I'm trapped in a block

Chapter 607 Touch
"We, what are we?"

When Mo Ling asked this question using the language of touch, the companion who was playing with him stiffened for a moment, as if it didn't quite understand the question. It circled around Mo Ling several times and rubbed against him.

"I don't know." The companion replied blankly.

"Follow me." It tapped the side of Mo Ling's head and asked Mo Ling to follow it to another place.

Soon, it brought Mo Ling to a solid cave.

Here, Mo Ling touched the companion who felt like jelly again.

"Ask it." The companion who led the way said to Mo Ling.

Ask it? Does it know?

So, Mo Ling wrapped around the jelly-soft companion and told it his questions.

"We, what are we?"

After understanding what Mo Ling meant, the jelly companion also began to caress Mo Ling and answer his questions.

"We, I mean the bugs."

This answer immediately broke through Mo Ling's thoughts and allowed him to recover for a moment.

"Fingerworm? A worm that looks like a finger?"

But the next moment, the red covered him again and drowned his will.

"What are fingers?" Mo Ling was stunned again. He clearly knew the word, but he couldn't remember its meaning. After thinking fruitlessly, he had to give up.

"You are very smart." The jelly companion suddenly praised Mo Ling.

"Why?" Mo Ling touched it, expressing his confusion.

"Because, none of the other companions would ask me this question, they would only play, and you are the first finger worm to ask me this question."

This passage was more complicated than anything Mo Ling had ever felt before. In order to complete this passage, this companion touched Mo Ling for a long time, and it also took Mo Ling a long time to understand the meaning of this passage.

However, the jelly companions have been waiting patiently.

"Why?" After understanding its meaning, Mo Ling expressed the doubt again.

"Limitations." The jelly companion replied with an extremely complicated word, and then began to touch Mo Ling slowly again.

Mo Ling didn't understand at first, but gradually, he connected the various actions of his jelly companions together, and by guessing, he finally understood what his jelly companions wanted to express.

"The development of finger worms has its limits..."

Touch language is a very inefficient language for communication.

Not only does this language convey very little information, but it is also very easy to be ambiguous. An action can express completely different meanings in different contexts, making communication among finger insects using this language increasingly difficult.

In the early stages of their development, finger worms would often walk out of caves to explore. For finger worms, the more things they touched, the richer their understanding of the world would be.

Flowers, grass, trees, the earth... Only after touching these things can they understand what these things are. The more they touch, the more knowledge they gain. These understandings of specific things can make the finger insects' consciousness clearer. When their understanding of the world becomes richer, they will become smarter and smarter.

However, exploration means danger. The more you touch, the more likely you are to encounter dangerous things, such as poisonous weeds, sharp stones, thorns... These can cause great harm to finger insects. Because they can only understand the world through touch, they will definitely be hurt by these things.

After some finger worms touched these dangerous things, they told their companions about them before they died. They only left a "word" to tell their companions that it was dangerous, but their companions did not know what these things looked like, and could only feel an unknown fear. Not only that, there were even some things that the finger worms died before they had time to touch them. They had no idea what those things were, they just felt a vibration, and their companions disappeared. They called these things that had never been recorded "disasters."

As the world explored by the finger worms became larger and larger, these unknown fears became more and more numerous, and they encountered more disasters. More dangerous "words" gradually spread among the finger worms.

The finger insects were scared and hid back in the cave, unwilling to explore the outside world again.

Some finger worms were very opposed to this decision, thinking that the finger worm race should not be trapped in the cave like this. Without touching the world, they would not be able to understand the world.

"But if you touch the world, you touch danger."

These explorers encountered even stronger opposition.

For finger bugs, they can only understand the world through touch. The various knowledge relayed by their companions is ultimately just a "vocabulary", an illusory "action", and they cannot truly understand what that thing is.

Knowing the word "grass" does not mean that you really know grass. Only by actually touching the grass can you fully understand what grass represents and connect that illusory movement with real things.

But what about poisonous weeds and thorns?

If you want to truly understand them, you have to touch them, but touching them will bring death...

If we know the world, we will definitely die?

The Fingerbugs realized this, and a feeling of despair spread throughout the race.

This refers to the limitations of insects and is also the reality they have to face.

Of course, they would not encounter any danger while hiding in the cave and playing, but since they refused to explore the outside world, as the old finger worms that had been to the outside world died, the thinking of the finger worm community became more and more backward.

These newborns know fewer and fewer words, and even if they know words, they don’t know specific things. Some of them don’t even know the word “tree”. Even if the old finger worms tell them, they will quickly forget it while playing.

Finger bugs are actually quite intelligent. They can easily remember what they have touched and quickly outline the objects in their minds. Their abstract thinking is extremely powerful. If they have explored a place, they can even build a three-dimensional model map in their minds.

Their understanding of the world comes from touch. If they hide in the cave, they will never be able to touch the world and their thinking will no longer function.

Newborns become more and more innocent and stupid. They no longer think about what the world really looks like, but play all day long, trapping themselves in caves until they die.

The old finger worms are also helpless. They can teach the newborns a variety of words and describe the beauty of the world to them, but they cannot teach them what the real world is like.

Newborns cannot imagine things they have not touched. The world in their minds is this cave, which is the place they are most familiar with and also the hardest cage.

The jelly companion wrapped around Mo Ling and slowly told the story about the fingerworm race.

Only then did Mo Ling realize that the jelly companion's bones had become a little soft, and strange wrinkles had appeared at the base of the body.

"Are you old?" Mo Ling blankly asked his doubts while looking at his jelly companion's body.

"Me? I'm dying." The jelly companion answered nonchalantly. It gently touched Mo Ling and gave him a heartfelt advice: "You have to go and touch this world yourself. Our world is not just about caves..."

"There are flowers, soil, trees, mountains, sea, storms, sunshine..."

"Hard, soft, rough, smooth, visible, invisible..."

“So beautiful… So beautiful.”

(End of this chapter)