When I heard my parents talk about the accident, I had already formed a similar suspicion. I just wasn't sure then whether the one manipulating everything from behind the scenes was that new thing or Heaven.
Nangong Yao didn't give me much time to be shocked.
He continued speaking.
"You can think of it as a company that develops and operates a game. Most of the time, it interferes with the game's operation by changing some of its settings and updating its content. Occasionally, it bans accounts it considers problematic. As far as we know, there hasn't been a mass ban in nearly a century."
I was a little surprised by the timeframe Nangong Yao mentioned.
Nangong Yao met my gaze and explained, "More than a century ago, we couldn't be sure whether anything like this had happened. A list like the one you saw would have been difficult to compile without modern technology."
Technology had made society more convenient, but it had also made everyone's movements easier to track.
The two years during which the dead and injured had gradually converged on Minqing Hospital, taken together, proved beyond doubt that Heaven had caused this, not that new thing. If it had wanted to silence people, it wouldn't have spent two years meticulously preparing.
As Nangong Yao had said, before technology had advanced to this point, population movement wasn't as widespread, but neither was it monitored as closely. Discovering this kind of "coincidence" would have been a matter of luck.
And with "spirits" in the world, it was hard to say whether a major disaster had been an ordinary accident, the work of a spirit, an evil ghost, or Heaven. If no one had investigated at the time, then the truth was probably lost forever.
I lowered my head to