Qin Xuan was just an ordinary person. When he saw a scene that looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie, his first thought was that he was hallucinating.
But the sphere encased in a gray shell was real.
After a long moment of stunned silence, he tried to touch it with a chopstick.
However, the sphere’s outer surface had a faint force field that prevented the chopstick from approaching the shell.
Only the crack had no such field.
The chopstick slowly reached toward the crack. Just as it was about to go through, Qin Xuan suddenly stopped.
He began to imagine.
If he wasn’t mistaken, this shell contained a miniature universe, with countless stars. This meant there was a high probability of planets with life.
It was too small, too fragile. What if he accidentally poked it and it broke? Would the universe be destroyed?
Qin Xuan retracted the chopstick and stopped touching it.
This strange thought saved that universe, and it also saved the planet where the Wu tribe resided.
After the initial panic, he gradually became interested in the miniature universe.
After watching it for a while, he was no longer afraid.
So, Qin Xuan became engrossed in observing this universe.
This observation also affected the interior of the miniature universe. Merely his few observations led to the destruction of thousands of star systems within. Simultaneously, due to the energy he brought in through his observation and breath, countless new star systems were born within the miniature universe.
At some point, a pinpoint of light, invisible to the human eye, bravely flew out of the crack. It was almost destroyed on the spot, but it successfully entered the small Transformer toy.
That evening, as Qin Xuan was deciding to call the relevant authorities, the mechanical toy behind him made a strange sound, a peculiar chirping composed of strange byte sequences.
The pinpoint of light that had flown out, using the toy’s chip, battery, and crude speaker, was communicating with him.
However, Qin Xuan only understood that the sounds from the toy were intelligent voices two days later.
But the initial contact and communication were difficult.
Neither could understand the meaning of the sounds the other made.
Another day passed, and Qin Xuan thought of a simple, crude method. He opened his computer, found a webpage about a professor's predictions, and played it for the toy.
Starting with the most basic language, pinyin, and Chinese characters.
What Qin Xuan didn’t expect was that that evening, the toy spoke its first comprehensible sentence: “Great Sovereign, are you the strongest god in this world?”
Qin Xuan froze for a moment, then couldn’t help but laugh.
He sat down cross-legged and began to describe the situation of this world, stating that he was an ordinary human.
The entity hidden within the machine seemed to fall silent for a long time, then began to recount its story.
It said it was the strongest being in its world, a god beyond all.
Qin Xuan found it amusing at first, but soon realized that this little guy indeed possessed astonishing intelligence and a unique cultivation method from its world.
Although the universe it belonged to was pathetically small, only the size of a watermelon, its wisdom was boundless.
Qin Xuan quickly became friends with it.
He was captivated by this discovery, and communicating with a unique life form made him forget to eat or sleep.
Qin Xuan told the life form about the legends of his universe.
The so-called creator gods of this world were mere figments of fiction.
The life form was very interested in the Chinese myth of Pangu creating heaven and earth. It wanted to see all sorts of information and absorbed all knowledge with insatiable thirst.
One day, it suddenly gave itself a name: Haotian.
It was at this time that Qin Xuan fell ill.
The illness came on suddenly and progressed rapidly.
Alone in his rented room, Qin Xuan was too weak to even knock on a neighbor’s door for help. Burning with fever and utterly weak, he lay before the crack.
At this point, the toy suddenly offered to teach him a mind cultivation technique.
Mind cultivation was a unique ability of the miniature universe, but any life form had the chance to succeed in practicing it.
Only this could save Qin Xuan.
Qin Xuan agreed.
In his extreme weakness, he practiced the mind method taught by the robot.
Right before the crack, he gradually felt himself floating, as if his soul were leaving his body.
A bright orb of light appeared before his eyes, emanating from the robot.
Qin Xuan finally saw the true form of the most powerful deity in the miniature universe.
A small, octopus-like creature, radiating a beautiful glow, its body composed of strange energy.
As he cultivated faster and faster, his mind grew more and more fragile.
