At the same time, back in the indoor basketball court under construction.
Gray Bear and Lithe Snake poured the cement and mortar on the ground and diluted it with water at the right ratio, stirring the mix with shovels. They moved their shovels alternatively with perfect teamwork.
Not far from them, Gao Yang and Xiran were building a wall with bricks.
“Here’s the cement.” Old Joe came up to them with a small bucket. “Come on. Before it gets cold.”
Before it gets cold? What are you serving? Food?
Gao Yang took the bucket while grumbling silently.
He and Xiran each took a brick in one hand and a small trowel in the other, picking up some cement mix and applying a layer before topping it with the brick, laying it down flat and stable.
“You two are working too slowly. You have to finish it in half an hour, or the cement is gonna dry.” Gray Bear supervised their work from the side, completely immersed in his role.
They worked a little faster without realizing.
Soon, a small wall was built—it was completely out of place considering the layout of the floor, but it was a wall.“Haha, it’s not bad!” Xiran wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.
“Yeah.” It was Gao Yang’s first time building a wall, and he’d learned quite a lot. He smiled with content at the fruit of his labor.
Clang! Lithe Snake cast aside the shovel with a dark look on his face. “Having fun?”
That woke the others to their mistake.
Originally, they only started the work to maintain their act, but they became fully immersed at some point. It turned out that construction work was a real drug.
“Ahem.”
As the captain, Gao Yang couldn’t just admit his fault. “If we’re gonna act, we make it perfect. All the ashes on us make us look like real construction workers.”
“Oh, then what are we doing next?” Lithe Snake scoffed. “Build another wall?”
Gao Yang walked out of the door and heard the faint sound of people doing exercises. It seemed that it was already breaktime after the second class.
“Let’s take a look.” Gao Yang put on a helmet. “If we run into anyone, we’ll say we’re looking for the restroom.”
The five of them got ready and left the construction site for the running track. As expected, they ran into a teacher, but he was in a rush and obviously distracted. He didn’t even spare Gao Yang and the others a glance.
The five of them soon reached the shaded path, and through the thriving canopies, they could see the running track in full.
About a thousand students, each dressed in blue and white uniforms, were doing exercises in formations. The ones in the front rows were closer to the teachers and did the set of movements seriously, while the ones in the back rows swung their arms and legs around carelessly, not hitting the beats at all.
There was one student standing on the flagpole platform, leading the exercises. It was too far for Gao Yang to make out anything but the uniform, but the figure looked vaguely familiar to him.
Lithe Snake had the best eyesight among them. He said with a slight frown, “That seems to be Niu Xuan.”
The revelation dropped like a bombshell.
Then came another voice, “What are you doing here?”
The five of them turned around. It was Mister Tan from earlier.
He was still wearing sportswear with a whistle around his neck. He must be a PE teacher.
“Where’s the restroom?” Gray Bear croaked out.
“Isn’t there one in the auditorium?” Mr. Tan frowned.
“Is there? We didn’t find it.” Gray Bear wasn’t fazed at all.
“Then use the one in the teaching building, but make it quick. The students are gonna leave and go back to their classrooms soon.” Mr. Tan didn’t seem suspicious of them, and he left with a wave.
Gray Bear exchanged a look with the others before they headed toward the teaching building. They walked by the running track on the way and were able to get much closer to the flagpole platform.
They picked up their pace while their expression darkened further.
Gray Bear stopped and sucked in a breath. Then he said with certainty, “That is Niu Xuan!”
Everyone had caught a good look as well, and their expressions were equally grave.
“Isn’t he dead?” Xiran said in a frail voice. “We all saw it.‘
Gao Yang had an explanation for that, albeit not one he would like to accept. “That’s not Niu Xuan, but his ‘past life’, Li Zhuanghu.”
“So there is a past life for him!” Gray Bear sounded shocked.
“That’s…creepy!” Old Joe’s voice trembled.
