Back in her own space, Ding Yun continued to submit tasks and write trial reports as usual. In less than a day, she had finished and revised her trial report, formally submitting it.
After several such experiences, she had become quite skilled in this area.
She wouldn't be foolish enough to recall the past few decades slowly after returning and then compile a trial report. Instead, she had already started recording and filing information while using the golden finger in the task plane.
Once most of the golden finger's functions had been tested, she would summarize and organize it in her spare time.
This way, when she returned, she only needed to do a quick check for any omissions or gaps to complete the trial report.
This saved a considerable amount of time.
After submitting the trial report, Ding Yun's next step was, naturally, to continue with random missions and random new golden fingers, then enter the mission mode, and her soul would directly vanish into light.
...
[Client: Gaia, the consciousness of the planet
Commissioned Task: Please clear out all those annoying little things on me. Please!
I can't hold on much longer.
If possible, it would be best if you could help me regain consciousness and heal my injuries. In return, I will offer greater rewards. I hope you will do your best.
Commission Reward: The origin of a life planet]
Upon seeing this mission, Ding Yun immediately knew that she had stumbled upon an extraordinary client and task. The client was clearly the consciousness of a life planet, and the "little things" mentioned in the task likely referred to species on the life planet.
Moreover, they were at the top of the food chain.
Intelligent, dominant species.
After all, ordinary species wouldn't bother Gaia so much.
However, because the client was Gaia, the consciousness of a life planet, and Gaia would not truly die as long as life on the planet was not extinct, she would at most fall into a deep slumber.
Therefore, Ding Yun could no longer merge with the original body as she had in previous missions. She could only use her mental power to take over the authority left behind by Gaia's slumber. Through this authority and the planet's core, she could indirectly control about eighty percent of the abilities originally wielded by Gaia's consciousness.
And then she began to take over Gaia's memories.
Immediately, Ding Yun felt her soul being swept away by a torrent of memories, nearly drowning her.
And the impact threatened to shatter her soul.
It was only when the consciousness chip deep within her soul quickly appeared and helped to intercept and sort through the memories that Ding Yun was able to recover.
This was no small matter. Even though Gaia's consciousness was not always awake, and mostly slept, she was still the consciousness of a life planet.
Her memories spanned over hundreds of millions of years.
Ding Yun's soul could not withstand such an impact.
However, with the help of the consciousness chip, Ding Yun slowly began to sort through the vast memories.
Even as Ding Yun tried her best to discard irrelevant memories, shield slumbering memories, and delete those that were unlikely to help with the current mission, it still took her a full year to extract a small portion of useful information from the colossal memory flood and gain a basic understanding of the situation.
Gaia's consciousness was extremely ancient. When the first life, a single-celled organism, appeared on the life planet.
She had been born simultaneously.
However, at that time, she had no self-awareness.
She could only instinctively absorb the scattered soul power from life forms on the planet after they died, and thus gradually grow and strengthen.
Eventually, a nascent consciousness was born.
As Gaia's consciousness grew, life on the planet also developed in tandem.
Similarly, starting from a state of no self-awareness and only instinct, it gradually developed self-awareness, shallow intelligence, and finally gave rise to true intelligent life and intelligent species, developing civilizations.
Civilization development inevitably consumed resources.
Resource consumption inevitably harmed the life planet.
This was an unsolvable problem.
When the first civilization was born, Gaia was actually very pleased because she felt that these intelligent beings could communicate with her and alleviate her long, boring, and endless lifespan. Therefore, she even transformed into one of them, helping them resist various threats and develop their civilization. She was even called a god by those lives and held a revered position.
Until there were greedy individuals within that civilization.
Who desired longevity and eternal youth.
They ultimately attempted to kill the gods, meaning they attempted to kill the life form that Gaia had manifested, to gain immortality.
It was then that their friendly relationship completely ended.
Gaia was unprepared at the time, and it took time for her to communicate with her true self. Thus, she was indeed successfully killed by those greedy individuals. The body she had manifested was divided and consumed by them as a magical item.
This undoubtedly filled her with immense rage.
So, she unleashed the first world-ending catastrophe.
At that time, a great flood alone destroyed the civilization.
As the entire civilization was annihilated, and a large number of intelligent beings died, Gaia instantly harvested a vast amount of soul power. Borrowing the soul power of those intelligent beings,
She herself experienced a certain level of improvement.
From initially only being able to control the abilities of certain regions, she gradually expanded the actual scope of her control.
