Chapter 414 - 411: The Thread of Hostility

Chapter 414: Chapter 411: The Thread of Hostility

"They should have had a dignified death, but now they’ve died in a merciless disaster, becoming floating corpses in the sea, tossed about without a shred of dignity..."

The balloon was special, but it was still a sponge creature, and it possessed the same moral code.

"Death should be glorious, beautiful, not like this."

Those creatures should not have met such an ugly end.

But the root of it all was it.

It had stirred the hostility of the waves, wreaking devastation across the entire Volcano Plain. All of this was because of its ignorance of its own power.

"Back then, I didn’t have the mental fortitude to bear this power," the balloon said to Mo Ling, filled with self-blame.

"A sin committed unintentionally is still a sin. After that, I decided to face my power head-on and explore the essence of hostility, right up until now..."

The balloon raised a sponge thread and hooked a strand in front of it.

"We are trapped within it without realizing. Our race, which seems to have the power to control hostility, is actually ensnared by this enormous web. Struggle, slaughter... This power is eating away at our souls, making us more irritable and quick to anger."

It looked at Mo Ling and asked with great seriousness:

"Have you ever considered that our very thoughts have long been eroded by this power? Because we can sense hostility, we worship struggle, we worship strength, and we even believe death is a glorious thing."

"I’ve learned about other races. Their views on death are vastly different from ours. They see death as the end of life, something to be feared, so they avoid conflict and minimize killing."

"But we feel this omnipresent hostility, and we’re forced to confront a cruel world."

"Everything in the outside world is vile and hostile, so we must be on guard, be ruthless, and suppress everything with absolute power to find true inner peace."

"Is... this supposed to be right?"

The balloon looked at Mo Ling, asking the question in earnest.

Mo Ling was stunned. He had never imagined a sponge creature would begin to ponder the essence of its race and explore the influence of power on a creature’s thoughts.

However, Mo Ling already had an answer to such a question.

He’d learned it back in middle school.

"Worldview determines methodology."

Mo Ling recited the knowledge he had learned.

"And when it comes to worldview, there’s never any right or wrong."

"Worldview? Methodology?" The balloon clearly couldn’t grasp Mo Ling’s meaning. These concepts from the human world were a huge shock to it.

"It’s how you see the world, and what you do about it," Mo Ling explained simply.

"If you feel the world is full of hostility, you’ll choose to fight it. If you feel the world is full of kindness, you’ll try to repay that kindness. It’s all determined by how you look at the world."

"Since we can see that all-encompassing hostility, it’s only natural that we’re caught in endless struggle. It’s inevitable. There’s no right or wrong in it."

"So, it’s really like that?" The balloon was lost in thought as it listened to Mo Ling’s words.

Mo Ling also knew that the balloon had actually understood this principle long ago. It was just missing that final push, always getting hung up on right and wrong.

It seemed the experience of destroying the Volcano Plain had affected it deeply; otherwise, it wouldn’t be caught in such a dilemma.

"In the end, your confusion stems from a discrepancy in your understanding of the world. The worldviews of other creatures are clashing with your own ingrained notions. You just need to adapt slowly," Mo Ling said reassuringly.

At first, he hadn’t been able to understand the sponge creatures’ perspective either, but after seeing the hostility with his own eyes, he gradually came to understand the source of their views.

However, the balloon refuted Mo Ling’s statement.

"I’m not confused, and I can understand the worldviews of other creatures. What perplexes me is something else."

"What is it?" Mo Ling asked curiously.

"Come with me." The balloon bobbed, motioning for Mo Ling to follow.

"Pull away the lava’s hostility threads, and it won’t be able to hurt you," the balloon said as it sank into the lake of lava.

Mo Ling quickly followed its instructions, pulling away the threads coiled around his body and tentatively dipping himself into the lava.

Sure enough, the lava didn’t harm him; instead, it flowed around his body.

’It can be used like this?’ Mo Ling was rather surprised.

After confirming the lava couldn’t hurt him, he followed the balloon down into the lava lake.

"Do you see those threads? The ones coiled around the lava," the balloon asked, floating as it was.

"Where?"

"Everywhere. Look closely. They aren’t coming from the lava; they’re wrapped around it by something else."

Listening to the balloon, Mo Ling searched with even greater focus. Finally, he spotted some infinitesimally fine threads, like faint hairs. They were almost completely transparent, hidden within the intense heat of the lava and very difficult to spot.

After checking again and again, Mo Ling was certain that these were the threads the balloon had mentioned.

The threads were somewhat haphazard, hidden within the red glow of the lava. They would occasionally tangle into a ball, making them extremely well-hidden.

"I see them. They’re very fine, hard to notice."

"That’s right, those are the ones," the balloon said, pleased. "Your perception is very keen."

"What are they?" Mo Ling asked, looking at the fine threads with curiosity.

The balloon didn’t answer right away. Instead, it asked Mo Ling about his perception of hostility:

"When you were first born, what did the hostility you sensed feel like?"

"I just felt like something wanted to hurt me..." Mo Ling replied, recalling the memory.

"Was there a specific time, a magnitude of hostility, or any other information?"

"Of course there was."

"Then that’s it," the balloon explained. "All of that specific information is manifested in the threads."

"The direction of a thread is the direction the hostility comes from. The tightness of its coil is the magnitude of the hostility. The thickness of the thread is the specific time the hostility will arrive... All of this can be seen in the threads."

"At first, we can’t see the hostility threads, so of course we can’t quantify these correlations. But in reality, all the specific information we sense is related to the threads’ shape, thickness, length, and so on."

The balloon explained to Mo Ling that ever since it had become able to see the threads, it had been studying what each of their dimensions represented, linking them to specific pieces of information.

It looked at the fine threads within the lava and said, "By following these threads, we can find the source of the hostility."

"Come with me." The balloon floated out of the lava lake and flew upward.

Curious, Mo Ling quickly followed.

The balloon continued upward, floating out of the volcano’s crater. It followed that one fine thread, drifting farther and farther, until it finally arrived at a coastline on the edge of the plain.

The fine thread plunged straight into the ocean.

"The hostility... it’s coming from the ocean?" Mo Ling asked in surprise.

"Yes. To be precise, it comes from the depths of the ocean," the balloon said calmly, gazing out at the water.

"The meaning of that thread is very simple..."

"Three thousand years from now, there will be an eruption. The lava we were just in will flow down the Volcano, across the plain, and finally into the ocean. The ocean will cool it completely, but even that won’t be enough to destroy it."

"Another five hundred years after that, the waves will shatter that cooled piece of lava, grinding it into dust and scattering it across the boundless ocean, bringing it a complete and total death."

"That is the specific meaning of this fine thread—hostility from three thousand five hundred years in the future..."