Chapter 41: The Changing Times

Liu Jun recalled the baby born in Rehe City whom people called a born saint.

He could not resist searching the news.

"Very well, taken away by Rehe Heavy Industries, and now whereabouts unknown."

A hint of I-knew-it regret crossed his face.

"Well, it makes sense, though. That is a prototype of a new model, a walking treasure chest, the future backbone of a faction. Could they possibly let a rival faction snatch it away?"

Liu Jun felt a massive headache coming on.

It seemed this particular path was now a dead end.

He sat before his computer screen, massaging his temples in distress.

He then thought of the family of three who had fled all the way to the ancestral lands: one threw themselves into Titan research, one into steam mechanics, and one into dragon development...

The more Liu Jun thought about it, the more speechless he became.

As expected of a plague fungus, its infectivity was simply absurd.

"Should I use the King of Angels to summon someone? Will he have met any born saints these days?"

"And then, craft a scheme to send a born saint across as a prophet, to save my world?"

A second later, Liu Jun dismissed this outrageous idea.

No.

Doing that would be sheer suicide.

Let's look into what is going on with this fungal broth first!

Just as Liu Jun was feeling annoyed, he received another message from his teacher, Si Anhe:

"Class physical examination tomorrow. Everyone must attend."

Liu Jun glanced at it and didn't care much.

Now that he had gone off the grid, he had nothing to fear, even from a physical exam.

He needed to focus on how to be a proper Creator and solve the problem of this "intelligent" mushroom!

Liu Jun understood that all beginnings are hard.

Once his fungal broth matured, giving rise to a multitude of powerhouses, countless saint-tier foundations, and various mighty races...

Future calamities of wisdom, or even more exaggerated talented mushrooms, would no longer easily infect all living beings as they did now, plunging civilization into collapse without a shred of resistance.

Yet, he still needed to shepherd this civilization through its current seedling stage!

The development of any civilization always encounters various accidents, natural disasters, man-made calamities, and world-ending crises...

And his task as a fake Creator was to protect this fragile seed of life.

"The early stages of a startup are truly difficult," Liu Jun sighed.

"After acquiring this golden finger, I thought my biggest problems would be a lack of resources, land, sediment, and the difficulty of launching a world."

"Little did I know, the world itself would start having problems of its own..."

...

Year 181 of the Butterfly Era.

All races vied for glory, and bloody battles raged ceaselessly.

Due to the spread of the wisdom plague, all Butterfly tribes grew radical, pursuing knowledge to extremes in every possible way.

Obsessive, radical, twisted, and insane.

They lost all morality, etiquette, romance, and emotion, leaving only cold intellect gleaming in their eyes.

They were like a group of fungus addicts, utterly fallen.

Even when this power that forced their intelligence to heighten began to overdraw their brains, bodies, and willpower...

Disaster descended, forcing the Butterfly race to shrink their territory time and again, seeking refuge in their ancestral lands and ultimately retreating into the Wutong Tree.

Year 182 of the Butterfly Era.

Led by the fallen angels, a new era of the Angelic Dynasty began.

"I will continue my father's glory and become the most beautiful king in the world!"

"My father's beauty was a beauty of the soul."

"And my beauty lies in wisdom!"

Raphael became the second King of Angels.

Furthermore, staunchly supporting the Mother of the Origin of Wisdom, he began to refine the evolutionary sequence of the Archangels, mass-producing a large number of angels!

The little angels welcomed their next forms one after another.

Meanwhile, the butterfly ancestral land became a restricted zone.

Because the moment anyone approached it, they would find their wisdom stripped away and drastically reduced.

Far away: "Angel wings are the most beautiful things in existence."

Upon approaching: "I want to eat cabbage."

...

Far away: "Eating is merely a wasteful biological necessity of life."

Hugging the boundary: "Delicious, delicious, I want more!"

Emperor Feng, who permanently resided in a state of "low intelligence," possessed an extremely high compatibility with this "divine authority." Coupled with two hundred years of deep development, this area had already turned into a pure land.

A "halo of lowered intelligence" was even established to protect the ancestral Wutong grounds, specifically designed to isolate and repel foreign invasions.

"A forbidden zone, this is truly an ancient forbidden zone."

"As expected of the God of Wisdom, methods terrifying to this degree!"

"I have a hunch that for some time to come, wisdom will serve as a national boundary, dividing the world into two distinct realms."

Raphael was deeply shaken, departing with lingering fear in his heart.

Was this the power of a god?

...

Year 190 of foundry-work, the Butterfly Era.

The entire world began to emulate the humanoid form of the angels, shaping and weaving life.

A brand-new race named the Titans rose, initiating wars against the angels because they sought to obtain the Mother of Wisdom.

The closer one got, the greater the wisdom one possessed.

The war between the Angels and the Titans unfolded on a grand scale.

Year 191 of the Butterfly Era.

The Tyrant Dragon Butterflies rose, splitting into the Five-Colored Dragon race, and began fighting for their own Dragon Mother of Wisdom.

The Tree of Life in the forest also began splitting off individual arboreal life forms.