That's right, Gaia's consciousness was not able to control the entire planet from the moment of its birth. She grew slowly, and her growth method was to acquire the soul power scattered after the death of life forms. A thousand non-intelligent beings dying was not as significant as one intelligent being dying. Intelligence greatly enhanced the quality of soul power.
From then on, Gaia consciously began to promote the birth of intelligence in some species, leading them to develop civilizations and expand their populations. Because it took a long time for ordinary species to develop intelligence, Gaia was reluctant to unleash world-ending catastrophes.
It was only when different intelligent species engaged in warfare and invented many terrifying weapons that not only destroyed other intelligent species but also harmed Gaia's consciousness, that Gaia felt a great sense of crisis and annihilated worlds again at any cost.
Although Gaia successfully ended that world,
And gained a lot of soul energy.
However, before the civilizations born from those intelligent species perished, they launched a frenzied revenge against the world. Therefore, Gaia ultimately suffered a net loss. She could only absorb the soul energy and fall into a slumber to heal her injuries.
Subsequently, many different intelligent civilizations were born on this life planet over time. Some civilizations were powerful, some were weak, some civilizations could provide some help to Gaia and promote her growth.
While some civilizations caused her harm.
However, overall, when viewed over hundreds of millions of years, Gaia was still growing. And as she grew, the quality of newly born intelligent species on this life planet also became higher and higher.
The future of civilization development also became increasingly promising.
Until about tens of millions of years ago, a meteorite descended. That meteorite, carrying extremely strong cosmic radiation, struck the life planet, not only completely destroying the intelligent civilization at the time, but the intense cosmic radiation also almost completely annihilated Gaia's consciousness, causing her to lose her self-awareness.
That's right, what Gaia's consciousness feared most.
Was actually cosmic radiation. After all, she was born on the planet and had the protection of the atmosphere. Even as a planetary consciousness, she was fundamentally unsuited to the cosmic environment. Moreover, consciousness is more ethereal than physical form, making it more susceptible to radiation, destruction, and mutation. Therefore, her fear was understandable.
At that time, if she had contracted her consciousness into the planet's core, although she would still have suffered some losses.
She would at least not have been close to death.
But at that moment, she had no intention of initiating a doomsday catastrophe, nor had she expected the meteorite to carry such intense cosmic radiation. Thus, she deliberately appeared to block it, and that was the end of it.
Her injuries were so severe that she slept for tens of millions of years.
Only then did she barely regain consciousness.
By this time, new intelligent species, namely humans, had already appeared on the planet. Humans' unrestrained exploitation of planetary resources, pollution of the environment, and damage to the atmosphere were all detrimental to Gaia.
Therefore, Gaia naturally decided to end the world.
First, she would end the world to recover her injuries.
Otherwise, if they continued to develop like this, it would be even more difficult to end the world in the future, and it might even harm her. If she were to be injured and fall into a slumber again, she worried that she might never wake up the next time.
However, her injuries were too severe, and her abilities were limited.
She could only try her best to summon a great flood, hoping to kill millions of people with the flood to gain enough energy to recover some of her abilities and then unleash a greater disaster.
But she chose the wrong place.
She did not choose an inexperienced area, but rather a country with thousands of years of experience in flood control, as well as a nation that was remarkably united and resilient in the face of adversity.
As a result, the great flood killed less than a hundred people in total.
Far below her expectations.
A lot of energy was consumed, and there was no replenishment.
Naturally, she was on the verge of falling into a slumber again.
Subsequently, she became concerned that she might never wake up after this slumber, as the severity of her injuries this time far exceeded any previous occasion. Thus, she had the commissioned task, and Ding Yun came to accept the commission.
Upon reaching this point in her memory review, Ding Yun was too lazy to consider who was right or wrong, as their standpoints were different. As for helping to end the world, the original body's residual energy was pitifully low, and Ding Yun could not even control a large river at the moment, let alone unleash a world-ending catastrophe. She could only set that aside for now.
Then, without any haste, she extracted the golden finger.
Immediately, a machine resembling a vending machine appeared before Ding Yun. The machine clearly displayed five large characters: "Myriad Realms Blind Box Machine."
Inside the machine was a large pile of various colorful blind boxes. Outside the machine, there was a coin slot.
And a joystick.
Presumably, you insert a coin, pull the joystick, and a blind box comes out.
Ding Yun currently had no currency, so naturally, she had to look for the instruction manual. She soon found a large instruction manual behind the Myriad Realms Blind Box Machine.