Protecting Animals

Across the aisle, Jiang Xueming hesitated for a moment before finally speaking slowly, "Is this what you said was the most exciting part?"

Bu Liuxing's large, watery eyes were full of innocence. "Yeah! What else would it be?"

Jiang Xueming pressed, "Did you and she talk about anything else?"

A Xing: "We did."

Jiang Xueming: "About what?"

A Xing: "I've forgotten most of it."

Jiang Xueming: "..."

The [Phantom Sun] outside the window shone on Bu Liuxing's face, making the kid look exceptionally pure. Combined with his thick eyebrows and large eyes, he had an air of innocent sincerity.

Jiang Xueming took a deep breath, managed his expression, and continued to ask patiently.

"Think hard, A Xing, really try to recall. I know the situation was chaotic, and like you said, that The Faceless Lady shoved her tentacles right into your face, like plugging a USB drive into your face to transfer data. Try to remember."

"Got it! Got it!" A Xing propped his chin on his hand and began to ponder.

Jiang Xueming: "Should I jog your memory? Help you get into the mood?"

A Xing asked enthusiastically, "Then you should hug me again? Like how The Faceless Lady held me. Without that scene re-enacted, I don't feel it."

Jiang Xueming: "Sir, please have some self-respect. I'm not some ancient super-species lady."

"Fine, if you're not going to hug me," Bu Liuxing pouted, looking wronged. "Why are you so fierce?"

After a long while, A Xing slowly and deliberately began to recount what he remembered.

"Honestly, I really can't recall most of that jumbled information. It flooded my mind all at once—

—Ming Ge, when we were kids learning to read and write, we had to progress year by year, step by step, book by book, right?"

Jiang Xueming: "Mm."

A Xing covered his forehead, trying hard to remember.

"But when The Faceless Lady transferred data to me like plugging a USB drive into a port, all the information was a jumble of illogical scenes. I wouldn't dare say I understood it all, and I don't remember much."

As he spoke, A Xing started to get a nosebleed.

Jiang Xueming's expression was complicated. He kindly offered a pack of tissues. "You've worked hard. A Xing, your nasal capillaries have burst. Don't be too nervous. This symptom is common in psychiatry. If your hippocampus and cerebral cortex undergo drastic changes in a short period, causing you to remember or forget many things, this intense brain activity can also cause nosebleeds."

"Do you go to the psychiatrist often, Ming Ge?" A Xing took the tissues and wiped his nose.

Jiang Xueming sat back down beside Bu Liuxing. "I just know a little."

Bu Liuxing continued, "My nosebleed isn't for the reason you said. You're mistaken. When I was recalling just now, I thought of The Faceless Lady's slippery legs, and then..."

Jiang Xueming moved back to the small table by the aisle.

A Xing asked, "Why are you sitting so far away again?"

Xue Ming replied, "Keep talking. Drink if you're thirsty."

"Ah, let me sort out my brain." Bu Liuxing rubbed his temples, striking a pose like the clever monk Ikkyū. A small 16-watt lightbulb suddenly lit up in his brain. "I remember!"

Xue Ming remained silent, diligently taking notes.

He heard A Xing's voice suddenly deepen, as if he were seriously recounting an old story from years ago.

"In a very, very ancient era, even older than the age of dinosaurs, ninety-six golden eggs fell from the sky."

A Xing's eyes reflected the sunlight as he calmly narrated the chaotic images in his mind.

"These golden eggs came from Procyon in the Canis Minor constellation. Their home planet was dying. Procyon transformed from the 'light of light' of its civilization into a dark red fireball that brought death."

"Ka-na. Ko-li-ka-long."

"It's difficult for human vocal cords to pronounce this name. This is the native race of The Faceless Lady."

"In the chaotic memories, she wanted me to call her Canaan, and to refer to her and her people by this name."

"These Canaan people fled from Canis Minor to Earth, attempting to establish a new home on this land."

"However, their physical bodies could not withstand Earth's environment. Neither the atmospheric pressure nor the gravity, let alone the ancient viruses that evolved alongside the biosphere."

"These Canaan people could only maintain their primitive golden egg form to protect their fragile bodies."

"Wait a minute." Jiang Xueming interrupted. "Are you saying those egg-like things weren't the aliens' spacecraft, but the aliens themselves?"

Bu Liuxing nodded. "Originally, their physical bodies were extremely fragile, like cells in a petri dish."

