Two Worlds in the Apocalypse: Each journey through the modern world lasts 60 seconds.

Chapter 162 Departure

In the SUV, Xu Mo looked at the receding figure of Luochuan City in the rearview mirror and sighed deeply. Barrett was at his feet, but he ultimately did not choose to kill Kong.

Kong, the name of the two-headed man, was given to him by Xu Mo during the conversation. This wasn't a saintly act; rather, it was because Xu Mo felt he had fallen into a morally complex gray area during the conversation.

In this post-apocalyptic setting, the survivors follow a survival theory that anything that threatens human survival can be killed.

This is a typical "anthropocentric" ethical view, which strictly limits the scope of moral concern to the "human" species.

However, this two-headed, four-armed being posed a fundamental challenge to Xu Mo. It possessed self-awareness, memory, emotions, and sociality, and most importantly, it could communicate.

In its struggle with itself, Kong was not a beast that lived by instinct alone, but said, "You killed my offspring, I am heartbroken, so I must take revenge."

From the perspective of reciprocal altruism, Xu Mo killed its offspring, and it retaliated, which logically forms a closed loop.

In a non-human community that also follows certain rules, revenge may be a core mechanism for maintaining order and dignity. Therefore, its retaliation is "just" within its own value system.

Xu Mo felt guilty precisely because he had also grasped this point. He was no longer facing an unconscious, natural force.

It's not about being threatened, but about being a flesh-and-blood individual with social relationships; this is a profound ethical issue.

Xu Mo then wondered why Luo Li had made the first move.

Because in her and most of the survivors' minds, anyone who approached with zombies was an enemy.

This two-headed, four-armed being was labeled a threat even before it spoke or proved its rationality. This labeling process is an inevitable product of the collapse of trust between groups after the social order breaks down in the apocalypse.

What's most unsettling about Empty is that it blurs the lines between humans and zombies. It has a human head and memories, yet also the power and followers of a zombie.

He said he didn't know what he was either, and Luo Li was also unsure if she was still human. This reveals a cruel reality in the apocalypse: evolution is not linear, but divergent. The conflict between them is essentially a "clash of civilizations" that erupts from misunderstandings between different social groups vying for living space and resources.

Western philosophical tradition holds that humans are rational animals. If this being can think logically, use language, and express emotions, then by definition, it is already infinitely close to the boundaries of humanity.

Killing a person and hunting a wild animal in the wild carry entirely different philosophical weights. The former involves the taboo of murder, while the latter is merely a means of survival.

Xu Mo felt that he was facing a dilemma: if he killed this being as a beast, it would be tantamount to denying the dignity of the other being as a rational being; but if he let it go, he would risk being devoured by its "revenge" or future conflicts.

The reason Xu Mo had a headache was because Kong's appearance shattered his psychological protective shell of "justifiable killing" as a human survivor. This being, with its rationality and grievances, forcibly pulled Xu Mo from a pure hunter into an interpersonal relationship that required dialogue, empathy, and moral responsibility.

Xu Mo couldn't bring himself to swing his triangular dagger or raise his Barrett rifle with the same ease he had when dealing with the zombies that had pounced on him before.

Furthermore, Xu Mo was also questioning himself: when civilization collapses, what do we rely on to define our enemies? By appearance? By behavior? Or by whether the other party possesses a soul worthy of our respect?

Xu Mo's helplessness stemmed from this: he discovered that his proud survival rules and fighting instincts failed him when facing an alien who could communicate, speak logic, and have emotions.

This may be the ultimate test that the end times present to the survivors: can a new social contract that transcends species and is based on reason and empathy be established on the ruins?

Of course, Xu Mo could also place himself on the moral high ground to judge Kong. After all, Kong's evolution must have involved consuming a large amount of food, which includes a very wide range of things.

However, if Sora doesn't remember devouring its own kind, then from a subjective perspective, it is innocent.

When it awoke, it had become a two-headed, four-armed creature, surrounded by zombies. It didn't know how it had become like this.

It doesn't remember the bloody process of devouring. It only knows that it is lonely, confused, and wants to find its own kind.

Although from an objective point of view, the existence of emptiness itself is built upon the deaths of countless fellow beings and humanity.

This constitutes a classic ethical paradox: if a person commits murder but has no recollection of it, is he still the murderer? If the essence of an existence is forged through evil, but its consciousness is innocent, how should we treat it?

Memory is a core element of personality identity. If you have no memory of doing something, then strictly speaking, you are no longer the person who did that thing.

The situation with the Void is even more extreme; not only does it have no memory at the level of consciousness, but its physical form has also undergone a fundamental change. It has completed the qualitative transformation from a zombie to a sentient being.

This raises a deeper question: Is the "it" that once devoured its own kind the same being as the "he" who is now standing in front of Xu Mo and speaking to him?

From the perspective of continuity of consciousness, no. The devourer is already dead, and was replaced by a new consciousness during the process of devouring.

However, from a material perspective, its body does indeed contain the flesh and blood of countless devoured beings.

This is very similar to the concept of original sin in theology, where a person is born sinful, not because of what they have done, but because of what their ancestors did.

But the original sin of emptiness is more complex; it is not inherited but directly inscribed in its physical constitution.

It gets even more interesting if we broaden the scope of this issue to a group level.

Imagine a future where a group of intelligent zombies emerges and forms a civilization. They don't remember their origins, nor do they know that they reached this point by devouring their own kind.

All they will say is, "This is how we woke up."

So their civilization is built on institutionalized forgetting, and there are countless examples of this in human history.

The colonists don't remember how many indigenous people they massacred; they only remember that they built a great nation. The descendants of slave owners don't remember the atrocities of their ancestors; they only remember that they inherited the family's estate.

This forgetting is not deliberate concealment, but genuine, structural ignorance. This kind of forgetting is more terrifying than deliberate concealment because it makes it impossible to hold perpetrators accountable.

Faced with this series of problems, Xu Mo ultimately did not pick up a gun to deal with the other party, and it was precisely because he did not deal with the other party that Xu Mo let out a long sigh.

All Xu Mo could do was put up a few signs on the outskirts of Luochuan City, explaining that there were intelligent zombies in the area that could be communicated with, and that individuals should not attack them without permission; individual survivors were advised to take a detour.

Let these problems be solved by wiser successors; Xu Mo felt he lacked the ability. After completing these tasks, Xu Mo retrieved his off-road vehicle and drove almost non-stop through Luochuan City, leaving the area. He still had a mission to complete, and since Luo Li was willing to communicate with her, Xu Mo didn't say anything more.

At this moment, a question lingered in Xu Mo's mind: How should humanity treat civilizations born from human corpses? This is only Luochuan City, so there's only one empty city, but what about other mega-cities? If the other side harbors ill intentions, then battle is inevitable, but what if not?

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