Chapter 1112
Chapter 1112 - 1998: The Struggle for the Dao
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"...This, is exactly what I need."
Lying on his modest bed, Lu Ping’an silently flipped through the book while ignoring the shouting and yelling of the two little girls below.
He had roughly flipped through the book, some of which Eve had helped to annotate... For those code-like references, she surprisingly remembered each one very clearly, which somewhat amazed Lu Ping’an.
"Are you underestimating me?!"
The sensitive little girl immediately became fierce with tooth and claw.
Lu Ping’an pressed her back down and stuffed a spiced chicken leg into her mouth to shut her up; lately, she had become more clingy.
But in fact, she truly had received a complete "elite" education, especially concerning some strange things related to religion, life, and alchemy.
Lu Ping’an suspected that Big Cat knew this too but was just too lazy to explain it to him, though he had no evidence.
"’Harmony’, ’coexistence’, ’environmental construction’ — I never thought I would come across such concepts within the Life system...."
In Lu Ping’an’s mind, the Life system was like a "Fighting Beast Arena," placing various materials and species together, where they would devour and prey on each other, ultimately yielding a stronger species.... All for the sake of evolution, the relationships between lives were more about predation and competition.
However, in these textbooks from Lin Nu’s Church, their discussion focused not on the "individual" from the start, but on the "environment."
They wouldn’t even discuss breeding; instead, they studied additional factors like soil, weather, and moisture.
".....Pursuing the evolution of the environment rather than the individual — is this the fundamental difference between Lin Nu and Big Cat?"
𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞
The more Lu Ping’an read, the more he realized that perhaps they started from the same point, both being pure "evolution" seekers.
While the goals may seem similar, the directions, if not divergent, were at least completely opposite.
Both pursuing evolution, both seeking a "species" with certain specific needs, Lin Woman Power would create a specific environment for potential species to attempt to adapt.
They would create a "big cage," whether it was for social, solitary, or parasitic living, they’d place them all inside, without interference; they would only wait for the result, then adjust the environment and begin a new round of selection.
What the ultimate "champion life form" was did not matter, nor did it matter if it met their needs. What was important in this process was the gain, the data.... The champion species could be thrown into the next selection round, and the data could be used to adjust an environment more suitable for evolution. Whenever they needed something, they’d just produce it en masse in the same environment.
Lin Nu wasn’t the fervent "naturalist" Lu Ping’an had imagined her to be; on the contrary, she was an extreme environmental interventionist.
She would continuously adjust the adaptive environment, forcing life forms to evolve... If that wasn’t extreme, then truly nobody was.
".....Birds of a feather."
Lu Ping’an sighed, the Evil Gods and the Proper God, perhaps there really wasn’t much distance between them.
What seemed like gentle concepts became possibly even more cruel than Big Cat upon a bit of thought.
For instance, Big Cat would throw a group of life forms into the Fighting Beast Arena, letting them devour, kill, and mate with each other to obtain the most optimized species or individual.
Whereas Lin Nu would create a harsh environment for a pure survival of the fittest, one that was completely beyond intervention. If that environment expanded, it was hard to say who would die off more.
Following her logic.....
".....War, massacre, even pollution and erosion in themselves, are all part of the natural environment and are acceptable forms of ’selection’? That’s a bit too cruel....."
"Heh, I was right to call her a bitch, wasn’t I."
Big Cat always jumped in at critical moments, especially when Lu Ping’an mentioned key words.
Lu Ping’an didn’t respond, instead he covered his head with the book and fell into deep thought.
Although the textbooks used elegant language, with phrases like "Natural Law" and "survival of the fittest," Lu Ping’an was no longer a rookie, and he could see the "extremism" within.
According to this statement, Lin Nu truly could cause a Nation-destroyer, species-extinction War, just to collect data and determine which species is more suitable for survival.
What they sought wasn’t even survivors, but "environment," meaning the collection of various extreme environments and considering them as "Nature"... the so-called Forest Land.
As long as the Forest Land is good, then advantaged species will naturally be endless, Life is constantly evolving, there’s basically no need to pursue a specific goal.
They may not actively kill or Devour, but if they determine You can’t adapt to the ’environment,’ a large-scale extinction is definitely brutal enough.
"Is this what Proper Gods are like... really is..."
Lu Ping’an was speechless for a moment, unsure of which sister was more extreme, only that both seemed to be cut from the same cloth.
"%%&&."
In an instant, more curses from Big Cat that needed censoring erupted on the other side.
Clearly, she didn’t think so.
"...I think you’re quite similar, especially cruel in your attitude towards Life..."
And Lu Ping’an smiled as he rubbed salt into the wound.
"It’s not the same! When I mentioned my hometown, my people, that woman actually said ’How wonderful, such a perfect Life evolutionary Forest Land, you’re alive because you adapted to the environment’, she actually Blessed me! Blessed me, a Dead Survivor, said the death of my people was natural! Said my people made me what I am!"
"Oh, so this is the origin of your conflict. Unexpectedly simple..."
Alright, Lu Ping’an, who elicited some interesting information, naturally received a barrage of scolding.
But by this time, Lu Ping’an also increasingly understood the differences and divergences in their paths.
Both of them were actually following the "species evolution" offshoot within the Life system, except one pursued individual evolution, trying to become the top of the Biological Chain.
The other, didn’t care who stood at the top... She was more like an Observer, a Controller, a manipulator of environments, one...
"A son of a... She didn’t care who was King today... heh, her Kings are periodically replaced, she’s the one who crowns, the selector, never the King... she just continually accumulates and evolves her own environment, then introduces more so-called Kings-in-waiting, no matter who the temporary King is, she herself is always the Queen..."
With Big Cat’s firsthand testimony, Lu Ping’an grew to understand the difference in this path all the more.
Putting it this way, it was no wonder Big Cat saw it as a deadly poison; one pursued individual evolution, the other pursued environmental evolution, and in essence, the two were contradictory and even necessarily competitive.
A powerful individual could overcome and even transform the environment, while a dominant environment could shape both the group and the individual... In essence, they were truly both the same direction, completely opposite "work" methods.
And at this moment, Lu Ping’an began to understand as well.
"No wonder you previously stopped me from accessing Lin Nu’s ’Knowledge’; indeed, it has a high degree of compatibility with me..."
"No, I wasn’t worried about you following her path—following the former’s approach is the biggest advantage of the professional system. Rather, I was concerned that, while You were too weak, jumping directly into Lin Nu’s cruel ’Natural environment’ would mean either elimination or Assimilation."
At this time, Big Cat unexpectedly took on the demeanor of a Mentor.
"She’s obsessed with indirect interference or even non-intervention, and actually, there are many problems with that approach, even more risks than my path..."
Sure enough, it wasn’t that she didn’t understand; she just didn’t want to say.
But now, with her Analysis, Lu Ping’an also filled in his own "foundation."
Or rather, he was the first lucky one who could simultaneously access two paths with the same origin and, with the help of the Creator, search for and summarize his own way.
— End of Chapter 1112 —