Shepherding Humanity

After a long search, Xu Zhi decided on the most suitable species. It was a beetle-shaped creature that possessed a vertebrate’s skeletal structure, with joints armored in black chitin.

"It’s armored and dexterous, with the advantages of both invertebrates and vertebrates. Most importantly, its head is also armored, which means no hair… You're it! Lucky you. You get to be the Homo sapiens overlord of the next few epochs.”

Xu Zhi picked up the beetle with metal tongs and placed it in a clear test tube.

Then he looked for the food to feed this species, and moved to a new test field that was only a square meter in size, where he scattered the food.

He accelerated cell division speed by 10,000 units.

After a mere ten seconds.

The number of the beetles immediately exceeded a hundred thousand.

Xu Zhi picked up a large number of transparent test tubes and placed them on the ground, "Here, be good and get into the tube yourself. Line up! Three hundred per test tube!”

Under the influence of the Mother Hive, the “ants”, one by one, lined up to enter the test tube.

Next, Xu Zhi numbered each test tube.

He diluted the monkey blood and dropped it into each test tube. He then instructed the Mother Hive to make the beetles pierce themselves, causing their body fluids to mix with the monkey blood. The acute hemolytic transfusion reaction that followed instantly wiped them out.

Survival of the fittest.

After two days of testing, countless batches of test tubes, and tens of millions dead, mutations allowing them to survive rejection finally started showing up.

Samples from three test-tubes, #1042, #2041, and #2415 accepted the blood transfusion and survived. This did not necessarily mean that they’ve perfectly accepted the new genes though. Also, they could just be one-off aberrations.

He selected the most successful specimen from among the three test tubes, the creature from test tube #2041.

It was an ant-sized creature with abundant hair that looked like an ape covered in black armor. He named it the Bugape. Unfortunately for Xu Zhi, however, the creature also had a luxurious head of hair to complement its ample body hair.

The great ape, now in a test tube, was banging on the glass wall, bellowing out odd, incoherent cries.

He listened to the syllables. “Ba Di?”

"Bal Di!"

"Baldy!"

"Baldy!"

…

The roar gradually transformed into a familiar word.

"????"

Xu Zhi was dumbfounded.

I wanted you to become bald, but you grew a head full of luxurious black hair, and not only that, you dare call me a baldy?

Dude, you're out of line!

My thinning hair is obviously a short term aftermath of chemo. Give me one month off chemo and my hair will grow back!

Xu Zhi took a deep breath. He felt that he should crush the impertinent creature, "Ha ha ha. I can’t accept this. Death before disgrace! I must be the only Creator in the world to be mocked by his own creation as a baldy."

You’re just a newborn baby, yet you dare to mock the great creator who gave you life?

Treacherous heretic!

This is clearly a brutal, vicious, psychotic, and warlike species; a scourge to all life that must be dealt with!

But no, if I think about it, this creature was the only success from among countless test subjects. I can't kill it now, so I’ll suffer this indignity for the moment, and write its name in my little notebook. I’ll kill it later.

The poor creature was completely unaware that the snarling syllables it instinctively emitted after its birth have made a certain vengeful and narrow-minded Creator harbor a grudge. In a future era, this would bring down calamity on its descendants.

"This grudge, I'll settle it another day…"

Xu Zhi took a deep breath and reintroduced the Bugape into the test field, allowing it to reproduce.

He accelerated cell division speed by 10,000 units.

The strange Bugape died a quick death, ending its sinful life with a roar of "Baldy!" In a few minutes, its descendants quickly reproduced and formed a race with tens ofthousands of members.

The tiny Bugapes mindlessly wandered around in the sandbox. They romped about merrily, and facing the giant in the sky, they collectively shrieked.

"Baldy!"

"Baldy!"

"Baldy!"

"You’re out of your mind." Xu Zhi raged. He had succeeded in mixing in monkey genes, and now planned to mix in termite genes. He was quite angry. "I must exterminate this corrupt race."

This time, the experiment failed.

He had repeated the tests over 70 times, forever silencing the “Baldy!” cries of hundreds of thousands of Bugapes, but never once did he succeed in fusing in the termite genes.

"The termite genes can't be assimilated into their DNA because the genetic mix is too chaotic? Or is it incompatible with the previously assimilated monkey genes?" His head hurt a little. He silently began to compose his thoughts, then searched the Mother Hive's memories for information, and eventually got the result.

"The level of the species is too low to hold too many genes at once."

He could only set the termite genes aside and began to let the Bugapes reproduce in large quantities. He then waited for them to gain sentience and start their own civilization.

