RotA – Chapter 56

Chu Ci responded faintly to the old man’s words.

Chai Yuening subconsciously squeezed Chu Ci’s palm, but was surprised to see not a trace of hesitation or concealment in Chu Ci’s gaze.

Chu Ci seemed to have an inexplicable trust in the person before her.

Yes, that had to be it. Only then could she recall such things so calmly.

After all, she was not one for lying. When faced with something she didn’t want to talk about, she would always fall silent or change the subject.

Chai Yuening had grown quite accustomed to this back at the underground city Base.

Once the words were out, it was difficult to take them back. Chai Yuening could only fix a wary gaze on Shi Wenlin.

She thought she would see something in the old man’s eyes—perhaps the thirst for “hope” that people had, or the way most researchers at the Floating City’s institute looked at Chu Ci, as if she were a specimen.

But she didn’t.

She saw only tranquility in Shi Wenlin’s eyes, a tranquility like the still water of an old well, as if nothing in the world mattered to him anymore.

Shi Wenlin was silent for a long while, seemingly lost in some kind of deep thought.

“The Floating City… is that the city from the Old World that used black vines as a power source to float?” Shi Wenlin said. “The last time I saw you, that city was still grounded due to a lack of energy.”

“But…”

“Child, I’m not senile yet.” Shi Wenlin’s tone was certain. “The year you successfully fused with the black vine, those salvationists of the Old World launched a nuclear war that almost completely annihilated humanity. People struggled to survive on their own. After the disaster, all was silent… I never saw you again.”

Seeing a flicker of doubt in Chu Ci’s eyes, Shi Wenlin couldn’t help but ask, “Are your memories clear?”

Chu Ci frowned, as if trying hard to remember something, but she couldn’t find an answer.

She bit her lower lip and said in a low voice, “That’s what all the files related to me at the Base say…”

In the small room, everyone fell silent.

After a long time, Shi Wenlin slowly spoke: “You are that child.”

There was no hesitation, no surprise. “I’m starting to remember. I even… made you one of those little bubble-blowing toys. It wasn’t something for a child your age, but there was nothing else in the institute to amuse you with. Do you remember?”

Chu Ci shook her head.

She didn’t remember. Her memory was a blur.

She didn’t even know if her memory had always been this hazy, or if she had quietly lost the part of her memory before the age of sixteen during the process of recovering from amnesia.

If it was merely the latter, then why was the time of her successful fusion with the black vine recorded in the Base’s files a full year different from what Shi Wenlin said?

She couldn’t figure it out, just as she couldn’t remember where she had been before the destruction of the Old World.

It was as if she was never worthy of knowing anything.

Even though everyone in this world told her she was extremely important, she was still only fit to be a quiet specimen, unworthy of having her own thoughts.

“I was the one who performed that surgery.” Shi Wenlin continued in a calm tone, his words pausing slightly as if he had fallen into a memory. “Every single person turned into a monster after the procedure, but we couldn’t stop. Our initial mistake pushed us ever forward. We first studied the black vine simply wanting to cure more people, but in the end, we turned the world into this.”

“You’re… a scientist from the Old World’s secret research institute?”

“A sinner,” Shi Wenlin said softly. “Our research destroyed this world. Our crimes are such that even ten thousand deaths could not atone for them. In our entire lifetimes… we can’t even begin to make up for a fraction of our mistakes.”

As he spoke, his gaze toward Chu Ci carried a hint of nostalgia. “Once, your appearance made me think we could finally atone for that mistake. But child, I was separated from you so early. So many years have passed. What brought you here? Was it the world outside that Lan Yi spoke of, the one that never got better?”

“I’m a useless specimen. I couldn’t help them,” Chu Ci said faintly. “So they didn’t want me anymore.”

Shi Wenlin: “Your eyes tell me you’ve suffered a great deal.”

Chu Ci: “You must be mistaken, sir. I’m not sad at all right now.”

Shi Wenlin sighed softly. “Yes, you are very calm. Completely different from before.”

The child before him looked the same after more than fifty years, but the emotion in her eyes—the kind that belonged to a girl, or rather, to a human being—had become difficult to recall.

She wasn’t sad. There was no sadness in her eyes, but no other emotions either.

She was too quiet, quiet like an indifferent spectator. The good and bad of this world, the pessimism of its people, all seemed to have nothing to do with her.

He didn’t even dare to imagine what could have happened over more than fifty years to turn the child from back then into the calm figure she was today.

“Those people who took you away didn’t take good care of you,” Shi Wenlin said softly. “Don’t be afraid. No one will bully you here anymore.”

His voice was very soft, very slow, steeped in the passage of time and wrapped in a past sense of indebtedness.

Chu Ci’s lips parted slightly, but her eyes couldn’t help but fill with tears, and for a long time, she couldn’t utter a single word.

It seemed she was starting to feel a little sad, but she didn’t know why.

The kind old man before her hadn’t said anything harsh, yet she couldn’t stop a stinging sensation from welling up in her eyes and in her heart.

Chai Yuening looked at Chu Ci, as if she could read the bitterness in her gaze.

For over fifty years, no one had ever said such things to her, no one had ever shown her a shred of apology. It was as if she were the one who truly owed the entire world.

Having spent a lifetime accustomed to the coldness of others, she found she couldn’t quite bear any form of care.

Chu Ci slowly walked forward and stood before Shi Wenlin.

The light outside the window was dim. A sudden downpour the previous night had soaked the yellowed tiles of the windowsill. The wind carried none of summer’s warmth.

She asked softly, “Sir, you’re also researching species fusion. Don’t you need me as a specimen?”

