A large butterfly figure flashed into a blue and flat ocean surface at high speed.

…………………………………………

“Where is this? Who am I?”

This was the first thoughts it had. It had a consciousness, and the sense of touch, but it did not have vision or smell. Through its only sense, it knew it was in a liquid.

This liquid seemed to be called water.

“I … … am called a cell?”

It did not have any brains but it knew what shape its body was. There was a thin spherical layer and the center of the sphere had a complex densely packed construct that was called the nucleus. It was due to the existence of this nucleus that it could think, move, be alive … …

However, this was the limit of its thinking. Such a small nucleus could not let it think further.

“Move … … search … …”

It controlled the think outer layer, and the layer started to ripple like waves. This movement caused it to slowly move in the water, and it searched for its own target in the endless darkness … …

Food.

Food was equivalent to energy. With energy, it could have more knowledge, and a bigger body that could allow it to think more.

Swimming forward, it suddenly felt its outer membrane come into contact with something.

Food?

It tried to figure out what this object was, but other than “soft,” there was not anything else. Then what could it to do figure out more about what this object was.

Consume it!

It used the thin membrane to surround this object and then engulfed it.

It felt this object slowly shrink inside its body and then disappear. It also felt that its body was slowly changing. The fragile and almost intangible membrane around its body was slowly being strengthened and grew.

This activity disappeared after a short while, but this feeling of fullness caused it to know … …

That just now was food. It had to get more … … food!

It rapidly rippled its outer membrane and quickly encountered something else like the object just now. It hurriedly engulfed it.

It was a feeling just like before. The object that it engulfed slowly shrank … … this time, it thought of a term.

This was … … digestion.

After swallowing two pieces of food, its body mass grew slightly larger, and it had more energy. Its speed increased. This meant that it could find more food and obtain more energy.

Engulf, engulf, engulf.

It almost swallowed all the “soft” things around it. Its body grew a whole size larger.

Yet it still wasn’t satisfied. It still swam in the water and tried to engulf more food.

When it engulfed the next piece of food, its body seemed to expand to a maximum size. When it finished digesting its food, its body did not continue to expand. It slowly tore apart staring with the nucleus as the center and then it completely divided.

In the end, it became two parts that were completely the same. They had the same spherical outer membrane, the same nucleus, it had completely divided into two.

However, its consciousness had not divided into two.

Even though it had divided into two cells, it still felt the two were a part of it. It could control both of these parts just as easily as it could control its two hands.

“What are hands?”

Its thoughts seemed to have become more varied. The doubled nucleus gave it more power to think but there were even more questions.

“Speaking of this, who am I?”

“I should have a name … …”

“And this name is … …”

“Lin.”

For some reason, it only had this thought in its mind.

“Then I will be called this. Lin … … it feels pretty good.”

Lin continued to swim. The two cells slowly moved in the water and continued to gather food.

This meant higher intelligence, more cells meant more energy.

Because Lin was now two cells, it found food faster. One of its cells quickly consumed enough and entered the stage of division.

When this cell finished dividing, Lin had three cells. These three identical cells represented the existence of “Lin.”

Lin had absolute control of them. Even though the three cells were not connected together, controlling them was not harder than controlling one. It felt even easier.

Right after, Lin produced many more questions. It could think about many things and found the biggest problem of the present.

Darkness.

Yes, it was unable to detect the state of the surroundings. Even though it felt that the surroundings were liquid, it was unable anything more detailed … … because everything in the surroundings, to Lin, was endless darkness.

“Eyes … …”

This term popped out of Lin’s thoughts, yet it was unable to understand the term.

In order to understand this term, Lin tried to consume more food. But it seemed as though it had eaten up most of the soft food around it. It planned on swimming further away.

The three cells, the three little cells that had the same consciousness, stepped onto its journey … …

“?”

Suddenly, Lin felt the cell at the front seemed to come into contact with something. This was different than the soft food, it felt very hard, but it was smaller than the food before.

It was unable to analyze what this was. Lin had one of the cells engulf it.

“… … it seems indigestible.”

The hard object did not show any signs of shrinking inside one of Lin’s cells. It silently floated in the cell.

It seemed to be a useless object.

Lin did not care and continued to search for other food.

In the nearby surroundings, it found many of the soft things that it encountered before but nothing that was hard.

It still continued on its mission of eating. One of Lin’s cells once again reached its energy storage limit and divided.

This time, Lin had four cells. But it still felt that it wasn’t enough and continued … …

When the number of cells reached five, the thought that Lin had before rose up again.

It wanted to see … …

Wanted to see everything outside! I don’t want darkness!

When its thoughts reached a certain level of fierceness, the nucleus inside the cell which had consumed the hard object suddenly trembled slightly.

Something like a tentacle reached out of the nucleus and lightly touched the hard object. The tentacle slowly pushed it towards the surface of the cell membrane.

When the hard object was slightly exposed out of the cell membrane, bright light broke through the darkness and entered Lin’s consciousness.