The Creatures That We Are-Chapter 1089: Fundamental

Many looks for help were cast his way. Gao Yang knew he had to play interpreter now.

He thought for a moment and explained, “Let’s continue with the apple analogy. Before it falls from the tree, it’s either a good apple or a bad apple.”

“A good apple is nutritious, and the nutrients are the many lives including humans. On the other hand, the bad apple isn’t nutritious. There’s never any lives there to start with.”

“Any question up to this point?” Gao Yang asked.

Zhang Wei shook his head. “I get that much!”

“Alright. Moving on.” Gao Yang nodded. “Wave-particle duality means that light can either be a wave or a particle.”

Baili Yi swept his energy chalk through the air. Above the bonfire, waves of light rippled outward on one side, while streams of distinct particles flowed on the other.

Gao Yang stood up and pointed at the illustration. “People see light as either waves or particles depending on their observation method. Then, when people aren’t observing light, the states overlap.”

“In layman’s terms, light has a probability of being waves and a probability of being particles. Light is both waves and particles.”

“Now, let’s go back to the apple on the tree. Just like light, it’s both a good apple and a bad apple. If it’s a good apple, the nutrients—humans—exist. If it's a bad apple, humans do not exist.”

“That’s right.” Dr. Jia nodded approvingly.

Zhang Wei shook his head. “An apple is either good or bad. How can it be good and bad? I understand everything until that part.”

War Tiger chuckled. “And you’re both understanding and not understanding the point now.”

“And you’ve fully understood everything, Uncle Tiger?” Zhang Wei challenged.

“Of course,” War Tiger proudly said. “You just need a working brain.”

Zhang Wei shut his mouth.

“Just accept that as is for now, Zhang Wei,” Gao Yang continued. “The apple is both good and bad at the moment, so its nutrients—namely humans—both exist and don’t exist.”

He turned to Baili Yi. “Is that right?”

“Mostly right, but there are details you’re missing.”

Baili Yi waved his hand. The apples on the intangible chalkboard merged into one, its overlapping lines vibrating at high frequency, alternating between white and gray while wobbling.

“Everyone, our apple was originally a good apple on a branch. It’s fresh and juicy, full of nutrients. And it was stable.”

“One day, however, something we didn’t understand happened. The apple fell from the branch, and during the long fall, it became both good and bad, and the nutrients both present and absent.”

“In that overlapped state, humans realized that something was wrong: the world had been changed by some incomprehensible, irresistible power. There’s no way for humans to know who was responsible and what the power was. A name was given to It—Gluttonous Snake.”

“Ha, it fits.” Dr. Jia was the first to grasp the implications.

“Consider the snake a worm burrowing into the good apple, slowly consuming it whole. But it isn't eating the apple itself—it's devouring the probability that 'the apple is good,' transforming it into 'the apple is bad.' The apple remains whole, yet its healthy flesh rots.”

“The Mist,” Vermilion Bird coldly uttered the familiar word; it sounded so foreign now that they had a different context.

Gasps could be heard all around. Even the warm fire couldn't ward off the bone-deep chill of understanding.

“Yes.” Baili Yi nodded. “The Mist is the manifestation of the badness of the apple. The bad apple’s flesh is still flesh, but it’s not nutrient—meaning there are no humans. However, a bad apple is an apple, so the world does not vanish. Humans are the ones vanishing.”

“Wait, let me sort this out...” War Tiger was getting lost. He rubbed his temple with the hand holding a cigarette. “You mean that the Gluttonous snake first turned the apple both good and bad. Then it gradually reduces the probability of good while increasing the probability of bad, until the apple becomes 100% bad?”

Vermilion Bird added in an unsteady voice, “The moment the apple hits the ground is the moment the duality collapses. The good apple will have become the bad apple. The deadline is the year 2020 of the Mist World.[1]”

Baili Yi nodded. With a wave of his hand, he conjured a mural drawn with simple lines above the bonfire. The drawing slowly changed like stop-motion animation.

There was a good apple on a tree, hanging heavy on a branch.

A wind knocked it loose. While it fell to the ground, the apple alternated between good and bad at a high frequency.

Then when it hit the ground a few seconds later, the apple was already a bad apple.

The awakeners watched in stunned silence, the implication sinking in.

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Only Dr. Jia burst with excitement, slapping his thigh as he jumped to his feet. “That explained it. When Green Snake and Nainai went through the Mist, what they saw was the original world. We restored the probability of the apple being good for that area for a few minutes—”

“Stop, stop, stop!” Zhang Wei hurriedly interrupted. “Dr. Jia, why don’t you have a rest and let Brother Yang explain? I was finally catching on, but you lost me again.”

“Agreed!”

“Let Captain Gao explain.”

“Yes, that’ll be more easily understandable.”

Many shared the sentiment.

“Dr. Jia meant that the desert beyond the Mist has always been there,” Gao Yang said. “It’s never disappeared, only turned into a bad apple—a world where humans do not exist.”

“Humans can’t enter the Mist because if we did, there would be humans, and that’s at odds with the definition of the Mist being a world without humans.”

“The world hasn’t been devoured by the Mist. It’s never truly disappeared. It’s only turned from a world with humans into a world without humans. The probability of human existence is being converted into nonexistence.”

“Humans cannot go into the Mist because humans can never be part of the probability of nonexistence.”

“However, humans have nowhere to flee because the world will sooner or later be wholly taken over by the probability of there being no human. The bad apple isn’t nutritious. There is no human in the Mist World.”

Baili Yi nodded and announced the conclusion in a bleak voice:

“Humans aren’t wiped out, but turned nonexistent.”

“The end of humans isn’t death, but never having existed.”

A deathly silence fell. Some had grasped the full implications, others only partially understood, and a few grew increasingly confused. Yet they all felt the same overwhelming despair.

Their enemy wasn't something, but nothing.

“The snake’s attack on the world may be a most fundamental assault on the universe. My mentor called it...”

Baili Yi looked up at the beautiful Milky Way, his eyes pessimistic but not despairing.

“Zero Probability.”

1. If you remember, this is the number Gao Yang increased his Luck to in order to unlock the Wishing Fountain. ☜