Chapter 36: Creating a Life, the Tree of Origin!

*Click.*

With a sigh, Liu Jun withdrew his consciousness from the spiritual realm, ending his journey.

"Butterflies manifest into ten thousand races, diversifying all living things."

"This is truly a fairy-tale era where all manner of butterflies compete in beauty, brimming with vibrant vitality."

The Fungal Soup World.

Unlike the dream, this place was incredibly crude. Beneath a vast, empty, void sky, Liu Jun gazed into a massive cauldron filled with murky broth. Floating on the surface was a giant piece of driftwood, densely covered in colorful mushrooms. Each mushroom represented a butterfly life within.

This was the true butterfly world.

"Poor, so poor. How beautiful it was in the dream, yet how ugly it is out here."

"In this age of highly developed information, I have no good way to make money right now."

"If I expose my Tier 3 status, I could naturally make money, but I would inevitably become a target."

He sighed, his thoughts returning to the task at hand. "It’s about time I started renovating the mushroom quarters."

He tossed his newly purchased supplies into the fungal soup and began constructing a simple, small room. Then, he fed animal feed to the various mushrooms inside. Although cheap, it could stimulate further growth.

Once nourished, these mushrooms began to differentiate rapidly, taking on new forms. Much like the mushroom from years ago that dreamed it was a "Multi-Armed Butterfly," the mushrooms began to transform into that shape once given nutrients.

Before his eyes, the various mushrooms quickly developed into diverse forms: little angels, native butterflies, flower butterflies, seashell butterflies, tyrannosaurus butterflies...

A variety of mutated species!

They looked like exquisite mushroom statues the size of fingernails—brilliant in color and incredibly adorable.

"As expected, as long as there is enough material, the creatures from my dreams will immediately manifest into physical form, becoming a real world."

Seeing this, Liu Jun shifted his mental energy.

*Whoosh.*

He lifted the adorable, shaped mushrooms with his mental energy and transplanted them in batches onto a makeshift vegetable rack. He arranged them in order, like tiny figurines on a display shelf, sorted by their cultivation level from high to low.

For instance, the five strongest mushrooms—one emperor and four marquises—were placed at the very top.

The laboratory itself was divided into four mushroom breeding racks:

The eastern wooden rack was primarily for the Swallowtail Butterfly clan.
The western wooden rack was for the Angel clan.
The northern wooden rack held various small, mixed-species populations that had settled down after leaving Butterfly Valley.
The southern wooden rack was empty.

Liu Jun placed the Amber Swallowtail in the center of the four racks.

"Four continents, surrounding a single Butterfly of Creation..."

Liu Jun knew it was crude—just four wooden racks for mushrooms—but it was all he could provide for now. After finishing the makeshift mushroom laboratory, he organized his various instruments and tools to facilitate his experiments.

"It’s time to find a species with potential."

His foundation had been too thin before; he had only managed to produce a relatively simple spherical little angel, which only later evolved into a Great Angel. But now, after a hundred years of evolution and accumulation, the foundation was gradually growing richer.

He naturally wanted to go further: to create life and engineer extraordinary species!

If a person has no dreams, what is the difference between them and a vegetable? The various divine artifacts he possessed already held infinite possibilities.

"Our world follows the system of scholars—wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. It is a path of pure soul cultivation, a route toward mechanical ascension..."

"I could entirely deduce a physical body system."

"As my cultivation level rises, I clearly feel that my body is too specialized; it seems unable to bear the weight of those few talented mushrooms."

"A Tier 0 body with a Tier 3 soul, all while squeezed by a mess of mushroom talents. If I don't serialize my body and systematize my cultivation, I might be squeezed to death by my own talents in the future, turning into a twisted, giant mushroom monster."

"I must evolve in an orderly fashion, not expand in chaos."

He pondered continuously.

"I am no god of creation, but if necessary, I can continue to create benevolent civilized races within the fungal soup to pave my way—it would be a win-win situation!"

This cheat, holding dominion over a Fungal Soup World, must be put to good use. His gaze fell upon a semi-finished "Life-Knot" species: the [Flower Butterfly].

He soon took the mushroom that had dreamed of being a "flower life with butterfly wings" down from the fifth row of the eastern rack.

"The patriarch of the Flower Butterflies, Hua Baishuang, is it?"

Holding the adorable little mushroom that was still dreaming—*zzZ*—he began his research on the laboratory table.

"The strength of the butterfly race lies in weaving life with silk to undergo metamorphic growth, but limited by the era, their thinking is too narrow."

"Why must one weave oneself?"

"One only has one life; the cocooning path is a trial-and-error process—if you fail, you die."

"It would be better to weave one's descendants. Descendants can be numerous; if one dies, you can just produce another."

