The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 1088: Apple

“What do you mean by you being the sole survivor over the previous rounds, Baili?” Gao Yang asked.

“Your one-hundred-year Mist World is only one round. There are many before you.” Baili Yi’s answer was clearly not comprehensive enough, but he answered only the actual question according to Gao Yang’s rules.

War Tiger asked a follow-up question. “When you say we’re the last hope of the world, do you mean we’re the last round?”

“I believe so,” Baili Yi said.

“If this round ends, where do we go?” Vermilion Bird asked the third question according to what had been established.

Baili Yi shook his head slowly. “Nowhere.”

That was to be expected, so the answer didn’t arouse any shock.

Nine Frost's turn came next. Zhang Wei kept making faces at him from across the fire. Understanding the unspoken message, Nine Frost asked the one thing Zhang Wei was most concerned about: “Do the Gates of Closure actually exist?”

Baili Yi thought for a moment before meeting Nine Frost’s eyes. “When you say Gates of Closure, do you mean hope of saving the world?”

“Yes.”

Baili Yi smiled faintly. “Then yes, it exists. It’s what all my efforts are for.”

“Great!”

“There’s hope!”

“No sacrifice is in vain...”

Chatters erupted from the crowd. The answer rekindled their hope, warmer than even the bonfire.

“Silence, silence!” War Tiger tried to restore order.

Once the others had settled down, Nine Frost continued, “That was Zhang Wei’s question. Now I’ll ask mine.”

“Go on.”

“Mr. Baili, I noticed that you always said ‘save the world’ instead of ‘save humanity’. Personally, I don’t care where humans go as long as we live.”

He paused. “I’m not sure if I’ve made myself clear. I believe humanity should only fight for our own existence, not the world. If more people have to die for the world to be saved, what’s the point?”

Baili Yi’s eyes glinted. “It seems that Gao Yang was right to suggest this method. Having the individual questions posed one by one exposed many questions. It seems that there exist many fundamental inconsistencies between our perceptions. We must fix that first.”

They quietly waited for him to continue.

Baili Yi adjusted his glasses. “To you, humans do not belong to the Mist World, and the Gates of Closure present hope, an exit out of this place. You don’t care about the fleeting and false Mist World. You are looking to head to the real world—the true, lasting world.”

“Yes.” Nine Frost started to say more but stopped, remembering he had had his turn.

“Is that not the case?” Qing Ling asked the question.

“To my knowledge,” Baili Yi paused, his gloomy eyes colored by regret, “that’s not the case, no.”

Silence stretched. Dr. Jia was the only one staring at Baili Yi with excitement dancing in his eyes. The truth of the world was getting more and more interesting.

Sitting by the bonfire, Baili Yi scanned the crowd and said seriously, “The Mist World is the only world, everyone. There is nothing else outside this world.”

Dr. Jia let out a genuine laugh. “Oh, this is fun!”

“Impossible! How can that be?” Zhang Wei jumped to his feet. “You must be joking, Brother Baili!”

“Zhang Wei,” Gao Yang intervened softly.

“Sorry, sorry...” Zhang Wei sat down, his face flushed from the suppressed emotions.

The group’s mood plummeted right after the soar like a rollercoaster. They all understood Zhang Wei’s reaction—Baili Yi’s answer had effectively proven Qilin’s words, that there were no Gates of Closure.

Qilin had known that humanity had nowhere to go and no way to resist, so he chose the Spinning Top.

“Mr. Baili, I-I don’t get it,” Hong Xiaoxiao weakly said, raising her hand. “Didn’t you say there have been many rounds? Shouldn’t each round be a world? Even though we are the last round, there should be other worlds before ours, yet you said this is the only world.”

“Good question,” Baili Yi said encouragingly.

Hong Xiaoxiao blushed and lowered her hand, pursing her lips.

“To me, it’s self-evident, but it is a little difficult for you to wrap your heads around.”

“I’ll start with the conclusion.” Baili Yi raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. “There has ever only been one world. I, you, all humans, and even all creatures exist in the same world, the world we are in now.”

“However, the throughline of the world—or its timeline, if you will—has been separated into several segments, which became different worlds. Each world is considered a round. It’s like an earthworm getting cut up before regenerating into multiple individual earthworms.”

