39: Chapter 39: All Failures, An Unexpected Blessing?

Su Bai walked to the edge of the Stone-skin Wasteland.

Over five thousand Stone-skin Clan members stood there dazed, at a complete loss.

Their skin was grayish-brown rock, their bodies were tall and burly, and their eyes were hollow and lifeless.

Su Bai looked at them and remained silent for a few seconds.

The Stone-skin Clan had a reproduction cycle of five years.

One generation every five years meant only a hundred generations in five hundred years.

Would a hundred iterations be enough for them to adapt to Yin Qi?

He didn't know.

But precisely because he didn't know, he had to try.

He raised his hand.

[Time Flow Adjustment]

[Adjustment Target: Stone-skin Wasteland]

[Power Of Faith Consumed: 300 points]

[Duration: 300 years (internal)]

Within the grayish-white Yin Qi, that wasteland began to blur.

Su Bai watched quietly.

In the first year, the Stone-skin Clan began to build crude stone houses. They piled rocks to make walls and used beast hides to cover the roofs, barely resisting the erosion of Yin Qi.

In the fifth year, the first newborn was born. It was a thin, small Stone-skin infant whose skin was even more grayish-white than its parents, yet still as rough as rock.

In the tenth year, Stone-skin people began to die. Their bodies were eroded by Yin Qi, their rock-like skin began to crack, and finally, they turned into piles of rubble.

By the twentieth year, the death toll reached one thousand. The elderly and weak Stone-skin people fell one after another. Those who lived began to try and find a way to survive.

But they couldn't find one.

Their reproduction was too slow.

One generation every five years meant only four generations in twenty years.

Four generations was simply not enough time for a race to undergo a qualitative change.

By the thirtieth year, the Stone-skin population plummeted from five thousand three hundred to two thousand.

By the fiftieth year, only one thousand remained.

By the eightieth year, only three hundred remained.

In the one hundred and twentieth year, the last Stone-skin person—that first infant born back then, now a hundred and fifteen years old—lay alone in a dilapidated stone house, gazing at the grayish-white sky.

His skin was completely cracked, his eyes were totally blind, and his breathing was so weak it was almost undetectable.

He remembered how they looked over a hundred years ago when they first stepped onto this land.

Back then, there were over five thousand of them.

Now, only he remained.

He closed his eyes.

His breathing stopped.

In the one hundred and twentieth year, the Stone-skin Clan went extinct.

Su Bai looked at the empty wasteland, his expression calm.

One hundred and twenty years was even shorter than he had expected.

He turned and walked toward the Ghostly Mist.

The same three-hundred-year deduction followed.

The ghosts lived longer than the Stone-skin Clan.

They were spiritual bodies and naturally had a high adaptability to Yin Qi. Furthermore, they could evolve by devouring their own kind, which allowed their iteration speed to far exceed that of the Stone-skin Clan.

But that was also where the problem lay.

The ghosts' method of evolution was devouring their own kind.

The more they devoured, the faster they evolved.

But the more they devoured, the fewer of their kind remained.

It was an unsolvable paradox.

In the one hundredth year, through frantic devouring, the ghosts birthed their first Tier 3 Elite. But the price was that their numbers plummeted from five thousand to two thousand.

In the two hundredth year, they birthed their first Tier 4 Ghost King. But the price was that their numbers plummeted from two thousand to five hundred.

In the two hundred and fiftieth year, the Ghost King began to indiscriminately devour all of its kind. It wanted to break through to Tier 5.

In the two hundred and eightieth year, the Ghost King failed.

At the same time, it was the only one left in the entire Ghostly Mist.

In the two hundred and eighty-first year, the Ghost King drifted alone in the empty mist, letting out shrill, mournful wails.

In the two hundred and ninetieth year, the wailing stopped.

The Ghost King self-destructed due to loneliness and madness.

The ghost race was extinct.

Su Bai looked at the empty mist and sighed softly.

He turned toward the Shadow Jungle.

The Shadow Leopard had a reproduction cycle of two years—faster than the Stone-skin Clan, slower than the ghosts, and much slower than the Shadow Demons.

In two hundred years, there were a hundred generations.

A hundred iterations were barely enough for them to undergo some changes.

In the three hundredth year...

The Shadow Leopard race was extinct.

Three races.

All wiped out.

Su Bai stood at the edge of the Shadow Jungle, looking at the empty forest, silent for a long time.

He thought of the Shadow Demons' five-hundred-year history of evolution.

That was an epic.

An epic about struggle, sacrifice, unity, and evolution.

But these races had no such epic.

They either reproduced too slowly for their iteration speed to keep up with environmental changes; or their method of evolution was flawed, leading them to eat themselves to extinction; or they were simply unable to truly integrate with Yin Qi and were slowly phased out by the environment.

This was the evolution of civilization.

Cruel, cold, and showing no mercy.

Survival of the fittest, death to the unfit.

Su Bai took a deep breath, turned around, and walked toward the final map area.

The Extreme Cold Ice Plains.

There were no races there.

Only a pile of frost cores.

He originally had the least hope for this place.

Elemental creatures could not be branded or reproduce; they could only serve as energy sources.

But now, as he stood at the edge of the Extreme Cold Ice Plains looking at the frozen landscape, his pupils contracted slightly.

In the center of the ice plains, beside that pile of frost cores...

There was a small figure.

It was a tiny thing, no larger than a palm.

Its body was transparent, like a piece of moving ice crystal. It had limbs, a head, and facial features.

Though those features were so small they were almost invisible.

Right now, it was sprawled over the pile of frost cores, its tiny hands clutching a core larger than itself as it gnawed away desperately.

Su Bai crouched down and looked closely at the little thing.

It sensed Su Bai's gaze and looked up, staring at him with eyes that were equally transparent.

In those eyes, there was no fear, no hostility—only curiosity.

Su Bai reached out and touched it gently.

It shrank back slightly but didn't run away. It tilted its head at Su Bai as if wondering what this giant creature was.

Su Bai closed his eyes, his consciousness scanning the little thing's life information.

[Ice Crystal Larva]

[Rank: Tier 1]

[Grade: 1-Star]

[Description: An elemental lifeform naturally conceived from frost cores, possessing rudimentary self-awareness. Can survive in extremely cold environments and evolve by devouring frost cores. Current quantity: 1]

Su Bai opened his eyes and looked at the little thing.

Naturally conceived from frost cores?

He frowned, his consciousness scanning the pile of frost cores again.

[frost core: A crystal containing pure frost energy. Can be absorbed by yin-attribute units like Ghost Kings to significantly increase strength. Can also be used to construct ice-attribute buildings.]

[Detected that the frost cores have been in a Yin Qi environment for a long time and have begun to mutate. A very small number of cores may conceive new elemental lifeforms.]

Su Bai fell silent.

He thought of those Frost Elementss that had been killed.

They had no wisdom, no emotions—only instinct.

But their cores, after being soaked in Yin Qi for so long, had actually conceived new life.

This wasn't evolution.

This was rebirth.

He looked at the tiny Ice Crystal Larva, and a thought surfaced in his mind.

Could this race survive?

He didn't know.

But he was willing to try.

He raised his hand.

[Time Flow Adjustment]

[Adjustment Target: Extreme Cold Ice Plains]

[Power Of Faith Consumed: 300 points]

[Duration: 300 years (internal)]

Within the grayish-white Yin Qi, that ice plain began to blur.

Su Bai sat cross-legged, sinking his consciousness into the ice plain.

He wanted to witness for himself whether this race born from death could create a miracle.