Xu Zhi had no other way of going about it.
He had waited for over 60 years, and it became clear that it was simply impossible for a hero capable of leading the age of civilization of the sorcerers to emerge locally. The dark age was completely looming over everyone's heads, and the conventional witches were already at the brink of utter extinction.
He felt that he was unable to afford to wait any longer.
Furthermore, he found that lesser sandbox to fit the guy called 'I'm Hunyuan Thunderbolt' very well. That scientist loved living in isolation and peace, loved researching technology, and growing things. That kind of a person was just the type of conventional sorcerer that Xu Zhi found to be able to steep himself in training and research.
As for the other idiot, while it was clear that he too was of terrifying talents, but Xu Zhi had no intention of bothering with him, as he was simply too unpredictable.
Xu Zhi murmured, "The age of the king of heroes in that world blazed the trail of the earliest form of tribal civilization. The age of the three witches brought about the sorcerers and meditation, laying the foundations of sorcery training. The next age shall be the beginning of the age of alchemy. That is what a great civilization of sorcerers should be, an age where one could move the world through boundless truth and knowledge! I need sorcerers who are passionate about the search for truth, research, and alchemy, to find a way to cure my cancer. I need them to know more than just casting spells, as that would hardly make them any different from mages."
The world is in a pinch. It's time to open the world portal and have someone cross over to the other world.
A grin was seen on his face, finding it amusing that the hero to lead the third age to surprisingly be some outsider crossing over, instead of one locally born and bred.
He wondered what would a leading genius scientist of the 21st century would bring about in that world of sorcerers in his compound. He wondered if that scientist would bring about a new kind of alchemical being, or simply be rendered dead as soon as he got in there.
…
On the other side.
In a private mansion.
Li Shengjiang was naturally oblivious to the existence of some scheming, shameless maker-farmer working a field in a compound, who was setting him up and kicking up a ruckus, to make Li Shengjiang work for him for free, through crossing over and saving the sandbox world that said schemer created.
He dismissed the servant sending him his meal and went back to his room, putting on his VR headset and logged into the game. Things went pitch-black in front of him.
"Please evolve your eyes."
He chose to commit suicide at that time and start things anew as a single-cell creature.
As the legendary boss of renowned enterprises like Qili Automobile, Mango Cellular, and a variety of other technological enterprises, he was a prestigious figure and one could say that he had arrived at the peak of his life. Life would simply be boring without anything worth pursuing. At his level, where billions were beneath him and only a handful above him, he deemed it natural to look for something else amusing to do.
To the public, he was an idol of many. He was worth billions, a middle-aged CEO of multinational enterprises, and a legendary figure among the circle of businesspeople. In private, however, he was just a game addict who spent a fortune doing microtransactions.
In the games, he was just a middle-aged man who would jest around with others at times and commanded no respect whatsoever. No one actually knew who he truly was.
The years spent playing games meant that he no longer had any interests in the usual games. However, that baffling, surreal game powered by some unknown tech well ahead of its time, naturally shocked him to the core.
He went on to ask for the assistance of experts across many fields just to play the game. The deeper he dug, the more unnervingly surreal he found that game to be. He felt as if the game was an entire world unto its own. All data found in the game correlated perfectly to reality.
He was acquainted with top-notch professors of various fields of science, and he invested in countless researches and experimental projects. As such, no one dared to refuse him when he asked for help, due to the fear of getting on his bad side. As such, he quickly formed a team that was tasked with a real-time calculation for the evolution of biological species.
A plan for evolution that was over a dozen pages thick came to his hand quickly.
'Speculations of a Biological Engine and Strategy of Evolutionary Structure'
"Well, there is the flow of things. How to get out of the ocean stage of biological structure, what to do, the direction to take with steering evolution. All very detailed… I'm about to evolve an engine that only has a mouth and a muscular arm, just so to bag an achievement reward. This is really getting interesting," Li Shengjiang mumbled to himself. He spent quite a fortune hiring countless renowned scientific professors from inside and out of the country to help with research, just so that he could play an online game. That was something only he would do.
He then began spending over a dozen hours evolving his creature.
A clunky-looking green sticky being appeared soon after.
