"Hey, it's me. Yes, I haven't left yet, no problem, let's get together in a couple of days." Li Qing contacted a few friends from school, obtained some simple instruments and tools, and set up a small laboratory in his room. He blinded the experimental mice to prevent them from looking around and implanted the Crystal Core into their flesh, observing if the mice were possessed…
In the following days, he conducted repeated experiments to test for any hidden dangers.
The rain poured down.
Late at night, it suddenly started raining heavily outside.
Under the faint incandescent light of the makeshift lab, Li Qing made notes in his diary.
[First, there's the issue with the eyes. Before completely mastering the power, the eyes are uncontrollable, awakening the intelligence of microbes just by seeing them.]
As for the solution, Ning Guochang had already provided one: special eye patches can be applied to forcibly keep the eyelids closed, with sunglasses worn outside to cover any unusualness, thereby minimizing accidents.
But can't see anything?
This isn't the case.
Ning Guochang communicated with him with his eyes closed the whole time and still could see, likely due to the Spiritual Power's "Heart Eye".
Li Qing's eyes shone brightly as he continued to write:
[Then there's the sterile workshop he left behind.]
[Though most of it was taken and self-immolated, there might still be remnant Enlightenment Civilizations inside, probably a microbe cosmos.]
[A civilization might have already been nurtured inside, Atabia Kingdom? It's unknown what kind of life form or system exists inside, but in any case, Pangu, who created heaven and earth, is dead, and his civilization must be dismantled!]
As Li Qing wrote this, he pressed his forehead:
"Having accepted the benefits, one must bear the responsibilities. That workshop lab must be destroyed, but that mess is not easy to handle."
The workshop was built with compensation from Ning Guochang's parents' car accident, with no corner-cutting, featuring advanced bulletproof glass and steel plates welded all around the walls for complete sealing.
But so what?
It can't be ignored.
As the civilization develops, it will surely attempt to discover the world's boundaries, "heaven's square, earth's round," potentially evolving into a force capable of corroding pathways out of the workshop with strong acids.
The civilization cannot escape the laboratory.
Who knows what kind of civilization it ultimately might become?
It could very well be zombies, aliens, Predators, Godzilla, Ultraman…
Handling this actually presents a complex problem.
Create a bomb to blow up the workshop? Use gasoline to burn the room?
This is the United States, and not mentioning the issue of landing ourselves in prison, this might even aid their escape, granting them freedom.
Open a small opening to shine ultraviolet light inside? Spray alcohol mist? Throw firecrackers in there to exterminate the life forms and civilization?
These various world-ending hypotheses all require practice.
Li Qing pressed his temples, feeling troubled.
At the same time, starvation was not a possibility.
Ning Guochang, having secluded himself in there, had long stored a massive amount of living supplies—canned food, instant noodles, sausages, military rations, water… It was a super petri dish inside, and those bacteria did not lack energy.
Early the next morning.
Li Qing began preparing for a small surgery.
The moment the Crystal Core was implanted, a huge ripping sensation erupted from his brain, as if numerous Nanny Rongs were jabbing needles into his eyeballs.
After over half an hour.
Covered in sweat, he struggled to get up from the bed, rotated his dry eyes, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, inadvertently saying:
"So beautiful."
A pair of eyes full of spirit, like containing the stars in the night sky, with an infinite gravitational pull, drawing one's gaze inward.
These eyes didn't seem human at all.
The pupils were exceptionally large, almost no sclera, resembling the pupil ratio of characters from manga.
The vision was far superior to human 5.0 vision, as if the eyes were filled with a new type of cones, similar to an eagle's 10.0 vision, easily spotting a rabbit from ten kilometers away.
In the next moment.
Almost instinctively, his eyeballs, like wriggling underwater worm tubes, emerged from their sockets, surveying the surroundings like a snail.
Vision was unlocked at this moment, offering an almost 360-degree panoramic view of the world.
"Oh my god!"
Li Qing was so scared he closed his eyes.
Yet there wasn't the expected pain of having his eyes caught by a door, as the eyes slipped back into their sockets, and then the eyelids closed, as if by instinct.
"These big eyeballs are utterly bizarre!"
Li Qing sat back on the bed, calming his nerves.
Despite his complaints, as a psychological counselor, his mental resilience was naturally strong.
The moment he made up his mind, he had decided to stop being human.
After all, humans have limits, especially someone of his social standing, a bottom-tier worker easily found everywhere.
"These eyeballs aren't so bad. In fact, they feel rather cool." Li Qing got up and approached the laboratory bench, beginning to test his actual capabilities, his eyes instinctively magnifying over and over again.
Click.
A microscopic world appeared under the microscope before his eyes.
Crammed with crawling microbes.
One second,
Two seconds,
Three seconds...
After more than a minute of observation, as if receiving mysterious rays from some bizarre creature, under intense stimulation.
Suddenly, the bacteria seemed to have gained intelligence, starting to wriggle and curiously observing their surroundings like newborns.
"These single cells have really come alive!"
"Ning Guochang only needed three seconds, but now I'm still too weak, having to gaze for over seventy seconds before the Awakening of microbial consciousness?"
He attempted to control them.
Afterwards, Li Qing spent another whole day researching, conducting various variable experiments.