As for whether weaving the forms of descendant insect eggs constitutes killing? That would be a bit too saintly. They are merely seeds of life that have not yet formed a self. If that counts as life, then some people kill billions of lives in a single night; in a week, they would be super-killers who have slain more than the total human population. In the animal kingdom, species that lay thousands of eggs at once are by no means rare.

Weaving egg embryos, where those that fail to weave die in the embryo and only the successful ones are born—this form is actually quite good.

"Furthermore, butterflies lay batches of dozens to hundreds of eggs, and the survival rate is naturally low. The weaving method could actually improve the quality of the descendants!"

Liu Jun constantly considered the possibilities. Theoretically, it was entirely feasible!

So, what should the base form of a butterfly that weaves its own descendants be?

He thought further. "Plants would be quite good."

"Why not turn myself into a tree of life mythology, covered in patterns and leaves that look like butterfly knots?"

"Butterfly egg-laying becomes the tree bearing fruit."

"Using the fruit as a biological nursery to weave new butterfly descendants?"

Trees nurturing woven creations of infinite possibility—this model was the best.

What did this amount to? A tree-shaped loom, weaving new life at every moment!

There was no reason for Liu Jun not to experiment. He had a hunch that if it succeeded, this could become a race with potential no less than that of the angels.

"I have [Longevity], which automatically optimizes the internal friction of life and reduces all kinds of bodily consumption..."

"Having me weave life, automatically perfecting it—it’s like a fish in water."

"After a few generations of such optimization, I might be able to produce a decent draft of the [Life-Knot Blueprint]."

Liu Jun kept planning. In truth, if he had [Deep Affection, Short Life] to accelerate the aging of life, the speed would likely be even faster, but he didn't have that now, so he let it go.

He proceeded to use the timeless nature of the spiritual realm to conduct his experiments. Occasionally, he would go outside to collect necessary biological information, then return to continue his trials. After about eight years, he finally produced a prototype.

He looked at the mushroom-tree on the table, thought for a moment, and planted it on the southern rack, where no one yet lived.

*Rustle!*

He tossed it into the culture soil, full of anticipation. "You are the first-generation Tree of Life, the mother of the origin of all things. Go and create the life you wish to weave."

...

In the Flower Butterfly tribe, a group of butterflies traveling through the area cried out:

"Ah! This is the legendary forest of strange trees!"

"The legend says a gloomy, ugly witch lives inside."

"Run!"

"It's a gargoyle!"

"No, no! It's a wood-butterfly-gargoyle! A pile of wood is flying out!"

The Flower Butterfly tribe members were incredibly hospitable, trying their best to welcome the visitors from outside. But these skittish little butterfly travelers were scared off immediately.

Nearby, an elder sighed: "I don't know when we will rise to prominence. Will we just go extinct like this? This [Life-Knot] sequence was opened through our collective efforts, and we don't know how many companions died for it."

They did not want to betray that trust. These were like-minded companions, passionate about plant grafting and modification, who had traded their lives for this.

Another elder asked, "By the way, where is the patriarch?"

"I don't know. He's been gone for a while. Maybe he went to the ancestral grounds to recruit new members."

After some time, their patriarch returned.

"Is that... the patriarch?"

"Why has your appearance changed like this?"

They saw a mysterious and beautiful little sapling.

The patriarch had become so beautiful! If he were to recruit new members, just by standing there, countless little insects would likely run over in excitement, begging to join their race.

Perhaps their race could be saved?

The little sapling seemed a bit dazed. "I had a dream. I saw a supreme, majestic, and infinitely vast figure..."

The elders present exchanged glances, a flash of horror crossing their eyes, as they suddenly recalled an ancient legend.

...

Having finished the experiment with the Tree of Life, Liu Jun stretched.

Li Feng and Zou Anmeng returned particularly late today. It was past eight in the evening when they got back, bringing food for Liu Jun. Their expressions were unnatural and stiff.

"Did you run into trouble?" Liu Jun asked at the dinner table.

"No." The two shook their heads.

Liu Jun didn't press further, keeping it in mind. Being guilty of a crime because of one's treasure—they were likely targeted by someone interested in the little angel brain chips they had sold. Teacher Zou Anmeng would likely help resolve it. Some small-time thugs liked to loiter outside schools to threaten and intimidate students. He would wait and see.

Liu Jun didn't ask more. After eating, he scanned various forums to see the insights of other netizens. In this day and age, the real masters were among the common folk, especially in this era where everyone was a scholar. Although many were angry youths or "cyber-psychotics" suffering from mental breakdowns due to excessive reading, he quickly found an interesting post:

[Great Dream of Longevity]: "I have finished the entire story of the King of Angels. I already know who the mastermind behind the scenes is."