After exchanging information with Cummings and his family, Mu You had recovered considerably and could get up and move around. But he was in no hurry to leave. Instead, he followed the family of four around the Fourth Layer, continuing to gather antidote ingredients while learning how to survive in Jie Forest.
"Don't fight the ecosystem here. Try to become part of it."
That was the secret to survival Cummings had told him before they set out.
Every creature in Jie Forest had its own place and purpose. The entire ecosystem was, in fact, one vast symbiotic system, with each creature doing its part to form a stable, closed loop.
As outsiders, humans who wanted to join this symbiotic system needed not to destroy it, but to carefully understand its ecological rules and find somewhere they could contribute. Then, without affecting the ecosystem as a whole, they could integrate themselves into it, meet its needs, and first help with whatever they could before thinking about obtaining what they needed. Only then would this closed-loop ecosystem refrain from rejecting them.
["Moon Butterflies don't actually reject outside species. They even welcome creatures from elsewhere. Within seven paces of a poison, there is always an antidote. That principle of balance, of things sustaining and counteracting one another, is fully embodied in this jungle. As long as you observe carefully, you'll never face a truly hopeless situation here," Cummings said.]
For the next three days, Mu You quietly followed the family, learning survival techniques for the Fourth Layer and gradually figuring out their survival strategy.
Cummings was right. To survive here, one first had to acknowledge one's weakness, humble oneself, and take those lower creatures as examples, observing, imitating, and learning their ways of survival.
Finding patterns and then using the rules was always