Li Yao woke up.
Or rather, the billions of cells that constituted his body, as well as the infinite genetic information stored in them, woke up.
The genetic information was not just from the Pangu Clan, the Nuwa Clan, the Houyi Clan, and other primeval species, but it was also from the creators of the primeval species, which were even older and more incomprehensible, and from the hot and chaotic primitive universe when those older species were not born yet.
Tremendous information was generated at the moment of the big bang, which created the planets and stars as well as the first batch of lives. That information was passed on to this day through the genes of those lives.
From the perspective of elements, humans were essentially no different from planets.
Perhaps the carbons in Li Yao’s body were part of a planet billions of years ago.
When Li Yao died and his body disintegrated, those elements would return to the universe in a different form and probably become another star billions of years later.
In his trance, Li Yao found himself standing in a big, waist-deep river that flowed from before the primeval age. Every wave in the river represented a civilization. The Pangu civilization, the human civilization, the crystal processor civilization, and so many more civilizations ran all the way forward to places that he could not see.
It was the river of life.
What exactly was life?
Was it separable individuals or an inseparable continuum?
If countless cells together constituted him as a human being, then, would the inseparable continuum made of countless human beings as well as the intelligent lives prior to mankind a certain life of a higher level?
How should such a life be called? God? Or just simply the universe?
That was the macroscopic level. From the microscopic level, if every cell that Li Yao was made of was a life, would Li Yao be their god and their universe for those lives? Did the Divinity Branching Stage mean that he had to inject his consciousness into every cell to awaken them?
If a man could control every cell in his body freely and wake up every gene in those cells, what a splendid universe would he see, and what amazing abilities he would have!
Would such a man still be a man?
Li Yao reached his right hand for the water in the river, sensing the heritages of the ancestors. Then, he looked at his hand in a stun.
His fingertips were itchy, as if something was growing inside. Then, his right index finger blossomed like a lotus flower, and a colorful butterfly flew out.
Li Yao smiled as the butterfly transformed by his finger danced around him.
He understood it now.
It didn’t matter whether it was his finger or a butterfly, because they were essentially the same. They were made of the same elements that constituted the objects in the universe.
Li Yao remembered the Monkey King from the legends, who could create thousands of clones by blowing at a handful of his hair.
Perhaps the Monkey Key was really a collection of countless strands of hair. Naturally, he could replicate and change himself however he wanted.
More and more butterflies were flying out of Li Yao’s hand, making his right arm look like a burning torch. The butterflies made of the information of his life were the most vivid colors to the river of life.
He looked less and less like a regular human being now.
However, what exactly was a regular human being?
When human beings were bound to planets whose temperature, humidity, gravity, and oxygen were limited, hairless monkeys would be the perfect form.
When they set foot on the resource planets with cruel environments or wandered in space forever, they would naturally evolve into bizarre forms such as demons with the genes bestowed by ancestors.
However, even the primeval species like the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan were far from conquering the whole universe. At the very least, they couldn’t develop gaseous planets or fly in stars.
If human beings were determined to conquer all the celestial bodies including the sun, could they really maintain their “regular look” as hairless monkeys?
When the day came, everyone would be redundant, and only energy would be eternal.
However, the so-called “energy life” was still only a concept of the three-dimensional universe.
If one day, human beings were to take a step into higher dimensions after they conquered the three-dimensional universe to explore the unknown realms, how would they look by then?
Perhaps there had never been regular human beings.
It took only several billion years for germs to evolve into human beings, and the current look of mankind was only a brief moment of it. Human beings would never stop changing, and they would press forward to the unknowns until they were in parallel with what they deemed to be gods.
That was the only significance of life.
Li Yao would never stop.
He burned himself up into billions of butterflies, which were gathered into a storm that stirred the information in the river of life, before they turned into a glittering ball of light.
Li Yao considered in the ball of light and reorganized his soul. Like a fetus in a mother’s womb, he grew up and constructed a new neural network.
This time, his neural network was not limited to his brain but spread out in all directions.
He was in an amazing new status.
On one hand, his consciousness was upgrading and changing while he was mutating.
But on the other hand, his nerves spread out to every corner of the Gold Crystal Pyramid like invisible rays of light, turning the Gold Crystal Pyramid into an extension of his body.
But it was still not the end.
His nerves continued spreading out into the crevices and pathways and reached the ground through the ventilation tubes, before they were connected to other people’s nerves, allowing Li Yao to share other people’s vision.
From ten thousand different perspectives, Li Yao saw that something huge seemed to be happening on the ground. Several fully-armed crystal suit legions were nearby, and dozens of warships were cruising in the sky vigilantly. However, the soldiers seemed more confused and panicked than they were relentless.
Li Yao was greatly puzzled. He did not understand why Lei Chenghu mobilized so many soldiers to the Gold Crystal Pyramid and why Boss Bai did not stop him.
But he was more confused about his new ability. If this was his “domain” after his level-up, the range of his domain would be too astonishingly wide!
Even Wuying Qi, who had advanced into the Divinity Branching Stage a thousand years ago, did not seem to boast such incredible abilities.
In other words, even Wuying Qi never awakened the primeval memories as clearly as Li Yao did.
Did it have anything to do with “Earthling Li Yao”? Did his unique soul trigger certain mutations that Wuying Qi did not foresee?
Li Yao tried to observe, but his vision suddenly shook, and the tides of fatigue and weakness knocked him over into an abyss, forcing him to return to his body.
He had gone too far this time.
He had just advanced into the Divinity Transformation Stage, and he was far from ready to enter the Divinity Branching Stage. Activating the techniques of the Divinity Branching Stage right now was like a three-year-old child shouldering a gigantic rock; he would only be crushed.
“Crap!”
Li Yao secretly cried. He had wasted too much energy on the mysteries of the universe. While those philosophical problems were important, his real life mattered more!
He had to wake up, literally and in the three-dimensional universe.
It was a pity that his understanding came too late. His body was still glimmering, as if he would disintegrate into colorful butterflies. His consciousness wandered for millions of years, not knowing that he was a member of the Houyi Clan, a member of the Nuwa Clan, or a human. For a moment, he even lost track of time and was about to be melted in his genes.
“Dad! Dad!”
Then, he heard the anxious cries of his children, which cut apart the darkness that enshrouded him like the sharpest axe.
All the butterflies returned to his cells in brilliant streams of information and were perfectly embedded in his gene strands. Li Yao cried like a baby that had just been born. He jumped to his feet, and his consciousness finally returned to the Gold Crystal Pyramid from millions of years ago!