Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 790: Is life supposed to be ordinary?
"What does this mean?" Alice was a little confused. "You said that the equality you want has nothing to do with race, class, wealth, or power, and then you inexplicably recited a famous quote from How the Steel Was Tempered. Could it be that..."

She suddenly opened her eyes wide and figured it all out: "You are a pro-Soviet, you want to rebuild the Soviet Union, right?!"

This was obviously a wrong answer. Tiantis shook his head, knowing that arguing with this guy would not lead to any good results. So he looked at a certain silent young man and said, "Why don't you ask Mr. Ling? I believe he can understand and has already understood."

This sentence made everyone look at Lingge, but facing their gaze, the young man had no choice but to remain silent. He had indeed guessed her true ideal from Tiandis's words, but to be honest, that made him unbelievable, because if Tiandis and the Witch Society were really working for this ideal, then the cause they were going to create was actually more difficult than eliminating the barriers between race, class, wealth and power.

"Don't just stand there, Lingge!" Alice urged, "If you know, just tell me. What's there to worry about?"

This is the main plot of the game. If the main plot is not advanced, how can the game continue to be played? This is her idea, while others are simply interested in the great ideal mentioned by Tiandis. This ideal can not only explain what the Witch Society has been doing, but also perhaps explain why the young royal powers of order and the young royal powers of chaos parted ways and took two completely opposite paths nine hundred years ago or even longer ago.

What kind of ideal is this, which is recognized by the Chaos Kings but opposed by the Order Kings? If it is really for the purpose of creating a new world of equality and beauty, then my past life self should have no reason to oppose it, right? Saint Shalia couldn't help thinking so.

Unable to go against his companions' expectations, Linger was silent for a while before finally speaking, both to explain to his companions and to ask Tiandis, wanting to get a definitive answer from her, whether it was affirmative or negative: "The equality you pursue, the kind that has nothing to do with class and wealth, or even human society, is actually equality in the sense of life, right?"

Snapped!
Tiantis snapped her fingers, her voice was crisp and pleasant, and it was obvious that she was in a good mood. "Correct answer, Mr. Ling, your ability to understand is indeed among the best of the people of the same type that I have seen. You are indeed a talent who was first a pastor and then a teacher. Let me ask you seriously, do you really not consider joining our Witch Society? The fact that you can understand this ideal means... you are also a person chosen by it."

"I'm sorry to refuse." Lingge replied expressionlessly, but this refusal had nothing to do with his personal choice. It was purely because: "The ideal you pursue is probably more difficult than eliminating the various contradictions in human society. I don't think you can succeed."

“But in fact, we are already on the road to success.”

Tiantis raised his eyebrows. Seeing that the girls, including Alice, still looked confused and didn't seem to understand the so-called "equality in the sense of life", he raised his left hand and pointed his index finger at the dark blue crystal wall above his head, or in other words, at the more distant night sky and universe. A confident arc appeared at the corner of his mouth: "Life is only once for everyone. This is the most beautiful sentence I have ever seen in a book. It is also the best gift the goddess has given to His creation. At the beginning of creation, He defined the ordinariness of each life, allowing them to exist in a limited way and continue indefinitely."

"Life is so cruel and fragile, which is reflected in every action driven by innate instincts and acquired desires: tigers hunt sheep, wolves prey on lambs, fungi decompose trees, ants gnaw on corpses, the greatest predator can die from an inconspicuous wound, and the smallest algae can create the miracle of life. Even with wisdom, life above nature cannot escape this fate: light elves will turn into shadows at the peak of the sun, feather elves will die alone on the mountain where their wings are broken once they are old, dragons are famous for their longevity, but after a thousand years, they are nothing but dust, and even humans, the leaders of all spirits, can hardly escape the threat of a stone or even a nail."

"However, it is precisely this cruelty and fragility that makes life in the world so beautiful and dazzling."

Although they were clearly in a sealed crystal wall, isolating the starry sky from the ground, everyone saw that Tiantis' eyes were shining, so they suspected that they were surrounded by stars: "The mayfly, which is born in the morning and dies in the evening, spends its whole life pursuing the meaning of reproduction. The mole cricket, who does not know life and death, leaves the memory of the past life in the mud and stones; the aging wolf king looks back on his life and decides to pass on the hunting skills and the qualification of leading the tribe to the best offspring; the young dragon, who has just broken out of the eggshell, opens his eyes and sees the long time of 700 years silently traveling in front of him... There is only one life, so how to spend this only life? Every tiny individual is thinking about the answer in the long journey of life, and practicing this answer personally, thus forming our vibrant planet."

"I like to see the beauty and calmness of life, such as a nest of petrels leisurely resting in a cave on the top of a cliff during a storm, using their beaks to groom their feathers wet by the rain. I also like to see the embarrassment and numbness of life, such as a wild deer fleeing in the mountains and forests in a panic, just to avoid the claws of predators, but eventually caught up, with its chest torn open and blood flowing out, and the light in its eyes gradually dimming as it was dying... Because no matter it is beautiful or embarrassment, calm or numb, it proves that they are living unremittingly and desperately for their only life, just to live up to the most precious gift given to them by the goddess. Just like what Pavel Korchagin said in "How the Steel Was Tempered" -"

She withdrew her gaze and looked at Lingge and others again, repeating the famous saying word for word. Now it sounded like it had a unique meaning: "A person's life should be spent like this: when he looks back on the past, he will not regret wasting his years, nor will he be ashamed of doing nothing; in this way, when he is dying, he can proudly say: I have dedicated my entire life and all my energy to the most precious cause in life - fighting for the liberation of mankind." Replacing "a person's life" with "the life of every life", and "fighting for the liberation of mankind" with "fighting for one's own life" is Tiantis's understanding of this sentence, and perhaps it is also the most unique understanding among all people who have read this book.

