Chapter 792: Evolution
"Is this the 'big secret' you were talking about?" Qi Xia asked coldly.
"Hehe..." The old man let out a strange laugh, lifting his head to look at Qi Xia. "Isn't this a 'big secret'?"
Hearing the old man's laughter, Qi Xia looked down at the skull again. Though he could only see the back of it, judging by the dry cracks and the amount of dirt clinging to it, it was nothing more than someone who had been buried here after death.
Maybe they had been dead for decades, or maybe just a few years.
No matter how he looked at it, this wasn't anything extraordinary, let alone a "secret."
No one could say how many people had died in this city over the past seven years, or how many corpses had been produced.
"It looks like I bet wrong," Qi Xia said, glancing up at his own empty head. "After all, it's gambling. No one wins forever."
With that, Qi Xia turned to leave, but the old man called out to stop him.
"Don't go, young man!" The old man happily cradled the skull in his hands, picking up the kerosene lamp with the other. "Aren't you curious?! I dug for so long to find this skull. How can you not be curious?"
Qi Xia sighed helplessly, stopping in his tracks and slowly turning back. In his eyes, this old man was no different from the usual lunatics.
Seeing that he had managed to stop Qi Xia, the old man quickly took two steps forward, but still clutched the skull tightly. "Young man! There's more down there! A lot more!"
Qi Xia looked down at the skull in his arms with an expressionless face. The lamplight was very dim, but it was obvious that this skull had nothing special about it.
"So what's the secret?" Qi Xia asked, looking up.
"Young man... you have to believe me... If you just believe what I say, I'll tell you everything!" The old man said with a strange expression. "But you absolutely can't think I'm crazy!"
"Alright," Qi Xia sighed. "I'll give you one chance. Go ahead. I'm listening."
"Good, good, good!" The old man happily held the skull and then plopped down on the ground.
Qi Xia crouched down as well. The two of them sat in the pitch-black alley, gathered around a small pool of light, staring at the skull in front of them.
Just as the old man was about to speak, he paused slightly, then lifted the kerosene lamp and moved it a few centimeters in front of Qi Xia's face. "Young man... what's wrong with your eyes? Are you sick?" he asked softly, puzzled.
"Do you want to waste this opportunity?" Qi Xia asked.
"Look how impatient you are!" The old man grinned, showing his teeth. "Fine, I won't ask! I'll tell you!"
He then lowered his head, bringing the kerosene lamp closer to the skull, and said, "Young man... what do you think humans evolved from?"
Qi Xia frowned at the question. "What do you mean?"
"I mean... before humans became humans, what were they?" the old man asked again.
"Are you trying to discuss 'evolution theory' with me?" Qi Xia felt a bit drained. "As long as you're willing to believe it, humans could have evolved from anything other than humans."
"Good...!" The old man nodded excitedly. "Hearing you say that... I can safely share my secret with you! Do you believe... that 'evolution theory' exists in this place too?"
Qi Xia's expression turned slightly cold. "You're crazier than I thought. As long as 'Echo' exists, in theory, a person can turn into anything overnight. There's no need for something like 'evolution.'"
"Yes... you make a good point, but I felt its call." The old man reached out and patted the skull beside him.
"Call?"
"I could sense that there was something incredible buried beneath this city... So I took the shovel I found and started digging. After so long... I finally dug it up."
With that, he slowly turned the skull around so its front faced Qi Xia, then lowered the kerosene lamp to reveal the skull's true appearance.
When Qi Xia saw it, his eyes slowly widened.
This skull was very strange.
Although it looked like a skull in shape, its front was completely smooth.
Not only were there no eye sockets to hold eyeballs, there wasn't even a hole for the nasal cartilage. The entire lower part of the skull was fused with the jawbone, and even where teeth should have been was just a flat surface. Qi Xia reached out and turned the skull around, finding that even the area for the cochlea had no indentation.
In other words, the owner of this skull...
Had no face.
"Young man... say something!" The old man was clearly getting excited. "Doesn't this skull upend everything you know?! Can you tell how long the owner of this skull has been dead?"
Qi Xia remained silent, his face grim.
"At least ten years!" The old man waved his hand. "Do you believe that the people here are evolving...? 'Evolution theory' really exists! Ten years ago, the people here didn't even have faces!"
Qi Xia reached out and gently touched the skull. It had just emerged from the soil, and its texture was warm and moist.
"Isn't this a 'big secret'?!" The old man said happily. "There are more bones like this below! Definitely not just one or two!"
After saying this, the old man stared at Qi Xia for a long time, but found that the young man remained completely silent.
"Why aren't you saying anything?" the old man asked, his voice trembling. "I'm not crazy, am I? This skull really has no face!"
Qi Xia slowly stood up, then walked to the edge of the pit and looked down carefully. His eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness of the alley, and he could indeed see the black soil revealing pale white bones. There were clearly many more skeletons waiting to be unearthed.
"Pretty impressive, right?" The old man came over to Qi Xia with the kerosene lamp, his face flushed with excitement. "I originally planned to dig for a while and then come back up... But I kept feeling this call from deep underground... as if some mysterious force wanted me to keep digging. Who would have thought that once I started, I couldn't stop?"
Qi Xia picked up a small stone from the ground and casually tossed it into the deep pit.
"This is the deepest hole I've ever dug, and I never expected to actually find something..." The old man continued muttering to himself. "I need to 'Echo' quickly and remember this spot. Maybe I can discover an even bigger secret deeper underground! I might be about to find the answer to this world!"
After a long silence, Qi Xia finally spoke. He let out a deep sigh and said, "Old man, if a face is flat, can it still be called a 'human'?"
"How is that not a human?" The old man said excitedly. "Young man, didn't you just see? That skull is connected to a spine! It's not some artwork someone made. The bones show signs of oxidation. Even though there are no facial organs, there's space to hold a brain. That is definitely a human skull!"