Chapter Eighty-Two: One Is All

As soon as he entered this mysterious space, Adonsa felt a chill like the slow tide creeping over a midnight swamp. It was the immense will of a third-stage evolved super-being, so dense with Delta waves that illusions formed and danced around him.

Scenes once witnessed and endured by the Black Death Emperor resurfaced in this darkness—ancient seas, forgotten fields, echoes of eras lost. The phantoms of the dead from a thousand years ago appeared in shadowy forms, reenacting their histories nearby. Even after a millennium had passed, the super-being’s powerful consciousness was still enough to assimilate the frail humans.

Adonsa quietly watched these visions unfold.

It was an era so ancient that the light of civilization had not yet been kindled. Ape-men, clad in shaggy fur, had yet to free their hands, struggling desperately against the harsh environment.

A hundred thousand years ago, an inconspicuous meteor fell to this world, and from it emerged a lifeform both fragile and perilous—a creature so weak that it could perish within minutes if left unchecked. This lump of soft sludge wrapped itself around a fern, mimicking the structure of the plant to reshape its own body, thus taking the first step of evolution.

But this was also its first misstep.

The neural reflexes of plants were too rudimentary to foster even the faintest spark of thought. This creature, destined for world-devouring greatness, instead lived its existence as a simple fern—growing and spreading by instinct alone, slowly securing its place in the world. It passively evolved toxins to repel herbivores, deep roots to ward off drought, and seeds to claim wider territory.

As a plant, it possessed only the instinct to survive, not the desire to evolve. It would change only as the environment demanded, sometimes weakening itself to cling to life.

Perhaps, as a fellow super-being, Adonsa felt a resonance with this way of existence, a sorrow stirring in his heart. The birth of intellect is a rare and arduous event; it took nature fifty-six hundred million years to nurture humanity, the primate with innate intelligence.

Had Adonsa not swiftly devoured and imitated the human central nervous system, he too would have become a beast lost in base desires.

The feeling faded as quickly as it came, and Adonsa continued to watch the unfolding story.

Ten thousand years passed, and another ten thousand, and yet another. Its roots and trunk stretched across tens of thousands of hectares, until one day it confronted the primordial question faced by all life.

Who am I?

Its vast and tangled root system resembled a gigantic neural network—bloated and sluggish, so that it pondered this simple question for another ten thousand years. Its neural circuits grew ever more sophisticated, clumsy electric impulses coursed through its roots, and at last it solved the question. It became aware of its own existence, learned to identify itself as "I."

Finally, it began its journey as a super-being, consciously reshaping itself and even its environment. Once awakened, the speed of evolution surged.

Its roots anchored the land, vapor controlled the weather, and it hunted all creatures that threatened or might threaten it. It began to selectively eliminate harmful genes, expressing an ever-greater desire for expansion and evolution.

In little time, it became the undisputed ruler of the planet. No creature could threaten it. With enough time, devouring the world would be effortless.

Yet it could not escape the eternal laws of physics, nor nature’s constraints.

Its awakening had come too late.

Over its long life, it had accumulated too much fatigue and pain—not merely physical damage, but a deeper form of death. Genes mismatched and deteriorated, bringing incurable diseases, like a program running for ten thousand years that no programmer could maintain any longer.

Starting from the outermost limbs, its leaves yellowed, roots rotted, even its cells ceased dividing and could not renew. Genetic errors accumulated, destroying the basic pathways for transcription and expression. Once-vital functions—feeding, breathing, photosynthesis—began to stall.

Adonsa sighed; this was clearly the sign of evolutionary stagnation and impending demise.

Is there an end to evolution? No, not an end, but stagnation.

When a lifeform reaches a certain stage and cannot discover or prove new theories or techniques, when it can only delve fruitlessly within its current knowledge, stagnation is inevitable.

By this logic, the same holds true for science as it does for evolution.

Though Adonsa, still youthful and vigorous, was far from such stagnation, he sensed the bottleneck and limits of modern technology.

There was no doubt that the Black Death Emperor was a super-being who had survived at least ten thousand years. In those ancient, harsh and ignorant times, its evolution was far more arduous than Adonsa’s—indeed, it had no concept of research, evolving solely through instinct and coincidence. Once its physical enhancements reached a limit, it suffered a long decline, until even its lifespan could not be sustained, succumbing to chronic death.

Even as it naturally entered the second stage of evolution through long years, it could not halt the coming end. Pure natural mutation had reached its limit; it needed a new evolution.

But in its ignorance, it had no idea where to begin.

Faced with this predicament, it felt profound fear and despair.

Large portions of its body decayed and rotted, maggots and flies returned, wandering over its corpse.

In the end, it abandoned all but its purest core and fell into a deep sleep that lasted for tens of thousands of years.

Upon awakening once more, it found the world had birthed a new civilization.

Suddenly, the illusion vanished, dissolving into a turbulent stream. Clearly, something had disrupted the Black Death Emperor, breaking the replay of memories.

With the illusions gone, a bottomless darkness was revealed, and humid vapors surged forth.

Adonsa calmly surveyed his surroundings, sending out ultrasonic waves undetectable by human ears, but received no feedback—as though the sound had been absorbed.

He dispatched countless tiny mosquitoes, and through their responses discerned that this was a cavern.

Adonsa shuddered his neural core, feeling his connection to the outside world was ambiguous, like a network suffering from latency, unable to draw much computational support. Normally, the structure of such a cave could be instantly mapped by sonar.

Even the split bodies that entered with him could only communicate, not determine their positions.

At that moment, the airflow shifted. Something seemed to be approaching. There was no warning from his infrared senses—only a viscous sound echoed through the darkness.