CHAPTER 4 - THE MYSTERIOUS UNCLE’S PRESENT
“I’m home grandma!” MC 1 called out as he barged through the door while depositing his shoes on the shoe rack.
“Did you go and extort presents from all the oldies under the mountain again?” the enchantress replied from the kitchen. Although MC 1 referred to her as grandma, it did not mean that she looked old. In fact, she seemed to be no more than 20 herself, but similar to the rest of the villagers who appeared to be stuck at a certain age in terms of their looks, she was too. She was actually a rather beautiful woman in comparison to the other old grannies in the village. That’s why everyone called her the enchantress.
“Of course I did grandma. Do you want to take a peek at my loot?” MC 1 replied shamelessly.
“No thanks. There is actually one more piece of treasure that your mysterious uncle hid in your room somewhere,” she said back.
Of course MC 1 did not stick around to hear her say that. Having seen his mysterious uncle vanish into the mist just a short while ago he had long since dashed up to his room to look for the present.
Upon opening his room door he was greeted by the sight of a brand new book on his small table. Hopping over he saw the title, “On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection” by Charles Darwin printed on the front. He instantly recognized the script as being from the place far in the North called the Cerulean Empire. It is a language with 26 characters known as alphabets that each represent a particular sound and when put together create the words of the language. Apparently they can manipulate the yuan qi they collect in their body by way of sound and do all kinds of weird things with it. There was once a period in the history of this world that the wielders of this ability known as magicians had colonized the entire planet but then due to internal conflicts it gave the 5 kingdoms of the east enough time to form an alliance and drive them out.
Hm… yeah the language they use is actually English from Earth. This narrator, me, has no idea why it exists in this cultivation world. But back on topic…
Seeing the strange book MC 1 was even more excited thinking it really was the mist vanishing skill. However after spending an hour reading it he was quite disappointed as a lot of what it was talking about was really strange and had nothing to do with vanishing into the mist. However, it was not blathering nonsense either and since it was free knowledge he continued reading it anyway. There were a few confusing bits to it though, like why there were so many “,in 18__,” and it took him a while before he realized that this was referring to a particular year. However he had no idea when the year 1800 was as the calendar year he was currently in was 991 S.H.E. or 991 Supreme Human Era, since the rise of the Supreme Human Race from the Human race happened approximately 991 years ago. He had a feeling however that the year referenced in this book was from a time in the P.S.H.E. also known as the Pre-Supreme Human Era. However, he had no idea when. Thinking up to this point he went about highlighting and circling everything which made no sense to him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
However, then he read one particular sentence. “One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” He was dumbfounded. As he kept reading he continued to run into similar statements all leading up to one conclusion in his mind. Shortly after the Supreme Human Era arrived a lot of the records of the past of the Pre-Supreme Human Era were destroyed in the first century when the leaders of all the nations were Supreme Humans. Then, in order to unify the species all non-supreme human males had been enlisted into the various militaries and sent to the demon battlefield to die while the women were left and with only supreme human males available, so ended the race known as human.
This book must definitely have been from before that era. In fact, its entire premise seemed to be foreshadowing those precise events and looking at history from a perspective from this book, such an event occuring was truly not something abnormal. However, after reading this entire book MC 1 noticed that something was incredibly wrong. If someone were to read something like this, it would definitely lead them into developing a need to endlessly increase their strength in order to not die off. However, if everyone were to act on this kind of a philosophy then wouldn’t that precisely cause this philosophy to become true! If, in the pursuit of strength so as to leave behind one's genes one steps on others and takes away their chances of reproduction by killing them than the mentality of the strong eats the weak would result in this idea becoming a fact!
What to do? MC 1 thought to himself silently. Although he still did not understand 80% of the book, he had clearly grasped the main idea and it was an extremely compelling one. In fact, with the amount of evidence it was presenting there was almost no possibility of it not being a true model that describes how species arise and die in the world. In fact, he had heard plenty of stories of cultivators who had no regard for those weaker than them would strike to kill them as if they were cutting cabbages. To think that the rule of life was so brutal. This was something that gravely disappointed the pure heart of the 12 year old.
Meanwhile the enchantress was sitting across the table from the mysterious uncle.
“Why did you give him that book?” She asked.
“If he is exposed to this idea earlier in his life then it can help him mature faster. It will also help mitigate the shock he would face when he goes to the outside world.”
“What if he never goes outside?”
“He will go outside within the next 3 years,” the mysterious uncle replied in a definite tone.
“What makes you so sure about that?” the enchantress narrowed her eyes.
“Because you will die sometime in these 3 years.”
Hearing this reply there was visible shock on the enchantress’s face. Knowing that the one who spoke was actually the mysterious uncle she was almost certain that he spoke the truth. In fact, she had also been having a premonition of her approaching doom recently. If she were to die, her grandson would definitely go out into the world beyond Parrotise.