That creature had a rotund figure, devoid of a torso and conventional limbs. There was only a mouth for eating, a pair of round, squiggly eyes, and an 'ahoge' on its head. The ahoge arm felt powerful, as it was something filled with bursting muscle all over it.
That was his biological engine.
That thing looked a blob of round, green slime, wiggling around with a tentacle above its head, looking chubby and cute. It would definitely be a favorite among the ladies to be kept as a pet.
That was the best form for the biological engine to take, that the professionals behind its design came up with.
It was practical and looked nice.
He was, after all, someone who was concerned with looks, and he spent a fortune on getting skins in games.
"I've finally nailed it down, brothers. Take me back to my place."
He found it difficult to move in such a form, and so he could only request the Racer of Mount Haruna was by his side, to command his tasty Final Chickens back to his place.
The Racer of Mount Haruna laughed. "What a cute-looking creature indeed! You're really something, dude! You really did make it! This thing looks just like some monster of western myth, the slime… well, I guess I should just name this thing Chicken Engine!"
What a douche!
This is a blob, for goodness' sake!
Final Chicken, Chicken Engine… what's with you giving creatures weird chicken names?
'I'm Hunyuan Thunderbolt' paid no heed to his antics, shaking his head as he said, "Hell, you're the better guy among us two. You developed that very poisonous bird thing called Final Chicken of yours all on your own… I only got this thing going after asking over a dozen of friends from various fields for help, putting their research and whatnot aside."
Everyone had their own unique talents.
It was obvious that the Racer of Mount Haruna was the type that excelled in 'learning evolution'. There were even quite a number of professor friends of Li Shengjiang being completely stunned by what the Racer of Mount Haruna pulled, wanting to enlist him to be their lab assistants.
It was quite a pity that the guy himself was simply too addicted to the game to pull himself away, and actually rejected the glorious path of becoming an expert.
Li Shengjiang, on the other hand, knew little about evolution and he had no talent whatsoever to speak of in that field, which prompted him to enlist help from others. He was a genius when it came to working with anything mechanical and electronic, developing a variety of machines that eventually led to him establishing a vast empire of technological enterprises.
"So, you want me to chuck you into the wooden car you made?" the Racer of Mount Haruna asked.
"Yep, put me in."
The Racer of Mount Haruna nodded. There were quite a lot of other players looking at them in the compound.
"Damn, this is really something! Could this actually be the next creature to bag an achievement reward?"
"I think that would be possible."
"This thing is so cute. The last one was tasty and this one look cute. Both have their own uniqueness to them."
That rotund cute creature was then put inside the wooden car made a long time ago.
The spot housing the engine in the wooden car is empty and there was only wheel crank in it, specifically designed for the tentacle.
Puffff!!
The slime began to pulling the airbox in that spot where the engine was housed.
The structure of the slime creature was simplistic to a fault, just like how that big eye monster before had been. There was only a mouth and an arm to the engine creature, both designed respectively for only for eating and only for moving the airbox.
Brroooom!
The wooden car began to slowly move.
The Racer of Mount Haruna sitting at the driver's seat became extremely hyped in an instant as he held the wheel in his hand. "Dude, this is awesome! Faster, faster. The speed demon is here! I'd be going all out in full glory!"
As an engine, I'm Hunyuan Thunderbolt was literally nothing more than a contraption for moving things. As a being for providing power, it was naturally impossible for him to steer the car itself. As such, someone else had to drive the vehicle.
"Second gear, dude!" The Racer of Mount Haruna shouted.
I'm Hunyuan Thunderbolt nodded and siphoned more power to his arm, pulling the airbox in a frenzy and enabling the car's acceleration to spike.
"Third gear!!"
He pulled the airbox with greater zeal, making the speed of the wooden car burst yet again, causing the car to drift nicely and the Racer of Mount Haruna shrieking in high spirits.
"This is a sandbox game about organic beings evolving, yet there is now a car being made in a primitive forest…"
The surrounding players were all stunned, and the threads online were all rage over what happened.
