Chapter 3671: Sketching the Path Traveled

When people debate whether the chicken or the egg came first, they instinctively limit their thinking to the chicken species itself.

But chickens did not appear out of nowhere.

Their emergence required a long process of species iteration.

Chickens are like this, and humans naturally cannot escape this developmental process.

Human civilization began in the two river valleys and has lasted only over five thousand years so far.

But the history of Homo sapiens already exceeds three hundred thousand years.

If we trace back further to ape-men, the earliest can be traced back two million years.

This line of thought suddenly opened Ye Chen's perspective; he suddenly realized that the cultivators who built the Antarctic underground city should have nothing to do with current human civilization.

Ye Chen and Lin Wan'er walked through the forests of western Sichuan at the cusp of spring and summer, exchanging words like unraveling silk or drawing a suspect's portrait, gradually sketching the path of cultivation.

Ye Chen sighed: "In the five-thousand-year timeline of human civilization, the average lifespan of ordinary people has developed from twenty or thirty years initially to over seventy today, and the five thousand years that nurtured civilization have already seen at least over a hundred generations pass the torch."

"And between these two key parameters—five thousand years and over a hundred generations—the truly important one is not the five thousand years, but the over a hundred generations."

"If one generation lived five thousand years, their innovative capacity would certainly be poor; only through constant turnover of younger generations bringing new thoughts, new horizons, and new ideas can civilization develop rapidly."

"A highly developed modern technological civilization requires five thousand years and over a hundred generations to nurture; then what about a highly developed Daoist civilization? It likely also needs dozens or even hundreds of generations to reach its peak."

Lin Wan'er nodded in agreement, her expression solemn as she sighed: "Then the question arises, as Young Master said, if a cultivator's generation has an average lifespan at least ten times that of ordinary people, or even more, calculating the development of Daoist civilization with this parameter would make its timeline at least tens of thousands of years—meaning, if our inference holds, then during Earth's several-billion-year development, a Daoist civilization sustaining at least tens of thousands of years once existed."

Ye Chen said seriously: "We have only calculated the timeline after this civilization truly formed—the period when chickens truly became chickens—but what about the generations before the chicken? Did those early cultivators also need several million years to evolve from ancient apes to ape-men, then to Homo sapiens, through continuous iterative evolution?"

Lin Wan'er suddenly furrowed her brows and said solemnly: "I suddenly realized a mistake."

Ye Chen asked: "What mistake?"

Lin Wan'er explained: "From the perspective of civilization, human-made objects hardly survive extremely long periods of gradual dissolution, but from a biological perspective, traces left by humans are extremely hard to erase over time—fossils are the best example."

After a pause, Lin Wan'er continued: "I studied at Harvard many years ago, when evolutionary biology was just budding; scientists worldwide were researching evolution, and countless people were obsessed with excavating various ancient biological fossils, the craze comparable to a gold rush; among the universities pioneering this field, Harvard was among the leaders."

"At that time, scholars already had sufficient and complete biological evidence chains proving evolution's existence—from Cambrian trilobite fossils to Cretaceous dinosaur fossils, to ancient ape-men fossils from several million years ago; these are biological evidences, and in modern times, scientists have also discovered microbial fossils from over three billion years ago; these biological evidences fully reveal Earth's journey from the birth of life to the birth of humanity."

"In recent decades, although I cannot involve myself in worldly affairs, many enterprises and institutions I once invested in continue related research, from fossil excavation to gene sequencing, further confirming evolution's uniqueness."

Ye Chen listened doubtfully, watching Lin Wan'er as he awaited her final conclusion.

Lin Wan'er took a deep breath at this point and said solemnly: "Young Master, I have said so much; the core I wish to express is that modern humanity, in the theory of evolution, is orderly in inheritance and possesses uniqueness—all biological evidence chains prove our existence came step by step through evolution, but no evidence can prove that during Earth's biological evolution, there was another human evolutionary history; if the Daoist civilization we previously inferred truly exists, the real contradiction lies in their having no biological evidence chain in evolution."

Saying this, Lin Wan'er murmured with a startled expression: "This also means they are not native Earthlings!"

Ye Chen suddenly gasped in shock!

Lin Wan'er's ability to unravel silk is indeed extremely strong.

She, in the time it takes to finish a cup of tea, has completely stripped away the core contradiction.

Modern humans, in Earth's developmental history, have verifiable origins as orderly-inheritance indigenous natives.

But these cultivators with great divine powers have no inheritance traces; Earth's microorganisms, dinosaurs, monkeys, apes, ancient ape-men, and Homo sapiens have no relation to them; in the past two or three hundred years, countless scientists and biologists have dug three feet deep across Earth, yet found no clues related to them.

This is somewhat terrifying upon reflection.

Ye Chen asked in shock: "If what we discuss is true, then they should have come from other planets to Earth, and then left Earth?"

Lin Wan'er nodded lightly, unable to hide her astonishment: "Changing perspective, they might be like the interstellar colonists or interstellar plunderers in science fiction novels; to cultivate, they exhausted their home planet's resources, and to sustain themselves, they began seeking other planets in the universe with cultivation resources; Earth might merely be one of them."

Saying this, Lin Wan'er sighed: "So Young Master, imagine why there would be an age of Dharma Decline when heaven and earth no longer possess spiritual energy? Before that age, did it mean heaven and earth were filled with spiritual energy nurtured over Earth's several-billion-year development? Even if spiritual stone deposits likely exist worldwide, what about the spiritual energy and spiritual stones spread across Earth?"

Ye Chen exclaimed: "That must be because these people came, exhausted Earth's spiritual stones, then left here, artificially turning Earth into the Dharma Decline era."

After speaking, Ye Chen furrowed his brows tightly and murmured: "If this inference holds true, then it means their arrival artificially severed Earth's chance to evolve a Daoist civilization."

Lin Wan'er nodded: "It should be so, though I feel this may not be a bad thing; from their process of migration, plunder, and remigration, one can see their consumption of spiritual resources is too great, preventing them from forming a healthy cyclical development path; precisely because they drained Earth's spiritual energy, our later Earth humans naturally adapted to the path of technological development; although modern humans' individual strength is far inferior to theirs, overall strength may not necessarily be weaker than theirs, and I feel technological development is the healthiest and most reasonable model!"