Alien creatures destroy homes? Start by killing upright apes!

A ring of white pebbles, with a black pebble in the center.

White is arranged in a circle, and black is placed in the center.

Then it used its front paws to push the black stones outwards, to the edge of the white circle.

The black pebble remained next to the white pebble, without moving out.

It demonstrates coexistence.

The disaster victims, sitting around, looked at the black stone and the white circle. Some nodded, while others put their hands together in prayer.

The last line of Li Wei's tenth telegram reads:

"The consul is teaching them that black does not have to replace white; black can stand on the edge of white and form a circle with white. The price is that black can never enter the center of the circle."

"It teaches humans to let upright apes stand on the edge. What humans don't know is that when all the upright apes stand on the edge, the edge becomes the new center."

……

September 5914 in the Blue Star Calendar, the fifty-eighth day since the arrival of the alien creatures.

The Water Dragon Beast is stuck at 113 meters and won't move.

It wasn't that it was tired; it had encountered a rock that even its massive fangs couldn't pry open.

Geologists from the Winners Kingdom squatted at the cave entrance and studied it for a long time before drawing a conclusion.

It was a single piece of naturally formed obsidian, two levels harder than granite, with an unknown thickness.

The water dragon pried at it three times with its large fangs, almost breaking its own teeth, and then decided to take a detour.

It dug 17 meters horizontally from 113 meters, bypassing the obsidian layer, and then continued downwards.

This detour took three more days to complete.

Lu Cheng squatted beside the cave entrance, holding a stone shard that the water dragon beast had dug out while going around.

The stone slab is engraved with a single character: “择” (ze).

"Select" is followed by "choose".

select.

The complete sentence inscribed on the last stone wall by the pre-civilization is: "Coexistence, peace, breakdown, war, cost, etc., the choice of the gods."

One last piece is needed.

The water dragon emerged from the cave after taking a detour, covered in mud, with a piece of obsidian hanging from its large fangs.

It spat the fragments at Lu Cheng's feet, then collapsed on the ground, looking at Lu Cheng with an expression that said, "That rock was so hard it almost broke my teeth."

Carrie brought a bowl of soup and placed it on the ground. It didn't drink it; instead, it stuck out its tongue and licked its large fangs to make sure they weren't broken before burying its face in the bowl.

……

Meanwhile, in the Lesotho mountain region.

Li Wei has been squatting in the same spot on the hill behind the seventh refugee camp for five days.

In five days, he counted them all—the seventh camp had a total of 347 refugees and 7 upright apes.

The seven upright apes had a clear division of labor: the stone talker was responsible for preaching, two were responsible for distributing food, two were responsible for repairing irrigation ditches, and one was responsible for patrolling the edge of the camp.

The last one did nothing but squat beside the stone platform and carve concentric circles on the stone slab with pebbles.

He carved from morning till night, finishing one piece and then moving on to the next.

The disaster victims called the last one "the scripture engraver".

The concentric circles carved on it were not carved randomly, because the number of concentric circles on each stone slab is different.

Some did three laps, some five, and some seven.

The finished carvings were stacked neatly under the stone platform, forming a tower.

Li Wei took advantage of the darkness to sneak up next to the stone platform and steal one.

The stone slab is engraved with five concentric circles, each marked with an upright ape symbol from the inside out:

Kernel—Hip-up ape.

The second layer consists of Water Dragon Beast and Glossy Beast.

The third layer consists of Antiomon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The fourth layer consists of giant nautiluses, giant dragonflies, giant millipedes, and Anomalocaris.

The fifth layer—humans.

Li Wei's fingers lingered on the stone slab for a long time.

The upright apes arranged all ten exotic creatures and humans into concentric circles.

The core is oneself, and the outermost layer is humanity.

He turned the stone slab over.

There is a line of small characters engraved on the back, the handwriting is so neat that it looks like printed text.

"Who is inside and who is outside is not chosen by us, but by blood. The purer the black, the closer to the inside. The purer the red, the closer to the outside."

