Parallel world.

  Arizona.

  8 PM, Chinese restaurant.

  "Drink up! You're heading back to China next week. No more interning at the psych ward, no more dealing with that old man's bullshit," a friend toasted Li Qing, raising his gss.

  "Ugh! I need to hit the restroom."

  The group of friends continued drinking and singing, their faces flushed red.

  Suddenly, Li Qing's phone rang.

  He set down his drink and answered a call from a mental patient he hadn't heard from in two months. "I want to settle some affairs. Before I die, there's a world I need to entrust to you."

  Li Qing: "..."

  The voice on the other end was all too familiar - a patient he'd treated before. This was the same man who'd once cimed to be the first Zombie of the modern world. Now he cimed to possess an entire world? The man's condition must have deteriorated further.

  "How did you end up giving your personal number to this patient? Didn't you quit your job? Are you still visiting him?" a friend asked curiously from the side.

  Li Qing sighed. "I've been secretly supporting him. He's a fellow Chinese immigrant, alone and helpless. I need to check on him tomorrow. At least I can rest easy after returning to China."

  The next morning.

  After completing his final work handover, Li Qing drove to a small house in Phoenix City's outskirts.

  The patient's name was Ning Guochang, an overseas student who'd often been bullied and extorted by his peers at school.

  A year ago in his home country, his parents who had worked tirelessly to support his education died in an accident. The multiple blows left him withdrawn and mentally unstable.

  Ning Guochang underwent psychiatric treatment for some time, but instead of improving, his condition worsened. He gradually began having nightmares, ciming to see another version of himself in a different timeline—a timeline where a zombie apocalypse had occurred and he himself had become a zombie.

  The story he described was a very ordinary zombie narrative—a rehash of the Raccoon City scenario from Resident Evil.

  The apocalypse had first broken out in this free nation that served as the inspiration for countless movies and novels.

  He had been bitten while saving a girl and turned into a zombie. By continuously eating people, he gradually regained his pre-zombie rationality, transforming into a mental power-controlling zombie with twenty-eight rge eyes. In the Phoenix City area, he became a zombie monarch, madly besieging survivor gathering pces.

  Li Qing had been constantly providing him with therapy, always serving as a listener.

  One day, Ning Guochang suddenly disappeared, never to be found again.

  The address he'd sent wasn't far.

  Half an hour ter, after entering the door, Li Qing finally felt something strange.

  The entire bedroom had been transformed by Ning Guochang into something resembling a sterile pharmaceutical workshop.

  Through a rge gss window, Li Qing saw Ning Guochang sitting on the other side, self-isoted.

  This honest and straightforward young man had become skin and bones, wearing rge sungsses. The exposed skin was like white paint, covered with fine cracks. Every movement he made radiated a sense of fear.

  Behind him stood a massive shelf crammed with bottled water, canned goods, and various foods that filled the bedroom.

  "How long have you been self-isoting in here?"

  After a long moment, Li Qing finally suppressed his strange feelings and asked, "Do you think you're a zombie? Afraid you'll infect others?"

  "I know you don't believe me, but look at this and you will."

  He held out his hand. A bizarre diamond-shaped crystal pulsed beneath his skin, coiling around veins and flesh as it wriggled toward his palm.

  "This is my Zombie Crystal Core," he said calmly through the window. "This is why I ran. I didn't want you people experimenting on me. I heard the zombie virus in the other world also came from a b in the neighboring state."

  Li Qing stared at him for several seconds without moving.

  So delusional he thinks Raccoon City exists here?

  But what's this crystal thing appearing on his skin?

  Magic?

  Li Qing didn't know if it was real or not, but he immediately put on a warm smile and said, "I've always believed in you.

  Running was the right choice. That advisor of mine is a real scoundrel. I think he's actually in a psych ward, secretly experimenting on patients. If you stayed there for treatment, he might really have used you for experiments!"

  Li Qing took the opportunity to trash-talk his capitalist advisor.

  This was a psychological technique called empathy manipution. By making the patient feel like you're on the same side, they lower their guard and trust you as one of their own.

  Ning Guochang said, "In my dream, the Zombie Lord could control rge zombies, animals, wild beasts, and mutated humans with a single gnce. It also had telekinesis, able to lift a one-ton car."

  "Here, my current superpower level is very low. After some temporal distortions during my transmigration, I need to stare for more than three seconds to grant control over bacteria and grant them intelligence. My telekinesis can only lift a small tuft of cotton."

  Li Qing followed up, "That's too big of a gap, isn't it? Before you could control humans and rge animals, now you're weak enough to only control some bacteria?"

  Ning Guochang pointed at a patch of wriggling bck mud on the table. "This is my current bacterial army. Not nanoscale, but definitely micrometer scale. It weighs 0.0023 grams."

  This wriggling bck mud... was it magnetic sand?

  Li Qing had seen too many severe mental patients who deluded themselves into thinking they were novel protagonists, unable to distinguish reality from fictional stories.

  "Now look at this. My telekinesis."

  He really took out an ant-sized tuft of cotton and made it fly through the air, but it looked very strenuous.

  Li Qing fell silent for a moment.

  He quickly gathered his thoughts and said, "So you're essentially a Zombie Lord now, and this sterile workshop is to prevent your zombie virus from spreading outside?"

  "No."

