Welcome to the Ability Shop!

Chapter 338 The Secret of Ascension
"Hmph, you want to cultivate immortality too?" Dean Sun sneered. "I do have a few cultivation techniques here, but the prerequisite is self-cultivation. I don't know if they're suitable for you."

“Since you’ve said that, you must think I’m not suitable.” Jiang Yiheng replied lightly, as if he hadn’t noticed the sarcasm. “But even if a person’s cultivation is very high, high enough to break through the void like in the movies, it’s not true ascension. The ascension we’re discussing is a general concept.”

"Let him explain in detail," Chen Xuan urged.

Although Honglian didn't understand the mystery behind it, she realized it was no small matter. "You might as well explain it in more detail."

Jiang Yiheng held out a hand. "Suppose I have a bacterium on my finger, and it wants to leave this hall, how long do you think it would take?"

"Dr. Jiang, are you treating this place like a classroom?" Honglian frowned. "If it relies solely on itself, it will never be able to climb out, because it simply won't live that long!"

“Correct answer.” He smiled. “But it has to leave because I’m about to wash my hands.”

"..." The scene fell silent.

Chen Xuan suddenly had a thought, "If it wants to leave, the only way is to ascend?"

Jiang Yiheng nodded. "This is the truth of our world. Compared to the distance bacteria have to traverse in the Green Grass Palace, the distance we have in the universe will only be stretched to an even more exaggerated extent. However, humans themselves are not at all a template for adapting to entering the universe. We can wear spacesuits and build spaceships surrounded by thick metal shells, but this is at best equivalent to the bacterial membrane or protein sheath that bacteria form for themselves."

Honglian opened her mouth, wanting to question, but when she thought about how she had just repeated Chen Xuan's words and was now acting as if she knew nothing, she realized that she was practically a lunatic.

Jiang Yiheng, however, expressed his understanding, saying, "Say whatever you want to say."

“Although I’m not a scientist, I do know some basic common sense,” Dean Sun said. “Just because we can’t go out now doesn’t mean we can’t go out in the future. Nobody’s forcing us to explore the universe, is there? Is there a problem with spending a hundred years, a thousand years… or even ten thousand years to do it? The Earth doesn’t wash its hands.”

"No, no, no... This has nothing to do with exploring the universe. It only concerns whether humanity can continue." The other person corrected, "If a thousand or ten thousand years from now we still only plan to build spaceships, then the essence will not change. It's like bacteria; no matter how hard its sheath is, it's meaningless because they can't adapt to this new world outside... Their strength, speed, and lifespan are all limited to this tiny fingertip."

The doctor paused slightly, then said in an extremely serious tone, "But if bacteria could become human... none of this would be a problem anymore. We could easily walk out the door with just ten or so steps."

"I'm getting more and more confused," Dean Sun sighed. "If you say it can't be changed, bacteria are, after all, one of the ancestors of humankind, and we were born after fusing with archaea; but if you say it can be changed... that would take too long, billions of years, what couldn't they have done?"

“You already understand the problem,” Jiang Yiheng smiled. “You wash your hands at least twice a day, and the Qingcao Palace should also be cleaned every day. So, for bacteria, more than six hours is an insurmountable barrier.”

"Washing hands again! I've said it before, you're perfectly fine on Earth, who's going to wash you?"

Chen Xuan couldn't help but shiver.

He suddenly had a chilling thought.

"This is just a metaphor... Are you perhaps trying to say that bacteria gave birth to humans, and that humans can then give birth to other things?"

"Hasn't it already been conceived?" Dr. Jiang looked up at the dome of the hall, as if peering into something beyond the mortal realm. "Abilities, erosion, elixirs, ghosts, multiple worlds... these are all strange phenomena that have emerged alongside the growth of humankind."

The two people present held their breath.

But the doctor continued. "To bacteria, humans are nothing more than a soft, grooved skin, surrounded by giant, crawling beasts that gnaw at the earth, and every so often, devastating boiling water storms occur. In reality, our situation isn't much better; we're just seeing a part of the whole picture."

"Just as bacteria cannot see our whole picture... we cannot see the whole picture of the anomaly either, and can only describe its scattered parts with words we can understand. Perhaps in another billion years, humans will be able to truly understand what it is, but as I said before, we only have six hours left. If we cannot glimpse its secrets within these six hours and transform from bacteria into humans, the only outcome will be extinction."

Jiang Yiheng looked at the back of Honglian's ear again as he said this, "—These six hours of hard work are the key to ascension!"

The ability... or rather, the power that grants the ability... is it an anomaly caused by humanity itself?
Is the same true for the Ability Shop? Was that giant worm that dwells on the moon also created by humans?

Chen Xuan was momentarily stunned by the scene.

However, he felt that something was not right.

According to the other party, ascension can be considered the ultimate goal... but the promotion condition for the Level 7 shopkeeper of the Ability Shop is to witness ascension.

You can't say that LV7 is the pinnacle of the store manager level, can you?

If, as the doctor says, humans after ascension become beings incomprehensible to us, then what meaning would trading abilities... or rather, the shops themselves, have?
"Hmm..." Dean Sun stroked his beard, his expression much more serious than before. "If you hadn't said these things, I definitely wouldn't have listened to a single word. What evidence is there for this argument?"

"Actually, the 'Great Selection Theory' was proposed a long time ago. Simply put, it's about weeding out those civilizations that can't adapt to entering the universe, which is why the universe seems so quiet. As for the selection methods, they could be internal wars among civilizations or meteorites falling from the sky."

"But now we understand that selection does exist, but it is far more brutal than we thought. It does not stem from developmental contradictions or extraterrestrial disasters, because both of these can be resolved without ascension. Selection comes from our own progress; the faster humanity progresses, the sooner the great selection will arrive. What will destroy us will be what we create, just as we destroy the bacteria on our hands."

Jiang Yiheng paused for a few seconds to give them time to process the information before continuing, "The evidence comes from the Dimensional Authority's observations of other worlds. Through the intrusion points, we have recorded the destruction of more than ten worlds. The causes of destruction are varied and bizarre, but they all have one thing in common: they cannot solve the problems with their current level of technology, not even to prevent them."

Does the government really have such a perception?

This was truly beyond Chen Xuan's expectations.

But considering the cause of the world's destruction... the nanobot plague was created by the very organization that caused it, which is undeniably ironic.

The question is, even knowing that the organization is facing annihilation, will it still follow the same old path?
"When did the authorities... find out about this?" Honglian asked in a low voice, a question she herself had raised.

“The last ten years, I suppose,” Jiang Yiheng said frankly. “After all, the organization is also evolving with the times. At the beginning, no one understood anything. They simply believed that if ability users were not restrained and intrusion points were not controlled, the harm would be immense. So the main goal was to maintain and limit them. However, this was obviously just standing still and could not help the world get rid of the crisis. The organization must become stronger than ever before and control more resources in order to achieve its goals.”

"I didn't expect you to explain it in such detail," Chen Xuan said through Honglian.

Jiang Yiheng clearly didn't care much about this, "because this secret itself is like a fantasy, it has no practical significance. It brings nothing but panic and despair. It's actually a good thing for the public not to know."

"What if the enemy wanderers hear this?" he asked deliberately.

“Well…” the doctor gave a meaningful look. “If they are wanderers who know nothing about ascension, then I am just talking to a brick wall. But if they have heard of ascension, then there is a possibility that they might abandon the darkness and come to the light.”

(End of this chapter)