"Only three and a half million years ago." Su Nan looked at the tea in her cup and spoke calmly.
More than three million years of time seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye, yet also seemed impossibly long. There was an indescribable feeling when she spoke of it.
Perhaps it was like telling someone stories of one's youth after growing old—lying in a rocking chair, watching the slanting sun sink westward and golden leaves wither and fall. It was like reminiscing, yet also like mourning a departed king. Though one might have a thousand words in one's heart, they became plain and quiet upon being spoken.
"Three and a half million years?!"
Yao Ziyan's mouth fell slightly open. She was only seventeen and simply could not imagine such an unimaginably distant span of time. Just thinking about walking through such long years alone made her feel stifled.
Luo Chuan could not help glancing at Su Nan a few more times as well.
If this were the Earth he knew, three and a half million years ago should have been the transition between the Tertiary and Quaternary periods.
Mammals, teleost fish, and birds rose during this time. It was the age of angiosperms and beasts. As for humans, they should still have been ancient apes around then. Another million years or so later, Earth would enter the Quaternary Ice Age, triggering a mass extinction and ushering in the era of humanity's rise—the Quaternary...
Wait, wasn't that getting a little off track?
*Forget it. Don't mind such details. It was just a simple example. According to Chinese-language descriptions, this should count as analogy: a literary rhetorical device that uses the traits of one thing as a metaphor, drawing upon the similarities between two different things to embellish and