Quan Taibin continued, "In my opinion, the gods are sharing information about the deaths of their own kind. The clearest evidence is that the points on the Round Armor Disc keep decreasing."
Liu Changsheng seemed to have found a flaw in his argument and immediately asked, "That doesn't make sense! Even if gods of the same species have some kind of signaling mechanism that lets them know when one dies, how would a newborn god know about it?"
"Take the egg-laying Blood Salamanders, for example. Are you saying they can communicate with others of their species while they're still inside their eggs? That's completely against common sense."
Quan Taibin smiled, "Can you really judge the affairs of gods by common sense? Let me ask you one thing. You've been talking about Blood Salamanders laying eggs, but have you ever actually seen one hatch? Or, for that matter, have you ever seen the egg or juvenile stage of any god?"
"That's what the books say."
"Books are written by people, and people can be wrong. Only factual evidence is reliable. So I'll ask again: have you ever seen the egg or juvenile stage of a god?"
"No."
Quan Taibin nodded.
"Not only have you never seen one, nobody in the safe zone has. How gods come into existence has always been a mystery. Humans can only make guesses based on biological knowledge and infer how they reproduce."
"Even the claim that all Blood Salamanders are female and reproduce by laying eggs is just an explanation inferred from observed facts. No one has ever actually hidden inside a Pooled Begonia and witnessed the process."
Qin Siyang suddenly thought of Professor Jiping, whom he had killed inside a Pooled Begonia.
The professor had stayed inside the Pooled Begonia for who knew how long and had killed so many Blood Salamanders that he definitely knew how they were born.
But his corpse had already been dissolved by the Pooled Begonia.
Thinking of that, Qin Siyang felt a little disappointed.
If he had been stronger back then, he could have killed Jiping and taken his body away.
The memories in his brain would definitely have revealed how gods were born. That would have been far more exciting than listening to Quan Taibin's lecture.
What a pity. He had met the right person at the wrong time.
In the end, it had all been for nothing.
As Quan Taibin continued, seeing the students' eager expressions, his words became even bolder.
"No one has ever known why gods descended or how they are born, or rather, those who do know don't want the public to know. But I believe that as long as we keep working at it, we'll eventually reveal the secrets of the gods to everyone."
["Ahem!"]
At that moment, the speaker mounted on the classroom wall crackled to life with Zhao Longfei's voice.
["Professor Quan Taibin, please come to the principal's office immediately. I need to discuss something important with you. If you're in class, have the students study on their own."]
Quan Taibin looked puzzled, but he still followed Zhao Longfei's instructions and left the classroom.
———
Meanwhile, in the principal's office, Zhao Longfei wore a troubled expression.
"I seriously don't know what to say. Quan Taibin just blurted out a whole bunch of things he shouldn't have, and he even openly talked about researching the Round Armor Disc. I don't know if I'll be able to protect him."
After a period of self-study, the dismissal bell rang, and Qin Siyang and the others headed to the cafeteria for lunch.
Qin Siyang had always thought South Glory University consisted mainly of the professors in Miracle Building, with Harrison and Lister standing at the top as elite researchers.
After attending Quan Taibin's class today, he realized his understanding of South Glory University had been rather shallow.
Even an obscure lecturer could explain ideas that completely opened his eyes.
Qin Siyang felt he had underestimated the researchers in the safe zone.
On the way to the cafeteria, he remained silent, still thinking about what Quan Taibin had said.
If gods could share information about being killed, then they couldn't possibly share only information about being killed.
Otherwise, that ability would be far too strange and lopsided.
And where did the gods come from in the first place?
He didn't know.
No one knew.
The road ahead was long, and everything was unknown.
He put those thoughts aside, planning to ease his complicated feelings with food and conversation.
Third-year students at South Glory University were busy with research and hunting gods, while fourth-years were occupied with internships and hunting gods. None of them had time to enjoy regular meals in the cafeteria.
So it was mostly first- and second-year students eating there, and it wasn't crowded.
While eating, Qin Siyang, whose God-Hunting Points had already surpassed 500,000, no longer had many second-year students who outranked him. He could even cut in line against upperclassmen without losing out.
After enjoying a satisfying meal, listening to Hu Chan and Chu Baxing trade insults while watching Zhao Sifang and Fu Wanli fool around really did lift his mood.
After returning to the dorm and resting for a while, Qin Siyang reflected on his earlier thinking.
If even an ordinary lecturer like Quan Taibin possessed such profound knowledge, then the other professors at South Glory University were probably just as learned.
If that was the case, maybe the electives he had chosen were actually worth studying.
The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.
Many of his twenty electives overlapped in schedule, making it impossible to attend them all in person.
Fortunately, recordings of every course were uploaded to the university website, so he could watch them first and decide which classes were worth attending.
But his phone screen was too small to watch lectures comfortably.
He remembered that Chu Baxing had a tablet, so he went next door to borrow it.
After hearing why Qin Siyang had come, Chu Baxing frowned, "It's not that I don't want to lend it to you, but Huo Dangkou is using my tablet."
Qin Siyang poked his head through the doorway and saw Huo Dangkou happily waving his arms around in front of the tablet.
"It's fine. Just lend it to me."
"If I do, Huo Dangkou's going to cry and make a fuss in the room again. How am I supposed to calm him down?"
"You're a grown man. You can't even handle a three-year-old? Enough talking. Next time we go out together, I'll charge you half price for travel expenses."
"Deal!"
Qin Siyang took the tablet back to his room.
After watching lecture videos for a while, he found them a little dull.
So he called the front desk and had them send up some snacks: soy sauce sunflower seeds, fried peanuts, boiled edamame, and the like.
As he cracked sunflower seeds while watching the videos, he smiled in satisfaction.
"Now this feels right."
Bzzz!
Just then, a text notification sounded.
But it wasn't his own phone.
It came from Yu Gu's phone.
He took it out and saw a bounty mission.
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[Mission No. 191: Kill Quan Taibin (New Mission)]
[Reward: Ten Tier-4 God-Hunting items, 5,000 bottles of Sequence Potion]
[Reward Collection: Bring Quan Taibin's corpse to the underground city in Sigma District to claim the reward.]
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Qin Siyang stared at the mission details, rubbed his eyes, and read them again carefully.
Then he froze for quite a while.
"I didn't read that wrong, did I? Kill Quan Taibin? The bounty's practically on the same level as kidnapping Chu Baxing!"