Xu Zhi searched for a long time before finding the most promising candidate — a beetle-shaped creature.
"You have armor and agility," he muttered. "And most importantly, you've got a shiny plate on your head instead of hair. Perfect. You'll be the lucky one to become the bald overlord of the future intelligent races—maybe even for several eras."
He picked up the ant-sized beetle with a pair of metal tongs and placed it inside a transparent test tube.
Then, he prepared a new one-square-meter experimental field and released the tiny creature into it.
Cell division speed: 10,000 times!
In just a short moment, its population exploded. They bred, died, and were reborn again and again until their numbers reached into the hundreds of thousands.
Xu Zhi picked up several rows of transparent test tubes and set them neatly on the ground."Come on now. Line up nicely. Three hundred per tube."
Under the control of the Mother Nest, the "ants" obediently formed lines and crawled into the tubes on their own.
Xu Zhi carefully labeled each tube with an experimental batch number.
Next, he diluted the chimpanzee blood and dripped a few drops into each test tube. Under the Mother Nest's control, the beetles pierced their own skin, mixing their body fluids with the chimpanzee blood. A violent rejection reaction immediately followed—most of them died on the spot.
Xu Zhi wasn't a top-tier biologist. His approach was simple, almost crude—something even a child could understand:
Survival of the fittest.
After countless test tubes and millions of beetles, only three batches—1042, 2041, and 2415—showed signs of mutation. These few survived the gene rejection and successfully fused with the chimpanzee blood.
But survival didn't mean success. Mutation could also mean deformity.
Among the three, he chose the most stable specimen: Test Tube 2041.
Inside was a miniature creature, even smaller than a regular ant. It had dense black fur and a humanoid shape wrapped in a natural armor, like a tiny ape with a beetle's shell. Xu Zhi named it the Ape-Beetle.
Unfortunately, it wasn't bald. Quite the opposite—it had an abundance of thick, black hair.
The tiny humanoid ape banged on the glass wall of its test tube, letting out strange sounds.
"Xie Di?""Xie Ding!""Xie Ding!"
The syllables slowly formed a familiar sound.
"...What?"
Xu Zhi froze.
He'd expected a noble, bald creature. Instead, this hairy little thing was mocking him?
"You dare mock me for being bald?" Xu Zhi twitched at the corner of his eye. "Baldness is just a side effect of chemotherapy! Give me a month and I'll have a full head of hair again!"
He exhaled slowly, resisting the urge to crush it between his fingers. "I might be the only creator in the world mocked for baldness by his own creation."
How outrageous. A creature just born, and it dares insult its god?
Still, after thinking it over, Xu Zhi sighed. "Forget it. It's the only surviving mutation. I'll keep it alive—for now. I'll write down this grudge for later."
He didn't realize that this small creature, by innocently shouting "Xie Ding," had just cursed its entire race with a terrible fate—simply because their creator was a little too petty.
"Little guy," Xu Zhi said with a dark smile, "we'll settle this later."
He took a deep breath and placed the test tube back into the experimental field, letting the Ape-Beetles reproduce freely.
Cell division speed: 10,000 times!
The first Ape-Beetle soon died, ending its brief life of shouting "Xie Ding." Yet within moments, it had reproduced tens of thousands of offspring—tiny black humanoids scurrying across the ground like ants.
"Xie Ding! Xie Ding!"
They ran around the miniature world, shouting in unison up at the sky.
Xu Zhi was speechless. "Are you all brain-damaged?"
Next, he added termite genes to the mix.The result: total failure.
He repeated the experiment seventy times, wiping out hundreds of thousands of Ape-Beetles. None survived the second fusion attempt.
"It seems their species level is too low. They can't handle more than one gene at a time."
He sighed and decided to set the termite genes aside for now, allowing the Ape-Beetles to continue breeding at high speed.
But generation after generation passed, and not a trace of intelligence emerged. They still only knew how to shout "Xie Ding!"
Then it hit him.
"Of course! With their cell division sped up 10,000 times, they live and die within seconds. How could they possibly have time to think or develop language, let alone civilization?"
He rubbed his chin. "Should I slow the rate down? But if I make it normal speed, evolution will take forever. Humans needed thousands of years to form civilization."
He accessed the Mother Nest's data.
Sure enough, there was an explanation.
In Zerg terms, a 1x division speed equals one year.
So a 10,000x rate meant ten thousand years passed in one day.At that speed, creatures could only act on instinct—their brains couldn't process thoughts fast enough.
However, at a 100x rate, the brain could keep up. Thinking, neuron activity, and body division all accelerated together—allowing intelligence to develop.
"Their bodies accelerate a hundredfold, and so do their minds," Xu Zhi murmured. "In other words, their entire perception of time speeds up."
He gave a command to the Mother Nest.
"For this area, set cell division speed to 100x."
Instantly, the Ape-Beetles' movements and thoughts synced. Their minds expanded, their neurons fired like lightning, and their bodies moved with incredible speed—as if they'd opened the Eight Gates.
The sandbox became a blur of life, every motion happening a hundred times faster.
A sudden thought crossed Xu Zhi's mind.
"Can I undergo 100x acceleration myself?"
The Mother Nest's mechanical voice replied:
"No. Only Zerg organisms can withstand such acceleration. Without Zerg cells, your brain and body would collapse under the strain."
Xu Zhi fell silent, then chuckled wryly."Right. If I did that, my cancer cells would also divide a hundred times faster. I'd die instantly."
For two days, he continued his experiments with the Ape-Beetles. Meanwhile, in the main sandbox—still running at 10,000x speed—the equivalent of twenty thousand years passed.
The world had changed.
Towering trees reached into the clouds, and massive beasts roamed the land—armored quadrupeds with black plates on their heads, as large as cats in the real world.
To the tiny Ape-Beetles, these were towering tyrants—giants akin to humans facing dinosaurs a hundred meters tall.
"I wonder," Xu Zhi murmured, "how they'll survive."
He slowed the big sandbox down to 100x speed, synchronizing both sides.
"The experiment's ready. Let's find a spot to release them."
Wearing his blue lab shoe covers, Xu Zhi walked carefully through the orchard, holding a test tube filled with three hundred Ape-Beetles. Beneath his feet stretched a lush, miniature world—mountain ranges, forests, and plains, all small enough to crush underfoot.
Every step sent tremors through the land. Trees toppled, and countless creatures fled in panic.
"Let's release them here."
He gently poured the Ape-Beetles into a green canyon surrounded by dense trees on the southern edge of the sandbox.