Volume 3, Chapter 92 – Divergent Evolution

“The demonic creatures that spill out of the Black-Rock Demon Kingdom are mainly this kind of ‘black-crystallized’ monster.”

On the wall of the side room, Aurora used the projector attached to her wheelchair to throw up the text and image files she had gathered, showing Bai Xiang the various forms of the black-rock crystal demons.

Page after page of diagrams showed humanoid forms, beast forms, giant forms, insectoid forms and more. But in general all of them used a kind of purple-black crystal as the carrier of their bodies, with two points of scarlet flame burning where their eyes should have been.

Bai Xiang watched with great interest, because she had actually never really seen what it looked like when a Demon Kingdom was unsealed. Inside the borders of Great Yu, she rarely had such an opportunity.

As for Yao Qingyuan, that did not count.

The rebellion raised by the Southern Prince was tied to that strange thing, the Sea of Blood. The derivative pollution from the Sea of Blood could indeed twist all kinds of demonic creatures, wild beasts and aberrations in the vicinity into tireless monsters with terrifying regenerative power, but that was not the same thing as a Demon Kingdom reviving.

“Black-Rock demonfolk, Black-Rock fire-eye beasts, black-crystal giants, black-crystal demon insects…” Aurora read off the scientific names of these things, then turned the page and pointed at an especially disgusting photo. “And then there is ‘black-crystal contamination’.”

The photo looked to have been taken on an operating table. The patient’s body was covered with gauze, only the operative area exposed. It was a patch of skin roughly over the abdomen. The surface of that skin was densely inlaid with countless black-crystal granules, so many that any ordinary person would get goosebumps just looking at it.

According to Aurora’s introduction, after the Black-Rock Demon Kingdom revived, it had continually produced special Demon Pools outward, including but not limited to “the Miner,” “the Treasure-Seeker Legend,” “black-crystal Buddha statues,” and so on.

The reason she used these three Demon Pools as examples was that they represented, respectively, the “illusory-deity” type, the “urban-legend” type, and the “physical-object” type among Demon Pools. It was not that only these three kinds were running wild.

“The Miner Demon Pool is a shadow.” Aurora flipped the page and pointed at a very obviously processed illustration. “The mines of Baco City sometimes throw the Miner’s shadow into the night sky at late hours. If anyone sees that shadow during that time, they will unconditionally and uncontrollably go to the mines to work. Even if they were not miners before, in that moment they will move like old hands of ten years, working themselves to death.”

“The Treasure-Seeker Legend is a dangerous Demon Pool that leaked out in the earliest phase of the Demon Kingdom’s revival. It spreads in the form of a campfire ghost story. Those who are polluted by it will have dreams at night about ‘searching for black demon crystal.’ Once that process starts, there is basically no saving them. Their bodies will gradually be filled by the ‘black demon crystals’ found in the dream, just like this… densely packed, until they are completely transformed into a black-crystal person. Even their brains will turn into carved crystal.”

In comparison, the black-crystal Buddha statues were actually the easiest things to contain and deal with. Their mode of pollution was the same as the Treasure-Seeker Legend. No one knew which unlucky fool had picked one up from the outskirts at first. Because the locals believed in the Buddha, that person had taken it home to worship. As time went on, everyone who had worshipped it, touched it, or even just seen it came down with black-crystal contamination, slowly warping into stiff crystal people.

“These statues are a real headache.” Speaking of them, Aurora could not help knitting her brows. “We were lucky there were not many. Looking at them indirectly through lenses can resist the pollution. Otherwise, those things alone could wipe out all the population on Baco’s outskirts.”

After she finished explaining the demonic creatures, demonfolk and Demon Pools of the Black-Rock Demon Kingdom, the topic finally moved on to the Lilu Demon Kingdom.

“They are waterfolk,” Aurora said very concisely. “Not pure water, and not aquatic creatures in the conventional sense. We call them ‘waterfolk’ or ‘water demons’.”

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Bai Xiang zoomed in on the transmitted images on her own phone for a careful look and found the description very apt.

The picture showed a “water person.”

It stood on a riverbank, with a clearly human silhouette. It was indeed not a fish, nor a shrimp, crab or other aquatic animal, but it was not pure water either. Through its translucent body, one could see structures similar to human bones and organs.

Just from what the camera had captured, the thing was terrifying. Picture a lump of slime on a riverbank at sunset, suddenly standing up with a skull and guts wrapped inside it. Anyone who saw a scene like that out of nowhere would be scared half to death.

That was probably why the photo looked a little blurry.

The photographer’s hands had shaken, and badly.

“Is this the only one?” Bai Xiang flipped forward, only to find more pictures of water people from different angles. The level of detail was far inferior to what they had on the Black-Rock Demon Kingdom.

“The Lilu waterfolk are very mysterious.” Aurora shook her head. “They can dissolve into water and travel with the currents to every corner of southern Luohou.”

The unspoken meaning was that their search difficulty was extremely high. If these things did not take the initiative to show themselves, even the Star Tower Group did not have many options.

