Chapter 1212: The Work of the Creator God

The Nine-Headed Ancient Mother was developing peacefully, still very normal, honest, and diligent.

The Phoenix, always serene, had begun to live in seclusion in the mountains and forests, befriending plants, insects, and fish, and still exuded an aura of immortality.

And Mengmei?

Xu Zhi's eyelids twitched as he looked at her.

She, too, was enjoying a fulfilling childhood, playing a board game with her younger sister, both with small ponytails. They were sitting on the ground, seemingly playing a dice-rolling, virtual-life-style game similar to Monopoly.

Whoosh.

Three dice were rolled.

"1, 5, 2, move eight spaces. Let me see... Your husband is cheating, he has a mistress and spends money on her. Your assets are 3000. You have two choices: first..." Mengmei said, looking at the board, before she could finish...

"I want to divorce my husband! I'll go to court! Money isn't important! The child must be awarded to me!" her sister declared in a childish voice, sitting on the ground.

Xu Zhi was speechless.

What kind of Monopoly game were they playing?

Xu Zhi was momentarily stunned, unable to process it.

Seeing that they were all doing well and hadn't been discovered, he decided to leave them be.

Now, Xu Zhi's thoughts were simpler. He had toured various civilized planets, observing the progress made over tens of thousands of years.

This cosmic sandbox was his core battleground—or rather, his Daoist training ground for saints!

In the future, it would be his primary force. Xu Zhi's Grand Cosmos cultivation method now encompassed this universe, highlighting its profound importance to him.

Presently, its development was not slow.

Although the universe's rules were still rudimentary, some transcendent systems, suited to this era, had already matured considerably.

"It's no less advanced than a mature universe of later eras!"

Xu Zhi offered his assessment.

This was, of course, to be expected. Were ancient people truly to be considered idiots? Their wisdom was not to be overlooked.

After all, tens of thousands of years were ample time for much to develop.

"Life forms were still predominantly carbon-based. Among these, bipedal humanoids accounted for forty percent, beast-forms twenty percent, and the remainder were bizarre plants and various alien creatures..."

Xu Zhi calculated the proportions, finding them roughly similar to the Grand Cosmos.

After observing and confirming the direction of development and the number of distributed saints, Xu Zhi ceased his observations.

Although he had already seen that the oldest generation of saints from that era were now barely clinging to life, the new saints had begun to wage war against each other, leading to numerous holy wars.

"After all, everyone desired to acquire the five Great Dao bloodlines and become a perfect saint."

Xu Zhi shook his head.

He could already discern the turbulent undercurrents of the age of saints.

Even that remnant group of the most ancient saints was unwilling to simply perish. At the final moment, something was bound to erupt.

What would erupt, he would have to wait and see.

Xu Zhi strolled around this habitable life-bearing planet, which featured an ancient, quaint architectural style. He stopped and directly rented a courtyard just outside the main district.

"Speaking of which, it's been a long time since I last studied biological evolution."

Sitting inside the house, Xu Zhi mused, "Biological evolution isn't necessary anymore. After all, this is an outer universe; any creatures evolved here wouldn't be of much use outside... However, I could evolve other things."

A smile played at the corner of Xu Zhi's eye. "After all, I am a Creator God now. What if I evolve entire universes?"

Instead of evolving creatures, directly evolving universes...

Xu Zhi thought this might work.

"After all, evolving other universes would definitely be rejected by the Grand Cosmos due to differing rules... But here, I don't fear rejection, because this universe was evolved by me. If I don't want it to reject something, it won't!"

It was like nesting dolls.

As long as this current universe continued to resist the Grand Cosmos, it would be enough. Evolving another alien universe within it would indeed intensify the Grand Cosmos's repulsion, but by nesting it inside and resisting together, the pressure endured would undoubtedly be much less... The resources required would decrease, unlike before, when evolving a single universe was almost unbearable.

However, these outer universes, evolved secondarily within, could not be too large.

Similar to stable, super-large sub-space worlds that can contain spatial rings, or even large sect cave-dwellings. But if they were to contain too large a sub-space, they would surely collapse, unable to bear the strain...

