Chronic illness. The relentless torture of chemotherapy. The death of his parents. All of it had left Xu Zhi physically drained and mentally hollow. He had long begun to question the meaning of his dull, lingering existence.
But now, in the twilight of his life, something had sparked a faint flame of curiosity—a final obsession.
The study of Evolution.
We are companions in dying, he thought. The great Queen has gone ahead, and soon I'll follow in her footsteps. But before that… I'll use her power to build an evolutionary sandbox and enjoy myself in these final days.
He chuckled to himself.
"This almost feels like that old sandbox game… Minecraft."
With surprising determination, Xu Zhi pulled out the dusty old tricycle that had been forgotten in a corner of the yard. Bald and thin, his frail body wrecked by chemotherapy, he pedaled toward town like a withered man fighting against the wind.
He spent nearly 40,000 yuan of his savings on landscaping equipment, and returned home with tools, pipes, and salt piled high in a squeaky cart. Once back in the courtyard, he got to work, his spirit buoyed by childlike excitement.
The sandbox he envisioned was small—only about 100 square meters.
Armed with a garden hose and a hoe, he molded the terrain: shaping tiny mountains of soil, carving rivers, sculpting caverns, and dotting the terrain with geographic features in miniature. It was like playing god in a world the size of a backyard.
Then came sterilization.
Using a high-temperature eductor, he scorched the entire sandbox inch by inch, purging it of all flora and fauna. No Earth life could be allowed to interfere with the evolution of the Tyranis spores.
Microorganisms, however, posed no threat. They'd simply be absorbed and restructured by the Tyranis, evolving into entirely new species. No need to waste energy removing them.
Finally, Xu Zhi turned his attention to the ocean—the cradle of life.
In the heart of the sandbox, he dug a large pond about 40 square meters in size. He carefully poured in salt, maintaining the same ratio found in Earth's oceans. Salinity, after all, was a key part of marine evolution.
But then he paused, struck by an odd realization.
This wasn't a round world like Earth—it was a square sandbox, 100 square meters across. And whether by fate or irony, its layout eerily resembled an ancient Chinese cosmological model:
"The Sky is Round, and the Earth is Square."
"A mythical land, huh?" Xu Zhi muttered, scratching his head. His body was frail, and it took a full week of backbreaking labor to complete the setup. But when it was done, he issued his first command to the Hive:
"Mass produce spores."
In the early morning, he deposited the first batch of Tyranis spores into the center of the ocean.
Evolution began.
He sent another command:
"Accelerate cell division by 10,000 units."
One unit meant that a day equaled a year of evolution.
Ten thousand units? One day would become ten thousand years. Could this primitive sandbox replicate Earth's Cambrian Explosion under such warped time?
Time would tell.
Of course, the sun and moon in the real world still followed Earth's cycle. This meant that inside the sandbox, the beings would experience 5,000 years of sunlight followed by 5,000 years of darkness—a single day and night stretched across millennia.
What kind of life could endure such extremes?
The first day passed. The pond remained still. The water was so clear he could see the bottom.
The second day—nothing.
Third day—silence.
Fourth day—no change.
Then, finally, on the fifth day, the water turned cloudy. Plankton had appeared.
By the sixth day, they had evolved—small, green organisms the size of fleas. A faint emerald hue spread through the water as the sandbox ocean filled with the early stirrings of life.
"Mother Hive," Xu Zhi instructed mentally, "set genetic locks on the spore-born organisms. Limit their size."
His backyard was too small. Creatures couldn't be allowed to grow beyond what the space could sustain.
Even in Earth's history, early life was microscopic. Still, it was better to be safe.
The Tyranis Queen had warned him: evolving toward larger size was the wrong path. Smaller bodies allowed for greater adaptability and energy efficiency. It was wiser to remain compact.
The genetic limit was set.
From this point forward, the sandbox's native Tyranis species would never grow larger than ants. Even those that evolved into apex predators—creatures equivalent to Earth's dinosaurs—would not surpass the size of a cat.
An insect the size of a cat was already fearsome. To ant-sized creatures, a 100-square-meter world was an entire continent.
Later that same day, the true upheaval began.
Nearly 3.8 billion years of evolution condensed into a few hours. At the dawn of the seventh day, the sandbox experienced its own Cambrian Explosion.
Life bloomed.
Plankton dominated the ocean, competing for space. One species would arise, multiply, then be devoured by the next. Growth, reproduction, death—it all happened in seconds. Xu Zhi watched, mesmerized, as if fast-forwarding through an ecological documentary.
The once-clear water became murky with life. Seaweed-like flora drifted on the currents.
"But..." Xu Zhi murmured, glancing toward the horizon, "It's getting dark. And that means... the end may already be here."
The blood-red sun dipped below the horizon. Shadows stretched across the yard, and dusk swallowed the sandbox.
Evolution had raced ahead—but its momentum might not be enough.
5,000 years of darkness loomed.
Plants, still in their infancy, couldn't photosynthesize without sunlight. Death was inevitable.
Unless… they adapted.
The night fell.
In mere seconds, the flourishing plants withered. Without light, they shriveled and sank to the pond's bottom. A green tide of decay settled into silence.
Xu Zhi sat quietly in the darkening yard.
"The first extinction event," he whispered. "That was fast…"
Earth had endured five major extinction events across its history. The most famous was the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, which ended the age of dinosaurs.
But the first had been the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction—a sudden ice age that wiped out 85% of all marine life.
Here, in his sandbox, extinction hadn't come from temperature, but from darkness. Five thousand years of night had instantly wiped out the young ecosystem.
He stared at the lifeless pond.
"Hold on… my courageous spores."
His voice was quiet, almost prayerful.
"My dear world, don't die just because you lost the sun. You've only just begun to grow."
On Earth, evolution was resilient—billions of species, endless genetic variation. But Xu Zhi's sandbox was different. It was small, limited.
Even if the pond had been teeming, only hundreds of thousands of plants had existed. That wasn't nearly enough genetic diversity to guarantee survival through Darwinian selection.
And yet, he waited.
The moon climbed overhead. Pale silver light spilled across the courtyard. And then—something changed.
A faint blue glow shimmered across the pond's surface.
Xu Zhi sat up.
Life had returned.
A new species had emerged. Bathed in moonlight, it had evolved a trait unseen on Earth: the ability to photosynthesize at night.