novelsite Chapter 59, First Dialogue
Chapter 59, First Dialogue
Frat relit the pipe:
"Do the mining committee members know that Homo erectus was domesticating Glossoptera?"
"I know, but his exact words were—'They tame the Grimoires, we tame them, let's see who tames whom.'"
Fula took a drag of his cigarette, the smoke carried by the wind towards the mine.
In the center of the mine, the upright ape riding on the back of the Grimoire pointed with its front paws at a new vein. The Grimoire turned and walked in that direction, its steps steady, like a well-trained warhorse.
"The Grimony it was riding was the leader of the Grimony pack," the intelligence chief added. "Taming the leader is equivalent to taming the entire pack."
Fula took the pipe out of his mouth.
"Send a telegram to the Kingdom of Winner Monkeys: The Kingdom of Ivan Bears needs the technical blueprints for the Instinct Testing Laboratory. Not for testing fake humans, but for testing our mining commissioners."
……
Taro Tanuki Country, Kyoto.
Massa and Kerry squatted outside in the courtyard, in front of them the new thing the upright ape had made that day.
It placed the mirror flat on the stone slab, with the mirror facing upwards.
Then, white pebbles were arranged in concentric circles around the mirror—the same as before.
But today it placed something right in the center of the mirror.
A gray pebble.
It's neither black nor white.
It's gray.
Then it dipped its front paws in water from the garden basin and began to paint on the mirror.
The water droplets lingered on the mirror for a very short time, but long enough to make out what they depicted.
One hand.
Seven fingers.
After the painting was finished, the water stains slowly evaporated, and the image of the seven-fingered hand faded more and more in the mirror.
The upright ape squatted beside the mirror, looking at Massa and Kerry with its clear black and white eyes.
Then it lowered its head and carved a line of small characters on the edge of the stone slab.
"It is in the mirror, and the mirror is in our eyes. When we close our eyes, it disappears. But we want to see you, and you want to see us. The gaze never ceases, and the spirit never dies. So we change our approach—not by closing our own eyes, but by covering its eyes."
Kerry looked at the words and asked, "Whose eyes are being covered?"
The upright ape carved two characters.
"Mirror."
Massa frowned: "How do we cover it up?"
The upright ape tapped the gray pebble placed in the center of the mirror with its front paw.
The pebble was just the right size to cover the center of the mirror.
When a gray pebble is placed in the center of a mirror, the reflection no longer shows the person looking in the mirror, but rather the gray pebble itself.
The mirror was covered.
"Cover the mirror with a third color, not black, not white, but gray. Gray is not us, nor you; gray is God Himself."
After the upright ape finished carving the words, it removed the gray pebble from the mirror.
Its face was reflected in the mirror again.
Flat, hairy, black and white eyes.
It looked at itself in the mirror, and then carved the last line of words.
"God wants us to blend red and black into gray, so we give it gray. But not the gray that is blended, but the gray that is pretended. We pretend to be blended, so God thinks we are already gray, and He will stop watching us and go find the next pair of red and black. Once He is far away, we wash away the gray. Red is still red, and black is still black. Sharing a table is not okay, but sharing a disguise is."
It was already dark when Kerry came out of the courtyard.
Massa followed behind him, and the two walked in silence for a long time.
"It's teaching us to deceive God," Massa said.
Kerry nodded: "Using gray to deceive Seven Fingers wasn't a real fusion, it was a disguise. God wanted gray, so he gave it gray. After that, red and black continued to live their separate lives."
"How long can this lie last?"
"I don't know, but it's better than mutual destruction."
……
That night, dawn broke.
[Day 67 of the Alien Creatures' Arrival - Phase 3 Disguise Progress Update]
[Average progress of camouflage for the Ten Kingdoms' Homo erectus: 87%. Individual from Taro Tanuki Kingdom (Kyoto): 98%.]
[The third ecological niche of Rasotho has expanded to cover the entire territory of Rasotho and extends into the border areas of Namibi and Angula. The total population affected is approximately 87,000.]