The last line of Li Wei's eleventh telegram reads:

"Governor, the false people of Rasotho are not establishing a religion, they are establishing an order. They have placed all ten exotic creatures and humans into a concentric circle system, using the purity of their black blood as the sorting standard. The core is pure black, and the outer layer is pure red. They are telling the disaster victims—you are not in the innermost circle, the other exotic creatures are closer to the center than you, so you accept the arrangement of the upright apes. This is not replacement, it is investiture."

……

The Winners' Kingdom, the government.

Lu Cheng put Li Wei's telegram together with the obsidian fragments dug out by the water dragon beast.

The obsidian fragments gleamed with a glassy luster under the kerosene lamp, and a very thin layer of white veins could be seen at the fracture.

It's not the stone's natural texture; it's carved on.

Lu Cheng brought the fragment close to the light and saw the words clearly.

"Once you make a choice, there's no going back."

The ancient civilization inscribed this sentence at the entrance to the last stone wall.

The obsidian layer is a natural barrier, and the pre-civilization carved warnings on it.

Humans have red blood, while upright apes have black blood.

Red and black.

incompatible.

Once you've made a choice, there's no going back.

Carrie placed a bowl of freshly cooked soup beside him:

"What does it mean that Livy said the false people held investiture in Lesotho, placing humanity on the outermost layer?"

"It means that in the order of the upright apes, humans are even lower in status than insects from another land." Lu Cheng picked up his soup bowl.

"What does it mean that Livy said the false people held investiture in Lesotho, placing humanity on the outermost layer?"

"It means that in the order of the upright apes, humans are even lower in status than insects from another land." Lu Cheng picked up his soup bowl.

"The Lystrosaurus and Gyrodont were probably considered by the Homo erectus to be 'species that could approach the core' because of their low blood toxicity and low ecological niche overlap. Human blood is pure red, so they were ranked outside of the dragonflies, millipedes, and Anomalocaris. This is their perspective. From their perspective, pure black is the highest level, pure red is the lowest level, and humans are a low-level species."

Carrie paused for a moment, a hint of annoyance flashing across her face:

"Then they made the disaster victims worship the Black Blood Bodhisattva..."

"This is about making humanity accept its inferior status, not coexistence, but a hierarchy. Humans can live, but they must acknowledge that the upright apes are superior to themselves. The 50,000 refugees in Lesotho are accepting this order because accepting it is better than being replaced; at least they can survive."

After finishing the soup, the water dragon licked the bottom of the bowl clean, then gently poked Lu Cheng's boot with its large fangs.

Today it has dug to 117 meters, and is still 3 meters away from the last stone wall.

Lu Cheng followed it into the cave, where the light of the kerosene lamp illuminated the bottom.

The cave walls, which are 117 meters long, are covered with inscriptions.

These are not symbols from pre-civilizational upright apes; they are human writing.

The ancient Blue Star language has a different grammatical structure than modern common language, but its vocabulary is recognizable.

Lu Cheng squatted down and read it word by word.

"We chose war, not because we hate them, but because their blood is black and our blood is red. Our children ate food they touched and broke out in rashes. Their children drank water we touched and vomited for three days. We tried sharing a table for three thousand years, but it didn't work. Not because we didn't want to, but because our blood wouldn't allow it."

"Later they created a god, a god with seven fingers. The god said that black blood and red blood could coexist, on the condition that the black blood was inside and the red blood was outside, and we accepted that. Three hundred years later, we discovered that the black blood in the core was slowly turning red, and the red blood on the outside was slowly turning black. The god did not come to mediate, but to merge. The result of the merging was not coexistence, but that both sides became a third kind of thing that was neither black nor red."

"We refused to integrate, and so did they. So we fought the last battle, not for territory, but for the right to retain our own color."

The engravings deepened here, each character appearing as if carved with all one's might.

"We lost, they lost too. We all lost, God won."