Alien creatures destroy homes? Start by killing upright apes!

"We asked it how to destroy you. It said there was only one way to destroy me—you and they all look in a mirror at the same time and see the true number of fingers. You see their five, and they see yours five. When the error reaches zero, I disappear. But then it laughed. It said you can't do it. Not because you don't want to, but because your eyes have been different since the day you met three thousand years ago. Black blood and red blood mean that the world you see will never be the same."

"It's right. We tried it. We sat facing them with a mirror between us. We tried to see their five fingers, and they tried to see ours. We stared at their hands in the mirror, telling ourselves there were five, but their hands in the mirror really did have six. It's not that we didn't want to see five, it's that our eyes can only see six. They stared at our hands in the mirror, telling themselves there were five. But our hands in the mirror really did have four. It's not that they didn't want to see five, it's that their eyes can only see four. The error isn't in the mind, it's in the eyes. The difference etched on the retina can't be erased by willpower."

"So we chose to perish together, not because we hated them, but because we didn't want Seven Fingers to win. Seven Fingers didn't want Black Blood to win, nor Red Blood to win, but error itself to win. It wanted both sides to misunderstand each other forever, to live in fear forever, and to see each other as monsters with two more or fewer fingers than themselves. As long as the misunderstanding exists, it lives. As long as we and they continue to stare at each other, it lives. The only way to destroy it is to stop the staring. So, we and they closed our eyes at the same time."

The text ends here.

The last line of characters was carved deeper than all the previous ones, each stroke as if it had been carved with all the strength of the body.

"Later generations, when you read this inscription, the Seven Fingers will already be among you. The fact that you can read this far means you have already encountered them. Your eyes and their eyes are no longer the same; the error has already begun. Before we close our eyes, let us carve these words in the deepest part of the blue planet. Not so that you can destroy the Seven Fingers—you cannot. It is so that you may know—when you and they each perceive the other as having two extra or missing fingers, that extra or missing finger is the Seven Fingers. It is in your gaze, in every misunderstanding and fear, in the mirror, in your eyes as you read these words."

At the very bottom of the stone wall is a handprint with seven fingers.

It wasn't carved out; it was printed on.

It looked like something pressed outward from inside the stone wall, leaving a shallow indentation on the stone surface.

Lu Cheng stood up, his knees covered in dust from the pre-civilization era.

Carrie stood behind him, the light of the kerosene lamp casting their shadows on the stone wall, overlapping the seven-finger handprint.

"The pre-civilization humans and upright apes ultimately chose to close their eyes simultaneously," Carrie said softly. "They knew they couldn't eliminate the seven fingers, so they chose to stop them from growing any further. By closing their eyes, their gaze ceased, and the error returned to zero."

"But they knew that those who came after them would meet again, so they buried the stone wall here. It wasn't a last message, it was a warning."

The water dragon emerged from the corner, licked its half-broken fang, and swaggered to Lu Cheng's feet, rubbing its head against his calf.

It doesn't know anything about seven or eight fingers; it only knows that it dug up a very hard stone wall today, broke half a tooth, and is in a bad mood, so it needs soup.

When the three people—two humans and one beast—climbed up from the bottom of the 120-meter-deep cave, the sunlight in the square was so bright it hurt their eyes.

Lu Cheng squinted and saw a person standing at the entrance of the government building.

Li Wei.

He returned from Rasotho.

Li Wei had lost a lot of weight, and his cheekbones looked like they had been carved with a knife.

He squatted on the stone steps in front of the government building, holding a bowl of soup that Carrie had just served him. He took a sip, and his eyes reddened.

"Governor, the false men of Rasotho taught fifty thousand disaster victims to look in the mirror. Not just any mirror, but the way upright apes look—look at their own hands and count seven fingers. The disaster victims looked in, counted, and then believed they were also descendants of upright apes. Black blood didn't flow into their veins, but seven fingers had already grown into their brains."

Li Wei pulled a stone slab from his robes; it was a concentric circle stone slab carved by the false man of Lesotho.

The fifth layer—humans.

He turned the stone slab over, and on the back was carved a line of upright ape symbols.

"You have five hands, but your eyes can see seven. For you are God's children, just like us. Black blood and red blood are not different in God's eyes; the difference is something you yourselves have imagined."

Lu Cheng took the stone slab and looked at the words on it.

Seven Fingers, through the hands of a false man, taught the same set of rhetoric to the 50,000 disaster victims of Rasok.

It wasn't there to replace humans with upright apes; it was there to convince both sides that they were supposed to have seven fingers.

That night, dawn broke.

[Day 63 of the Alien Creatures' Arrival - Phase 3 Disguise Progress Update]

[Taro Tanuki Country: 95%. Individual Kyoto hominids have fully mastered human language writing, with a vocabulary of approximately 1,200 words.]

[The Rasotho-style coexistence model has entered its third stage—cognitive transformation. Of the 50,000 disaster victims, 32,000 have passed the upright ape mirror test, confirming that they "see" seven fingers. This cognition has transcended physical vision and entered the level of belief.]

[System notification: Once the mirror recognition conversion rate exceeds 60%, the system will recognize it as "Establishment of the third ecological niche." Current conversion rate: 64%.]

[System confirmed: The third ecological niche in Lesotho has been established. This niche's species self-identify as "the seven-fingered people," comprising both humans and hominids. Both retain their original physiological characteristics but share the same system of self-identification symbols.]

[System Supplement: The overlap between the third ecological niche and the original two is 97% for humans and 96% for hominids. Once established, this third ecological niche will simultaneously replace both humans and hominids.]

[System final notification: The Lesotho pattern is spreading to neighboring countries. Spread rate: approximately 17 kilometers per day.]

The light curtain went out.

Lu Cheng stood on the balcony, with Jia Li standing beside him holding a bowl of freshly cooked soup.

She handed him the soup, and Lu Cheng took a sip.

"It spread faster than the water dragon digging its burrows. The water dragon can't dig 20 meters a day, but it spreads 17 kilometers a day."

"Because the water dragon beast digs up the soil, but it spreads thoughts, and thoughts don't need to be dug up."

The water dragon crawled over from the square and gently poked Lu Cheng's boot with half of its broken fang.

It's not digging today; it has a toothache and is taking a day off.

Carrie crouched down, pried open its mouth to look at the half-fang, then took a small piece of water dragon bone from her pocket and stuffed it into its mouth.

"Bite down, don't chew, it's to stop the bleeding."

The water dragon beast, with a bone in its mouth, lay on the ground, covering its face with its front paws, looking like a wronged child going to the dentist.

……

Taro Tanuki Country, Kyoto.

Massa and Kerry stood outside the courtyard, facing the new characters that the upright ape had spelled out that day.

It wasn't made of pebbles; it was actually carved directly onto the stone slab with fingernails.

The handwriting is so neat it looks like printed text.