"To put it metaphorically—if we look at the human body, every inch of our skin, every strand of hair, could be considered a life form that thinks and expresses emotions. These Canaan beings had a vast number of cilia, photosensitive cells, and electro-signal recognition organs. They were like living 'water,' able to change their forms in countless ways when gathered together. Some individuals possessed Canaan colonies numbering in the tens of billions, while others acted independently, detached from the group."

Bu Liuxing took a sip of coffee and explained unhurriedly.

"When the Canaan civilization faced imminent destruction, they decided to cram their entire civilization into thousands of golden eggs. They had absolutely no mastery of faster-than-light travel technology. Their home planet lacked energy and had not even developed thermonuclear technology."

"The 'golden eggs' they used were actually a product of their mimicry talent. Due to the very small size of the Canaan beings, they imitated other natural creatures from their home planet's biosphere. They used their own bodies to create a ceramic-like, high-temperature resistant, and highly sealed outer shell. Then they began their journey through the universe."

"Ultimately, ninety-six golden eggs, after a long journey, grew solar sails to act as wings for the eggs. They used the gravity slingshots of various celestial bodies for acceleration, like stubborn snails, and by sheer luck, they landed on Earth."

"The The Faceless Lady we saw once contained over fifty-five million small Canaan."

Jiang Xueming: "Once?"

"These Canaan golden eggs have endured countless years on Earth," Bu Liuxing murmured. "When the Canaan beings first arrived on Earth, it was a time of great hardship. They found it difficult to adapt to the unfamiliar star, the Sun. Coupled with Earth's vegetation, the carbon-oxygen balance was repeatedly disrupted, leading to extreme climates every million years."

"The Canaan beings, having just emerged from suspended animation after their cosmic journey, immediately sought refuge on the relatively stable seabed of the deep ocean upon arriving on Earth. They then slept, hoping for a more stable environment to emerge."

"During the Carnian Pluvial Episode, the entire Earth turned into a water ball, with rain falling for a million years. Before that, insects began to curb the rampant growth of plants, and Earth's environment finally stabilized."

"In the unfathomably deep sea, the Canaan people endured for hundreds of thousands of generations, surviving the disasters of continental shelf and plate movements, earthquakes, volcanoes, and changes in water temperature. It seemed they were finally heading for better times, but things were not that simple."

"They recuperated within the golden eggs, and the organisms inside the eggshells had long since undergone generational changes. Unlike the native Canaan from Procyon, they originally existed as semi-energetic, semi-biological entities. However, their energy forms were no match for Earth's harsh magnetic field and peculiar solar activity."

"To adapt to the environment, the new generation of Canaan beings, upon leaving the golden eggs, used their mimicry talent to transform into pure carbon-based species on Earth, resembling colorful sea slugs. But..."

Bu Liuxing's tone shifted.

"Having a stable physical body meant that these new-generation Canaan could no longer return to the golden eggs. This was a one-way evolution, irreversible. After the Carnian Pluvial Episode ended, these new-generation Canaan people became fossil samples of mysterious creatures in human history textbooks. Mother Earth's capricious temper was like a cruel stepmother, showing no special care for these intelligent alien life forms."

"The Canaan beings that remained in the golden eggs followed Earth's geological timeline. After successive extinctions—the last batch of beings to leave the golden eggs and maintain their carbon-based physical forms were The Faceless Lady from Fang Feng, and the residents of the settlement."

Jiang Xueming frowned. "If these Canaan beings possessed intelligence, why are they like that?"

"Because their civilization has been severed—to be precise, what emerges from the golden eggs has little to do with the original Canaan beings anymore," Bu Liuxing explained. "The Canaan beings from Procyon originally had semi-energetic, semi-material bodies. Their method of reproduction was to exchange information and matter, resulting in an effect far greater than the sum of its parts."

A Xing snapped his fingers.

"For example, if two of their communities exchanged a portion of their units, they could immediately draw energy from the natural environment and multiply, producing more Canaan beings. It was like creating something from nothing, a gift bestowed by their homeworld's abundant natural environment."

"Similarly, they didn't need any medium to store history—no need for writing, books, or music. Their semi-energetic, semi-material bodies were the best information storage tools, like biological computers. And the vast collective of Canaan beings formed a cluster network of these computers."

"However, the rules on Earth were different. Over a hundred years ago, the last generation of Canaan beings to emerge from the golden eggs, upon solidifying their physical forms, lost their energetic bodies and completely forgot their racial history. Only a very few individuals still remembered the star-spanning events that occurred on a timescale of tens of millions of years."