And in practice, the Lilu Demon Kingdom really was that low-key. Since its revival, it had consistently avoided direct collisions with human society. Apart from a few minor rumors, there were no recorded cases of anyone being harmed by related Demon Pools.

“The Burning-Saliva Demon Kingdom, the Black-Rock Demon Kingdom, the Lilu Demon Kingdom.”

Bai Xiang repeated the names under her breath, then looked up at Aurora. “Their traits are all very distinct.”

The demonic creatures of the Burning-Saliva Demon Kingdom were marked by eyes wreathed in ghastly green flames and drool dripping from their mouths in the same ghastly green, which could turn into flame when it met the wind.

The Black-Rock Demon Kingdom was all black-rock people, black-crystal people, black-crystal monsters and black-crystal disease.

The Lilu Demon Kingdom simply had water people.

Each one was stranger than the last, each one more distinctive in its traits.

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They were all “demons,” yet judging purely from appearance, these were obviously three different races. The differences between each and the others were as great as the difference between humans and other animals.

“How should I put it…” Aurora tilted her head. “We have researched some other Demon Kingdoms as well and have gathered quite a bit of experimental data. Comparing all the results side by side, we found that the beings spawned inside these Demon Kingdoms, between themselves and also between them and the living creatures and species active outside, actually have certain connections.”

“For example, all of them have humanoid demons.”

“They all do, and outside we humans are humanoid too.”

“Or, for another example, some of them display fairly obvious biological traits. Some have horns. Some have skeletal traits and outlines. Some retain certain habits. All of this proves they are closely related to certain species outside.”

“What causes that?” Bai Xiang frowned. “Were they originally outside species to begin with?”

As she spoke, she flipped on her phone to the section on the Black-Rock fire-eye beast and the more she looked, the more it reminded her of actual lion demons or tiger demons.

Close relatives, counterparts… What did that imply?

Pollution?

That all the creatures in the Demon Kingdoms had originally been normal outside species and only warped into their current forms after being polluted by demonic power?

Did that not mean that all the humanoid demons in there had originally been humans?

That every Demon Kingdom purge up to now had been the slaughter of former kin?

“This is very normal.” Aurora did not see why she was displeased. After thinking a moment, she offered an example. “I wonder if Dao Lord Bai has ever heard of the ‘fenyan theory’?”

Bai Xiang shook her head.

She had read plenty of miscellaneous books, after all she had lain in bed for over ten years in her previous life, but she really had never heard this term.

“Fenyan theory, meaning ‘divergent evolution’.” Aurora’s expression was slightly strained as she explained.

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“It was proposed by a scientist named Katalo from the Ximu Federation. It says that if you take a large population of the same kind and, using some method such as spacetime isolation, scattering them through the universe for example, cut them into separate smaller groups, then as time passes, a few hundred years, a few thousand, tens of thousands, and you go back and observe these groups again, you may find that they no longer look anything alike.”

“Do you follow?” She gestured with her hands.

“Say you have a troop of monkeys. You split them into Monkey Group A and Monkey Group B. You cast Group B off into deep space. Ten thousand years later, assuming Group B is still alive, they might have evolved into something very bizarre according to their environment over there.”

Is that so.

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes.

In fact, the example did not even need the assumption of scattering through the universe. Her own familiar world already had a prototype: the different human races living in different geographical regions.

People of Yu.

The Federations.

The barbarians.

The polar people.

The human race was roughly divided into these four big categories, and within each you could make finer distinctions.

Each group and subgroup did differ in some ways.

Sometimes it was skeleton and facial features.

Sometimes it was body type and skin color.

Just imagine, even on the same planet, differences in geographical environment alone could lead to such large evolutionary divergences. What would happen if you pulled the distance even farther?

This fenyan theory was interesting.

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It was not nonsense or alarmism. It really did have its logic.

Bai Xiang savored the implications and then, with interest, asked Aurora, “You are trying to tell me that the beings in the Demon Kingdoms were not necessarily warped into that state by demonic pollution, but may have simply evolved that way… advanced that way?”

It was a novel angle.

She had to admit she had never thought of it like that before.

“It is parallel.” Aurora shook her head. “Augu particles, that is, demonic power, might be precisely the kind of ‘environmental factor’ that forces them to change.”

“But evolution is always ongoing. Even without demonic power, evolution would still happen.”

“After all, an Illusory Realm is already a different spacetime. From a scientific viewpoint, it is very hard to judge how far an Illusory Realm is from the primary plane.”

“If communication and contact between an Illusory Realm and the primary plane are completely cut off for a very long period, the probability that the situation fenyan theory describes will occur… We consider that to be one hundred percent.”

So they had even built theoretical support for this.

Rationally, Bai Xiang knew she was not wrong, but it still felt absurd.

Because according to that line of reasoning, Aurora could just as well claim that humans and demons shared a common ancestor, and that so-called demonkind were only “new humans” and “new beasts” evolved inside sealed-off Illusory Realms.

“That is enough.”

Bai Xiang picked up her sword and stood, looking at Aurora.

“You handle the equipment examinations.”

“I am going to take a look at black-crystal contamination.”