DipNovel Chapter 19, Phase 2: The Thug Bows His Head
Chapter 19, Phase 2: The Thug Bows His Head
Lu Cheng chuckled: "The four big hooligans have finally bowed their heads, though they bowed them very discreetly."
Are you planning to help them?
"I'll help, but not now." Lu Cheng stood up and walked to the window.
"If I help them now, they'll just think I'm lucky. But if I help them when they're truly desperate, they'll remember it for a lifetime."
"So what do we do now?"
Lu Cheng looked out the window at the water dragon beast lying in the square. It was round and lazy, with its big fangs sticking out of the ground. It was ugly but gave him a sense of security.
"Keep digging. The surface is their battlefield, the underground is our escape route."
……
Meanwhile, in Taro Tanuki Country, Kyoto.
On Prime Minister Massa's desk was the document that Professor Yamamoto had brought back from the Wynners.
The document was only three pages long, and he spent the entire night reading it.
Page 1: The stress response pattern of the Water Dragon when threatened.
When attacked, the digging claw grows faster, digging speed increases, and cave depth increases.
Conclusion: Attacking the Water Dragon Beast will not make it stronger, it will only make it dig holes faster.
Beating the Water Dragon Beast is like helping it with renovations.
Page 2: Comparison of stress responses between upright apes and water dragons.
Attacks on upright apes → accelerated brain evolution → enhanced learning ability → more complex social structures.
Conclusion: At this stage, attacking the upright ape is tantamount to helping it level up.
Page 3: Lu Cheng's handwritten notes, only one line long.
"The reason we chose Suiryumon wasn't because it was strong, but because its evolutionary path didn't threaten humanity's existence. Those who chose Homo erectus chose a replacement for humanity."
Massa closed the file and shut his eyes.
In the Kyoto night outside the window, countless upright apes are squatting in bamboo forests, outside temples, and on the rooftops of houses, looking at this ancient capital with their clear black and white eyes.
They held tools made of mud in their hands, and in their minds was a plan that Massa dared not think about in detail.
Taro Tanuki Kingdom is one of the top four powerful nations on Earth.
He was known as one of the four great rogues.
On Advent Day, he felt he had made the most rational choice.
Now he knows.
The most rational choice is to choose the ugly thing that can drill holes.
Massa opened his eyes, picked up a pen, and wrote a reply below Lu Cheng's line.
"Taro Tanuki Kingdom is willing to exchange any condition for the method to suppress the upright ape, any condition. —Masa."
He folded the paper, put it in an envelope, and handed it to Professor Yamamoto, who was waiting outside the door.
"Go to the Kingdom of Winners again. This time, take this letter with you and deliver it to Lu Cheng personally."
Yamamoto accepted the envelope, bowed deeply, and turned to disappear into the night.
Massa walked to the window and looked towards the courtyard.
He hadn't been back to that courtyard for half a month, but the number of upright apes inside was increasing every day.
From three to thirty, from thirty to three hundred.
They painted patterns on the stones of the dry landscape garden, hung tools on the bamboo poles in the bamboo forest, and arranged flower petals to form a map on the surface of the pond.
This morning, the guards reported that a pattern made of white pebbles had appeared in the center of the courtyard.
It is a Chinese character.
"generation."
The substitute.
Replacement.
……
The alien creatures have been here for eighteen days.
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv has not eaten for two days.
It's not that I'm not hungry, it's that I can't eat.
A report lay before him, its cover bearing the words "Results of Ganges River Water Sample Testing".
The report contained only one line of red text: the concentration of black blood had reached 0.3%.
What does 0.3% mean?
This means that the number of upright apes in the Ganges River has increased so much that they have turned the water black.
Rajiv put down the report and walked to the window.
The streets outside the Prime Minister's Office were filled with upright apes.
They weren't gathering, they were squatting.
One after another, they squatted from the street to the alley, neat and motionless.
They held branches in their hands, their eyes fixed on the direction of the Prime Minister's Office, as if waiting for something.
"How long have they been squatting there?" Rajiv asked.
The secretary's voice trembled:
"Three days. From Varanasi to Delhi, the apes of every town along the way began to gather towards the Prime Minister's Office. They dismantled our railways, they dismantled the telegraph lines, they even dismantled the millstones in the steam mills. They took nothing and left, just squatting by the roadside watching the Prime Minister's Office."
Rajiv remained silent for a long time, then asked:
Do they always observe things before taking them apart?
The secretary opened the report:
"Yes, our intelligence personnel documented the entire process of the upright apes dismantling a steam mill. They first squatted outside the mill for four hours, watching the millstone turn. Then they sent three upright apes inside to circle the millstone, observing it from different angles, before finally starting to dismantle it. After dismantling it, they sorted the parts and stacked them neatly, then continued to squat by the roadside."
Rajiv's hands left marks on the window frame.
"What are they looking at?"
"They are learning; they are learning everything about humans."
Rajiv turned around:
"Get me Lu Cheng from the Wynners Kingdom."
When the call connected, Lu Cheng was watching the water dragon beast digging a hole in the backyard of the government building.
This water dragon beast has been digging for three days and three nights, creating an underground passage leading out of the city. It is twelve meters deep and wide enough for two people to walk side by side.
When it emerged from the hole, it was covered in dirt, with tree roots hanging from its large fangs, making it so ugly it made you want to laugh.
Carrie handed over the microphone: "Prime Minister Rajiv of India."
Lu Cheng took the microphone, but before he could speak, a suppressed voice came from the other end.
"With Lu in power, India can't hold on any longer."
Lu Cheng didn't respond, waiting for him to finish speaking.
"The Ganges River has been polluted by the black blood of Homo erectus, who bathe, excrete, and give birth in the river. The black blood dissolves in the water, rendering the drinking water sources of 37 villages and towns downstream unusable. Our health department has tried filtration, boiling, and distillation, but nothing has worked. The protein toxins in the black blood are heat-resistant; boiling for three hours only reduces the toxicity by 40%."
Rajiv's voice grew softer and softer:
"What's even more terrifying is that people who drank the contaminated water developed symptoms. Not poisoning, but—changes."
"What changes?" Lu Cheng's eyes sharpened.
"Their blood vessels have darkened, from blue to dark blue, and from dark blue to black. Although not as pure black as those of upright apes, they are three shades darker than those of normal humans."
Lu Cheng's grip on the microphone tightened slightly. Black blood is infectious.
It wasn't through physical contact, but through the water source.
When the upright apes bathed in the Ganges, they dissolved a certain substance from their black blood into the water. People downstream drank this water, and their blood vessels began to change color.
"Does the behavior of infected individuals change?"
Rajiv was silent for three seconds, then spoke in a tone that Lu Cheng had never heard before:
"They started squatting by the roadside looking at things, sometimes for hours at a time, just like upright apes."
After hanging up the phone, Lu Cheng wrote a line in his notebook:
Black blood, waterborne transmission, behavioral assimilation.
Then he drew a circle heavily.
Carrie walked over, glanced at the words, and her expression changed: "It's contagious?"
"It's not contagion, it's pollution. The black blood of Homo erectus contains a special protein that, once it enters the human body, is not cleared by the immune system but instead deposits on the blood vessel walls. When it accumulates to a certain concentration, it affects the nervous system. Those people squatting by the roadside looking at things aren't studying; their nervous systems have been paralyzed by toxins."