# Chapter 27: Xiao Guang's Race Development Plan
Xiao Guang, also known as a sub-strain of the Bloodmoon Abyss World Will split off to remain by Joshua's side, was essentially one with its parent body—the same existence in nature. It could also be considered an observation terminal placed in the Mycroft World by the other party, meant to accompany Joshua and absorb large amounts of information regarding human culture and knowledge.
On ordinary days, Xiao Guang floated around the Lord's Manor as a mascot. During the day, its appearance was acceptable, but at night, it somewhat resembled a ghost flame. Once, a maid was startled by Xiao Guang wandering through the corridor late at night and, in her shock, exerted too much force, punching a hole through the manor wall. However, after becoming familiar with it, the servants in the manor were all quite willing to buy some magic crystal chip fragments as snacks to feed Xiao Guang whenever it drifted by.
But even if it looked cute and felt pleasant to the touch, Xiao Guang's essence was that of an extremely powerful World Will—one could even say it was the larval form of the future Bloodmoon World's Steel Serpent.
Its intelligence far surpassed that of most conventional intelligent life forms.
Joshua had naturally recognized this point long ago, so he had deliberately prepared many related books for Xiao Guang and occasionally personally taught it knowledge concerning concrete creations and biological modification. After all, the Bloodmoon Abyss was now almost completely barren. Even with the Mother Tree of Life gifted by the elves and the small creatures he had given it, it wasn't enough. The Bloodmoon Abyss had to learn to create a complete ecological cycle on its own before it could break free from the Abyss stratum and become a true reborn world.
Xiao Guang also had a Psychic Terminal. Aside from browsing forums and discussing related Transcendent power topics in professional chat rooms, it even played Fae Cards. Its specialty deck combination was "Heaven Shield Priest," a control deck that ended games through board clears and powerful creatures staying on the field. Its current win rate was 63.6%, which could be considered remarkably high.
Naturally, Xiao Guang was also undoubtedly one of the closed beta players of the game "Continent of Strife."
Joshua naturally knew that Xiao Guang played Continent of Strife and also knew that it often reached the fourth stage. This was sufficient to prove that its knowledge reserves, overall perspective, and ability to establish and plan social systems had already reached a fairly high level. It was only in the fourth stage, "War," that it frequently failed due to lack of experience.
According to Joshua's original design philosophy, each stage of "Continent of Strife" had corresponding knowledge assessment scopes and implications.
Among them, the first stage, "Spore," tested the player's knowledge of the basic characteristics and needs of life, guiding players to contemplate the origins of their own race and civilization. By constructing a unique life race, it enhanced the player's identification with their race, laying the groundwork for further gameplay. This stage was very simple—as long as one knew the basic points that life needs "something to eat," "something to see," "speed to move," and "ability to digest," one could pass smoothly.
The second stage, "Race," mainly tested how thoroughly the player understood the needs of intelligent life. Most novice players were eliminated here. They might pursue cooler appearances, stronger attack capabilities, greater survivability, or higher intelligence, neglecting the balance in certain life designs, causing fatal weaknesses in their race that led to elimination by nature.
At this stage, the most important things were trade-offs and judgment—a clear mind. By observing the entire world's environment, players analyzed what kind of race was most suitable for survival in that world. After all, a player who insisted on choosing amphibious life in a desert world would likely find their controlled race unable to set foot on land, forced onto an extremely difficult underwater civilization route.
The third stage, "Tribe," was where most player failures occurred. It tested the player's overall perspective, establishment of social systems, and understanding of life's instinctual desires. At this point, players thought not just about the individuals they controlled but about the entire race's future planning. This stage tested the comprehensiveness of the player's thinking and problem-solving ability. As long as one was knowledgeable or clear-headed, passing this step, while not simple, was not too difficult. If one really couldn't manage, playing a few more times would surely make it clear.
Because each time the race, planet form, terrain, and gene plug-ins available in the first stage were different, every new game could essentially be called a brand-new challenge. Players who could pass the above stages with 100% consistency could basically be called elites. Even if such people didn't cultivate any Transcendent power, they could become outstanding talents in the real world.
But the fourth stage, the "Civilization" stage, tested not only overall perspective, resource management, strategic deployment, and world-scale social planning but also whether any problems had arisen in the previous stages. For example, in the first and second stages, whether the entire race had fundamental physical defects—like extremely low fertility rates. And whether social contradictions had been properly resolved in the third stage was also a major issue, determining whether the entire world civilization was unified when entering the fourth stage.