“This isn’t the right place for conversation. Let’s head back first.” Gao Yang had goosebumps as well. Something felt wrong, and he couldn’t put it into words.
Rather than going to the toilet, the five of them returned to the construction site before the students were done with their exercises.
“Shit, it’s insane!”
Gray Bear took off the slightly too tight helmet as soon as he entered the room and cast it on the table. The others were quiet, each held a different expression as they turned to look at Gao Yang.
Why are you all looking at me? Gao Yang grumbled to himself. I’m not an encyclopedia.
“What do you think, Captain?” Xiran looked at him with urgent curiosity, hoping that Gao Yang could give them a reasonable explanation.
“What do you think?” Gao Yang prompted the others first, which he also learned from War Tiger.
“Well.” Gray Bear rubbed at his stubbled chin and put on a serious look. “First, that is Li Zhuanghu from eighteen years ago, but he looks identical to Niu Xuan. What does that mean? That means they must be closely connected.”
“Saying something useless isn’t going to make you seem smarter.” Lithe Snake shot him a derisive look.
Gray Bear responded with a glare. “Talking shit isn’t going to make you seem smarter, either.”
“Enough. Come on, have some water.” Old Joe took out a few bottles of water from his supply bag and passed them around.
They were feeling thirsty, so they all took a drink.
After having a sip and putting the cap back on, Xiran glanced at the bottles in Lithe Snake’s and Gray Bear’s hands before his eyes lit up. “Ah!”
The others jumped and turned to him.
Xiran adjusted his glasses and said impassionedly, “Can it be that Li Zhuanghu and Niu Xuan are from the same source?”
Gao Yang gave him a look of surprise. He was just thinking the same thing. He nodded for Xiran to continue.
“I meant that just like these two bottles of water, they were from the same ‘factory’. That’s why they are so similar, even identical.”
“That’s right!” Gray Bear, sitting on a pile of bricks, slapped his own thigh. “What did Niu Xuan say when he was hovering?”
“Mother,” said Gao Yang.
“Yeah, he said, ‘Mother, mother I’m back. Take me back. Don’t abandon me…’”
Gray Bear repeated what Niu Xuan had said and slapped his thigh again. “What does that mean? What does that mean, boys? That means they might have come from the same mother!”
It sounded like a waste of words, but it wasn’t.
They could all sense the truth waiting to be uncovered. Although it was still a fleeting thought, it was there.
Gao Yang turned to look at them. “I’ll try to put it all together.”
They looked at him.
Gao Yang concentrated and said, “To our knowledge, monsters don’t have human reproductive organs. Thus, monsters cannot procreate, or at least not in the way humans do.”
“Then where did monsters come from? Manufactured in bulks at some factory? Obviously not.”
“Then can it be that monsters procreate as a collective?” Gao Yang paused. “Perhaps like the insect species in games, there’s a queen that produces eggs, which will then give birth to offspring in big numbers.”
“Isn’t that how bees work?” Xiran chimed in. “A queen bee, the drones, and the worker bees. Each plays their role with a collected hive mind.”
“There is a hypothesis like that, but it’s not proven,” Lithe Snake said.
“I’m leaning toward the hypothesis as well,” said Gao Yang. “However, monsters’ ecosystem must be much more complex than that of bees. Let’s suppose that there’s a ‘Monster Supreme’ in charge of creating monsters, and the monsters differ fundamentally from humans. While each human is a unique individual…”
“...Monsters are more like replicates. There are a total of 4.5 million monsters on all isolated islands of the Mist World. Suppose that the monsters are created by the Monster Supreme. Then the limit to the kinds of monsters it can create is 4.5 million.”
Gao Yang paused to make sure that everyone was following. “However, we know that monsters die every day, and Monster Supreme has to create new ones to replenish them so that the society may remain its basic functioning. Under the assumption that the Monster Supreme can at most create 4.5 million unique monsters, it will lead to one situation.”
Lithe Snake’s eyes flickered with understanding. “Monsters repeat.”
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