Looking at these filthy Indigenous Humans clad in animal hides, Natalie and the other nine showed varying degrees of contempt in their eyes.
Lowly creatures were lowly creatures.
Chi, the tribe's leader, stepped forward, raising a stone spear and letting out an angry roar, trying to force back these huge, strange-looking monsters.
Unfortunately, not only did those monsters fail to retreat, they instead marched into the tribe in unison.
Seeing this, although Chi was deeply wary of these monsters, he had no choice but to lead his people forward.
"Don't let them enter the tribe! Stop them!"
"Ah? What is this?"
Natalie pulled out a small, rod-shaped weapon. As she activated it, powerful currents flashed from its tip, firing bolts of electricity one after another.
As expected, faced with Aliens possessing High Technology, these people had no ability to resist and were crushed in the blink of an eye.
"Ah..."
One prehistoric human after another fell to the ground, convulsing, their eyes filled with terror as they looked at the ten people.
Natalie wore a look of disdain.
"This is the difference between us and you—a bunch of lowly creatures. Hmph."
Even though she knew they could not understand her, she still said it arrogantly.
After that, with no surprises, the entire tribe of over a thousand people was enslaved by them.
Using High Technology, they quickly mastered these people's language and achieved seamless communication.
One afternoon, they began asking some questions.
Standing before the ten of them was a young man who looked to be in his twenties. He was extremely nervous, with fear visible in his eyes.
"How long has your tribe been developing here?" Natalie asked the lowly creature before her in a flat, arrogant tone.
"Over two hundred years, I think. I remember that the chief and I migrated here from a plain back then."
They had migrated here more than two hundred years ago...
Natalie and the others nodded, though their brows furrowed slightly.
For some reason, they felt there was something strange about those words, yet they could not pinpoint it.
After asking a few more questions, a female Alien with a rather gentle face suddenly asked curiously, "How old are you?"
She had only asked out of curiosity, but she had not expected the answer she received to be so unexpected.
"Almost three hundred, I suppose," Meng said nervously.
"What did you say? Three hundred?"
Voices of astonishment rang out one after another as they stared at him in disbelief.
They already had a good understanding of their years, and precisely because of that, they could not believe it.
"How old is the oldest person among you?" asked Tim, a male Alien with a youthful face.
Meng did not notice their strange looks and answered as though it were perfectly reasonable, "Over eight hundred, I guess."
Natalie froze, then instinctively shrieked, "Impossible! Even with technology as advanced as ours, we can only live five or six hundred years at most. How can you live that long?"
In her agitation, she blurted it out without thinking.
"What?" Meng listened to her words in confusion, not quite understanding them.
Wasn't it normal to live that long?
Could they not?
Suspicious gazes turned toward the young man one after another.
They did not believe him!
How could a lowly creature live that long?!
"Don't lie to me! Otherwise..." Natalie looked at him skeptically. "I doubt you want to experience that painful torment!"
"N-No, I wouldn't dare! I'm not lying!" Meng jumped in fright, his face full of panic.
Seeing that his expression did not seem fake, a question surfaced in the ten people's minds.
Could it really be true?
They suddenly realized that these lowly creatures they had looked down upon possessed something that seemed strange to them.
How could a normal life-form live that long?
If what he said was true, then even they were not as long-lived as these Indigenous Humans. How was that possible?
Was that reasonable?
It was not reasonable!
After recovering from her shock, Natalie looked disgusted, convinced that he was talking nonsense.
How could these lowly creatures live longer than she did?
She absolutely did not believe it!
"Hmph, if I find out you've lied, you're dead!"
She thought that as a higher life-form, she should give the person before her a chance and verify whether it was true. If it proved false afterward...
Hmph!
Without explaining anything beforehand, Natalie swiftly cut a small wound into Meng's body with a blade amid his cry of alarm, then quickly took a little blood.
"Let's go back."
With bored disbelief, the ten people quickly left under Meng's bewildered gaze, preparing to return and study it.
After returning to the spaceship, they headed straight into the laboratory and began studying the blood with an utterly casual attitude.
Yet in less than ten minutes, cries of astonishment rang out one after another.
"Something's wrong!"
They were utterly shocked. That Indigenous Human had not lied!
After examining it, they discovered that Meng's theoretical lifespan really could be that long!
What was going on?
How was that possible?
After repeatedly comparing him with other animals, they realized that only those Indigenous Humans had a problem!
For the first time, they felt doubt and shock toward those lowly creatures.
After their shock, they conducted even more careful research.
They then discovered that those lowly creatures had actually undergone Accelerated Evolution during a certain period!
This was not normal!
More and more questions piled up in their hearts, leaving them increasingly baffled.
Natalie said excitedly, "Why can they live longer than us? This isn't normal! They're only some lowly creatures—how can they compare to us?!"
The others also frowned. The more they researched, the more confused they became, and the stranger it all felt.
After realizing they could not uncover anything new for the moment, Farouk said, "Since we can't find anything new through research, why don't we look for clues in that Indigenous Human tribe? Maybe we'll discover something."
The others pondered for a moment, then nodded one after another.
"You're right."
"Alright..."
After packing their things, they once again headed toward the distant tribe.
Before long, they were back in the same place, facing the same people. But this time, Natalie and the others were no longer as casual as before.
Jonas, whose face looked imposing and whose voice was deep, asked, "Tell me, why are your lives so long?"
"Lives?"
Meng looked blank and confused. "We've always been like this."
This answer did not satisfy Jonas and the others.
Tim, with his youthful face, asked in confusion, "Don't you think you live far too long compared with the animals around you? Haven't you noticed that something is wrong?"
Meng first shook his head, but after thinking along those lines, he gradually began to sense that something was indeed off.
It seemed that compared to other animals, they did live much longer?