Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Nor did he know whether he was Li Yao or not, nor even whether he was "he” or “it”. He seemed to have lost the ability to think logically as an intelligent life, but there were more things that could not be portrayed in language.

He seemed to be an egg, and he seemed to be a condenser of tens of millions of eggs, and he could feel the soil temperature, the humidity, and the tremor of the eggs themselves at the same time, and he could even connect with the adults on the ground in some sort of psychoactive or informative way, sharing the vision of the adults, seeing everything.

He saw that it was a vast, burning planet filled with volcanoes and lightning clouds, and that the stars seemed very close to the planet, and the sun shined down, as if the magma had fallen, causing far more destruction than life.

Few lives can adapt to such a harsh environment, let alone the intelligent life that has evolved into civilization.

But his community is a rare exception.

He “saw" millions of kilometres of black meteorites or starships burning, dragging grey white tail flames, tearing apart lead clouds, steering the sun and diving into the planet's atmosphere.

Instead of slowing down their landings, however, they made huge noises in the middle of the air, bursting into countless spiral fragments.

These pieces scream hard and as soon as they land on the ground, they spin at high speeds and drill to the ground.

A word appeared in Li Yao's original sense of chaos, “explosion”.

He instantly understood the significance of this image, as if the blind had seen the light for the first time, seen the colorful world, and received endless messages.

These black meteorite-like battleships are not cold vehicles, they are the backpackers themselves.

Hundreds of millions of queen worms, like hundreds of millions of cells, have gathered together to form a giant starship that can cross the sea of stars, with the mission of exploring the stars and finding new habitats, to come to this new and pristine planet.

The dark, icy universe is constantly eroding the black beetles that make up the starship, and these beetles are gradually reaching the end of their lives.

And the high temperatures brought about by hypervelocity friction with the atmosphere have extinguished the last of these "living starships".

So, after successfully bringing a large amount of genetically stored seeds into the atmosphere of this new inhabitable planet, the Starships accomplished their mission, exploding themselves with one last trace of power.

Hundreds of millions of old beetles died instantly, but hundreds of millions of seeds, inspired by shockwaves, sowed up every inch of the planet.

Li Yaojing watched the fireworks representing destruction and rebirth sparkle over the lead cloud, and realized that deep in the sea there was no sense of sadness.

All beetles are one, and countless beetles together make up a creature called the Posthumus, and the sacrifice of millions of biochemical starships creates the hope of incubating new life, a very common metabolic process that is neither tragic nor pleasant nor inspiring - moreover, their situation remains precarious, nor should a single bit of energy be wasted on joy or emotion.

He, it, they, simply faithfully carry out a mission that has been engraved deep into the genetic chain, trying to absorb the heat of the sun and the nutrients in the soil, constantly nurturing and growing.

Not all seeds are lucky.

Many insect eggs were sown in shallow soils too close to the ground, roasted like lava by the sun, and even the black crusts of the rear clan could not resist such heat, unified into ashes.

There are also many bug eggs drilled too deep, all the way to the depths of too dark and cold a formation to get enough heat and nutrients to freeze there forever.

Not to mention the natives of this planet - although there are no large, tall organisms here, there are also sun-feeding fungi in the soil, which create a lot of trouble for Li Yao's "people", such as lightning flushing information elements that bring distant "people” news. Somewhere, it is said, the fungi have become huge meshes and blankets of fungi, devouring countless aftermath bug eggs, and they have to adapt their genes in time to evolve and resist this fungal infection, which dramatically delays their ability to break out and occupy the entire planet.

Fortunately, Li Yao was not buried deep, not high, not too humid, not particularly dry. The sun was enough to provide him with sufficient energy without burning his naive shell. There were no obnoxious fungi to disturb his growth. Volcanoes and earthquakes were more than 18,000 miles away from him. He could unlock the secrets deep in the genetic chain with a single thought and bring out an equally new weapon from the "armory” to arm himself.

He has been shelled seven times in total, each time the shell is removed, the shape expands once, while the newly grown crust is branded with a new pattern for the star's radiation, wavelength, and spiritual energy ripples.

These patterns have raised his absorption efficiency of solar energy to new heights, and countless speckle bargaining. The images of the floating shadow flashed through his sea of knowledge, making him look as if he saw thousands of "biochemical starships” of the backward clan cross the star sea, and also saw the highly developed backward clan home star, the scaly, straight into the skyscraper of the tall buildings are made up of small beetles, and even billions of beetles of beetles clustered together to form something like "biochemical superbrain”.

