Chapter 666: The Ancestor's Gift (55)

The three bright stars of Orion rose before them, and Luo Qi stared at the distant three stars with a blank expression. Liu Ziyi looked up in a daze, her face expressionless, but her chaotic thoughts and intense emotions at this moment were almost crashing into Luo Qi's Yajian.

Wusu let out a low chuckle, like a sigh, yet tinged with a bit of mockery, and took a step back, walking out of the room.

Liu Ziyi's emotions suddenly took a high-dive, and just as her thoughts became highly focused, Luo Qi grabbed Liu Ziyi's wrist and forcibly pulled her away from that all-too-obvious console.

"Luo Qi?" Liu Ziyi turned her head in annoyance, the complex emotions piling up almost ready to burst out of her body. She looked into Luo Qi's eyes in confusion; the determination in Luo Qi's eyes was like cold water splashed into her mental world. She froze for a moment, letting Luo Qi pull her away, "I can..."

"Is it meaningful?" Luo Qi said. "We have already guessed enough; fully activating this place is just a waste of time. We don't have time, and we have no way to predict in advance how others will react when they discover the truth. The Lotus Burner will never have a good reaction. We cannot create extra complications. Besides, just think about it calmly—do you think the higher-ups of the Qionglin don't know about this? At the very least, your teacher Pei Shu should be clear about it. Aside from being your teacher, what other identity does he have? Do I need to remind you? The secrets he doesn't want to tell, if discovered by you, that won't be a good thing. Just stop here; everything is just your wild speculation. Don't find tangible evidence for your own conjectures."

A flash of surprise swept through Liu Ziyi's mind, accompanied by a trance-like sorrow and a heavy dose of confusion. Luo Qi retreated from these emotions, controlling himself to carefully avoid Liu Ziyi's active consciousness. She was too pure, sometimes not even bothering to hide her thoughts, and Luo Qi had to be cautious to control himself from passively reading her mind. Luo Qi's thoughts shifted, and he suddenly realized that Zhao Jiaozhu on the other side was like a stone; even after witnessing things that would be enough to overturn a clever Mage's cognition, he had almost no emotional fluctuations.

Luo Qi focused his attention on Zhao Jiaozhu and could clearly observe that his thoughts and emotions were actually changing due to the new discoveries. But unlike others, his thoughts and emotions were operating more actively, maintaining a good response to all new findings, and he kept himself in a completely positive state, ready to incorporate all new discoveries into his positive thinking at any time. To put it in common parlance, Zhao Jiaozhu's emotional intelligence was truly heaven-defying; he was born to be a theological leader.

If being a leader required maintaining professionalism under various circumstances, then Zhao Jiaozhu was truly professional. Even without delving into his mind, Luo Qi could guess that his entire thought process now was to incorporate the new findings into the Lotus Burner's ideological system, write the three big stars of Orion into a new manual of faith, and construct a better ancestor worship and anti-human ideology.

Luo Qi had suspected it somewhat before, and now he was increasingly certain that his guess was correct: Zhao Jiaozhu was likely no longer an independent and complete individual.

Two warning knocks sounded; it was Wusu leaning against the doorway. He tapped the wall to remind Luo Qi to leave, and Luo Qi nodded in understanding.

Luo Qi dragged the dazed Liu Ziyi out, and Zhao Jiaozhu soon followed. They returned to the hexagonal corridor. This time, they entered the second room. Perhaps at this moment, calling it the Second Cabin was more appropriate.

The Light Magic of the Second Cabin activated naturally; the interior of the cabin was a circular space with a diameter of about three meters. The most eye-catching feature was the transparent cylindrical container in the center of the cabin, about two meters high and one meter in diameter. Luo Qi walked over and touched the surface of the cylinder; he could feel that this container was still operating at low energy, and the translucent interior was empty. He knew what this was, just like the ones they had seen before, only this one was smaller and separate. If expressed in human technical terms, this was a Cultivation Chamber, or rather, a Life Support Device.

