I created the myth of the Great Old Ones.

Yang Yiwu suddenly felt that such humans could overcome any difficulty and withstand any disaster.

"Cold?"

He asked the student next to him.

"not cold."

The student shook his head, while simultaneously burying his neck further under the covers.

The charcoal fire crackled and sparked, and the scene in the movie shifted to outer space. On the cloud map, a huge eye of a typhoon was forming over the ocean. The camera slowly moved toward the typhoon, passing through the lightning-streaked clouds, and onto the sea where torrential rain and crashing waves were crashing. A giant ship was tossed about, and in an instant, it capsized. The large ship, with its lights on, slowly sank toward the bottom of the sea, and the light became hazy.

The camera pans up and shows people struggling on the sea, their cries of agony filling the air.

Suddenly, the surrounding storm seemed to have stopped, as if the storm had passed.

But before the people could even cheer, a white dot spread across the sea.

This is the coldest place in the eye of the storm.

The temperature here even dropped below zero, and snowflakes drifted down from the sea.

In an instant, the people floating on the sea were frozen in place, their expressions frozen.

Seeing this, one of the mothers with her child desperately swam outwards, trying to swim into the storm.

But she couldn't swim out of the typhoon. Just as the sea froze and she realized she couldn't swim any further, the mother pushed her child hard, sending him towards the still unfrozen sea.

Even so, her efforts were in vain. The moment the child turned around, his body and expression froze, turning him into an ice sculpture.

Watching the scenes in the movie, Yang Yiwu felt even colder.

Chapter 541 Look up at the stars, keep your feet on the ground

In the movie, the world is getting worse and worse.

This sense of despair is deep-seated.

If Yang Yiwu were dealing with an accident like a fire or a car crash, he could still hope that firefighters would come to rescue these people.

But amidst this unprecedented natural disaster, Yang Yiwu truly couldn't think of even the slightest way out.

He glanced out the window again. The snowflakes were carried by the wind and blown high into the sky. The night sky was pitch black, with no stars or moon in sight. As a southerner, Yang Yiwu was terrified of the northern winter. The deep, snow-covered forests, the pitch-black night sky, the silent snowy night, and the howls of certain animals made it difficult for him to fall asleep during the initial period after arriving in this town.

After so much time, Yang Yiwu should have gotten used to the cold winter, but at this moment, the content of the movie reminded him of those nights when the cold wind and snow were pounding on the windows, and it was still cold even with heating on.

Can humanity overcome typhoons and earthquakes?

Yang Yiwu felt that it was impossible within his own understanding.

The people in the movie are researching how to escape disasters rather than how to prevent them. In fact, according to Yang Yiwu, these ideas about saving the world are somewhat ridiculous and absurd.

At most, the wormhole idea is somewhat feasible, but in the world depicted in the movie, people's level of development of the universe seems rather low. Moreover, from some brief plot points and background posters and slogans, it can be seen that people's original attitude towards space technology was negative.

"Teacher, why don't they want others to go to space?"

At that moment, a student suddenly asked a question.

"Because for many people, they can't even get enough to eat, let alone have the desire to go to space."

Yang Yiwu thought for a moment, paused the movie, and then answered.

"For example, our school wants better equipment and a better playground, which requires a lot of money. Do you think it's better to use that money to let those uncles explore the universe, or to save it for us to build a playground?"

The children looked at each other, unsure how to answer.

"Perhaps, well, building a playground would be better?"

One of the students said timidly.

“If a playground is built, we can enjoy it, and future students can use it too, but only the people here will benefit.”

"But if we explore the universe, the various new technologies developed in the process of overcoming difficulties can benefit tens of thousands of people."

Yang Yiwu explained patiently.

"Building a playground here is simple, but building one in space requires much more technology. It's like our learning; mastering only elementary school material is certainly easy, but why do we still need to learn middle school material?"

The children exchanged a glance.

"Because you can earn more money in the future?"

"We can go out and see the world!"

"Because you need to take the college entrance exam?"

Several answers.

"These are all true. The reason we don't stay in our comfortable environment but keep pursuing new things is because we want a better life and want to do things we haven't done before. Things that are easy can be done anytime, but some things are difficult. If we want to achieve a better life, we must choose these difficult things."

Yang Yiwu said these things not because he had any spacefaring dreams or because he was talking without understanding the situation.

It was because such things had happened many times during his career as a rural teacher.

Often, it is this kind of perception that prevents students from continuing their education.

Most parents themselves have lived their lives without much education, so they believe that their children don't need much education. Knowing a few people and being able to read and write is enough. Even if schooling is free and funded by the government, they still think it's better for their children to work.

It is easy to be ignorant and apathetic, but difficult to learn, to engage with the world, and to understand it.

Yang Yiwu hopes that when these children stand on solid ground, they can occasionally look up at the starry sky.

Press play, and the story continues.

However, what happened next was something Yang Yiwu didn't expect.

Several plans have failed one after another, while natural disasters continue to occur around the world, and the path to saving the earth seems to have reached a dead end.