Li Yao gained unprecedented insight and understood the mission of the expedition.

They want to breed and breed millions of times more homogeneous people on this new planet, and only when the number of beetles reaches the limit and exceeds the limit can complex structural maps such as warships, skyscrapers and biochemical superbrains be constructed and qualified to be called “civilizations” can they send a message back to their home planet announcing the "triumph” of this expedition.

Li Yao broke out with millions of people.

He can't even tell if he's this little beetle, or the condenser of the myriad nearby beetles that exchange pheromones.

He did not feel uncomfortable with the intensely toxic air and the excessively intense sunlight, and his genes had long been adapted to fit perfectly on the planet in the course of the long underground growth - the rear clan had conquered many similar planets, not the worst of the environment, and some of their gene banks were weapons to deal with difficult conditions.

Even so, countless people die as soon as the earth breaks out.

Death poisoning, death from sun exposure, death from low temperatures, death from hunger, death from all sorts of strange or common reasons - death doesn't need cause, survival needs it.

Li Yao did not hesitate at all. At this time, his instincts were still far above his ability to think. He strived to wriggle his rounded body, waving his naive tentacles clumsily and devouring the corpses of his dead companions.

This is a very critical moment, when the entire wilderness is flooded by black tides, which make the sound of "clicking", where countless beetles are devouring the bodies of the dead, enhancing their nutrients, bitterly defending themselves against intense sun exposure, raging winds and heavy rains, and struggling for that slim line of life.

In the wind and sun, Li Yao went through several more shell detachments, and his body became bigger and prettier.

He grew a pair of sharp and tough enough to refine the rocks on the planet; his crusts became more oily and filled with colorful patterns, reflecting different wavelengths of light and turning into complex information; his abdominal minister produced several pairs of redundancies and two rows of parallel holes in his chest - each with its own wonderful organ, which he does not yet know.

All of a sudden, it was like a lightning stroke across his horrible sea of knowledge, and he and the millions of people around him were awakened - it was the season of gathering!

Li Yao's crust emits colorful lights, sending the pattern branded on him to all sides, looking for the right people to pair with.

And all his people were doing the same thing, like looking for him in the crowd.

Soon, the two glittering patterns gathered together in the middle of the sky, and Li Yao struggled to climb towards a clan who also responded to his call.

Li Yao firmly fixed the groove between the waist of the other party with the buckle of his abdomen. The other party also inserted the tentacles of his head into the hole in Li Yao's chest, which fits perfectly and seamlessly.

In a moment, Li Yao felt the trembling chestnut from the deep end of the gene. He felt he had become more “complete". He shared the sea of knowledge with the other party. The gene library, which could not be opened, was opened, and more information poured out like a tidal wave.

Not satisfied, they -- he's still not satisfied, he's still attracting more beetles to this with the pattern on the beetle -- "small group," and then 12 beetles accepted his invitation and became part of him, some beetles as crawling parts, some beetles as fighting and finishing parts, some beetles as digestive and energy storage parts, and he instantly completed the leap from a lower animal to a higher animal, becoming a crab-like, transcendent creature.

And he's not the biggest winner of this agglomeration season, and many beetles have managed to agglomerate hundreds of companions, forming a “big group," shaping themselves into a one-size-fits-all, light-hearted image, not limited by any laws, just to try out what form is best suited to survive on this planet.

Survival trials are brutal.

Numerous past forms of success have proved unsuitable for the planet's environment. Those seemingly claw-dropping, fierce “masses” have collapsed, the vast majority of beetles have died, and the remaining beetles have joined “small groups” such as Li Yao with the lesson of failure.

But there are also a small number of agglomeration patterns that have proved quite successful, and the “large groups" that make up these forms will also be divided in an orderly fashion, bringing new and successful forms to more “small groups”.

Even Li Yao died twice.

He wasn't sure if he should describe his collapse by “dying," and in short, the form he had finally congealed up had proved unsuitable for the planet's survival and rock finishing operations, making up 90 percent of his body. All of the beetles died, but the remaining 10 percent carried the most critical genetic information, joined a new team, and blended in perfectly.

Perhaps death is a meaningless concept for individuals of bee colony civilization, who can live forever if civilization persists.