When Olvera, the most artistic girl, heard this, many similar ideas from literary works suddenly emerged in her mind. But this time she did not repeat the sentences in the book. Instead, she murmured in a low voice, as if inspired: "Every life is unique and fragile. They must live for their unique but fragile life. Sometimes it is happy, sometimes it is difficult, but because of this, they can release the light of a meteor and illuminate the night sky of our planet."

"exactly."

Tiantis slowly lowered his left hand pointing at the night sky, but there was still a breathtaking brightness in his eyes: "The world Miss Alice lives in is like this: life is precious because of its uniqueness, and beautiful because of its fragility. In nature, plants, animals and birds compete for freedom, the fittest survive, and the unfit are eliminated, but the fittest will not be favored because they are better, and the unfit will not lose their beauty because of being eliminated; among humans, there are superiors and ordinary people, rich and poor, but after stripping away the value given by society, their lives are actually equally important and equally insignificant; in nature and humans, an ant and a human are in the same position, even if this human invents a spacecraft that can travel the universe, and the ant can only carry the remains of flowers, plants, insects and birds between the soil and rocks, but the blue planet doesn't care, because in her eyes, these two creatures exist finitely and continue infinitely. Ants cannot escape the fate of life and death, and of course humans can't escape the fate of life and death."

"However, in the Mirror Star World, this balance has been broken."

Tiantis changed the subject and naturally brought this grand and distant theme to the planet he was standing on: "Both planets have their own unique operating rules. Earth's is called physics. Humans can use the power of physical rules to create all kinds of terrifying weapons. The most dangerous strategic weapons can even wipe out tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant. However, the person who controls the weapon will not change the nature of life. He is also fragile and may become one of these tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands at any time."

"The Mirror Star world is different. Its rules are called magic. The life on this planet can not only use magic, but can even use it to change its life form. Some people call it sublimation or evolution, but I think a more accurate name should be exploitation and plunder: they are exploiting the value of other lives, plundering the origin of this planet, and satisfying their own evil and greedy desires."

When Tiantis said this, his tone gradually became cold, like a cold wind blowing across the Indorsis Bridge, making the girls shiver subconsciously: "So you will see, since ancient times, all the tragedies and conspiracies caused by this inequality of life: the aliens who are born with the ability to use magic naturally have authority over their entire lives, spreading their ambitions to every corner of the world. Even if they fail, it is only a temporary retreat. The infinite dragon god Bahamut, who was defeated by humans ten thousand years ago, still overlooks every blade of grass and every tree on Mount Platinum, while countless lives have been buried in the dust; humans who have gone through hardships to control magic seem to make up for the regrets of the past. Once they obtain the qualifications to surpass mortals, they become more rampant. The four empires' rule over the world lasted for three thousand years. During these three thousand years, there was not even a change of emperor. Endless rule brought endless darkness. The fate of the extraordinary people slaughtering each other may have been destined from then on."

"The brutal fighting never stopped, but this killing was not the vitality and wildness of life in order to survive, but their attempt to distinguish themselves from mortals and abandon the only precious gift given to them by the goddess. Once those with power separate themselves from mortals, the world will become just their playground, allowing them to release their desires as they please: Abraham, the 'Mad God', devoured the ashes of his own kind to gain strength. If he, who claimed to be a god, had not regarded those weak people as his own people, he would probably not have heard the wailing from their souls; Vanos, the 'Sleepless Eye', explored the mystery of death in his laboratory in the deep sea, intending to master the forbidden knowledge of resurrecting the dead. If he succeeded, the life that everyone is proud of would no longer be a unique treasure, but just a weight with an estimated weight on an unbalanced scale."

"The alien races of the Shikilia Peninsula have been hiding for many years, but they are willing to take risks for the temptation of the teeth of immortality, because they are afraid of the death that awaits them at the end of their lives, but they don't know that without such a death, their lives are meaningless. What an ugly attitude; the fanatics who follow their beliefs try to call on the arrival of the fictional gods to reshape the world for them, but how should the imaginary gods who have never lived and cannot die understand their definition of the world? They are just using blindness and impulse as their own nutrients. What a foolish cognition."

“Life is so beautiful, but the world is becoming ugly because more and more people are unwilling to admit their identity as mortals, unwilling to let their lives be only once, and even unwilling to accept those cruel but beautiful things. The more people pursue power, the more people will have such thoughts. They live on this planet, essentially plundering and exploiting the value of other lives.”

"So, I want to return the world to normal."

Tiandis's eyes swept across everyone's faces. Everyone she saw avoided her gaze without exception, but not out of fear, but out of some more complicated emotions. Lingge was perhaps the only exception. He met Tiandis's gaze without flinching, with a deep calmness in his eyes, because he could actually understand Tiandis's thoughts, and even faintly agreed with them: "Life should be ordinary. Only in this way can this planet composed of all life be great enough."

Across the empty bridge, the black-haired girl and the silver-haired young man looked at each other from afar, and spoke each word clearly: "An ordinary life only happens once. It is beautiful, fragile, and destined to shine in the dust."

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)