Chapter 1: The Genesis Simulation

Rustle… 

He suddenly heard a strange, whispering sound.

"Who's there? Something's moving in the courtyard?"

Yate stood and walked into the empty orchard. Amid a tangle of weeds, he spotted a black beetle the size of a bowl.

"So black… what kind of insect is this?"

Reaching out, Yate touched its shell—

Whoosh—

In an instant, his consciousness was pulled into the beetle's obsidian carapace, swept through an immense history of the insect people.

He witnessed their long, glorious rise: on a green world in its Cambrian bloom, ancient insects first attained intelligence and built technology. Their staggering fertility and latent potential drove them to the stars. Yet even as their science peaked, they knew their home was barren and lowly.

Determined to transcend their limits, they pierced a dimensional veil into a fantastical higher realm—the Realm of Eternal Life—only to be utterly vanquished, as if fate deemed it just. In the dying throes of their hive, the last Queen Mother left a message brimming with regret:

"Evolution is not measured by size. True strength lies within. We erred from the start—growth into gargantuan forms was our undoing. The smaller the frame, the purer the potential for energy's metamorphosis… Whoever succeeds me as Queen Mother, venture once more into the Realm of Eternal Life!"

Abruptly, Yate realized he had inherited that ruined hive. From its memories he learned that this fiercely aggressive great race possessed a single special power:

Hyper‑accelerated cell division.

By voluntarily shortening their lifespans, they could multiply their cells at unimaginable speed—blooming like flowers in an instant, then withering and dying. The hive served as a war fortress. Once the Queen Mother released her spores onto a barren world and triggered hyper‑division, new armies and entire species would erupt within years.

This race holds infinite possibilities…

Yate's heart raced. Years of sickness and chemotherapy had left him drained and questioning his life's purpose. Now, on the brink of death, a spark of curiosity ignited: the grand sweep of evolution.

The former Queen Mother seeded countless worlds with spores, birthing species and civilizations. I have no planet—only my hundred‑acre orchard. But with this hive's power, I could build a miniature sandbox world right here…

He imagined sculpting mountains, rivers, seas, and watching single‑celled spores evolve into myriad creatures… Perhaps even uncovering a cure for his cancer within that tiny ecosystem.

Filled with new resolve, Yate fetched the dusty tricycle in the corner of his orchard and pedaled—with the effort of an old man—into town. Spending some thirty‑odd thousand of his savings, he bought farming tools and machines, then returned to transform his orchard.

With hired hands, he cleared brush and trees, leveling the ground. Yate grabbed a hoe and began carving miniature hills, freshwater streams, caves, and arid plains. He then wielded a high‑temperature torch to sterilize every inch of soil, ensuring no stray Earth life would disrupt the spores' evolution.

Microbes remained—but they, too, would be subsumed by the hive's DNA to spawn entirely new organisms.

Life began in the oceans. I must build a great sea.

His parents' old fishpond lay in one corner, so Yate expanded it—digging deeper, widening its banks—and filled it with water mixed to sea‑salinity.

Yet a thorny problem emerged: this wasn't a spherical planet but a square, hundred‑acre sandbox—a literal "heavens round, earth square" of myth.

Yate, weakened by illness, labored for a week before the orchard‑sandbox was ready. That morning, he engaged the hive's auxiliary brain and ordered it to spawn the initial batch of unicellular spores into the central sea.

Then he issued the command:

"Cell‑division acceleration: ×10,000."

In their terms, one "×1" equals one year—so ten thousand times meant a day would simulate ten millennia. Whether new life would burst forth in his tiny courtyard remained to be seen.

Day 1: The clear water stayed still.

Day 2: No sign of change.

Day 3: Silence.

Day 4: Nothing.

Then, on Day 5, the central sea teemed with fledgling plankton, turning the water visibly murky…