Chapter Sixty-Nine: Evolution

Although there was a way out for becoming a Sludge Beast, Feng Xue had absolutely no intention of trying it. Just the thought of only being able to throw feces at others filled him with a desperate urge to die.

Therefore, Feng Xue cautiously selected the food brought by the Digi-Elves, and after eating, did his best to pick out the data suitable for his own absorption.

In his previous life, Feng Xue wasn’t a programmer or a technical prodigy. Of course, even if he had been, it would have been almost impossible to reduce everything in the Digital World to pure data. Thus, his standard for judging whether data was useful was—appearance.

Yes, appearance! The type of Digimon is determined by a structure called DNA, but this DNA is not the double-helix deoxyribonucleic acid of humans or other carbon-based lifeforms; rather, it is a data factor. Broadly categorized, there are eight types—Dragon, Beast, Bird, Insect, Darkness, Holy, Water, and Machine. By ingesting different proportions of these, nearly endless possibilities arise. (Curiously, in the infancy stage, Digimon should only ingest 0s and 1s, yet these 0s and 1s still result in the eight factors, or even mixed factors, so a factor is not exactly the same as data.)

Take, for example, the Greymon evolutionary line, which has the most complete evolutionary branches (the Veedramon line covers all dragon-type Digimon, but its scope is not as broad as Greymon’s, and Veedramon itself comes from the Greymon lineage). If Greymon absorbs a certain amount of Machine factor, it will evolve into MetalGreymon; by taking in Water factor, it may evolve into Plesiomon; with Beast factor, it could become a Megadramon; an excess of Darkness factor will turn it into SkullGreymon; and by pure Dragon factor, it might become AeroVeedramon. Carelessly ingesting everything without discrimination, however, only turns one into an abomination—a mishmash doomed to collapse into a Sludge Beast due to data conflict.

So Feng Xue judged the possible DNA factor in a food item by its appearance, and by filtering these factors, made a deliberate choice in his own evolutionary direction—in short, he consciously avoided ingesting the Dragon, Beast, Bird, Insect, and Machine factors. Moreover, to avoid becoming an aquatic or amphibious type, he rarely touched the Water factor either. He didn’t even dare to drink water. Fortunately, for Digimon, water and food are essentially the same, so this didn’t lead to the tragedy of dying of thirst (except for plant and aquatic types, Digimon have no strict need for water; just as, whether they drink or eat, Digimon only produce feces, never urine, since all undigested data is waste, with no distinction between liquid and solid).

The reason for all this was that Feng Xue’s goal was to become a humanoid Digimon.

Why humanoid? Because the nature of this reward-driven transmigration was to use vast amounts of time to hone martial skills and accumulate combat experience. If he became a beast-type Digimon, how could he practice martial arts?

It’s not that ingesting those five factors would inevitably result in a beast form, nor that only Darkness and Holy factors would guarantee a humanoid form, but this was the only method Feng Xue could think of.

Due to rejecting large quantities of unwanted factors, Feng Xue’s appetite was several times, even dozens of times, that of other Digimon.

Thus, the Digi-Elves noticed a strange Blacky-mon in the Village of Beginnings. Unlike the other Digimon, who alternated between eating and sleeping, this one ate constantly from dawn to dusk. Its excrement was also far more copious than any other Digimon’s. The Digi-Elves had to assign a specialized worker just to clean up after this Blacky-mon. Fortunately, all of this waste was really just data. If left in one spot, it would soon turn into “abandoned data” resembling tumbleweeds in a western film. When Feng Xue learned the truth, he couldn’t help but shudder, remembering the plot where the Weird Frogmon used abandoned data to heal Andromon. (Incidentally, this also explains why, in the first series, the Cosmic Brain Demon used feces as currency: for this suddenly mutated type, the data other Digimon discarded was exactly what it needed. Who knows—maybe one day, it would gather enough data for its Mega evolution just by picking up dung.)

…

Time is the cheapest commodity in the world of Digimon. Even Feng Xue himself lost all sense of it during his leisurely, uneventful, parasite-like existence. It might have been half a year, a year, or even two (don’t think that’s long—the first Digimon series spanned four years from the Hikari-gaoka incident to the Chosen Children arriving in the Digital World, which in the Digital World equated to five thousand years; even if the Holy Plan started later, it still took at least a thousand years, and after all those millennia, only Gatomon had reached the Champion stage through training and battle, while the other seven, living carefree lives, had just reached the second phase of infancy). In short, Feng Xue had no idea how many years had passed before his body finally began to change.

“Bang!” With a puff of white smoke, Feng Xue felt his body grow a bit larger, and the two conical shapes on his head lengthened slightly. And that was it—the transformation ended there.

Feng Xue wasn’t disappointed. After all, he had never really hoped. Just as almost all first-phase infant Digimon are slime-types, the vast majority of second-phase infants are still classified as “small.” Except for Baby Dragon types, which are already independently categorized even in infancy, everyone else is the same. There is no real reason for disappointment.

And, thankfully, Feng Xue awakened the first special move of his life—Black Spiral. In plain terms, it was a technique where he spun at high speed and rammed into enemies. But unlike a self-invented move, this was a power recognized by the Digital World itself.

For most Digimon, in the infancy stage, only deterrence techniques are available for survival. Only a gifted few can have a special move in the second phase of infancy. Among these gifted Digimon, there are prodigies who possess a special move right from the first phase (again, Baby Dragon, the purest aggregation of Dragon factors, is the exception to almost every rule in the Digital World; a comparable status is held by the Baby Angel, the purest aggregation of Holy factors, who also has a special move at the first phase).

Here, it’s worth explaining the classification of Digimon skills:

Deterrence techniques refer to the skills infant Digimon use when they lack the power for real combat—spitting acidic saliva, opening their mouths wide (like Botamon), or making scary faces to frighten predators. Skills with almost no offensive capability like these are called deterrence techniques.

Signature moves, on the other hand, are innate abilities—powers etched into the Digimon’s core, a natural application of skills, akin to the legendary dragon’s breath. Possessing a signature move means the Digimon can truly step into the Digital World and begin fighting.

There is also a third, most unique skill type for Digimon—the proficiency move. Proficiency moves are the most commonly used regular attacks: tackles, brawling, or forming energy into basic offensives. These are not innate, but are summarized through long-term combat and are recognized by the Digital World. Thus, even Digimon of the same species may have different proficiency moves, but their signature moves will always be identical.