He saw that many ordinary people had given up hope and taken to the streets, hoping to find peace in the end. Some even chose suicide to escape the world that was destined to be destroyed.

A sense of despair was spreading.

Even in the research base, the man who started it all sensed something was amiss. Many researchers were hitting a bottleneck and began desperate attempts. Morality and law could no longer restrain these people. Rather than heroes who saved the world, these people were more like devils pushing the world toward destruction.

In the end, even he himself became somewhat deranged.

Monsters appeared on the other side of the wormhole. After a tense, exciting, and thrilling battle, the worm-like monsters were defeated, but the other side of the wormhole could no longer become humanity's new Eden.

While people exposed to ore radiation develop certain supernatural abilities, drawbacks such as short lifespans also emerge. Humanity certainly cannot rely on this state to escape natural disasters.

However, attempts to upload consciousness and ascend to mechanical form repeatedly fail, as machines are ill-suited to support the human brain, and structural differences can lead to the collapse of consciousness.

The more Yang Yiwu looked, the more desperate he felt.

Even these researchers, who represented hope, gradually fell into despair.

Just then, a sound came from outside the window. Yang Yiwu immediately stood up to check and found that a tree outside had been knocked down by the heavy snow. The tree had stood outside the school for many years, long before Yang Yiwu came here. No one could have imagined that it would fall on this snowy night.

Yang Yiwu felt that human civilization in the movie was like this tree, which existed before you came into this world and has stood firm for so many years. You think it will always be here, but no one knows that sometimes a sudden disaster will cause this tree to fall, and you will be powerless to stop it.

He looked at the students, who were staring at the screen, not yet understanding Yang Yiwu's bitter feelings. They were too inexperienced, full of hope for the future, and thought that what happened in the movie was all fiction. But Yang Yiwu knew very well that although these things were not exactly the same, they were actually happening in this world every moment.

Suddenly, the film's color tone brightened.

Several disheartened scientists seemed to have gained some inspiration from the disaster; they seemed to have found a way to save the world, and they took action.

Yang Yiwu thought that the movie's plot was about to take a dramatic turn and reach a happy ending.

But he was wrong.

What awaited him was an even deeper abyss.

Chapter 542 Butterflies Fluttering

In the film, the researchers delve into a taboo subject.

They used humans as their subject, exploring all sorts of possibilities.

In some chilling experiments, the three plans unexpectedly intersected.

Yang Yiwu began to seriously consider whether he should continue showing these children the children the lessons.

Of course, the specific details of the experiment were not presented in a straightforward manner, but judging from the lighting, the experimenters' expressions, and the final results, people can easily have many imaginations about it, and each imagination is enough to become a nightmare.

Yang Yiwu sensed that something was wrong.

Although he acknowledged that in times of human crisis, sacrifices and things that defy past understanding and moral norms are inevitable, what he saw and heard before him still surpassed his limited imagination.

The humans in the movie are people who have abandoned all dignity, rules, morality, and humanity, completely discarding the social order that has been formed over tens of thousands of years, leaving only the purest animalistic instincts, and presenting an image in order to survive.

Such an image of Yang Yiwu can probably only be seen in certain war documentary literature or in some heinous cases.

It presents the behaviors that humans would exhibit after losing their humanity.

What's even more chilling is the scene of those researchers who once called themselves humanity's hope and last bastion conducting ruthless experiments on their fellow human beings.

Yang Yiwu saw that the students instinctively covered their eyes. Although these scenes were not particularly bloody, violent, or gory, they were filled with a cold and indifferent sense of dread.

Just as there are no ghosts in truly terrifying horror movies, movies that depict despair are not all about flying blood and gore.

The thought of humanity being lost in such an apocalyptic world sent chills down Yang Yiwu's spine.

Compared to such salvation, perhaps complete destruction would be far more satisfying.

If before this, Yang Yiwu was watching this movie with the mindset of seeing a special effects blockbuster and how heroes save the world, then from this moment on, his mindset has completely changed.

Rather than calling it a disaster movie, it's more accurate to call it an apocalypse.

It shows the psychological changes in humans when facing the end of the world. When they have to give up certain things, the living are even more terrifying than those natural disasters.

Yang Yiwu could only watch helplessly as the characters in those movies completed their journeys step by step, plunging into the abyss.

Using body modification technology to transform the monsters discovered in the wormhole, and using consciousness uploading technology to infuse human thoughts into those monsters, these crazy acts were gradually accomplished by those once proud scientists. Even the whole society began to accept these ideas, and people were fanatically eager to become insects, flocking to the laboratory as if to the Promised Land, and crawling out in the form of insects.

Yang Yiwu felt something rising in his throat, but there was actually nothing there.

Even the wind and snow pounding against the windowpane didn't seem so scary anymore; what Yang Yiwu saw in the movie was the embodiment of despair.

Beyond the students who were directly shocked by these stimuli, Yang Yiwu thought of much more.

Because such behavior has happened before in this world.

During wartime, people from certain countries commit inhumane acts with this mindset, and they believe it is an act of saving humanity.

History tells Yang Yiwu that what happened in the past will happen now and will happen in the future.