Chapter 546 - 543: Pity

Chapter 546: Chapter 543: Pity

"Are you all right?"

"I’m fine."

Xi slowly walked over to the fallen Horned Elephant, knelt, and stroked its mangled head.

"This was the last one..."

"Horned Elephant meat is delicious, and their horns are incredibly hard, making them ideal materials. But these creatures aren’t very intelligent and fly into a frenzy when provoked by sound. This made them a target for other creatures, and they were hunted to excess. Now, you can hardly find a trace of them in the Abyss."

"Now, the last one on Senluo Island is dead too. In the future, this species may never be seen again."

Xi’s withered hand slowly caressed the Horned Elephant’s eye. This Horned Elephant’s eyeball hadn’t been replaced by other flesh. A clear liquid, like tears, trickled from the corner of its eye. The massive creature seemed to have been enduring immense pain right before its death.

His fingertip traced the path of the tear. Xi remained kneeling in silence for a long time.

To him, every creature on Senluo Island held profound significance.

These creatures had once been "patients," and they were also a manifestation of the healers’ compassion—one of their few interferences in the destinies of other races.

The healers had always been conflicted. They loved to cure diseases, to see patients plagued by illness restored to health. They loved to save, to rescue creatures from suffering.

But they were also timid. They didn’t dare interfere in the fates of other races or leave the Hua Sheng Islands, and they were exceedingly cautious in everything they did.

They longed to save those patients in dire straits and knew that the Abyss was filled with rare "diseases," but they didn’t dare. They could only hide away in the Hua Sheng Islands, waiting for patients to arrive by chance.

They didn’t dare keep intelligent life-forms, so they could only bring some endangered, non-intelligent species to Senluo Island, secretly protecting them, providing a good environment, and intervening in their fragile destinies.

The power to heal was immense. This power made the healers timid and hesitant, yet it also compelled them to uphold their duties, to hold fast to the compassion that defined them.

This led back to the question Xi was always pondering: What is disease?

In Li Luo’s view, it was a question of perspective, and also a question of how the healers defined themselves.

The healers were perpetually lost, which was why Xi could never figure out the answer.

To this day, Xi still couldn’t figure it out. When his companion left the Hua Sheng Islands to save a race being consumed by parasitic plants, was that action right or wrong?

Xi knelt by the Horned Elephant’s head for a long time, the ball of light flickering continuously.

"Li Luo, you humans... you also protect animals on the verge of extinction, right?"

"Yes," Li Luo replied, walking to his side.

"But why?" Xi asked in return. "Shouldn’t these creatures have been eliminated long ago? Their physiology is outdated, their habits are outdated, and their intelligence can’t keep up. For them to remain in this cruel world is just a form of suffering."

"Because they are weak, they cannot fight off plagues. Because they are weak, they cannot adapt to their environment. Because they are weak, they are preyed upon by enemies... In nature, weakness is the original sin. We round up this ’refuse’ that nature has discarded, give it the grand name of ’protection,’ provide a comfortable environment and ample resources, and build an illusory world for them. Is that the right thing to do?"

Li Luo thought for a moment. She had never considered it so deeply before, but hearing Xi’s words, she was reminded of something familiar...

"Are you talking about zoos?" Li Luo asked back.

Xi faltered, taken aback by her counter-question.

"Something like that..."

"If one day, humanity were also eliminated, unable to adapt, and was ’protected’ by another species—locked in a cage with a comfortable environment and abundant resources, where humans could still develop according to their own ’ideas’—would you be willing? Wouldn’t that be despair?"

Before Li Luo could answer, Xi continued on his own, "I’ve been wondering, is there really any point in us protecting these extinct creatures? Or are we just satisfying our own desire to be protectors? Do we just need weaker beings to pity and guard, so that we can feel a sense of superiority, a sense of pride in protecting the weak...?"

Listening to Xi’s questions, Li Luo shook her head. "I don’t know. But I’m always pretty happy when I go to the zoo."

Humans initially protected endangered animals because they couldn’t preserve their genes and could only propagate the species through live breeding. But with technological advancement, genetic technology was mastered, making it possible to create clones of any species from recorded genetic data at will.

Li Luo recalled that Yuanxin Technology had once been penalized by the government for using complete genetic fragments to create cloned pandas. Although the head of the genetics department at the time argued that other genes had been mixed in to create these "pet pandas," the authorities didn’t accept the explanation. This shattered the plan to give "everyone their own panda."

While cloning technology remained tightly controlled, the goal of preserving genetic diversity has gradually lost its meaning. These days, preserving rare animals is done purely out of a sense of compassion and curiosity.

"Humans get to have some fun, and these ’outdated’ creatures get to eke out an existence. That’s already a good deal. If one day humanity also ends up being kept in a pen for show, well, we could only lament how unfair the world is."

"When you’re truly weak, despair is meaningless."

Li Luo gave Xi her answer.

Whether in the Abyss or on Earth, agonizing over the reasons for species conservation was pointless. Whether the motive was scientific research, compassion, or a sense of superiority, the protector didn’t need to overthink it.

These healers, too, had chosen to protect simply because they had a compassion they didn’t know where else to direct.

And now, Xi was questioning that very compassion, which was why he was asking these questions.

The healers as a group truly possessed a strange, impartial compassion, which led to all sorts of internal conflicts. And the more they agonized over them, the less effective their healing abilities became.

"You’re just a healer, not a god. You’re overthinking things, Xi."

Li Luo said to Xi in a serious tone:

"Protecting the weak—whether it stems from compassion or a sense of superiority, and regardless of what it means to the ones being protected... All you need to know is that you protected them. That’s it. Judge the action, not the motive. Don’t overthink it."

Hearing Li Luo’s advice, Xi fell into thought for a moment before slowly breaking free from his tangled emotions.

He slowly stood up and gazed into the depths of the forest.

Although his heart was still filled with confusion, one thought remained resolute:

’I have to find out what exactly happened on Senluo Island...’