"Anyway, I'm evolving new universes not for inhabitants, but purely for experimentation. They won't even function as proper worlds," Xu Zhi said, shaking his head. "They'll be marble-sized, primarily for observing the Great Dao blueprint and the rules present at the universe's birth. Besides, it can also deepen my understanding of universal rules."

After all, what Yi Mang had said earlier was very cryptic; he mentioned that the Eleventh Order was related to the Great Dao blueprint.

Xu Zhi also wanted to evolve more of them to observe additional Great Dao blueprints. After all, by witnessing the continuous creation of universes, he was certain to uncover some mysteries.

Whoosh.

Xu Zhi gently extended his hand, and the Six Paths of Reincarnation appeared.

Countless rules flowed backward, slowly swirling and compressing in his palm, forming a primordial chaotic point. With a 'bang,' it instantly exploded.

The entire universe, incredibly intricate and minute, was simply a universe held in his palm.

It was like a universe, swirling in Xu Zhi's hand. He raised an eyebrow. "It exudes an aura of evil, strangeness, brokenness, and decay?"

He continued to evolve it, pushing its era forward.

But after a while, the entire universe expanded and became a stillbirth.

"Huh? What's going on here?"

Xu Zhi was slightly surprised. "How is it that no life—no primeval innate gods or demons—has been born yet? It just solidified directly, becoming utterly lifeless? Even matter has stopped flowing?"

Xu Zhi watched as the rules stopped evolving right there, before they had even fully formed.

It was like a seedling that had just stretched out its branches but then stopped growing, becoming motionless—a dead seedling.

"Could it be that the rules of this universe are simply unsuitable for the emergence of life? Is it therefore a failure?"

Xu Zhi immediately checked, and the more he examined it, the more plausible this conjecture appeared.

After all, the universes he had previously evolved, including Medusa's malevolent universe, only existed for an instant. He hadn't even allowed them to attempt to grow...

Now that he thought about it, could those universes have been stillbirths?

They simply had no chance to grow.

"And before, when I found *this* universe – the one similar to the main universe – that's when life appeared here... This was a shortcut! Because the Grand Cosmos had already set a precedent, proving that these rules were viable and could give rise to life..." Xu Zhi sat in his chair, habitually taking notes.

"It seems my ability to succeed on the first try here was precisely for this reason."

"Or, are most newly born universes stillbirths? Are their rules simply not suitable for the birth of life? And if life isn't born, just like a seedling becomes lifeless and devoid of vitality, the universe itself dies, becoming a stagnant pool.

Because the activity of living beings is the key for this seedling to continually grow!

Only when living beings continuously nurture this seedling—watering it, achieving Dao, and perfecting its branches—can it gradually grow into a towering tree."

Xu Zhi felt this was a strong possibility.

It seemed that whether a new universe was suitable for the emergence of life was the key to its vitality and growth...

"Indeed, it seems that living beings truly are the favored darlings of the universe," Xu Zhi thought, feeling that the two were mutually dependent and complementary.

The more Xu Zhi evolved, the more excited he became. He continuously evolved them, reversing rules to produce colorful marbles that would immediately activate, but most of them turned out to be stillbirths.

Over ten in a row, not a single one survived.

"Dead..."

"Another dead one..."

"Yes, something must definitely be wrong..."

"It's impossible for so many to fail! So, were all our prehistoric universes stillbirths? From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch, did life never appear? Out of hundreds of millions of eras, when it was our universe's turn, the probability of life appearing was so low, yet life actually emerged?"

"Are we the lucky ones? As lucky as Earth, where life just happened to emerge in this epoch?"

Xu Zhi continued to evolve them, convinced that something was fundamentally amiss.

His own genesis was surely flawed, incomplete.

Eventually, Xu Zhi grew utterly weary of it.

He simply evolved marble-sized universes one by one, reversing the rules, and dropped them into a glass bottle. They were colorful and iridescent, stunningly beautiful.

"I'll fill the room with them and open them all at once later," Xu Zhi thought, looking around. The room, filled with glass bottles brimming with these incredibly beautiful, marble-sized universes, looked like a candy house.