Chapter 213: The Armory

Guan Xinyue stared at them, dazed, her face gradually flushing. The three men before her were all her friends, yet for the first time, she felt that the three people in front of her were entirely alien, coming from somewhere higher and darker. Before them, humanity was like a grazing flock, their fates dominated in ignorance. A world like this was destined not to be the same world. Even regarding her grandfather, she suddenly did not know how to view him.

The three men were still arguing, yet she vaguely felt as if it were gods debating the fate of ants.

"Hitler and Mussolini were lunatics to begin with; how much does that have to do with us? Humanity has been slaughtering each other since they appeared, for thousands of years. Do you really think every single time it was us Mages being bored and interfering? Besides, we have helped humanity, haven't we?" Majiang said. "How many wars have we helped them end? Just looking at the combative nature of humanity—not to mention the distant past, just look at the recent past: if not for our intervention, how many times would humanity have already nuked themselves?"

"If we had known back then that war would drive humanity to develop technology at the speed of Teleportation, we certainly wouldn't have triggered the Great War at all," Luo Qi said with a cold laugh.

"Not necessarily," Majiang argued. "Air conditioners, refrigerators, video games—these are the treasures of your generation of Mages, technological products you'd even take off your own underwear to trade for."

"Then I also hope that one day we can have fair trade!" Luo Qi's voice rose as well. "We could show our true forms in the human world. We could sit down and trade fairly regarding how the exchange rate is calculated, instead of exploiting humanity like we do now. So many humans don't even have enough to eat; perhaps our abilities could lead to better cooperation with humanity."

"Wait, with that nature of humanity, it's not our fault they don't have enough to eat! Humans can't even achieve fair trade within their own race. Besides, what is human science? Do you know what happens when human greed and science are combined? Have you thought about it? Besides stealing our children and locking them in laboratories, they'd do other things, wouldn't they?"

Guan Xinyue saw Luo Qi hesitate, and Majiang noticed it too. "Especially someone like you when you were a child—with no ability and no room to protect yourself, you would definitely have been bagged by humans who love trafficking children and sold into a laboratory. By the time you grew up to now, you would have already been shocked into an idiot by humans."

Luo Qi did not speak. The scene of Li Xu electrocuting him still repeated in his nightmares; with Majiang bringing this up, he could barely continue.

"Majiang, humanity was originally a slave population created by the Ancestor Mages; there was only one fundamental purpose, which was to support the Mages," Du Zhengyi suddenly said from the window, cutting off the possibility of Majiang continuing.

Majiang froze, looking at Du Zhengyi suspiciously. "You can't just spout such insane hypotheses just to speak up for Luo Qi."

"I am not spouting nonsense; don't drag me down to the level of you two," Du Zhengyi said.

Majiang let out a "hmph." "Then where does your information come from? Myths passed down by word of mouth within the Qionglin? Let's play a game of telephone with ten people; I guarantee that ten people would distort the information passed down by word of mouth."

He took a deep breath. Luo Qi was staring at him steadily, those deer-like eyes straight yet softly filled with trust and expectation.

"In the wordless Ancient Scroll of the Qionglin," he said.

"Isn't it the Wordless True Scripture?" Majiang said with a hint of sarcasm, his face full of distrust.

"Are you actually listening to me or not?" Du Zhengyi's face darkened, and Majiang hurriedly waved his hands to tell them to ignore him.

Du Zhengyi continued, "Perhaps influenced by human evolutionary theory, many Mages have begun to think that we and humans are merely two branches on the tree of evolution. But in reality, humans believe that a Creator God exists in the world, and we Mages also believe there is a Creator God. Mages never engage in meaningless imagination, so the Creator God that Mages believe in is real."

The room went quiet. Perhaps the topic Du Zhengyi brought up really felt too far off-track, and everyone was at a loss for a moment. Guan Xinyue looked at Luo Qi; normally, it was Luo Qi's duty to spout off at times like this, and she could even guess what Luo Qi would say and how he would say it.

But to her surprise, Luo Qi was sitting quietly, his eyes fixed on Du Zhengyi, his whole person appearing to be thinking earnestly.

Guan Xinyue couldn't help it and spoke up, "Why are you two not saying anything? You're joking, right? Du Ge is practically brainwashed by a cult!" Luo Qi turned his head to look at her. "Why do you say that?"

"Although I haven't finished my schooling, and you aren't even human, I think you must know that all religions say more or less the same thing," Guan Xinyue said. "It's all the same script: the god I believe in created the world, the god you believe in is fake, and the one I believe in is the real one. That's exactly what Du Ge just said. He surely wants to say next that the Main God created the Mages, and the Vice God created the humans as slaves to serve the Mages."

Luo Qi said, "Then perhaps we should think more about why people everywhere have the same idea—whether this idea itself is actually true."

Du Zhengyi took over from Luo Qi and said quietly, "I can only say that whether you believe it or not is unimportant. Because I don't believe in gods; if I believed in gods, I certainly wouldn't allow you to insult the divine, and I would be making sacrifices waiting for the divine to reward me."

Luo Qi suddenly thought of Du Zhengyi giving up on fighting for the Ship Ticket and accepting death; that was indeed without begging for divine favor or reward.

His words made Guan Xinyue quiet down as well. She thought of Jingtu Temple, thought of the walls full of wishes at Jingtu Temple, and thought of the believers on the mountain releasing animals, begging for their next life.

Du Zhengyi continued, "After the Ancestor Mages created the Mages, they created humans, whose brain capacity was slightly inferior to Mages and whose physical strength was far less than Mages. The Ancestor Mages gave the Mages the blessing of civilization while driving humans into the wilderness; humans had to rely on hard labor to ensure the social development of the Mages. In this way, Mages could completely control humans in every aspect. However, the Ancestor Mages were still worried about the future; life can never be stably predicted, so the final layer of insurance was scattered and buried underground all over the world."

"Seal Beasts," Luo Qi interjected in a low voice. "The Ancestors, who were skilled at creating life, essentially left behind a biological weapons arsenal."

"Pei Shu does not believe it has reached the point of activating the Seals, but now it seems the secret can no longer be kept," Du Zhengyi said. "Mages control humans through the Calculations of Calculators combined with mental intervention. Perhaps as human development becomes increasingly complex, the difficulty of Calculation has become greater and greater, and regulation has become harder. Mage organizations hostile to humanity have appeared in every century, but only the Lotus Burners are desperate enough to want to use the crudest and most extreme methods. And yet, the secret of the Seals has leaked out at this very moment."

Luo Qi thought once again of Du Zhengyi, who served as a Gushan Guard, and that narrow encounter with the Lotus Burners three years ago.