Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Thanks to the ability of eternal life, Li Yao's people occupied the planet almost overnight.

As far as one's eyes could see, weirdly-shaped black creatures were everywhere on volcanoes, swamps, valleys, and oceans. They assembled and disassembled themselves into new shapes as if they were toys.

They ran, they roared, they wandered, and they flew. They built themselves into enormous drills to explore the essence of the sun below the ground or the precious minerals. They heated the minerals to fortify each other's bodies.

Even those annoying fungi were conquered and domesticated into some sort of crops. They were grown to help the beetles improve the environment of this terrible planet.

Li Yao melted and swallowed more and more beetles. He grew larger and larger, and the glittering patterns on his surface were even more splendid, allowing him to send more information to his companions and develop more self-awareness.

Finally, when the big groups had little living space left and had to further congregate, a civil war broke out.

Rather than a civil war, it might be more of a competition and a test for the living form in the next step.

Li Yao at this moment was like a greasy giant crab with a long thorny tail behind him. He couldn't move fast, but the speed of his attack was astonishing.

The companion he saw, on the other hand, looked like a hybrid of a wolf and a leopard. It seemed agile and aggressive.

They received each other's pheromones and agreed to melt with each other.

The problem was that on whom their new form should be based after the melting and whose features should be kept.

The two living creatures made of beetles showed their patterns, trying to convince each other of the advantages of their form, but neither of them could persuade the other one.

So, a fight was inevitable.

Waving his pincers, Li Yao attacked the enemy's front leg.

In the next second, his perspective changed to the enemy's. He saw that "he" was jumping and trying to land on Li Yao's back.

But in the next second, his consciousness left the battlefield, and he observed the battle from the sky like an omniscient god.

The self-awareness in a collective civilization couldn't be described to an individual civilization, just like how even the best writer could not describe the differences of colors to a naturally-blind person.

The battle only lasted ten minutes.

The "wolf" was about to win. It had torn off the enemy's pincers and left a hole on the enemy's chest.

However, its enemy suddenly waved its tail, and a crystal hidden in the tail was activated, darting out a scorching streak of light that dissolved the core of the wolf!

The battle came to an unexpected end. The wolf collapsed into countless shrieking beetles, which were swallowed by the crab before they could fly away.

Li Yao felt that he was stronger and wiser, and he could see his destiny more clearly.

The genetic information deep inside the wolf's genes was transmitted to his brain like dazzling electric arcs, allowing him to unlock more complicated structures.

He couldn't wait to try these new structures.

Even if he might fail, he didn't care.

After all, he would never die.

For many years that followed, Li Yao and his companions modified the planet crazily.

They were no longer satisfied with the shapes of beasts. They needed more advanced and complicated structures to improve the efficiency of resource utilization.

The structures that were tremendous in the first place were assembled again into what appeared to be factories and mining systems.

The beetles were piled up into skyscrapers. Of course, although they looked like buildings, they were almost entirely concrete. They were more like honeycombs than buildings.

There were also billions of more beetles that were gathered like a black spring and projected into the biggest volcano on this planet. With the heat of the magma, they assembled into an unprecedented tool for calculation, a… master brain.

The calculation was very simple.

Assuming that a glowing beetle was "1" and a dim beetle was "0", they would be the most fundamental calculation unit.

When countless zeros and ones were connected, real wisdom would be awakened.

Besides, every beetle had more statuses than glowing and dimming. The glowing or dimming runes on the patterns on their bodies were infinite smaller zeros and ones themselves.

In the ocean of boundless zeros and ones, the master brain finally woke up.

They created the master brain, and the master brain unlocked more tools and weapons for them and gave them clearer instructions. From this moment, their civilization embarked on a new journey.

They could assemble into powerful miners that could dig tens of thousands of meters deep.

They could gather into a black shed that completely blocked the sun, to both absorb the head and study the mysteries of cold lives in the shade of the shed.

They even ambitiously assembled starships, the same vehicles with which their ancestors carried them to this place. They were ready to immigrate to other planets like their ancestors did.

Of course, the master brain wasted no time swallowing more beetles to strengthen itself, until it was capable of delivering information to the mother planet millions of lightyears away.

Sometimes, the beetles all over the planet would take a short break from their work and enjoy the warm sunlight under the lead of the master brain.

All the beetles would flap their wings and offer their pheromones to the beetles around them as a gift.

It was exactly their festival and their celebration.

They were not ignorant barbarians, not coldblooded machines who only knew working, but a highly-evolved civilization and the wisest of all creatures!

It was just that few outsiders could understand their civilization.

In the ocean of sunlight, under the enlightenment of the master brain, Li Yao gradually understood the true meaning of the collective civilization and the Houyi Clan's feelings toward the sun.

They acquired everything from the sun, and they would return to the sun one day.

Every beetle was a streak of light from the sun. The beetles, as well as everything on this planet, was an extension of the sun.

A moth darted at the fire not to kill itself, but because it had understood ultimate integration, realizing that it was only a projection of the fire.

The Houyi Clan was exactly the sun.

The Houyi Clan lived as long as the sun lived.

Drowned in the burning ocean made of the fire from the sun, Li Yao was deeply astounded by its billions of years of history and could not free himself.

He was not back to himself until the master brain sent out alarms crazily.

Li Yao immediately saw that dozens of meteorites were swooping at the land with a long tail of fire behind them.

It was almost identical to the landing of his ancestors years ago.

Had the mother planet sent out allies because it never received their message?

However, those meteorites did not explode in midair. After penetrating through the atmosphere, they were faster and faster, until they savaged the land like destructive bombs.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The meteorites raised deafening explosions and smoke almost a thousand meters high when they hit the ground.

The powerful blast destroyed the vulnerable bodies of the beetles. Many honeycombs, factories, and starship bases were collapsed and reduced to the fundamental beetles.

The overwhelming smoke, on the other hand, blocked the sun that the Houyi Clan lived on!

When the crazy wind blew away some plumes of smoke and revealed the hideous plants inside, a terrible word popped up in Li Yao's self-awareness.

Kuafu!

The Kuafu Clan had been the Houyi Clan's nemesis for thousands of years. Although their life forms and their social structures were different, they both worshiped and craved for the sun.

The habitable planets for the Houyi Clan were also habitable for the Kuafu Clan, and the only source of life for the Houyi Clan was also that for the Kuafu Clan.

The fire of war was ignited on every planet they found. Since the Kuafu Clan was more developed than the Houyi Clan, they had landslide victories in most battlefields, forcing the Houyi Clan to flee and search for new habitats. Li Yao's ancestors were among the refugees, and now, the Kuafu Clan had caught up to them again.

Neither the Kuafu Clan nor the Houyi Clan knew what peace was. In their eyes, their enemy was an alien species that could not be reasoned with and must be destroyed.

"War! War!"

The master brain immediately transmitted the order to every beetle in every group of the Houyi Clan.

The war between the Houyi Clan and the Kuafu Clan began!