Translator: AnubisTL
Wizard Starfall grew more excited as she spoke, the light in her eyes nearly igniting the silver-white room.
She spun toward Jieming, her gaze burning as if she were staring at a walking vein of rare elements.
"Wizard Jieming! It's wonderful that you've arrived! I was just lamenting my dwindling stock of Imaginary Elements—my experiments couldn't proceed any further."
"As long as you can provide a steady supply of Imaginary Elements, I can further refine the 'Ignition of Intelligence' model. I could even use it as the core to fully construct and expand my 'Spirituality' Law, taking that crucial next step!"
The intensity of her gaze, so fierce it felt almost physical, made Jieming's scalp tingle. He felt that if he didn't change the subject immediately, he'd be dragged into her laboratory as a human element-production machine.
He cleared his throat, forcing the conversation back to reality. "Excellency Starfall, we can discuss the supply of Imaginary Elements in detail later. What's more important right now is the current situation of the two newly intelligent races in your plane."
Viola immediately chimed in, her brow furrowed as she pointed to the brutal battlefield on the light screen. "Exactly, Starfall. I've been away for less than a month! Even if war is a catalyst for civilizational development, this is too fast, too violent."
"And there has to be a trigger for a war between two races, right? Ecologically, one absorbs light and elements while the other roots into the earth to draw nutrients. There's no fundamental competition for resources that would necessitate a fight to the death. So why did they start slaughtering each other the moment they met?"
Pressed by their questions, Wizard Starfall finally managed to pull herself back from her reveries about the future.
Her bloodshot eyes blinked as she turned to the control console, her fingers flying across the interface.
Soon, she brought up a vast array of real-time battlefield records, energy fluctuation spectra, and—most importantly—the decrypted "linguistic" logs of the mental waves and specific electromagnetic signals exchanged between the two sides during combat.
"I didn't understand it at first either," Wizard Starfall explained as she retrieved the data. "All I knew was that after a single, accidental large-scale encounter, they descended into total hostility without warning. They then began to breed and expand at a terrifying rate, spreading the conflict across the entire plane."
She projected the filtered key information onto the main light screen.
"Later, through continuous monitoring and analysis of their 'communication' during combat, I formed a preliminary hypothesis."
On the light screen, records of two completely different "languages" were displayed side-by-side:
On the left, beside the data stream representing the light-ball elemental creatures, were the decrypted high-frequency terms: Twisted, Aberrant, Impure Form, Purification!
On the right, beside the spiritual fluctuations of the animated plants, terms like Mutation, Unpalatable, Energy Toxin, and Purge appeared frequently!
"Look," Wizard Starfall pointed to the screen. "The elemental creatures seem to regard the plant lifeforms as some kind of 'twisted' or 'impure' existence, filled with rejection and a desire for 'purification'. Meanwhile, the plants view the elemental creatures as 'mutated' things—unfit as nutrients, even harmful—and intend to 'purge' them."
"I believe this may stem from the most fundamental difference in their forms of existence—the completely different bodily compositions of pure energy beings and physical organic life. This structural opposition at the most basic level perhaps sowed the seeds of mutual repulsion and heresy right at the dawn of their spiritual awakening."
Jieming focused intently on the information scrolling across the screen, especially the fragments of words representing "insults" and "denigration."
He blinked. A previously overlooked detail, combined with their own experience upon arrival, sparked a realization in his mind.
He noticed that the "language" used by both the elemental creatures cursing the plants and the plants cursing the elementals contained a vast number of words accusing the other side of being ugly.
Then he recalled how, the moment they had appeared, both factions had simultaneously denounced them as "ugly flesh monsters"...
A thought, somewhat absurd yet not entirely impossible, surfaced in his mind.
Could it be... that the root cause of this life-and-death struggle between the two races wasn't resources, living space, or even their opposing forms, but simply... they both found each other too ugly to look at?!
Had it even escalated to the point of "I'm disgusted just seeing you, so you must be destroyed"?
His deep concentration didn't go unnoticed by the other three.
Viola asked curiously, "Jieming, what are you thinking about? You have such a strange expression."
Jieming opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated.
The idea sounded too much like nonsense, and the data was so sparse that he instinctively tried to brush it off. "It's nothing, just a half-baked thought..."
"Tell us!" Viola said, her interest piqued.
Wizard Starfall also cast an encouraging gaze his way.
Under their combined pressure, Jieming had no choice but to bite the bullet. He recounted in detail their experience upon teleporting in: how they had been attacked by creatures from both sides simultaneously, and how both factions had unanimously cursed them as "ugly flesh monsters."
