Shepherding Humanity

The great flood fell like a white waterfall from the vault of heaven, flooding the mountains, rivers, and earth with its rushing currents.

"What terrifying might."

"To instantly drown the world in a great flood…"

On the deck, countless merchants, nobles, paupers and slaves sighed in awe.

They were the most virtuous and peaceful of all Sumerians. God had sent down the great flood to cleanse the land of sin. The savage, the cruel, the guilty, and the insolent will be washed away by the flood.

[The Great Flood destroyed the world on the day of Armageddon. The last sons of the Sumerian civilization, Utnapishtim and his people, weathered the Great Flood on Noah’s Ark.]

In an unoccupied corner of the ship, the historian in charge of recording Sumerian history paused, quill pen in hand. He slumped down on the deck, still in shock over what he had just witnessed.

"God created our world, and all under heaven and earth. What great power…"

Akkad’s hands trembled. His old eyes were clouded with tears. He silently contemplated how God created the world in seven days and raised his pen. The Sumerian Epic of Genesis thus ended with the following account of God's seven days of creation.

[On the first day God said, ‘Let there be light'; and there was light. And God separated the light from the darkness, calling the light Day and the darkness Night.

On the second day, God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters', and there was Heaven.

On the third day, God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.' and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas.

On the fourth day, God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night.' And so there was an alternating cycle of sun and moon, with fifty years of Day and fifty years of Night.

The fifth day…

Sixth day…

…….

On the seventh day the heavens and the earth were complete, and God rested on this day and blessed the first six days for all His work which He had done.]

In the years that followed, the conjectures of the historian were taken as gospel. It was as if on the day of the Great Flood, God had personally explained to mortals how he had created the world in seven days.

But would God really lay down his pride and explain himself to humble men?

The people will believe what they want to believe.

In the story, God rested on the seventh day of creation, and the people called this legendary day a day of rest, a holy day, and thus it became custom for people to rest on this day.

……..

The great flood continued to descend from the heavens.

Man-made structures were demolished, crumbling like fortresses built of wooden blocks. All traces of Sumerian civilization were washed away into the ocean.

Xu Zhi kept up his work for a while and made sure he missed nothing before stopping the high-pressure water gun. He silently turned off the switch, and put the high-pressure water gun away, on top of a wooden shelf in the shed.

This way, it was a fresh start.

The Bugapes had brought the entire sandbox to the brink of collapse. Now, with a pair of each species left behind, the old ecosystem would be restored sooner or later.

Hopefully, after this humbling experience, they'd have learned to control themselves.

The Hive Mind spoke: "Even if you didn’t do this, they’d have self-destructed sooner or later, after killing and consuming all of the other species and irrevocably damaging the sandbox. This is the correct course of action."

Xu Zhi let out a great sigh of relief, "I'm not as softhearted as you think. You don’t need to comfort me."

The Hive Mind continued, "As the Tyranis Queen, this endless process of death and rebirth is something you need to get used to. Do not sigh like that.”

Xu Zhi corrected it in annoyance: "I'm male, and not a Tyranis Queen."

"But they’ve all been born from your spores…" The Hive Mind started to defend its point.

"Stop!!! Anyway, proper family planning is very important, isn’t it?" Xu Zhi immediately interrupted it. He sat at the yard’s entrance, enjoying a freshly peeled orange one bite at a time, before tossing the seeds on the ground beside him. "I should go into town tomorrow and buy two pounds of fruits."

He picked up the black notebook he hadn’t used for a while and started recording.

"This is the age of the great beasts. I was originally going to call it the Behemoth Age corresponding to the age of the great dinosaurs, the Cretaceous age. But since the Sumerians have recorded it as the Age of Genesis, then I’ll simply do the same."

Earth’s Cretaceous Age ended with a meteorite falling from the sky and destroying the dinosaurs.

Here in the sandbox, the great flood ended all life, so let's call it the “End of Genesis” Extinction Event.

Xu Zhi organized his thoughts, and turned to the fourth page after the Dark Age, Radiant Age and Revival Age. He wrote down the words “Age of Genesis” and summarised the events of the era in a few words..

"In the Age of Genesis, the first intelligent species appeared. The Bugape tribes developed civilization, built city-states, expelled the giant beasts, and became the masters of the era. But they were cruel and violent, and so heaven sent down a great flood, ushering in the third extinction event and wiping out ninety-nine percent of all life."

………

After he had recorded the third extinction event, Xu Zhi went to bed. The next morning, when he got up to wash his face and brush his teeth, he felt a frightening energy stir within his body.

"This power is…"

Xu Zhi looked at himself in the mirror.

He had grown taller by several centimeters, reaching a height of 1.83 meters. His facial features had become elegantly handsome, giving him a refined and mysterious aura.

His physique was robust and sturdy like that of Greek sculpture, but when he put on his clothes, he would still look like a refined and elegant gentleman.

"Muscular when undressed, slim when dressed."

Xu Zhi felt that his body was now comparable to that of Gilgamesh’s in his prime. His sleek muscular body would not lose to the mythical Hero King.

"My gain from the third extinction event is several times greater than the last two times… I get the feeling that I'm now comparable to the top athletes."

Xu Zhi made a fist. He felt himself brimming with explosive power. "My physical fitness has improved so much."