Chapter 895: Origin Truth

After a brief silence, the revived corpse squeezed a sound from its throat, hoarsely speaking.

"The essence of human origin."

Concise and to the point.

Essence? Origin?

Lin An frowned slightly, then simply pulled over an empty chair, and he and the corpse sat facing each other.

The revived one's words were too vague.

This was still his first time using the revival skill to communicate with the dead; it seemed the other had indeed recovered their memory.

But in this strange setting, their conversation inevitably felt eerie.

"Please elaborate."

"What research directions have you pursued?"

"Origin? Are you looking for the ancestral species at the root of humanity? Like some kind of ape, or an even earlier mammal?"

He left the matter of the crystal skull for last, to prevent the revived one from having another accident.

Thinking of the zombies he had seen in that scene, Lin An couldn't help feeling a faint unease.

But he didn't know where that unease came from.

After the command was given, he stared straight at that deathly pale face, the large hole in the researcher's forehead, even able to see the chair back behind the brain.

After a moment of silence, the expression on that lifeless face remained unchanged, and it gave a stiff reply:

"Neither."

"We previously studied the so-called origin, but later discovered it was mistaken."

"What we are researching now is the true difference between humans and other species."

"And the greatest of those differences is emotion."

"Joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure, fear."

"Huh?"

As soon as the words fell, Xiao Mo Ling listened seriously, and a hint of suspicion appeared on her face.

"Emotion?"

"Isn't the biggest difference just bodily structure?"

"Flies have wings, elephants have trunks, turtles and shrimp have shells..."

"Humans belong to the primates. Class, order, phylum—this kind of taxonomic distinction is what truly sets us apart, right?"

Lin An didn't speak, merely tilted his head slightly to glance at Xiao Mo Ling.

Exactly, although Mo Ling didn't put it clearly, strictly speaking, the so-called emotions, feelings, intellect...

... are all formed by different brain neural structures, or brain capacity.

Emotion is not the true essence, but merely a manifestation.

It's like two-dollar bottled water and three-dollar cola can both quench thirst, but what quenches thirst is not the price of two or five dollars, but the water itself.

The differences in emotion, thought, reason, and IQ between species are merely phenomena of differing bodily structures.

For example, bats lack eyes; their greatest difference from humans is the addition of echolocation.

Emotional intelligence and the like are also due to differences in brain volume and structure, causing some arthropods and mollusks to lack emotions such as joy, anger, and fear.

Just as human fear, at its essence, comes from the amygdala and cognition of specific stimuli.

If a worm were given a human-like brain structure, it would also think and have feelings.

Even adding a vocal organ, such as vocal cords, it could, after education, say to you a grateful "thank you."

To claim that animals differ from humans because they lack certain emotions is to put the cart before the horse.

In fact, simply electrically stimulating the amygdala region of the brain can plunge a person into unwarranted extreme panic.

Studying emotion as such a metaphysical existence amounts to staying at the surface of research.

This is a rather "naive" approach.

It's like ancient people with backward technology, whose simplistic worldview held that the greatest difference between humans and other animals lay in the seven emotions and six desires, and in differing souls.

Beasts lack feelings, or lack a certain feeling, therefore they are not human.

In less than 0.1 seconds, Lin An, upon thinking this far, also felt doubtful.

Logically, just the underground research center he saw proves that this world's technology cannot be too backward.

Even elementary school students know this; the other side has no reason not to know.

He countered:

"Why do you believe the greatest difference between humans and animals lies in emotion rather than bodily structure?"

"And what does this have to do with essence, with human origin?"

"Incorrect."

Fluently answering, the deceased researcher replied with empty, wooden eyes; obviously he had answered this question many times while alive.

"Our former mainstream science also held that the difference between humans and other species lay in differing bodily structures."

"Even early human origins could be traced back hundreds of millions, even tens of billions of years; perhaps our ancestors were fish that came ashore, or maybe worms."

"All living things are carbon-based life; different environments evolve different species, and humans are the most successful product of that evolution."

"To prove this theory, we have almost dissected, synthesized, and induced mutations in the vast majority of natural species, attempting to find the evolutionary pathway."

Hearing halfway through, Lin An's doubts grew even stronger.

"What the heck?"

"How can this region's civilization still be repeating what the real world accomplished as early as the 19th century?"

"Prokaryotic cells-eukaryotic cells-flatworms..."

Jawless (he) fish-jawed fish...

Amphibians-reptiles-mammals...

Apes-hominids-human.