Thus, the world entered the era of the Four-Way Hegemony.

Titans, Dragons, Angels, and Elves.

"Kill them all!"

"The Mother of Angels belongs to us!"

"No, she is the Primordial Titan, the king who bestowed wisdom upon us."

"She is our Dragon Mother!"

The war was brutally cruel; they wove life and charged into endless slaughter.

To fight for Worm Qiqi and secure the source of this fungus addict, they stopped at nothing.

Adult Titans possessed bodies larger than Tyrannosaurus Rexes, muscles like marble, and armor fashioned after Ankylosaurs protecting their vital joints.

Roar!

Herds of Titans trained Tyrannosaurus Rexes, forming a corps of dragon tamers that shook the mountains as they marched, swatting away angels like flies with casual strikes.

"Charge!"

Among the angels, close-combat warriors brandished ancient swords, while ranged soldiers wielded crossbows.

The entire era was populated by true geniuses.

Possessing wisdom closest to the gods, they continuously wove all manner of life.

This was the most unimaginably frenzied era.

New species were created every day.

New weaving philosophies were proposed by scholars every day.

Guesses previously proven unfeasible were overturned every day.

Angels and demons, Titans and elves—almost all of them were created and refined in the hands of those Butterfly scholars.

They created myths.

Millions of years later, they were eternally carved into murals. In the eyes of future generations, they were the gods who forged all mythological creatures!

They created the Mythological Era of Origins.

Year 192 of the Butterfly Era.

Major races wove brand-new magitech hearts, granting their created progeny even greater driving force.

All major races underwent frenzied updates.

They were all pseudo-saints, traversing in a mere few years the super cocoon-weaving creation technology that the Butterfly civilization should have taken thousands of years to develop.

Civilization was erupting!

Year 195 of the Butterfly Era.

The Titan race chose to abandon mental power as their primary path, instead reshaping their physical structure and researching cultivation techniques for Titan physiques.

Based on multiple cocoon-weaving cycles, they forged a method of growing stronger through Titan molting.

"The world belongs to us!"

The Titans roared.

In this era, Titans and Angels engaged in frenzied slaughter.

Both sides were the undisputed masters of the earth.

Year 199 of the Butterfly Era.

The elves, who had long remained weak, propagated at extreme speeds as wood-type life forms, their abundant fruits nurturing vast armies.

Relying purely on numbers, they secretly amassed a terrifying military force and launched a counteroffensive against the two most powerful races: the Titans and the Angels.

The entire earth was dyed crimson.

The elves had started out the weakest, but soon, dense hordes of various elven tribes launched a counterattack, even establishing an empire.

Surging to sudden prominence, they unexpectedly became the strongest.

During the Battle of the Angelic Prairie, the Angel Queen was recaptured by the elven race.

"What King of Angels? I am the next most beautiful king!"

Looking at the fleeing Second King of Angels, the leading Elven King did not pursue, instead walking deep into the palace.

"Welcome back, our primordial elf."

They welcomed Worm Qiqi back.

This battle marked the defeat of the angels, signifying that after the Age of Angels, the Age of the Elves had arrived.

After merely a decade of bloody warfare, the dynasty had changed.

And their primordial Mother Tree was none other than Hu Baishuang, whom they had briefly crossed paths with long ago.

Yet the one truly ruling the elven race now was an Elven Queen named Sylph.

The defeated angels, Titans, and dragons, depleted in population, could only migrate to desolate corners of the world.

Because the transmission of wisdom diminished with distance, they grew far from Worm Qiqi, their intelligence declined into a vicious cycle, and their development slowed to a crawl.

The elven race, however, was the exact opposite.

Flawless in appearance, brilliant in intellect, cold in temperament yet fearless of death, with high reproductive rates and limitless... plasticity!

Their ancestral butterflies were insects, yet now they resembled insectoids even more.

Their unit-spawning speed was terrifyingly fast.

Moreover, the life forms woven from their fruits even exhibited various elven templates: archers, rangers, assassins...

They were like true creators of life, weaving all manner of powerful weapons of war.

Even colossal war treants emerged.

Hailing from the Butterfly lineage, they harbored an even greater obsession with beauty, giving rise to unprecedented scenes of prosperity!

"The world belongs to us elves."

That year.

Sylph set foot upon the ancestral lands of the Butterfly race, gazing at the scene beyond the Wutong Tree.

"My wisdom is being cleansed."

"Incredible, it truly is impossible to approach this place."

"As expected of the prophet, the god of the previous era. He must have anticipated today long ago, which is why he nurtured Emperor Feng of low intelligence. When high intelligence arrived, he could use it to isolate us, forming a contrasting forbidden zone!"

"Perhaps he once witnessed the calamity of wisdom in the previous era and found its corresponding solution."

Sylph's entire body possessed a darkish bronze hue, a physiological trait formed as a result of being infected by high intelligence.

For their species, calling them dark elves would be far more fitting.

"Elven Queen Sylph requests an audience with the ancient prophetic deity." Her loud voice echoed across the entire Wutong ancestral land.