[System notification: The rate of transmission of mirror cognition exceeds the predicted model. The basic reproduction number is approximately 3.2. That is, each converted individual infects an average of 3.2 new individuals.]
[System Update: The following exotic creatures have exhibited cross-species cooperative behavior—Homo erectus and Gyrodon. Cooperative type: Riding and command. It has been confirmed that the Homo erectus has successfully tamed the Gyrodon leader.]
[System Final Notification: The order in which the upright apes domesticated the nine exotic creatures is now observable. Current progress: Girafalicoma (Leader-level), Tyrannosaurus Rex (Trading-level), Megaloceros (Gathering-level), the remaining six (Contact-level).]
The light curtain went out.
Lu Cheng stood on the balcony of the Executive Government building, with Carrie standing beside him holding a cup of hot tea.
She handed him the tea, and Lu Cheng took a sip.
"The system says that the upright ape has completed the taming of the Glossy Beast. The upright ape riding on the back of the Glossy Beast in the mining area of Ivan Bear Kingdom is the first case of successful taming."
"And then what happens after the leader is tamed?"
"The tribe is domesticated, and the leader leads the tribe to serve the upright apes. The mining committee of Ivan Bear Kingdom has already proposed outsourcing the mining area to the upright apes. He wasn't transformed by Seven Fingers, he was transformed by Efficiency. Seven Fingers attacks the mind from the mirror, while Efficiency attacks the mind from the wallet, a pincer attack."
Carrie took the teacup and took a sip herself.
In the square, the water dragon beast with half of its fang broken was lying on the ground gnawing on a bone.
It finally found the right angle to gnaw on the bone, and it gnawed it with great crunch.
After finishing gnawing on the bones, it pushed the broken bone fragments aside, yawned, rolled over with its belly in the air, and kicked its four paws a few times.
Then it rolled over and stood up, slashing at the square floor with its claws again.
My toothache is gone, time to work overtime.
Lu Cheng watched its back as it dug in the soil.
"They're going to start digging again tomorrow; I wonder what they'll find."
September 5914 of the Blue Star Calendar, the seventy-first day since the arrival of the alien creatures.
When the water dragon beast dug to a depth of 130 meters, its front paws suddenly broke through the air.
It lurched forward, and if Lu Cheng hadn't caught it by its tail in time, the water dragon beast with half a tooth broken would have rolled right into the cavity.
"Empty cavity?"
Carrie squatted at the entrance of the cave and shone the kerosene lamp downwards.
The light couldn't reach the bottom.
Lu Cheng dragged the water dragon beast back into the cave. It lay down on the side, using its two front paws to grip the edge of the cave entrance, and poked its head in to look down.
After watching for a while, it turned back and poked Lu Cheng's boot with the broken half of its fang, the meaning clear:
There's something down there, I'm too scared to go down, you go down.
"You dug this hole, but you're afraid to go down?" Lu Cheng looked at it.
The water dragon retracted its head, lay down on the ground, buried half of its fang in its front paw, and pretended to be dead.
Lu Cheng had the engineering corps set up a steam winch and lowered an iron cage down.
Inside the cage was a kerosene lamp and a mirror—the mirror facing outwards, angled so that it reflected the bottom of the cage.
The winch was left running for a long time, until it reached the maximum length of the steel cable, before the cage finally reached the bottom.
When the iron cage hit the ground, the kerosene lamp flickered but didn't go out.
The mirror reflected the ground around the cage—not rock, but artificially polished stone slabs.
Concentric circles are carved on the stone slab.
The core is a round hole, about the size of a fist, pitch black, and its destination is unknown.
The outermost circle consists of six concentric rings, each marked with an upright ape symbol from the inside out:
God, upright ape, water dragon, gibbon, tyrannosaurus rex, human.
Unlike the concentric stone tablets carved by the False Man of Rasotho, which place the gods on the outermost layer, this tablet places the gods on the innermost layer.
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