"The Faceless Lady was one such relatively complete ancient Canaan life collective. She chose to leave the golden egg during humanity's first Industrial Revolution and opted for a human form as her material body, attempting to interact with humans."

"She went to study in London, learning human history and culture. Using her racial talent, she influenced the neural networks of the humans around her, making herself appear ordinary and inconspicuous, despite being an anomaly."

"To preserve her memories, her transformation was incomplete, leaving her with a large portion of her ancient consciousness, allowing her to change her physical form at will, like a mass of viscous cells. For this, she paid a terrible price; seventy percent of her Canaan collective died. She also had to constantly avoid sunlight and environments with strong magnetic and electric fields, wearing a black umbrella and wrapping herself tightly when going out during the day."

"She learned human customs and tried to marry another Canaan being from her community, having children using a double-helix gene sequence. But unfortunately, after her husband left the golden egg, he accidentally contracted Vita Imprint. Even amputating a leg was no use; his condition worsened. Finally, in their Western-style house, fearing he would infect The Faceless Lady, her husband exposed himself to a powerful ultraviolet lamp and died, right in front of his workbench. We've seen that prosthetic leg."

"No wonder I couldn't see any books," Jiang Xueming said with sudden understanding. "Only a few photos on the wall. They never needed writing."

"Speaking of which, it was quite romantic," Bu Liuxing chuckled. "When The Faceless Lady talked about those photos, she seemed very happy. For the Canaan people, a fixed life form held no meaning. They couldn't comprehend a sentient being being trapped in a physical cage for its entire life. But when they took photos together, they had to stand in front of the camera for thirty seconds without moving before the flash powder ignited."

"Those thirty seconds of companionship felt like a priceless treasure to her, because her husband was about to leave her, to return to the embrace of the star realm."

"When Canaan beings die, they say their energy and thoughts return to the star realm, from nothing to something, and from something to nothing. In the photos, she could see the reflection of herself and her deceased husband left on Earth. What made her ecstatic was that she was like a thief, stealing sweet memories from the star realm without returning them completely."

Jiang Xueming then thought of the residents in Fang Feng.

"What about those vacant-eyed residents in the settlement, like primitive people?"

Bu Liuxing pondered, sorting through his jumbled memories, then replied.

"The Faceless Lady is watching over them. The clothes on these humanoid beings were all painstakingly woven by her with her dexterous tentacles. Over a hundred years ago, The Faceless Lady expended immense resources to travel underground and hide the remaining golden eggs on this seabed with its sweet sea breeze. The environment here was similar to where she was born, with volcanic activity and geothermal heat to provide relatively stable thermal energy for the golden eggs, making it an excellent incubator. It was perpetually overcast here, with no direct strong sunlight. Her anticipated husband was also born here and then fell ill."

"Later, she believed Earth's environment still needed to evolve, and for her kin within the eggs, it was still too early to become a habitable planet. But it's strange, with The Faceless Lady as a precedent, when the station's engineering team arrived here, they also awakened some Canaan beings from the golden eggs."

"They followed suit, attempting to [be born] in human form. They weren't as docile either—but as Canaan beings, these younglings were too immature. Freed from the constraints of the eggshell and the support of the collective consciousness, they became incapacitated the moment they solidified their physical forms, losing all memory."

"The result is what we see: they are like apes with undeveloped intellect. Apart from a physique similar to The Faceless Lady, they can essentially be considered a new species. The Faceless Lady tried to connect a USB to them a few times, just like she did to me, but the interfaces were incompatible for these infants. That's why we see those residents speaking various languages, but struggling to express complete, specific meanings."

"The blood of the deep-sea era still flows within them—blood rich in copper ions, like that of mimicked marine organisms, which is why we see blue blood. Simply put, these aliens can no longer be called aliens. To survive on Earth, they paid the price of near-civilizational extinction, forcibly and irreversibly transforming themselves into native, pure carbon-based life forms. They are protected animals."

"And then?" Jiang Xueming brought his coffee to his lips, asking curiously, "She told you all this? What happened afterward?"

Bu Liuxing: "We slept together."

"Pfft!" Xue Ming sprayed coffee all over A Xing's face.

Bu Liuxing wiped his face, nonchalantly explaining, "She made the first move. I was very reserved. And I had just learned grappling techniques last month, it would be a shame not to use them. But honestly, that was her only request. To adapt to human society and allow her kin to obtain better mimicked bodies, she needed more DNA samples."

Jiang Xueming held back for a long time, feeling he couldn't quite retort.

Finally, he managed to say, "Is that how you treat protected animals?"