Just as he had seen, the Progenitor Mage used Cultivation Chambers to cultivate bodies. They cultivated adult bodies without any mental activity; the bodies were like equipment, and souls or consciousness would "wear" the bodies. Theoretically speaking, since thoughts could be downloaded into human bodies, they could also be downloaded into the bodies of other creatures. Luo Qi could put himself into a cat or a bird; there was no reason the Progenitor Mages wouldn't do the same. They were even more casual when doing these things; they even put themselves into Alien creatures.

In the memory of the Alien Queen, she saw this "Mysterious Bird" open, and a creature similar in appearance to her walked down, but its brain was filled with a Mage's soul. Was this a bit like the ancient humans? The Mysterious Bird landed on the earth, a creature similar in appearance to humans walked down, and its brain was filled with a Mage's soul.

Luo Qi was very curious: what were the Mages' own true forms? Were they really humanoid? Had they changed their forms countless times during their long journeys? Their true forms might be human, might be Alien, might be lizard, might be insect, might be a five-clawed golden dragon—who knows? The Six Paths of Reincarnation might just describe the six stages of their fashion trends.

Then what are we Mages? What do we count as?

If Luo Qi boldly used what he knew to speculate, the Progenitor Mages... no matter what they really were or where they came from, what they seemed best at and most interested in were biological entities. They preserved and created the primitive dinosaurs of Earth, they collected Aliens in other worlds, and they deeply studied the characteristics of Aliens. Compared to other creatures, the symbiosis of Aliens was definitely the most worth studying; this was normal. Then where did Mages come from? This world could find too much evidence to prove that humans were the original masters here; human evolutionary theory should be valid, and humans had a vast sea of research proving their origins. Then what about Mages? Mages had no source, nor did they have a future.

Humans had been evolving, or rather, progressing. But Mages had not. The species of Mages seemed to be in its prime the moment it appeared, and then it began to decline. Now, a deep twilight had shrouded the heads of the Mages. The Lotus Burner sensed the arrival of the twilight, but their direction of response was completely wrong. No matter how much they hated and envied humans, it could not save the future of the Mages.

There were many versions of Mage legends, but it seemed all versions indicated that the Progenitor Mages created the Mages. After seeing so many creations of the Progenitor Mages, this statement sounded quite terrifying. What kind of things did the Progenitor Mages create? Aliens, dinosaurs, insects, snakes... and Mages. The only mercy was that Mages were the only ones among these creations allowed to possess free will.

He had thought of these things, and someone as clever as Liu Ziyi must have thought of them long ago. Wusu, the Mage from Wushan, seemed to have guessed it long ago; the reason he was willing to follow a junior like Luo Qi on this trip was likely just to confirm Wushan's own speculations.

Yet the Progenitor Mages very strictly separated Mages and humans. Mages and humans were so similar that they could easily fall in love, just like Guan Xinyue's grandfather and Nainai. But Mages and humans would not produce offspring. Mages could not... Mages could not contaminate human genes. This sorrowful thought skipped through Luo Qi's mind. Suddenly, he thought of Du Zhengyi again. The Du Clan were descendants of the Progenitor Mages and humans; it seemed that in all the legends, only this one involved humans. If the Du Clan were children of the Progenitor Mages and humans, wouldn't that mean the Progenitor Mages and humans were the real family, while the Mages were the outsiders?

Once this thought started, Luo Qi found it hard to restrain himself from going off-track, suddenly wondering if he could let Du Zhengyi and a human try, would a child actually be born? Would little Du-Du be more like a human or more like Du Zhengyi? This thought was about to scatter uncontrollably when Luo Qi suddenly remembered that the Du Clan was once a rare, flourishing, large family in the Mage World. A single family of theirs once filled a small town; how could they have only mated with Mages? Mages having cubs was even more difficult than for giant pandas.