CHAPTER 41: CHAPTER 39: THE ELF WHO WALKED OUT OF THE LABORATORY

Leaving the laboratory, I return to my home just tens of meters away.

The autumn wind is somewhat desolate outside the window.

Being a two-plus hour drive from the city center makes it quite remote, and it feels empty outside.

Li Qing plants the seeds in the soil of a large bonsai pot in the room and begins watering it. Under the influence of the growth-inducing code, the plant breaks through the soil at a visible speed, sprouting buds.

Li Qing starts pouring water and various nutrient solutions.

The first segment of the spine grows rapidly.

And with the speed of one layer every half an hour, it’s like 3D printing, ascending layer by layer!

"The ripening technology is faster than cultivating fast-growing white-feathered chickens, like in that brand’s pig feed commercials, swift and fattening."

Li Qing shows curiosity.

He has been frantically replenishing his biological knowledge lately.

The fastest-growing creatures in nature are mostly insects, but some mushrooms growing overnight can make you doubt life, of course, the most exaggerated is that some bee larvae can increase their weight by a hundred times in just one day.

And just one afternoon.

The spine starts to form a skeleton, turning into a white-bone Tower of Babel, a twenty-six-layer exquisite pagoda, standing on the ground.

At this stage, the spine can be modified with any data and fine-tuned.

The Tower of Babel technology is still a very useful experimental specimen detection technique, constructing the main framework of the spine and continuously observing and recording growth.

But now all parameters are set by others, and Li Qing doesn’t need to input data to adjust the Tower of Babel.

Under the windowsill where the bright sunlight shines in.

"I can wait for a day or two." Li Qing’s face is very calm, carefully reading a book in front of the growing bone structure.

With his fast reading speed, his gaze doesn’t linger, hence not fearing any accident.

The book is titled "The Selfish Gene."

The ideas inside are intriguing.

"Every organism is a survival machine controlled by genes. For self-preservation purposes, genes always manipulate the life individuals to take various actions, doing their utmost to maintain the continuation of their genes, even going through fire and water."

Li Qing continuously scans over the rows of text.

Through the passages of this book, he feels profoundly, sensing a grand, magnificent, and cold evolution history.

These selfish genes, manipulating their life forms as survival machines... aren’t these the intelligent single cells continuously changing exoskeleton life machines?

These genetic single cells are alive, conscious, manipulating the body machines, orchestrating a magnificent evolution history process.

Closing the book after reading till the end, he takes a deep breath and gently strokes the elf skeleton skull in front of him.

The scenes described within, the evolution history of civilization on the planet, evoke longing!

Compared to the long planetary evolution history of tens of billions of years, we humans are insignificant.

Normally, a limited life cannot see the unlimited evolution history.

But now, he possesses the ability.

With enough power to simulate the future biological history of thousands or even billions of years, evolving this vast and magnificent everything, overlooking each rise and fall of organisms.

Li Qing stands up, returns the book to the shelf, his eyes sparkling: "But will there be an end to the evolution of life?"

"As currently known, life apparently has limitations."

"Or rather, carbon-based life on our Earth has limits."

Boom!!

Li Qing suddenly punches the steel plate next to him, the steel plate remains unmoved, but his hand shows some bone cracks.

He shakes his hand, feeling the bones healing.

"Reality is not a movie, after all..."

"Flesh and bones can run fast, jump high, but cannot dodge bullets, no matter how strong the recovery, it’s hard to resist the torrent of steel, high-temperature magma."

He looks at the monitor screen on the tablet in front of him, at the World Tree, his eyes shining with different light.

"Dear Gods, I hope you can give me the potential for surprise, to see what a mass of flesh and bones can achieve."

"I no longer have any biological content for your reference, you have stepped into an era I cannot understand in the future."

His eyes glimmer with longing, revealing a gentle smile:

"Let me see if the bones of carbon-based life can be harder than carbon steel!"

"Let me see if the muscle can match the toughest, most elastic modern rubber, if your strength can become the Green Giant of movies, or even the Giant Dragon, Qilin, Immortal Gods of mythology."

