If Elder Zhong were still an ordinary man, Ye Xuan would never have extended his trust. As a fellow human being, he understood human nature far too well for that.
But Elder Zhong had obtained the template of the Geo Archon, God of Contracts, God of Commerce, God of History, God of Vanguards, God of the Hearth, God of War, God of Geo, God of Wealth, and Forefather of the Adepti, Rex Lapis, Morax, Zhongli. And so his trust was willingly given.
It sounded ironic, perhaps, but that was simply the truth of it.
A human being is a vessel for both virtue and vice. No matter how kind, generous, or warm a person appears in public, there is always a shadow of equal depth somewhere within them. It is simply that, held in check by any number of external constraints, that darkness remains locked inside and is rarely shown to the world.
And if that was true of ordinary people, it was even more true of those who held power and stood to gain from it.
No one climbs to a position like that on goodness alone.
Compared to Elder Zhong the man, Ye Xuan trusted far more readily the Elder Zhong who had obtained the Rex Lapis template and was steadily becoming something closer to a god.
Because he was Rex Lapis Morax, and no one else.
People were free to say the game was boring. What they couldn't say was that the character design for Rex Lapis was poor.
He was the truest conception of what a god could be, a figure who embodied every ideal humanity had ever held for divinity, the kind of person who simply could not exist in the real world.
Hearing the tone of Ye Xuan's voice, Su Mengyao could only exhale quietly to herself.
(How deeply do you all distrust human nature, exactly? Could you not try to think a little more charitably?)
(Even if there are always bad people among humanity, aren't most of them decent, broadly speaking?)
Ye Xuan was like this, and the other cross-dimensional treasure holders she had encountered before him had been the same way. Was humanity really so impossible to trust?
"Why are you running tests on students? Is it only to find unregistered ability users?"
Ye Xuan had no idea what Su Mengyao was thinking, and even if he had, it wouldn't have concerned him. What human beings were like, surely they already knew the answer to that themselves.
What he actually wanted to know was why the Celestial Pivot Bureau had used a method like this to test students, and why they were searching for ability users among young people specifically.
Was it concern that the students' age and maturity might not be enough to safely manage the powers they had awakened, making accidental harm a risk?
Or was it to see whether any particularly exceptional individuals had emerged among them?
If it was the first reason, all of this seemed like far more trouble than it was worth. And if it was the second, then what did it matter whether exceptional individuals existed among them?
The abilities of current users weren't yet meaningfully stronger than the output of human technology. Faced with firearms and artillery, they had no real advantage. This was still fundamentally a technological era, and even cross-dimensional treasure holders couldn't afford to dismiss the power of science.
Beyond that, there were already enormous numbers of adults outside school who had awakened abilities. With Xia Nation's population at 1.4 billion, even if only one in ten thousand awakened, that was still 140,000 people.
The Bureau could have directed its attention toward those people instead of a group of students still sitting in classrooms.
"That goal exists, yes, but it's only one of the reasons."
Su Mengyao didn't dispute what Ye Xuan had said.
"Then what else?" He asked.
"To help them adapt."
"Because in the future, mutant creatures appearing in cities and injuring people will not be a rare sight."
If Ye Xuan had been an ordinary high school student who happened to stumble onto a cross-dimensional treasure but still thought like a teenager, Su Mengyao wouldn't have given him that answer. But from everything she had gathered in this short conversation, he was far more mature than he appeared.
Telling him this much should be fine.
"Adapt?"
"Those were just a few mutant creatures. They mutate because of Spiritual Energy, but humans are also growing stronger because of that same energy."
"As a species, outside of tigers, lions, leopards, elephants, and black bears, most animals in nature won't experience greater increases in power than humans will."
"And with technology and cross-dimensional treasures factored in, I don't see how mutant creatures could pose a genuine threat to humanity."
Hearing Su Mengyao's reasoning, Ye Xuan didn't suspect she was lying, but something in him still didn't fully accept the answer.
Because humanity was formidable. Even setting aside the staggering reach of technology, on the basis of raw physical capability and intelligence alone, humans were already a force to be reckoned with.
Why did so many people refer to the human race as "the terrifying upright apes"?
Because humanity held a decisive advantage over nearly every other species.
Even without tools, relying purely on physical endurance and intelligence, a human being could hunt most creatures on earth. They might come away injured, but the animal would die.
The arrival of Spiritual Energy had made weak things stronger and strong things stronger still. In that particular race, humans might fall behind tigers or bears, but compared to the vast majority of living creatures, their relative gains were actually greater.
And human strength was never just personal. Technology was the fundamental foundation of humanity's dominion over the earth.
With technology behind them, no matter how far a creature mutated, it could never be a match for humanity. And beyond that, every cross-dimensional treasure born from the dimensional invasion had originated in human imagination, and only humans could draw out the full potential of those objects.
For Su Mengyao to now claim that their purpose was to help students "adapt," there was simply no way he believed that.
Unless they were in an untamed wilderness or a nature preserve, how likely was it that lions or tigers would appear in the middle of a city? Or that mutated animals would break free from a zoo and attack people?
"That is true for now. But as the Spiritual Energy Awakening deepens, something called the Spiritual Energy Tide will occur in the future. When it does, the dense concentration of Spiritual Energy will trigger profound changes in every creature on Blue Star that carries the necessary foundation."
"Those without that foundation will simply receive a kind of physical nourishment, living longer without any fundamental change. But those who do have it will find the abilities they awakened growing dramatically more powerful. Their bodies will begin drawing Spiritual Energy from the air on their own, growing stronger continuously over time."
"This applies to humans, and it applies equally to every other species."
"The difference is that humans have order, structure, and established systems. The natural world is far crueler. Creatures without the foundation will be weeded out quickly, leaving only those with varying degrees of talent."
"When that time comes, even if these mutant creatures are nothing to ability users, to ordinary people they will be the equivalent of apex predators, more than capable of killing them with ease."
"And you should know, for Xia Nation, even a single death is not a small matter, let alone injuries or casualties in the tens, hundreds, or thousands."
"Human technology is powerful, yes. But what use is killing a mutant creature after an attack has already happened? For the victim, their life is already gone."