Carbon-Based Life Cannot Support Higher Civilizations

Lu Xing's expression almost couldn't help but change.

With such a major event, wouldn't the historians of the Future World conduct archaeological research to restore the cause, process, and outcome of the nuclear war?

The nuclear war was world-destroying, and historians weren't interested at all?

Lu Xing glanced at this brief world history book. It had a total of over two hundred pages, and the history before and after the 21st century AD was only written in three paragraphs.

He calmed his emotions and continued to read with an expressionless face.

"After the nuclear war, most of the unstable genes of ancient creatures mutated. People who developed diseases due to nuclear radiation were called Mutants at that time.

Mutants possessed stronger power, higher intelligence, better memory...

War soon began."

Perhaps because he was using Jiang Xuannv's body, Lu Xing's browsing speed was very fast. Within the thin twenty pages, he read through the wars, fusion, absorption, and disappearance of humans with Mutants, Beastmen, Gene-Modified Humans, Robots, and Heteromorphs.

The content, just a few tens of thousands of words, contained history that the 21st-century humans could not imagine:

Using nuclear bombs as conventional weapons; using nuclear radiation as a means to induce mutations in Mutants; humans absorbing the genes of other creatures to create war weapons like tiger-men, lion-men, cat-men, etc.; humans modifying their own bodies, abandoning flesh and blood, achieving mechanical ascension; humans abandoning conventional forms, attempting to shrink their heads.

And so on and so forth.

Things that 21st-century people would find unbearable were commonplace in the era after the nuclear war.

As for things that shattered one's worldview, such as organ farms, cloning factories, and Beastmen brothels, they were also mentioned in the history book. By the time Gene-Modified Humans appeared, the moral values of the 21st century had already been abandoned.

Ultimately, this protracted biological war was ended by a virus called Death God, which was born in a biological weapons factory. Once leaked, it spread across the globe within a month, killing the vast majority of humans. Even the wealthy who fled into space were infected by the virus carried by supplies transmitted from the ground, dying in droves within the space stations.

"Compared to the Death God virus, nuclear weapons seemed quite merciful."

The historian made a humorous remark here.

Lu Xing couldn't help but laugh.

"The surviving humans returned to the caves, and the First Epoch ended."

Lu Xing was speechless for a moment.

Looking at it this way, the nuclear war was indeed not that important. Humans created a virus that violated biological laws, and its lethality far exceeded that of nuclear bombs.

Lu Xing continued to read, and alien civilizations did not appear.

The Second Epoch began with a sentence:

The only lesson humans have learned from history is that they have learned nothing from history.

These were Hegel's words, but they were not attributed in the history book.

"Hundreds of years later, the Death God virus degenerated, and the human population slowly increased. From the myths passed down from ancient times, they once again created civilization. They created new languages, new scripts, new beliefs, and through archaeology, science developed rapidly."

Nothing wrong with that, the technology of the Second Epoch relied on archaeology.

"But humans soon encountered an insurmountable problem: there was no oil or coal underground on Earth.

By the end of the First Epoch, humans had already exhausted these two important resources. The remaining oil and coal were buried deep underground, and their technology at the time was unable to extract them."

Lu Xing gradually understood. The Second Epoch was an era of resource scarcity. Humans did not undergo the first industrial revolution but relied on archaeology to develop technology to the stage of using clean energy such as solar and wind power.

Iron ore, plastic, etc., were dug out from ruins and reprocessed for use.

After an unknown period of time, the turning point came when humanity received an electromagnetic wave signal from within their own star system. After being analyzed by linguistic experts, it was confirmed to be an ordered text.

Human society was in an uproar because of this. Even Lu Xing couldn't help but curl his lips when he saw it; human civilization was finally not alone!

Excited humans invested vast resources into interstellar exploration. For the first time, they established a base on the moon, retrieved Martian soil, and built several space stations.

But that was all.

Human technology did not advance because of this. The high cost of rocket launches made it difficult for society to bear. Ultimately, after a war, the Lunar Base was abandoned for the first time.

Lu Xing was getting a bit impatient, and with limited time, he skipped the middle section, only looking at the aliens and some key events.

Five thousand years later, humanity received alien information again.

Another five thousand years later, after three exchanges, the two civilizations finally confirmed each other's location within the star system and affectionately referred to each other as "friends of humanity." The other side also called Earth humans "friends of the Elando people on distant Earth."

As exchanges gradually increased, both sides gradually learned each other's languages and scripts, initiating an exchange activity that spanned five epochs.

Every question that one side wanted the other to answer required a five-thousand-year wait.

Therefore, both sides sent large amounts of repeated electromagnetic waves at once to ensure that the information would not be lost across the vast star systems.

The history and technology that both sides knew about each other were from five thousand years ago.

For example, the information sent by humans in the Second Epoch stated that humanity was building a base on their home planet's satellite, but by the time the Elando civilization learned of this, humanity's Lunar Base had already been destroyed.

It took Earth humans tens of thousands of years to roughly understand the Elando civilization.

They were also carbon-based life forms, also experienced a technological explosion, and had gone through nuclear wars, biological wars, and also encountered problems such as resource scarcity.

The history of the Elando Planet was much longer than that of Earth humans. Archaeological discoveries showed that there were traces of civilization on Elando during Earth's dinosaur age.

Even they themselves were unsure how many times their civilization had risen and fallen.

"Carbon-based life forms cannot carry a more advanced civilization."

A sentence that didn't belong to humanity suddenly appeared in the history book. At least, Lu Xing thought so. The victor, artificial intelligence, was writing history.

"The official Elando civilization did not explicitly state it, but civilian communicators have always sent such pessimistic information to Earth. After the two civilizations could communicate smoothly, the Elando civilization sent a complete set of artificial intelligence technology to Earth, and repeated it three times."

"Massive amounts of information crossed the distant starry sky and were received by humanity. After Professor Li Zhe organized it, he published it under the title 'Revisiting Artificial Intelligence Life Forms'."

Ancient history ended.

Lu Xing let out a long sigh. Although he didn't know how much of it was altered by artificial intelligence, for example, the history book stated that Earth had not received information from the Elando civilization for three thousand years, speculating that they had experienced another civilization's destruction, and the next exchange was unknown.

But three thousand years ago, Maria had already appeared, and the details in between were vague, making it hard not to be suspicious.

At least after reading the history, Lu Xing understood why the names of people like Jiang Xuannv, Chu Caifeng, and Wang Bagua were so strange.

Chinese characters, English, French, Russian, etc., were all forgotten by humanity after the First Epoch. Religions were also new, and scientific theorems were rediscovered and renamed.

The reason why Chinese characters are used now is because in the Fourth Epoch, humanity's language at the time was too cumbersome. After selection, Chinese characters were re-selected as the official language from the texts excavated by archaeology.

As a two-dimensional ideographic script, Chinese characters stood out among the languages invented by humans.