“Haha, now I get it!” Dr. Jia exclaimed, his eyes lighting up with understanding.

The others didn’t fully understand the explanation, but it shocked them all the same.

Gao Yang alone was silent and unconvinced. As someone who had transmigrated into this world, he couldn’t fully buy the explanation.

Thinking about it, though, there was no saying for certainty that his transmigration was real. And Baili Yi wasn’t posing the concept of a multiverse; the man meant that to the universe, it was unique and one.

If Gao Yang brought up transmigration and didn’t get an answer, the discussion would only be further muddled. He decided to let Baili Yi finish first.

Baili Yi rose to his feet, an energy chalk suddenly in his hand. With a move of his hand, a golden line appeared above the bonfire. He continued to move the chalk, and the line was divided into seven segments of different lengths.

The leftmost segment was the longest, about a meter, and every following segment was shorter than the previous one. The rightmost segment was only a few centimeters long.

Baili Yi gestured at the illustration, “Just like this line, the one-hundred-year Mist World is the last segment.”

He isolated the second last segment with a wave of the chalk. It was about twenty centimeters long. “And I’m from this round, lasting about three hundred years.”

They nodded in understanding.

Chen Ying counted the segments and asked, “Are there only seven rounds in total?”

“The history and the truth of the world cannot be passed down reliably, but I’ll say that there are at least seven rounds according to what I know.”

Chen Ying nodded, staring at the last segment with lingering shock. “And we...are the last round.”

“Let’s talk about that later, Chen Ying,” Dr. Jia interrupted impatiently. “Let’s get back to the earthworm. Tell us how that came to be, Brother Baili.”

Although Dr. Jia wasn’t following the rules, Gao Yang and War Tiger didn’t stop him. This was the question on everyone’s mind.

And Baili had intended to speak on that. “What I’m going to tell you isn’t my personal speculation, but truths earned from the sacrifice of numerous lives—at least it’s as close to the truth as possible.”

He waved his chalk, and white lines drew an apple above the bonfire. It looked three-dimensional from every angle, rotating slowly as if displaying its appleness to each observer.

“Now, imagine the world as this apple.” Baili Yi lifted his other hand and made a circular gesture, pulling to the side like he was photoshopping a picture. Immediately, the apple duplicated. The second apple looked identical to the first apple, only it was drawn in gray lines. It looked dark pink under the firelight.

“The apple on the right is white. It’s healthy and nutritious.”

“The apple on the left is rotten, no longer edible.”

“There is an apple on the tree. Before it’s picked, it can either be a good apple or a bad apple, but no one can tell, right?”

They nodded as they listened.

“Now, this apple on the tree is lucky to be a good apple with delicious flesh. The nutrients think nothing of it. They believe the apple should be good.”

“The apple is the world, and the nutrients the humans,” Gao Yang said.

“Yes.” Baili Yi smiled, looking at the gray apple in the air. “But the nutrients are wrong. The apple can be a bad apple, and there is no nutrient in the bad apple.”

“So humans cannot survive in the rotten world?” Gregor spoke up.

“No.” Baili Yi shook his head. “There has never been any nutrient inside the bad apple, just like there have never been humans in the rotten world. Humans only exist in the good world, under the possibility and premise that the world is a good world.”

“Ughhh! What are you talking about?!” Canary tugged at her hair, whining. “My head’s hurting.”

“Good, that’s your question.” Dr. Jia had no time for imbeciles.

“Ha, ignorant mortal.” Nainai crossed her arms derisively.

“Good, your turn’s done, too.” Dr. Jia did not discriminate between ignorant fools and delusional fools. He smiled at Baili Yi. “So the world is a wave function.”

“Wave what?” Zhang Wei blinked.

“Know the Wave-Particle Duality?” Dr. Jia asked.

“Wayne Participle? What are you talking about?”

Gao Yang said with cool composure, “Just think of it as everything being a probability. The world, too.”

Having given himself a crash course in relevant physics after hearing the Observation Theory regarding the Mist from Dr. Jia, Gao Yang understood enough to translate the concept.

War Tiger chuckled and teased, “Our Interpreter Gao returns!”