With a flash of white light, Du Xin vanished from the system space, transforming into a streak of starlight as he entered the bubble-like realm.
He stood upon a reddish-brown terrain—devoid of air, devoid of sunlight. Yet, Du Xin remained unaffected; his gaze encompassed the entire planet in a single glance. Before him lay a sphere approximately one hundred meters in diameter, suspended motionless within the void. The surrounding space spanned roughly ten thousand meters across, yet contained nothing else.
"…*This* is Earth? Who are you trying to fool? Is this merely 'short on energy'? It looks like it has *barely any* energy at all…"
Du Xin stood upon the planet, utterly speechless. In this world, he required no air to breathe, nor was he subject to death.
"System, what do I do if there's no energy?"
"Energy may be obtained by either terraforming the world or establishing fundamental laws."
Du Xin pondered for a moment, then raised his hands and began to focus his intent upon the planet. Gradually, parts of the planet's surface began to heave upward, rising into towering peaks, while other areas subsided into deep depressions. The entire world underwent a ceaseless transformation; eventually, a patch of solid ground began to flow like liquid, ultimately coalescing into water—and thus, a small lake appeared upon the planet's surface.
Du Xin waited for a while, but seeing no further changes occur within the world, he couldn't help but ask again:
"System, I've finished terraforming the world—so why is no energy flowing in yet?"
"Host, terraforming a world entails a transformation at the level of *life itself*. Once life emerges, the cyclical processes of biological evolution will draw energy from the boundless chaos of the void, ultimately channeling that energy back to sustain the entire world. Furthermore, true 'laws' stem from the fundamental principles governing a world's existence; merely altering the world's basic physical structure is insufficient to generate energy."
The System offered its explanation in a calm, unhurried tone.
Du Xin furrowed his brows in thought, then once again set his hands to work. The entire planet visibly shrank in size, its diameter reducing to a mere eighty meters. Its myriad rocks and stones dissolved into a swirling gray mist. This mist then split into two distinct masses: the larger portion drifted away from the planet, coalescing at the edge of the bubble-like realm to form a gaseous sphere—roughly half the size of the planet itself—which then began to orbit the central world, radiating both light and heat. The smaller portion of the mist hovered directly above the planet, transforming into an atmospheric composition of 20% oxygen, 79% helium, and 1% carbon dioxide. Next, Du Xin partially liquefied the planet's interior; he transmuted the rocky core—a sphere two meters in diameter situated at the planet's very center—into a molten core of iron and nickel, while encasing it within a circulating layer of magma. With these changes complete, the entire planet began to rotate upon its axis—and gradually, a magnetic field took shape around it. Du Xin suddenly realized that the gravity throughout the entire world was extremely low. Since he remained unaffected, and—following the creation of the atmosphere, magnetic field, and sun—winds had begun to blow, dust from the ground was swept up into the sky; even the lakes were lifted into the air. Consequently, Du Xin shrank the planet down a notch, fixing the surface gravity at 1 G—the equivalent of Earth's surface gravity.
Having completed all this, Du Xin nodded with satisfaction, wiping away the non-existent sweat from his brow.
"Haha! Good thing I actually went to high school. Even though I slacked off in college, I still remember a few things from high school—nuclear fusion for the sun, the planetary core... it's all still there!"
As he spoke, Du Xin settled down to wait quietly for life to emerge.
One hour... two hours... five hours passed. Aside from the planet's rotation and the gentle breeze, absolutely nothing changed.
"System? Why hasn't any life appeared yet? Surely the conditions are sufficient by now!"
"Host, life originates from organic matter; it is the serendipitous product of chemical processes spanning hundreds of millions of years. The world you have created requires a much longer period of waiting."
...A look of utter exasperation crossed his face as Du Xin froze. His excessive excitement had caused him to completely overlook this crucial detail. Slapping his forehead, Du Xin suddenly snapped back to reality.
"Wait a minute! I can just step out and look it up! I can find the chemical formulas for the earliest forms of organic matter!"
With that thought flashing through his mind, Du Xin instantly materialized back outside.
Booting up his computer, Du Xin opened Baidu. He spent a good while searching, but all he found were a few useless, low-effort forum posts speculating on the origins of organic matter on Earth—absolutely worthless.
Suddenly, the System's voice spoke up inside Du Xin's head.
"Host, the System is capable of scanning the organic forms and structures present in the real world."
Hearing this, a look of delight spread across Du Xin's face.
"That's fantastic! In that case, go ahead and scan..."
Du Xin began to speak, but then paused to think for a moment before continuing:
"Scan the organic and genetic structures of mosses and similar plant life."
Du Xin vaguely recalled learning in high school that mosses were the primary agents responsible for the initial terraforming and environmental modification of a planet.
Once the System had finished gathering data on dozens of different moss species, Du Xin—unable to wait another moment—eagerly transported himself back to the planet. "System, use the data from these mosses to create identical life forms. Place them in... hmm. Convert eighty percent of the landmass into wetlands and the remaining twenty percent into a swamp environment; then, generate the mosses across both the wetlands and the swamps."
As he spoke, the entire surface of the planet began to tremble. Before long, the wetlands took shape, and the swamps emerged as well. Patches of various shades of green appeared across the landscape. A smile touched Du Xin's lips, though it did not last long; he soon noticed that the mosses were withering and dying at an alarming rate. Du Xin's brow furrowed once more.
After a moment of contemplation, Du Xin experienced a sudden epiphany. The sun he had created was largely identical to Earth's sun—complete with ultraviolet radiation, cosmic rays, and the like. Although the magnetic field he had established successfully deflected the majority of the radiation, the ultraviolet rays still penetrated the atmosphere, naturally resulting in the demise of the mosses.
"System, create... actually, never mind. I'm going to step out for a moment."
With a flash of white light, Du Xin found himself back inside his small cabin.
"System, scan the atmospheric composition of Earth."
Two minutes later, once the system had completed its scan, Du Xin was just about to re-enter the planetary world when he suddenly halted.
"System, run another scan—this time on the soil composition."...
Du Xin stepped back into the world of the planet. The moment he arrived, he immediately resumed his grand project of planetary transformation.
"System, alter the atmospheric composition to match that of Earth, and modify the soil composition to match that of Earth."
No sooner had Du Xin issued his command than the planet began to churn once again. The composition of the air shifted, and the atmosphere grew significantly thicker—reaching a depth of nearly one hundred meters. Since this required drawing energy directly from the planet itself, the celestial body's diameter shrank to a mere sixty meters, while its soil gradually took on the characteristics of Earth's soil.
Once all these processes were complete, Du Xin finally proceeded to generate the algae. Although he had strived to mimic Earth's environment as closely as possible, subtle differences remained; consequently, the algae continued to perish, one after another. However, the rate of decline had slowed. Amidst this gradual process of change, the algae dwindled until, in the end, only two specimens remained—both having undergone varying degrees of mutation to successfully adapt to their surrounding environment.
It was only then that Du Xin realized the passage of time within this realm was somewhat peculiar: the plants were completing an entire cycle of growth and decay in the span of roughly ten minutes. "No wonder I died so quickly before—it turns out this world actually has a time-acceleration feature. System, can the time acceleration be sped up even further?"
"Host, the rate of time acceleration is linked to the world's level; the higher the level, the faster time flows. Alternatively, you may expend energy to accelerate time."
Gazing out at the utterly empty world, Du Xin could only shake his head. It seemed there was no way to increase the acceleration rate anytime soon; he would simply have to wait for the algae cycle to generate energy before he could resume accelerating time.
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