"Early-stage stomach cancer does have a chance of recovery, but you're already in the middle stages now. The odds are much lower. Still, with aggressive treatment, there's a possibility…"
"Enough," Xu Zhi interrupted softly. "I want to leave the hospital."
Two hours later, Xu Zhi stepped out onto the street. Chemotherapy had left its ruthless mark—his hair thinning and scattered, his body pale, hunched, and fragile. He looked exactly as weak as he felt. If treated aggressively in the earliest stage, cancer might be curable, but by mid-stage, survival had already become nearly impossible. Xu Zhi knew this grim truth all too well.
He had always been capable, working diligently at a renowned multinational corporation. Yet, over four or five years of tireless labor, the five or six hundred thousand yuan he'd painstakingly saved had melted away into hospital bills. After all the hard work, he was left with almost nothing.
Dragging his suitcase, Xu Zhi boarded a high-speed train back to his hometown in rural Dongcheng. It had been a year since he last returned to his family's old orchard estate. Once, his family had been among the wealthiest villagers, owning over a hundred acres of lush fruit trees. But six months ago, when lychee prices plummeted, their abundant harvest went unsold and rotted away. Worse still, they'd trusted someone who promised to salvage their stock—only to be swindled out of nearly a million yuan. His parents, devastated by the loss, fell gravely ill, never to recover.
With no one left to manage the orchard, even the hired workers had left. The once thriving grove had been cut down, leaving only an overgrown wasteland behind.
Xu Zhi unlocked the rusted courtyard door, which creaked open, releasing a cloud of dust into the air. The familiar scent of the countryside he'd known since childhood stirred memories deep within him. Setting his luggage in his old room, he quietly decided that he would spend whatever days remained living simply, right here in his hometown.
"Oo@@…"
Suddenly, a strange sound caught his ear. Xu Zhi frowned, startled. "Who's there?" he asked aloud. "It sounded like something moving in the yard…"
Curious, he stepped outside into the overgrown orchard. Among tangled weeds, he spotted a strange black beetle about the size of a rice bowl. Its shell was pitch-black, absorbing the faint twilight.
"What kind of beetle is this?" Xu Zhi muttered, extending a hesitant hand toward it.
In an instant, a mysterious force sucked his consciousness into the beetle's obsidian shell. He found himself immersed within the vast memories of an ancient civilization—a race known as the Insect Race.
He saw their arduous journey: a primordial insect species, born from the vibrant green of an alien planet much like Earth's Cambrian Explosion, evolving step-by-step toward intelligence and advanced technology. Driven by incredible reproduction rates and limitless potential, they'd expanded rapidly among the stars. Yet, at the pinnacle of technological achievement, they realized their home world was inherently barren and inferior. Seeking greater realms, they'd breached dimensional barriers, hoping to reach a land of immortality—only to collapse disastrously at the threshold, losing everything they'd built.
In the final moments, the last queen left behind a regretful message:
"Evolution isn't about becoming larger—true power resides within the smallest forms. Our mistake was aiming endlessly outward. Expansion leads nowhere; true transformation arises from minimalism. We have failed. Whoever succeeds as the next queen, please carry forth our legacy and return to the land of immortality!"
To Xu Zhi's astonishment, he soon realized he had inherited the insect hive itself. The memories flooding his mind revealed the extraordinary power of this fierce insect race: an ability called "Hyper-Speed Cellular Division."
This power allowed them to accelerate their life cycles dramatically, compressing the entire process—birth, maturity, aging, death—into mere moments. The hive itself was a formidable war fortress, releasing spores onto lifeless planets. These spores multiplied at astonishing speeds, rapidly evolving into diverse new species and powerful armies for the hive.
"This race truly has limitless potential," Xu Zhi whispered thoughtfully.
Long tormented by illness and exhausted from endless chemotherapy, Xu Zhi's weary heart began beating rapidly again. For the first time since facing his mortality, he felt the spark of curiosity—curiosity about the evolutionary potential of life itself.
The previous insect queen had spread spores onto empty planets, sparking evolutionary explosions and creating new worlds. Xu Zhi, however, had no planet—just his family's orchard. A sudden thought struck him:"What if I create a miniature sandbox of evolution right here? Using this insect hive, I can turn my orchard into a miniature landscape of mountains, oceans, rivers—a tiny ecosystem. By spreading spores and single-celled organisms, I'll guide them into evolving new species…"
His heart leapt with excitement. "This is just like creating my own sandbox game—my very own world. If countless new species and civilizations emerge, perhaps one might even develop a cure for my cancer."
The possibility filled Xu Zhi with renewed hope. Perhaps this was the unexpected chance he'd desperately sought. Cancer, the disease modern medicine had failed to conquer, might finally meet its match.
"I have to start building this sandbox quickly—I need proper tools for farming!"
From a forgotten corner of the orchard, he dragged out a dusty, rusty old tricycle. Struggling to breathe, weakened from chemotherapy, Xu Zhi pedaled slowly to the nearby town.
He quickly spent thirty to forty thousand yuan from his remaining savings on various farming tools and equipment. After hauling everything back, he eagerly began preparing his new world.
Since he had no planet, he would use his family's modest hundred-acre orchard as his sandbox. He hired workers to clear the overgrown grass and remaining trees, leveling the earth. With a simple hoe, Xu Zhi personally sculpted miniature mountains, winding streams, caves, and plains into the soil.
He even used a high-temperature torch he'd bought specifically for this purpose, carefully scorching the entire surface to eliminate unwanted plants or animals that might disrupt evolution. Microorganisms, however, were no concern—they'd inevitably be absorbed and reshaped by the insect spores into entirely new lifeforms.
"All life originates in the ocean," Xu Zhi reminded himself, "I must create a realistic sea."
His parents had built a small fish pond years ago. Xu Zhi spent another large sum of money expanding it. Workers dug out the earth, lined the basin, and filled it with fresh water. He carefully added salt, mixing precise proportions to replicate seawater.
However, one glaring problem remained: his sandbox wasn't a spherical planet—it was a hundred-acre square plot. In ancient mythology, this echoed the shape of the universe itself: "A square earth beneath a rounded heaven."
Xu Zhi chuckled quietly, amused by the irony. "Have I created a mythical land?"
Though his body was weak, Xu Zhi toiled tirelessly for an entire week until the hundred-acre sandbox was finally complete.
That very morning, he activated the insect hive's secondary brain, instructing it to produce numerous evolutionary spores—single cells—which he carefully introduced into the center of the artificial sea. Evolution had officially begun.
Xu Zhi gave his first order to the hive: "Accelerate cellular division—ten thousand times."
By the insect race's calculations, one acceleration-fold represented one year. Therefore, at ten thousand times acceleration, a single day inside the sandbox equaled ten thousand years of evolution. Xu Zhi waited patiently, uncertain whether these cells could spark an explosive evolutionary event reminiscent of Earth's Cambrian period.
On the first day after the spores were released, the water in the artificial sea remained clear and still.
The second day passed quietly without visible change.
Then came the third day, and the fourth. Still, nothing stirred.
But on the fifth day, Xu Zhi finally noticed a transformation. The once pristine, crystal-clear ocean was growing cloudy—single-celled organisms had finally evolved into tiny plankton visible to the naked eye. Evolution was underway.