But no matter how long Xu Zhi waited, no matter how many generations passed, the Bugapes still showed no signs of intelligence, and only mindlessly roared: "Baldy!" “Baldy!”

Xu Zhi quickly realized his mistake after a moment of thought.

"I’m so stupid. When cell division, along with growth and death, is accelerated by 10,000 units, a person's lifespan is only a dozen seconds. How can there be time to think? To create civilization? Language? Text? He could only be a beast."

"Should I set the time scale back to normal? But then, that'll take too long. It took humans thousands of years to give birth to civilization!" He began to search through the Mother Hive’s information base, thinking that there definitely must be a solution to his dilemma.

And sure enough, there was.

Accelerating cell division by 10,000 units would leave the Tyranis without intelligent thought. They would only be able to rely on sheer numbers, culled by natural selection, to quickly evolve and adapt to the environment.

However, when cell division is reduced to 100 units, the Tyranis brain would be able to withstand the side effects of the hundredfold acceleration, and the accelerated cell division of their brain cells and neurons would cause their thought processes to also accelerate.

"Accelerating their body and thought processes by 100 units is the same as accelerating their time flow by 100 units…" Xu Zhi thought about it and ordered the Mother Hive.

"For this area, set cell division speed to 100 units."

After regulating the Tyranis’ cell division, the movement speed of the Bugapes sped up to match their accelerated thought processes. They became extremely fast.

Their movements were so fast that they left behind afterimages

It was as if the sandbox had turned into a world of accelerated time.

Each and every one of their cells furiously burned life energy to undergo hyper-division. This meant they were constantly in a state similar to when a Konoha Ninja had opened the Eight Gates.

And thanks to their accelerated thought processes, they could now make use of that speed.

"The Tyranis’ racial ability is truly terrifying." Xu Zhi took a deep breath.

"The 10,000-units acceleration was just too much. This caused the Tyranis to lose the ability to think, leaving only instinct, but they gained hyper-evolution to make up for it."

"Reducing acceleration to 100 units makes evolution much slower, but allows for sentient thought, along with ultra-fast thought processes."

He became curious and asked the Hive Mind.

"Can I apply this acceleration to myself?"

The Hive Mind mechanically answered.

"No, this is the unique racial ability of the Tyranis. You’ll only be able to do it after having implanted Tyranis cells. Accelerated cell division will ignite your cells, burning your life force and increasing your speed by a hundredfold. Also, your accelerated thought processes will make you feel as if the world around you has slowed by a hundredfold."

This is exactly like opening the Gate of Death in Naruto isn’t it?

Xu Zhi thought about it and shook his head.

"If I'm accelerated by a hundred units, then my cancer cells would also divide that much faster, and I'll instantly reach the final stage of cancer and die, wouldn’t I?"

"On the other hand, the cultivation of the Bugapes has been successful. As the first sentient species that the Mother Hive has given birth to since I've inherited the Tyranis throne, I’m really looking forward to seeing how far you can go."

Xu Zhi spent several days experimenting with the Bugapes. Meanwhile, on the other side of the large sandbox, he kept the acceleration at ten thousand units. After the equivalent of tens of thousands of years, various powerful species have started to appear.

Great trees soared into the clouds, and there were also some giant dinosaur-like species. The largest of them was a crustacean-like beast with a black disk above its head. It had reached the upper size limit set by Xu Zhi, and was as big as a cat.

With its stature, the ant-sized Bugapes were as helpless before it as ancient humans would have been helpless before a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"I wonder how they will survive?" Xu Zhi pondered. In order to match the Bugapes’ speed, he began to slow down the cell division speed of the entire Sandbox, and set it at a hundred units.

He hoped that the sandbox’s native species would also be able to evolve and gain sentience.

The Bugapes were a product of his impatience, which caused him to directly interfere with the sandbox's evolutionary history.

"The experiment is complete. I should now find a place for these Bugapes in the sandbox." Xu Zhi put on his blue plastic boot covers. Holding the transparent test tube with the three hundred Bugapes in hand, he walked across the land, past green and verdant miniature valleys, trampling over lush diminutive forests…

Trees fell, the ground shook, and countless species that were in the deep woods frantically fled.

"Let it be here."

Xu Zhi dropped the Bugapes into a large, tree-covered canyon south of the sandbox.

This was a species that he had high hopes for. He hoped that these warriors who had dared to mock the Creator as a "Baldy!" would show their tenacity, develop tools, build civilization, and fight off the monstrous beasts. It would be terrible if they got eliminated by natural selection.