Su Mengyao let out a long breath after saying that.
When it came down to it, all of this stemmed from humanity's own arrogance. They proclaimed loudly that all lives were equal, while knowing better than anyone that lives were, in practice, anything but.
That was true even among humans themselves, let alone between humans and every other species.
Rats, cockroaches, leopards, tigers. When those without the necessary foundation died according to the natural law of survival of the fittest, no one mourned them. Not even those creatures themselves, in whatever way they could be said to care.
But when a human being without the foundation died because of them, it became a serious matter. Because the value wasn't comparable.
A mutated rat was still a rat. A mutated tiger was still a tiger. How could either be compared to a human being? Even a perfectly ordinary person with no special potential whatsoever.
So in their eyes, when an ordinary person died at the hands of a mutant creature, even if the creature was killed in response, it remained a tragedy. As for what the creature itself might have thought, did that really matter?
"If that's the case, I understand."
Ye Xuan nodded after hearing her explanation. The question that had been sitting in him was answered now.
Natural selection, the strong surviving. A straightforward logic. Spiritual Energy had brought the possibility of evolution to all life on Blue Star, but only those with the necessary foundation could undergo it. Those without it had no right to evolve.
And so, naturally, life without that foundation would die. Either killed by members of their own species for their weakness, or by natural predators. It might take time, but the outcome was inevitable.
Humans were different. Humanity had no natural predators on Earth. And because of the order and rules that human society maintained, ordinary people without any special potential wouldn't be killed by ability users who did have it.
The mutant creatures, however, didn't understand this. Their intelligence wasn't sufficient to grasp the protected status humans held. So when their strength grew large enough, they would begin hunting humans. And given how vastly ordinary people outnumbered ability users, most of their prey would be ordinary people.
Death would be unavoidable. From the perspective of natural law, this was survival of the fittest in its purest form.
Eliminating ordinary humans without potential and leaving behind more ability users who did have it. Through generation after generation of this selection, what remained would eventually be a humanity composed entirely of those who carried the foundation.
But from a human perspective, this was war between species. They would never permit a group of mutant creatures to openly hunt human beings and shatter the peace of human civilization.
"But what exactly is the Spiritual Energy Tide?" Ye Xuan asked, puzzled.
The concept of a Spiritual Energy Tide existed in novels, but it had never been reality. He didn't know how it would be defined if it actually occurred here.
"If the Spiritual Energy Awakening that began three months ago was the stage where Spiritual Energy first appeared on Blue Star at low concentrations, then the Spiritual Energy Tide is an anomalous event that precedes a massive increase in that concentration."
"I don't know the precise details. The technology we have today isn't capable of investigating the origin of Spiritual Energy, or how the Tide will manifest."
"The reason we can say with certainty that it will occur is that someone in the Celestial Pivot Bureau awakened a prediction-type ability."
Su Mengyao herself didn't fully understand it either. Current human technology simply couldn't reach the root cause of such phenomena. They knew about it only because a prediction-type ability user within the Celestial Pivot Bureau had seen a fragment of the future involving it. She knew it would happen, but not exactly when. Only scattered glimpses of what was to come.
"A future prediction ability?!"
"With the dimensional invasion in play, is it really still possible for an ability like that to work?"
If this had been a world of pure Spiritual Energy Awakening, Ye Xuan wouldn't have questioned the existence of someone who could see the future.
But their world was more complicated than that. Alongside the Spiritual Energy Awakening, the dimensional invasion had brought the products of human imagination into reality. In that environment, every cross-dimensional treasure holder was, in effect, someone capable of changing the course of the future. If the treasure someone obtained had a large enough influence on how the world unfolded, the future should have already become a state of total uncertainty.
Under conditions like that, how could a prediction-type ability still function?
"They can only see fragments of one possible future, and even then it's just one thread among infinite possibilities."
Su Mengyao understood his doubt and offered the clarification. In short, what that ability called "predicting the future" actually meant was seeing one fragment of one possibility out of an endless range. Even that was only partial.
They couldn't use it to locate all cross-dimensional treasure holders in advance, or to identify highly talented ability users before they surfaced. What they could do was prepare earlier for crises they knew were coming.
But for them, that was enough. Even if a disaster couldn't be avoided entirely, the preparations they made beforehand could at least reduce its scale. Preventing it altogether was out of reach.
"Outside of Elder Zhong, are there other cross-dimensional treasure holders in Xia Nation right now?"
Most of what Ye Xuan had wanted to know had been answered by Su Mengyao. This was the only remaining thing he was curious about.
Though he wasn't particularly troubled by it. As the holder of the Cross-World Fishing System, he could obtain a new treasure every month. Given enough time, becoming the strongest person in the world was simply a matter of logical progression. He was asking purely out of curiosity.
Su Mengyao didn't answer immediately. She just watched him with a faint smile, a flicker of something knowing in her eyes.
The implication was clear. If Ye Xuan wanted his answer, he would need to provide one of his own first, specifically the answer to the question she had asked earlier.
Ye Xuan caught the meaning in her expression, and a resigned look passed briefly through his eyes.
"What I obtained was the Wangquan Baye template."
He had already received a great deal of information from Su Mengyao. It was only natural that he would keep his end of things and tell her what she wanted to know.
What he didn't mention was that the template he had received was the youthful version. He also didn't mention that his situation differed from Elder Zhong's, that he didn't need to roleplay or align his personality with the character in order to receive the template's full abilities.
Although he trusted Elder Zhong, who had merged with the Rex Lapis template, well enough, he wasn't going to reveal everything about his strength until he had reached the point where he could simply disregard any threat on Blue Star.
"As I suspected. You're a cross-world character template holder."
Su Mengyao nodded, satisfied. Between the possibility of the Wangquan Sword and the possibility of the Wangquan Baye template, she had already been leaning toward the latter.
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