The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 949: Eyes

"That's it," Dr. Jia declared. "That's the entire exploration of the Mist."

"Isn't that a little anti-climactic?" War Tiger dropped back, propping his crossed legs on the tea table.

Dr. Jia bristled. "What else do you want? Entering the Mist at all is revolutionary!"

"He's right." Nine Frost nodded. "Now that we've glimpsed inside the Mist, fully understanding it isn't impossible. It's another path forward—if only we had more time."

Gao Yang sat in contemplative silence.

When the room grew quiet, he looked up at Dr. Jia. "Your hypothesis?"

Dr. Jia's face lit up with self-satisfaction. He'd been waiting for this question. Tapping his temple, he said, "Though the Heavenly Way erased all traces of the desert, it couldn't erase my memories."

"That oasis Qing Ling and Nainai found? I've been there. Beautiful lake. Tourists would ride camels around it for photos. Quite the attraction."

“I actually considered building my laboratory near the oasis, but the place saw too many visitors and was too close to the border of the Mist. The chance of it being swallowed by the Mist was too great. Therefore, I ended up building the lab ten kilometers away. And the area of the desert did turn out to be swallowed. I was right to be cautious.”

Gao Yang said without missing a beat, “You’re saying that the area Qing Ling and Nainai explored was that part of the desert before it was swallowed.”

"Given our current knowledge, yes." Dr. Jia shrugged.

"But wait." Gao Yang's brow furrowed. "If that's all there is to it, why did the cameras fail?"

"Ah, this is why I love talking to smart people!" Dr. Jia beamed. "I have two theories."

Everyone straightened, their attention locked on him.

"First, the Dispersing Theory."

Silent glances passed between the others.

"Put simply, the Mist is exactly that: a mist obscuring our vision. My mist-dispersing light allowed Qing Ling and Nainai to pierce through it, revealing the territory the Heavenly Way had lost."

Dr. Jia raised his fists and knocked them together, his voice taking on a playful tone. "If you retreat, I advance. If you advance, I retreat. Oh, you've got a mist-dispersing light? Fine, impressive. I'll back off for now. Ah, battery's dying! Haha, I'm back! What fun! Muhahaha!"

The anthropomorphized Mist he described was such a troll that everyone felt their blood pressure soar, compelled to give the Mist a good punch.

"That doesn't explain the recorder malfunction," Nine Frost pointed out. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"Perhaps the Mist generates some strange energy field or interference. Though it temporarily yielded its territory, its contamination remains permanent."

Dr. Jia's expression grew serious. "But there's still one thing this doesn't explain."

"The camel," Qing Ling said.

"Precisely." Dr. Jia gave her a thumbs-up. "By your description, the camel was real—and young. It should have been trapped in the Mist for twenty years, yet it couldn't have survived on water alone for that long. That leaves us with one possibility." He paused for effect. "The camel you saw wasn't twenty years old. It had just been swallowed by the Mist."

“Do you mean...the passage of time differs inside and outside the Mist?” Nine Frost caught on.

War Tiger stroked his chin. “It’s only been a couple of days for the camel, but it’s been twenty years for us?”

"No, that's inconsistent too," Gao Yang interjected. "If time flowed differently inside the Mist, when Qing Ling and Nainai returned, it wouldn't have been four minutes on Dr. Jia's end—it would have been at least a week."

"Bingo!" Dr. Jia's smile broadened. "So that theory's disproven."

"Are you fucking with us, Old Jia?" War Tiger's irritation flared.

“What do you know? A wrong answer also holds value.” Dr. Jia shifted his bottom and got increasingly into the topic. “I’ll share my second theory, the Observation Theory.”

The room was silent for a long while. Like a teacher giving a test, Dr. Jia waited for a smart student to raise their hand and volunteer an answer.

“Do you mean...” Gao Yang caught a thought. “That we can never observe the true state of the Mist, for our observation itself is a disturbance?”

Dr. Jia nodded contently. “You all know Schrödinger's Cat, right?”

Nine Frost, War Tiger, and Qing Ling nodded.

Dr. Jia’s gaze shifted to Nainai.

Nainai paused and said weakly, “How dare you! This Empress is omniscient and omnipotent! An ant like you are not to question me!”

"Alright, moving on."

The moment Dr. Jia looked away, Nainai whipped out her phone, frantically searching for an explanation.

"I'll make it simple. I believe the places the Mist has devoured no longer exist."

"Huh?!" War Tiger recoiled. That wasn’t easy to understand by any measure.

The others exchanged bewildered looks.

Nainai, having just grasped why Schrödinger would theoretically torture a cat, slumped in confusion when Dr. Jia declared there wasn't even a cat to begin with. She settled into her seat with a manufactured look of haughty indifference, determined to weather the rest of this philosophical storm with dignity.

"Don't worry." Dr. Jia chuckled. "When I say it no longer exists, I mean in the narrowest sense—it no longer exists in our dimension according to our world's rules."

"From our perspective, the devoured desert simply isn't there. Consider it a void. A void is a state of being, but one we cannot sense."

"Questions so far?"

Met with silence, he continued, "Now, Qing Ling and Nainai entered this void with an entrance ticket and observed it."

"But they couldn't perceive the void since it was nonexistent to them. Their observation became a disturbance carrying information, which filled the void for them. That's why they saw the desert as it was before the Mist devoured it."

"So the desert was just their imagination?" War Tiger frowned. "There wasn't actually anything there? Wouldn't that make it an illusion?"

"No, no." Dr. Jia wagged his finger. "Not an illusion, but an existence created by the act of observation itself. And Qing Ling and Nainai were merely a point of view—a line of sight. They weren't positioned to be the actual observer."

"Simple?!" War Tiger clutched his head. "You fucking called that simple?"

"Ah." Gao Yang's expression cleared as understanding dawned. "We are the Heavenly Way's pawns as well as its eyes."