...

...

Amidst his reflections, suddenly the computer makes a ’ding’ sound.

He receives a link to a trailer video:

"Call of Cthulhu"

——Epic movie premieres, shocking your eyes!

Two months have passed, naturally, he didn’t do nothing, he signed the contract and got the money.

That big movie featuring voiceover and picture storytelling is about to premiere.

The speed can only be described as standard.

After all, the footage existed, only post-production voiceover and editing were needed, along with various preparations for cinema release.

Although he didn’t plan to make money from it, having sold it out, Li Qing still clicked on the promotional video, as a viewer:

[Wow, it’s amazing! The scenes in the trailer are even more magnificent than before!]

[Yes, yes, yes, it’s like it’s really happening, every Sea Race warrior with the lower half of a giant sea beast, and holding spears in the upper half, it’s got such an epic style! The visuals alone are worth the ticket price!]

[Oh man! Didn’t you notice? The most outrageous thing is the overhead scenes, with tens of thousands of warriors assaulting the city, each with different actions! Each fighting movement is so reasonable, as if everyone is controlled by an AI!]

[And the Holy Knight of the Church, the Emperor, the City Wall Guard, they’re too realistic! I seriously suspect it’s a fantastical and vast Sea Race Otherworld! I’ll verify this viewpoint after watching the movie!]

[You fool above, it’s AI technology drawing, understand? As long as I’m foolish enough, everything is superstition, everything is mythology! Is it really an Otherworld? If so, I’ll perform a handstand walk!]

...

Li Qing browses through the trailer comments and finds them interesting.

The next day.

Early in the morning, Li Qing sees in the large flower pot, a spine inserted into the soil, with a skeleton hugging its legs curling up on the pot.

The skeleton is brown.

It is covered with intricate and delicate circuits and patterns, like a peach pit.

This elf is the latest technological version, the third-generation elf, the Peach Tree Spirit.

It’s made of peach tree as the Tree-man.

The skeleton is indeed made of solid peach wood without the polished smooth shine.

A layer of thin bone membrane, like cling film, wraps the entire Tower of Babel, forming an exquisite semi-transparent white wax statue, resembling a cicada pupa of a beautiful woman, within which the weaving of flesh is clearly visible.

Li Qing curiously observes for a while.

The internal structure is still simple!

It doesn’t even have complex structures like intestines, and the interior resembles a tree’s structure, as expected of a Tree-man.

The third day.

A perfect, unclothed elf girl emerges from the spine, hugging her legs, curled up emitting a peach fragrance, like a human-shaped peach tree flower demon.

The lush hair is fine and smooth like willow branches, occasionally with a few hanging green leaves, which can even be woven into a leaf crown. The ears are pointed, the body slender with perfect proportions, extremely beautiful in appearance, and radiating an aura of nature.

Li Qing grabs one of her slender, green-onion-like hands.

Unlike humans, her skin is icy cold, similar to cold-blooded reptiles or snakes, but the flesh is quite soft, like peach flesh, feeling like juice would ooze out with a bit of pressure.

"The body is a wooden skeleton."

"The flesh and skin covering is just a disguise coating, the skin and flesh are too fragile, any simple vigorous movement can damage the skin, cause flesh to fall off, exposing the skeleton, but the regeneration ability is strong."

"It’s simply a large humanoid peach growing on a tree! The flesh is blood, the core is the skeleton! In hand-to-hand combat, it’s weaker than normal males, only comparable to a monkey from Mount Emei, with very insufficient strength...."

"But inside, it has paralysis toxins that can spray pollen, the only means of self-defense."

Li Qing doesn’t mind that much, being able to create subhuman life is already interesting.

It truly resembles the elves of mythology, all those Divine Techniques, are not what he can currently achieve. This civilization needs at least another month, or, two months more of explosive growth?

"But this elf is very beautiful, you can question their technology, but not the Gods’ architectural aesthetics. Just look at the Tower of Babel, it’s almost an exquisite work of art....."

"However, just wait a bit, by nightfall the final stages of weaving will be completed, adding the final brain."