  Ning Guochang shook his head. "Dr. Li, you're overthinking it. This isn't about preventing zombie virus transmission. High-level zombies like us have lost the ability to infect others. We've become a new Extraordinary species. I've conducted my own tests - there's no contagion risk."

  Li Qing immediately rexed his posture and asked, "Then what's the purpose of this workshop?"

  Ning Guochang suddenly shuddered. "This sterile workshop exists to contain my eyes. They can manipute bacteria and see with microscopic precision - like a living microscope that can zoom in or out at will."

  His mental state suddenly destabilized, pain twisting his features.

  Like a mental patient experiencing an episode, Ning Guochang suddenly erupted in emotion.

  "Do you know what it's like to have this microscopic ability?"

  "Your world looks like a pixeted movie to me. My eyes see everything in 4K ultra-high definition. I can clearly see the mites crawling across your face!"

  "The wall behind you appears perfectly smooth to your eyes, but to mine, it's a veritable wall of phobias - a teeming empire of mold, worms, dust mites, and ticks, forming a nauseating billion-strong domain."

  Li Qing's mouth gaped open.

  An inexplicable itch crept across his face.

  Visions of repulsive mites crawling in dense swarms danced before his eyes.

  Yet he remained unfazed - medical students like him faced far worse horrors daily.

  Still, the thought struck him: if his eyes could peer through the lens of an electron microscope, wouldn't he himself appear as a hairy, microbial-covered monster to Ning Guochang?

  The concept of such microscopic crity baffled him.

  Perhaps their eyes had already diverged into different biological structures - he'd crossed into the realm of the bizarre and mysterious.

  "You know this!" Ning Guochang's voice rose from the sterile workshop across the room, his agitation palpable. "I've always suffered from trypophobia! Severe mysophobia!"

  He paced restlessly, hands wringing as he continued, "I scrub my hands until they bleed, spray disinfectant daily, bathe in distilled water until my skin cracks!"

  "Even built this sterile workshop! Must live in the purest world!"

  "When I dare venture out, it's in a bubble helmet and custom hazmat! Ever read One Piece? I'll be a Celestial Dragon!"

  He was like a mental patient suffering from extreme agitation, radiating a wild aura. Endless pain was deeply rooted in his twisted facial expression.

  At this point, Li Qing would have simply thought it was a story about a cleanliness-obsessed new human evolving.

  He even imagined a science fiction future.

  From a peculiar perspective: if cultivators from the high-tier world saw this mundane world, they might develop such intense phobias. The earth being covered in bacteria, disgusting enough to make them want to vomit, they would immediately hide in their Grotto-Heavens to cultivate, withdraw to the Immortal Mountain, and avoid entering the mortal world...

  This isn't about Immortal Hero myths, but modern technology.

  In a few hundred years, when future humans experience a technological explosion, reaching this level of vision, wouldn't they go mad too?

  No need to look that far into the future.

  Even now, the visible mites on the quilt are becoming increasingly noticeable as people's living conditions improve, finding them more disgusting.

  The degree of civilization is directly linked to the degree of cleanliness obsession.

  In the old era, common people didn't care about dirt or filth. As long as it didn't make them sick, they'd eat it - even considering it protein and nutrition.

  But the story of cleanliness is gradually transforming into a horror story.

  "If this was just about continuously improving vision, seeing the high-definition world of bacteria, that would be one thing."

  "But my eyes can control and grant wisdom."

  Ning Guochang suddenly wore a bitter expression. "I'm terrified! These microbes have gained intelligence—how horrifying! Their development of civilization is akin to our ancient primate ancestors building tribes during Earth's distant past."

  Li Qing tried to follow his train of thought.

  If what he said was true, and these microbes were indeed building a civilization—even with intelligence, what difference did it make?

  Their structure condemned them to be low-level organisms.

  What could a group of primitive creatures relying on fgel possibly achieve with intelligence?

  Build bonfires? Cultivate crops and raise livestock? Construct machinery? Develop a steam age? Enter an electrical era?

  None of that was possible.

  They couldn't even start a fire.

  Due to their physical limitations, even with intelligence, they couldn't replicate humanity's cultural progress.

  Intelligence made no difference.

  "I initially thought the same," Ning Guochang said with a bitter smile, as if reading his thoughts. "But then I realized humans are merely tool-wielding monkeys. Measuring unknown civilizations by our own arrogant standards is ughable."

  "Do you know what I mean?"

  He gazed across the sterile workshop at the tiny bacterial army on the table.

  "They ck eyes, yet possess mysterious mental power perception. They herd other non-intelligent microbes as my subjects, using weaker telekinetic force than mine to painstakingly dismantle RNA structures, compile, transcribe, and construct their own biological machines - fgel, outer shells, and more. They've directly entered the era of biological herding."

  "They built fgelr mounts and constructed massive biological houses using giant mites, forming microscopic cities."

  "Humans took 3.5 billion years to evolve from marine microbes to our current state, yet these creatures are rapidly re-experiencing this process."

  "These single-celled organisms are evolving themselves!"

  As Li Qing observed the mental patient's anguished confession, he finally understood what the man was saying.

  This patient had witnessed the terrifying history of life's evolution.

  When invisible microbes gained human-like intelligence, their civilization far surpassed our modern human culture.

  They were natural creators, a group of great creators in the microscopic world.