“This world is collapsing,” Shi Wenlin said. “We are barely surviving at the end of human civilization. I’ve been thinking, all these years, my pursuit of truth was perhaps no longer about saving anything, but simply about wanting to die with a bit more understanding… If I can’t, it’s no great matter. In any case, once I close my eyes, it’s dust to dust, earth to earth.”

“Perhaps, when human civilization is destroyed, the sins of my life will scatter with the wind.” He let out a long, trembling sigh. “Of course, if you are willing, I do hope to take some samples from you, on the condition that it doesn’t harm you… Although, what the people who took you away couldn’t achieve, I probably can’t either. But doing something is better than the regret of doing nothing at all.”

Chu Ci unconsciously pressed her thin lips together. After a few seconds of silence, she crouched down, placed her hands on the armrests of the wheelchair before her, and said earnestly, “I am willing, sir.”

A faint smile bloomed in Shi Wenlin’s weary eyes.

He softly said thank you, his wrinkled hand patting the back of Chu Ci’s hand in a comforting gesture.

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

Her worries seemed to have been unnecessary.

She took two steps forward and said earnestly, “Sir, the human bases outside the Fog Zone have yet to find a way to resist infection and mutation, but you have. Perhaps this world isn’t as hopeless as you imagine. As long as we can keep moving forward, there’s a chance to grasp hope.”

“You’re right, but you don’t understand this world,” Shi Wenlin said, shaking his head helplessly. “Never mind you; I’ve pursued truth my entire life, and I still can’t see through this world.”

“My generation learned a great deal of knowledge from childhood through university, but when the Old World was destroyed and the new one arrived, all that knowledge became shackles binding our minds.” Shi Wenlin looked up at Chai Yuening. “Everything I once learned told me that infection is a gradual process, that a virus needs time to spread, that a person is slowly and completely eroded by the virus bit by bit.”

“But now, infection is no longer a process of erosion that requires time. It simply makes a yes-or-no determination within a certain period. If the determination is no, the signs of infection slowly fade. If the determination is yes, the body’s DNA chain undergoes an irreversible change in an instant. It doesn’t need time to spread—it’s truly instantaneous. The entire body changes at once, and it’s impossible to stop it with localized surgery.”

“Perhaps you don’t know, but the Old World had many movies about the awakening of prehistoric behemoths. Humans were as insignificant as ants before them. But most people knew that all life on Earth is carbon-based, and the molecular structure of carbon-based life is unstable. They couldn’t possibly grow that large; Earth’s gravity would cause their massive bodies to collapse under their own weight.”

“But now, you can see those behemoths living in this world. Though massive, they can run with incredible speed, even fly tens of thousands of meters into the sky. You can’t comprehend their physical structure, can’t imagine how they defy gravity, or what they use to continuously power their enormous bodies…”

“In the long river of human civilization’s development, people constantly refuted or refined the laws discovered by their predecessors, believing that as long as they could grasp all the laws of this world, they could become its sole masters.” Shi Wenlin’s brow furrowed slightly. “The emergence of the black vine ecosystem has completely shattered the old laws.”

“The old laws no longer exist. Humanity must find new ones to survive in this chaotic world.”

Shi Wenlin spoke, then closed his eyes and sighed softly. “But… it seems this world has no laws anymore.”

Chai Yuening: “No laws?”

Shi Wenlin: “Have you heard of the shooter hypothesis and the farmer hypothesis?”

Chai Yuening frowned. “What are those…?”

Shi Wenlin: “Perhaps they are everything this world is experiencing right now.”

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Author’s Notes:

The shooter hypothesis and the farmer hypothesis are quite famous. I tried to retell them in my own words, but I felt it took up too much space, wasn’t much different from what you’d find on Baidu, and a long string of theories you can search for anywhere felt like I was deliberately padding the word count. So, I deleted it all from the chapter and won’t elaborate on it further (I’m also later than usual today because I wasted time writing that long section). I’ll explain it here in the author’s notes to help the little angels who aren’t familiar with them understand the context.

The Farmer Hypothesis: You have a farm, and you raise a flock of turkeys. You come to feed them every morning at 8 a.m. If there were a scientist among the turkeys, it would conclude that food arrives every morning at 8 a.m., just as our ancestors discovered that the sun rises every day. But if one day you get sick, you might not feed them. If you’re going to sell them, you might slaughter them.

The Shooter Hypothesis: You are practicing at a shooting range. Your marksmanship is excellent, and you shoot a series of regular holes in the target, one every centimeter. If there were a two-dimensional creature living on the target, its scientists would conclude that there is a hole every centimeter, and thus a new universal law would be added to this two-dimensional creature’s universe.

The farmer hypothesis is a wake-up call for our inductive science. Just as we accepted the daily sunrise as truth before we knew why it happened, many of our current scientific theories are also derived from induction. These theories are not necessarily truths. We can use them, just like the turkey scientist who can get food every morning at 8 a.m.—this is a tangible benefit. But if one day the food doesn’t arrive at 8 a.m., one shouldn’t collapse into denial. Because it wasn’t a truth. Many people, when the “truths” they have firmly believed in for years turn out to be wrong, have a breakdown or even commit suicide.

The shooter hypothesis goes a step further, questioning not just the correctness of inductive theories, but the very reality of our universe. Are the truths that exist in our universe constant and unchanging, or are they only true for us, right now? The two-dimensional creature’s scientist discovered a hole every centimeter; we have discovered more, like the speed of light, which we found to be the fastest and constant. But is the speed of light constant within our observable range, or is it eternally constant? Has the speed of light been this speed for the last few billion years, or has it always been this speed? We can’t be certain about things like this. This is perhaps the most terrifying thing for a scientist. If a god truly exists, then the theories they spent their entire lives researching might just be the result of a god’s casual action. Such a science really robs one of the motivation to continue researching.

(All of the above content in the author’s notes is copied and pasted from a Baidu search, haha)

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