This is the real world; in the human origin chart, the evolutionary route has been verified countless times.

Whether it's that human hands and feet found in the embryonic stage match fish fins, or in the body structure, the ears have holes similar to fish gills.

A large amount of fossil evidence proves that the origin of humans is a certain species that has undergone continuous evolution over billions of years.

Could it be that this world has no fossils? Or lacking historical records, so they need to find the route by dissecting existing species?

Just as the thought arose, I heard the researcher pause for a moment then continue speaking:

"Our fossil evidence proves the correctness of this theory, but four months ago we discovered an inexplicable loophole."

"This loophole is severe enough to destroy the entire chain of evidence proving human origins."

Huh? Any fossil records?

Lin An blinked slightly; looking at it this way, this place is the same as reality.

"What loophole?"

He asked instinctively.

In a vague sense, he felt as if he had touched a terrifying answer.

The researcher maintained a stiff sitting posture, responding to him quickly like a robot:

"It's emotion."

"In human thought, or rather instinct, there is an emotion that should not appear."

"This emotion should not appear in us, and indeed cannot appear in any human evolutionary path; this emotion does not conform to biological evolutionary logic."

"What emotion? Is it... fear?!"

Little Mo Ling instinctively spoke up, her big eyes filled with even greater doubt.

She glanced at the corpse beside her, face full of terror, and immediately thought of this without needing to think.

"That's right."

The researcher mechanically nodded, and a red-white fluid flowed from the bullet hole at the center of his forehead, dripping onto his body.

Frowning, Mo Ling couldn't help but voice her objection:

"Isn't that wrong? What prevents fear from appearing in humans?"

"Most animals have fear; it is the most primal 'expression' of life resisting death, or genes avoiding genetic discontinuity."

"If humans lack it, that's the problem, right?"

"You say arrogance would be about right; this complex, higher emotion is meaningless for life's reproduction."

"Creak"

Only see the researcher suddenly turn his head stiffly, his gaze wooden as he looks at Mo Ling who objected.

Suddenly, a weird smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"No, it's not fear of death."

"It's that humans fear humans."

"Or rather, we are extremely fearful of those who resemble humans."

"This fear emotion is almost imprinted in our instinctual genes, thus forming a mark."

"This emotion appears only in humans, which is obviously unreasonable and does not conform to biological evolutionary logic."

"What do you mean?!"

Blurted out, Lin An suddenly felt a strong unease; if not for his spiritual power being uninterrupted, he could clearly sense that the other party was under his control.

He even felt that the revived researcher had lost control.

In an instant, the Second Will suddenly spoke in a low voice, his tone full of gravity and astonishment:

(("He wants to say?!"))

(("Uncanny valley effect?!"))

As if hearing his thoughts, the revived researcher, as if receiving a command, turned his neck again and looked toward Lin An:

"That's right."

"In the uncanny valley effect, we do not fear semi-human entities in cartoons and anime; instead we find them cute."

"But we fear those whose resemblance to human faces reaches a certain peak."

"Like extremely realistic dolls, spiders with human faces, snakes... or other creatures."

"As long as that entity's similarity exceeds the critical point, we will feel fear."

Blinking, Mo Ling could hardly understand what the researcher wanted to say; she instinctively looked at Lin An, only to see his complexion growing worse.

Before she could speak, Lin An stared fixedly at the other party:

"Keep going!"

Following the order, the deceased researcher continued speaking mechanically:

"According to the above theory, in our subsequent research we boldly hypothesized a horrifying truth."

"Why do we fear? Why do we fear entities that look extremely like us? Why can we easily tell they are not human?"

"There is only one answer."

"Those 'people' who look just like us, upon encountering humans, will act in ways unbecoming of humans."

"In short."

"In human civilization, there once was a lengthy period during which we suffered slaughter by beings who looked like us but were not human."

"Such slaughter methods must be extraordinarily cruel, cruel enough to let us easily tell the other party is not human."

"They" have faces almost identical to ours, but they are our enemies, to the extent that we are so afraid that we have etched this fear deep into our genes.

In the uncanny valley effect, we have created a large amount of visual culture, novels, records, stone carvings... based on that fear.

Although we have forgotten who "they" are, we instinctively want to describe the existence of "they"..

After speaking, the laboratory was completely silent.

Taking a deep breath, Lin An took a deep look at the researcher.

He understood what this regional world had actually discovered.

They discovered...

In human history, zombies had already appeared long ago.

Moreover, it happened more than once.

But here, there is clearly no Doomsday Game.