Of course, aside from these, there was one most important point—it tested whether the player had strong combat and command abilities. A player who only knew management but didn't know how to fight would inevitably sink in the fourth stage, meeting a bitter end.
Those who could not withstand the fires of war, who could not respond to threats, could not be called a civilization at all. They were merely overgrown, malformed giant infants living in a greenhouse, a nursery.
This was the concept Joshua wanted to subtly imply through the game "Continent of Strife."
As for Xiao Guang, after experiencing its initial mistakes and failures, it had long summarized a unique set of thinking logic and management planning. So from the first stage all the way to the fourth, it basically made no mistakes, allowing its civilization to develop perfectly and uniformly to the fourth stage. But the problem lay right here.
Xiao Guang simply could not fight.
Whether commanding armies or taking the field itself, Xiao Guang's ability in this area could be described as extremely poor. And because of its peculiar form, it couldn't copy human combat techniques. This meant that although Xiao Guang knew many combat methods, very few could actually be used. Because of this, due to the controller's complete ignorance of combat, Xiao Guang's races were all overly peaceful creatures, lacking any sense of urgency regarding war threats.
It was like the time Joshua saw Xiao Guang using a plant-based intelligent race. Just before an alien Chaos Legion invasion, they were still leisurely stretching their leaves and roots, seemingly unconcerned about the enemy's existence. Naturally—having no army, no fortresses, and most technology not focused on combat—such a race was eliminated in the first moment. And this kind of scenario had occurred at least a dozen times.
But despite this, Xiao Guang and its races had actually broken through the fourth stage, and even passed the fifth stage, completing the closed beta dungeon?
Joshua immersed his spirit into the Magic Net. He was reviewing Xiao Guang's game recordings and data. The warrior was now very curious about the process of its clearance.
Vast amounts of data formed a torrent of information. If it were an ordinary person, they would surely have been lost in this storm of information. But even the total computing power of the Magic Net's main server, combined with all the sub-servers spread across the Mycroft Continent, could barely suppress the warrior's mental deviation. The information flow of Continent of Strife was originally designed by him, so it couldn't possibly affect him.
Thus, after a few seconds, Joshua, having passed through layers of blockades, obtained the recording of Xiao Guang's most recent clearance.
Then, in the real world, the Number 3 located beside Joshua noticed that the warrior's expression froze for an instant.
"What's wrong, Joshua?"
She turned her head and asked somewhat curiously: "Did some demon act stupid again, provoking crew members of other races? If you ask me, just separate them all out, to avoid this trouble..."
"...No."
Joshua's expression returned to normal. He exhaled: "It's just perhaps... I've witnessed the birth of a very gentle demon..."
Magic Net, Continent of Strife clearance recording.
One could see a tiny cell floating and drifting deep within a moist sea-and-land planet. It was not an elemental, nor did it possess affinity for other Transcendent energies like Psionic Energy or Aether. This cell was ordinary. If one had to point out something special, it was probably that it was set as a "fungus" type cell.
Without the mobility of ordinary cells, yet unable to perform photosynthesis like plant-type cells to produce organic matter, the cell Xiao Guang set this time could only drift with the ocean currents. With luck, it could obtain some drifting nutrients to split and reproduce. But with bad luck, excessive hunger would even cause the cell to digest and decompose its own kind... This seemingly completely luck-based, drifting existence continued for a long time, until one day, the fungus cell controlled by Xiao Guang attached itself to a massive multicellular organism.
It was a large patch of primitive sponges and ancient coral attached to the shallow seafloor. While most other organisms had already evolved during the game process, the cells controlled by Xiao Guang remained in their most basic form. However, when they landed on those sponge columns and coral layers that resembled plants, for Xiao Guang, the game had only just begun.
Joshua carefully watched the game process accelerated several hundred times. He clearly saw that the fungus race controlled by Xiao Guang lodged itself upon the gentle sponges and coral. It hunted, absorbed, and digested other cells attached to these large multicellular organisms, then slowly eroded the sponges and coral themselves. For sponges, which reacted extremely slowly and relied entirely on ocean currents to obtain nutrients and oxygen from seawater, they had no way of discovering that they had been eroded by some strange fungus. And their instinctive counterattacks were utterly insignificant to Xiao Guang, which had already obtained numerous gene plug-ins through hunting and parasitism.