Haruko loves Learning: This is way, way, wayyyy more hardcore than I thought it'd be! Full voice control over the car's speed, something that not even technology of modern cars is able to pull! This god**amn surpassed modern automobile technology. AI voice control over the speed of the car! >O<
Top-up more, I'll chop off your hands wrote, that is one hell of an engine indeed. All the other engines are fed with gasoline, yet this one is fed with meat and vegetables, thus getting rid of the polluting traits of conventional gasoline engines, and made very eco-friendly. This biological car technology in the game has surpassed what we could in achieve in modern society!
Brainy Tiger down the Mountain: That dude is really forgetting what is he's out to achieve. He said he wanted to evolve into a Kun, yet he's now all absorbed with climbing the technology tree and researching cars in a frenzy LOL.
Cute girl who will evolve into a dragon, become the face of a web game wrote, who said that the big guy has forgotten his original goal!? Just look at that muscular arm of his, isn't that arm of the creature over ten times more powerful than all others that exist now? This is what I call the true Hunyuan Thunderbolt! But then again, don't let the streamer girls get a look at such a powerful arm, for they wouldn't be able to contain themselves after that ROFL.
…
Everyone was raving about what was taking place at that moment. It was all too surreal and explosive for them to handle.
That biological car was deemed to have beaten everything that modern real society was able to come up with.
Everyone was amazed at just how unbelievable the degree of freedom that was afforded by the game. That was the freedom of the sandbox in the truest sense. The evolved beings perfectly mimicked reality and possessed infinite possibilities.
It was no wonder why the testing was being taken so seriously as to require players to submit a thesis and opened only to people with professional knowledge. Those players were really having the time of their lives.
A prompt popped up at the moment.
[Notice: Congratulations to 'I am Hunyuan Thunderbolt Hand, and I want to evolve into Kun, the legendary fish'. His creature of evolution, the biological engine, possesses a lot of potential, and he is hereby awarded the achievement.]
Countless were thrown into a frenzy. The development was indeed an achievement. The second being to win the achievement was born.
Li Shengjiang, who had been pulling the airbox in a frenzy, ceased moving his arm, causing the car to gradually slow down.
Three options appeared before his eyes.
1) Keep the engine being as a starting race.
2) Permanent access to sandbox game.
3) Embark on your second life.
...
Everyone else around was hyped, anticipating the guy's choice.
Li Shengjiang was pondering over the options.
The first option for keeping the being as his starting race was cool, as that meant that the being that he worked so hard to develop would be saved for good and being spared from extinction. That would also mean that he would no longer only be able to start as a spore, and he had a new starting race to begin the game with. The Racer of Mount Haruna picked that option before.
However, he deemed such an option unnecessary.
That was because he found that sandbox world to be unbelievably real, completely mimicking reality. That much was seen in his own compound. Every change he made to the terrain was kept permanently.
Even if the 'king' that controlled a species died and logged out of the game, the rest of the species would continue to live on as wild species. Although without someone in control, they would all soon face extinction.
However, at present, he could simply keep a pack of those 'engines' in his compound secretly after he died, thus sparing the species from the fate of extinction.
He embarked on the journey of creating such a species just for the expressed purpose of creating an engine. Having them become wild animals was a non-issue.
…
"This thing is a being for serving specific functions and I've no need to control it personally. It won't be going anywhere as well, unlike the Final Chickens. Selecting such a being as my starting race would be completely pointless."
Li Shengjiang continued to mumble to himself, "The second option would be of the best interests to common players, but I have no need for it at all. My abilities mean that I would never need to fear being eliminated…"
He then turned his gaze at the third option, which was the most mysterious.
The option to 'embark on his second life'.
"Second life eh?" Li Shengjiang took a deep breath and a tinge of fire was seen in his eyes.
'Second life' was something that meant nothing to others, but to him, that was the term that truly touched his core.
He saw that option back when the Racer of Mount Haruna got his achievement reward, and he had already determined to get such a reward himself, just to see what 'second life' would mean in a sandbox game that is just so unbelievably free. "I've reached the peak of my current life. I'm too damn talented, and that caused my life now to be utterly boring…"
"I sure hope this would be surprising."
He said and then selected the third option quietly.
The option to embark on his second life.