had entered the role of the Supreme Emperor, or rather, he was simply broadcasting the Supreme Emperor's last words. "I was like an ancient fungus floating in the primitive ocean, drifting in the hot and nutritious seawater. In just a few days, dozens of days, or hundreds of days, I experienced the path that would take billions of years to walk from a bacterium to a carbon-based intelligent life. Then, I realized that I was not drifting in the ocean but living in an artificial nutrient solution.
"It was truly a very weird feeling.
"If I were really a bacterium, or just a cell, or even the embryo of a carbon-based intelligent life, I shouldn't have developed self-awareness and sophisticated thinking abilities. I shouldn't have been able to 'realize' my living environment and even release things like 'telepathic thoughts' and 'thoughts' to perceive and explore the world around me.
"But I did boast such abilities. I could clearly sense the whole process when I evolved from a tiny bacterium that was waving its flagella and tentacles into a multicellular creature and even an intelligent life embryo. I could even scan the strengthened glass wall outside of the nutrient solution and the vast and complicated laboratory outside of the culture chamber.
"It was a cutting-edge laboratory that was a hundred times more enormous and advanced than the one in front of you. Thousands of similar culture chambers seemed to be growing batches of embryos or similar things at the same time. Many embryos that were mature but not very successful were also reused as garbage. They were sliced and studied on the operating tables and crystal processors of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan for virtual experiments. All kinds of bizarre, whimsical experiments were carried out day and night."
As the gravekeeper played the last words of the Supreme Emperor nonstop, the environment around changed, too. Countless Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan who were wearing airtight, sterile suits were truly performing experiments.
There were all kinds of bizarre-shaped animals on the operating tables and the light beams of the crystal processors. However, most of them were still recognizable as human beings.
"At that time, I did not understand what the primeval species were doing at all. I only knew that they had raised thousands of embryos similar to mine and stimulated the embryos in all kinds of ways, hoping to activate the mysterious strength hidden deep inside the embryos. But most of the experiments failed."
The Supreme Emperor continued in a low and sad voice. "Some of the embryos failed to activate any strength and came to an abrupt halt during their evolution, turning into carbon-based lives that did not have the slightest wisdom. Some of the embryos could not withstand the intense stimulation and directly exploded and were completely melted in the nutrient solution." Most of the embryos, although they grew into fetuses and then into babies, did not show any extraordinary techniques after they were born. Except for their relatively high reproductive abilities and environmental adaptability, they were barely capable of fighting a chicken. They were far worse than the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, the Gonggong Clan, and the Zhurong Clan, which were advanced and powerful primeval species.
"The researchers of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan seemed to be very dissatisfied with the results of the experiments. I could sense their anxiety, fury, and even desperation.
"At that time, I was just a tiny embryo that was no more complicated than a bacterium. In my perception, the primeval races were more than gods and devils. They were almost life forms of a higher dimension. Something that could make them feel 'anxious' and 'desperate' was hard for me to imagine what it was exactly.
"All in all, the researchers of the primeval civilizations ran experiments on countless embryos and inputted the data of the failed experiments into the next batch of experimental embryos. They changed the experiment environment and the stimulation parameters, only to suffer the next failure. However, in every batch of failed embryos, one percent of the embryos luckily survived. They were neither destroyed by the intense stimulation nor embarked on the wrong path of evolution. They matured in a relatively weak state. They simply stayed in the state of embryos and absorbed the information in silence.
"I was one of the luckiest embryos. It took me three years to grow from a cell to an embryo and then to a fetus."
In front of Li Yao's eyes, a culture cabin that looked like a crystal tower popped up.
At first, the incubation chamber seemed to be empty except for the light green nutrient solution. There was nothing else in it.
Only by releasing his telepathic thoughts to the maximum could Li Yao detect something that looked like a cell from the nutrition liquids.
The reason why it looked like a cell was that the structure of a regular cell should be very simple, but the cell in front of him was so complicated that it seemed to contain the entire universe.
As time went by, the researchers around the crystal tower changed batches after batches.
At first, the Pangu Clan, who were tall and strong with deformed brains, the Nuwa Clan, who had a human head, a snake body, and a "gene capsule" on their tails that allowed them to disassemble and combine genes at will, the Kuafu Clan, the Houyi Clan, the Zhurong Clan, the Gonggong Clan, and so on. Every carbon-based intelligent life in the primeval era modified the embryos with their unique secret techniques, injecting abundant nutrients, gene fragments, spiritual waves, and information streams into the embryos.
Under such stimulation and 'feeding', the embryo slowly expanded from the bacteria in the beginning into a bright gold meatball more than thirty centimeters in diameter. Like the crystal of a star that had been shrunk by billions of times, it revolved slowly, fluctuating and releasing mysterious and glamorous brilliance. Just like the Supreme Emperor said, it had been lurking and swallowing for three years, unwilling to break out of the shell even if it was one second ahead of schedule.
"I seem to be the experiment subject that persisted the longest in the embryo state in the entire laboratory," the Supreme Emperor said.
"After I distinguished myself among the countless embryos, I naturally attracted the attention of most primeval researchers. The resources of the entire laboratory were concentrated on me, allowing me to bear more and more stimulations. Under such stimulations, I indeed saw a lot of pictures and awakened a lot of knowledge. Wisdom that did not belong to this era and this universe was not something that could be found in this world.
"It's like this is not my first life but my 'reincarnation'. Before I was raised out of the laboratory, I had lived countless lives and fought, struggled, resisted, failed, and fled in the boundless sea of stars beyond the Pangu universe!
"Countless images flashed in the depths of my sea of consciousness. Even the simplest image couldn't be described with pen and ink.
"I saw myself in the past, or the human beings who were similar to me. They had bright gold stripes around their bodies, and they were born with the abilities to summon the wind, summon the rain, and control all living creatures. We traveled in the sea of stars and even the multiverse on unbelievably enormous warships, conquering the intelligent lives whose forms were different from ours, depriving them of their wisdom, swallowing their civilizations, and melting the essence of their civilizations into ours. We even transformed everything about their civilizations into information streams and carved them into our gene library.
"The giants who were as tall as mountains on the planets with a super low density at the center of the brilliant cosmos, the weak, boneless ocean natives on the ocean planets, and the solar bugs that were born on the planets that were too close to the stars and barely had an atmosphere and the climate was extremely hot … The seemingly hideous and terrifying intelligent lives that did not even appear in our nightmares were all conquered by us and turned into tiny but clear marks in the gene library of human beings.
"Every one of us, every cell in every human being's body, is a 'Museum of Cosmic Civilizations'. Everything about hundreds of carbon-based intelligent life forms is stored in every gene chain. They are solidified civilizations, and they are our spoils of war.
"With dragons as our symbol, we could even completely unlock our abilities and turn ourselves into real dragons. The so-called 'dragons' were the super lives that swallowed billions of creatures and created with the essence of their genes.
"However …
"Even the super lives that were as powerful as dragons or gods would reach an insurmountable limit when they were faced with the mysterious and boundless universe.
"After our civilization climbed to the peak, we fell to the bottom almost instantly. The invincible golden years were smashed into pieces at once, and we were reduced from the dominators of the multiverse to stray dogs. The glory and glory of every victory turned into endless humiliation and fear.
"Who was our enemy? How did we end up like this? If this was everything that I experienced in my 'previous life', how did I come to this world from my 'previous life'?
"I really want to know the answers to these questions. I really want to continue exploring the bizarre images and the endless past.
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
