"What about the Chan Sect?"
"I saw the Chan Sect's position over by the West Wall." The third professor, surnamed Zhao, came around from the North Wall, holding a notebook.
"The Heavenly Venerable of the Primordial Beginning's exact words were... 'The Heavenly Dao preserves the best, while the weak return to dust. Such is the natural order.'"
The three professors exchanged glances.
"He meant that if there wasn't enough spiritual energy, only the gifted should remain," Professor Li said.
"Survival of the fittest," Professor Zhao said.
"The Jie Sect said people had rights. The Chan Sect said only the elite should remain," Professor Lin said.
"And so they fought for ten thousand years."
The live chat's feelings were complicated at that moment.
"The Jie Sect... doesn't seem wrong, either."
"The Chan Sect has a point too, right? When there aren't enough resources, not everyone can survive."
"But what gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?"
"Isn't this just the trolley problem... the Primordial Era version?"
"The ten-thousand-year trolley problem."
Chen Siyao took all of this in without commenting.
Her attention had already shifted to the final passage on the South Wall.
The end of the war.
The writing at the far right of the South Wall differed somewhat in style from the preceding accounts of the war.
The earlier account had been annalistic: an event in a given year and month, calm, objective, restrained.
But in this final passage, the tone changed. It was no longer a narrative.
It was closer to a personal record, tinged with emotion.
Chen Siyao noticed the difference in the lettering. The tens of thousands of characters before it had been carved with even pressure, in a standard script honed through years of practice.
But in this last passage, the pressure