Lucien continued testing.
Living Creation was everywhere.
The worlds did not wait for Lucien to decide how every species adapted or how every ecosystem responded to change.
They adjusted naturally.
Plants introduced into unfamiliar climates developed variations across generations.
Beasts exposed to different energies slowly produced new traits.
Civilizations altered their environments, and those environments influenced the generations that followed.
Lucien could still intervene.
He simply did not need to.
His inner realm had acquired its own capacity for development.
That was the part that unsettled him.
In the past, everything inside the Divine Energy Core had existed because Lucien sustained it.
That remained true at the deepest level.
But increasingly, the things inside were sustaining one another.
Worlds produced resources.
Living beings altered worlds.
Death fed future life.
The Tree of Creation interacted with the Core.