Gradually, Qin Xuan forgot his identity, forgot the body lying before the crack, and yearned more and more for the universe Haotian spoke of.
Unknowingly, the little octopus calling itself Haotian, bathed in white light, coiled itself around Qin Xuan’s body.
And Qin Xuan’s consciousness, transformed into his mind, drifted further and further from his body.
“Haotian, what are you doing? Didn’t you say that by reaching the peak of mind cultivation, one could completely break free from the shackles of the body? Why are you in my body?”
At this moment, the little octopus revealed a devilish gleam.
Qin Xuan suddenly realized that this guy wasn’t teaching him to cultivate at all, but tricking him into leaving his body so that he could possess it.
What would a being from another universe do if it disguised itself as a human in this world?
Coming to his senses, Qin Xuan returned to his body and gathered all his strength, fiercely swatting the robot before him away.
The robot, however, involuntarily fell toward the crack.
The crack had already opened like a terrifying eye. Qin Xuan, having lost all strength and on the brink of death, had his consciousness uncontrollably seized by Haotian and, along with the toy, plunged into the crack.
After being impacted, the crack began to slowly seal.
After an unknown period, the room door was opened. The landlord, seeing Qin Xuan lying on the ground, barely alive, was greatly alarmed and quickly called an ambulance.
After Qin Xuan was taken away, the elderly landlord inspected the room and saw the strange object with a small crack sticking out of the wall.
“Sigh, still have to rent it out. That young man seemed like he wasn’t going to make it,” the landlord muttered. He found some cement and materials and plastered over the exposed part of the wall.
Future tenants were all short-term renters, and no one paid attention to the issue with that section of the wall.
Inside the miniature universe, the moment the toy entered, it collided with the two largest star systems. After the impact, the toy transformed into energy within the miniature universe, scattering into several pieces and dispersing across the starry expanse.
Meanwhile, Haotian, dragging Qin Xuan’s consciousness, arduously traversed the star systems and arrived at the vibrant planet inhabited by the Wu tribe.
Under Haotian’s control, this fused consciousness, after having key memories erased, was used to resurrect a body in Qin Xuan’s likeness.
This was the world of the Wu tribe civilization from ten thousand years ago.
Humans had not yet appeared; only many apes gathered by the grasslands and the great rivers.
Although Qin Xuan, merged with Haotian’s consciousness, had lost key memories, the knowledge from the prime universe remained in his consciousness.
Under his miraculous influence, and with Haotian’s boundless power as a foundation, the process of ape-to-human evolution was successfully completed in an extremely short period.
The newly evolved humans, empowered by cultivation and spiritual energy, advanced at a speed far exceeding that of the prime universe.
Qin Xuan became the National Master of a tribe.
The rising human civilization engaged in several wars with the Wu tribe civilization.
Ultimately, the Wu tribe could not compete with these terrifying humans. They chose a different path: merging their collective consciousness into a single entity, to lie dormant within human civilization with minimal material consumption.
The development of human civilization, under the combined influence of Qin Xuan and Haotian, infinitely approached the trajectory of the prime universe.
After the true birth of the Great Xia civilization, everything developed naturally…
In the prime universe at this time, that city, that apartment, still existed.
Time had moved to 2012. The area around Jinhua Apartment had been demolished, and the landlord had passed away. His son, however, refused to sell, and instead began to redecorate the dilapidated apartment, continuing to rent it out under the banner of a noble residence.
On a certain day in 2012, a girl who had just graduated from nursing school moved in with her luggage.
She was an intelligent, steady, yet beautiful girl who didn’t quite fit in with others.
In the third month of her tenancy, she discovered the anomaly in the wall.
At the time, this girl, named Su Qing, was working on a science fiction novel. As a unique hobby, her imagination was astonishing.
After discovering the shadow on the wall, she, like the boy ten years prior, used a tool to open the outer layer of the wall. Thus, the shell, hidden for ten years in the prime universe and where countless years might have passed in the miniature universe, reappeared…