After listening, a look of bewilderment crossed Wizard Starfall's face. "Such a thing happened? My monitoring system focuses primarily on the macro-scale battlefield, energy, and spirituality data. I... indeed overlooked 'aesthetic' feedback on an individual level."
Viola turned to Starfall, asking with a hint of apology, "Starfall, did our earlier intervention interfere with your experimental data? Do we need to take any remedial measures?"
Wizard Starfall waved her hand dismissively, signaling it wasn't necessary. Instead, her attention was now completely captivated by Jieming. She pressed, "Wizard Jieming, does the thought you were hesitating to share have anything to do with this? You must tell me!"
Seeing no way out, Jieming took a deep breath and voiced his hypothesis: that "ugliness" could be the catalyst for a wave of war. He even added, "From our limited encounters and the insults we've seen so far, keywords related to appearance and morphological aversion—like 'ugly' and 'aberrant'—seem to appear with an unusually high frequency. They might even be more common than terms simply describing the other side as 'harmful' or 'competing for resources.' Of course, this is just an intuition based on a small sample size, so it might not be reliable..."
Viola and Wizard Starfall didn't find his theory laughable. Instead, they both frowned, their expressions turning grave.
As experienced high-rank wizards, they had witnessed countless bizarre social structures and the origins of conflicts among intelligent races.
All too often, the spark that ignited a war could be absurdly trivial—a deity's statue with a slightly crooked nose, a chief's impolite sneeze, or even just finding the other side's skin color or body structure "unpleasing to the eye."
By contrast, the idea that war could be triggered by "mutually finding each other too ugly" sounded absurd, yet logically plausible.
This was especially true for two species that had only just attained intelligence, their social structures and value systems still in a state of primordial chaos.
Moreover, Jieming's conjecture was no wild guess. It was a hypothesis awaiting verification, formulated from observed phenomena and existing data. Its only flaw was the lack of direct evidence—a sufficient sample size of creatures explicitly stating they fought because the other side was ugly.
The fire of research rekindled in Wizard Starfall's eyes. "The biological samples you've influenced don't need special processing!" she declared rapidly. "Not only that, but perhaps... the presence of a wizard could itself serve as an ideal 'external stimulus variable' to be introduced into this experimental environment!"
"Observing their reactions to a third party—something completely different from either of them, yet equally 'ugly' in their eyes—would be a precious opportunity to study their cognitive evolution and social interaction!"
The proposal piqued both Jieming's and Viola's interest, and they immediately began discussing this new possibility.
"We could design a controlled experiment," Viola said, her mind racing. "We'll select several regions of comparable size and intensity of conflict. In some, we'll moderately reveal our presence or even initiate non-hostile contact. In others, we can send in different creatures to make contact. We can then observe whether the reactions of the two sides change—perhaps their mutual animosity will ease in the face of an 'uglier' third party, or maybe other unexpected interaction patterns will emerge."
"Excellent idea!" Wizard Starfall exclaimed, her hands flying across the control console as she began to demarcate the experimental zones and set the observation parameters. "We need to precisely control the variables and record all energy exchanges, spiritual fluctuations, and changes in population behavioral patterns... This could unravel the deeper connection between aesthetic preferences and social conflict in the early stages of sapient intelligence!"
"But this means we'll need a larger sample size for the experiment—which is to say, we'll need to create more creatures," Jieming added. "We can also use the Imaginary Element to manufacture more intelligent races, as well as the ones we've already modified, to test the two factions. I can cover the cost of the Imaginary Element..." He directly produced a crystal containing Super-Compressed Spiritual Energy.
In an instant, the three wizards threw themselves into the intense and efficient work of designing and deploying the experiment.
They bustled around the light screen and control console, alternating between heated discussions and rapid-fire operations.
Anya was left standing alone, her mouth slightly open as she watched her grandmother and the two guests instantly enter a state of complete absorption in their research. She ultimately said nothing, her face a picture of utter astonishment.
This... the leap in the conversation and the shift in research direction... it's just too fast, isn't it?
They were just discussing planar rebellions and elemental supply, and now it's suddenly a controlled experiment on "ugliness triggering war"?
She silently retreated to a corner, deciding not to disturb the three fanatical researchers who had clearly found a new toy.
Looking at her grandmother's revitalized profile, Anya silently lit a candle for the two races still fighting to the death outside.
(End of the Chapter)
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