440: Chapter 440 The Spark of Rationality on the Loess Plateau – Bonus Chapter of "The New Type of Salted Fish"

Elder Cui's hands let go of the lectern.

He took half a step back, leaning against the edge of the blackboard with his arms crossed over his chest.

The look behind his lenses changed.

It was no longer scrutiny, but something deeper.

As if he were confirming something.

“So,”

Lin Que concluded, his tone as steady as water.

“The coordinates falling on the Loess Plateau is the only center of gravity that allows this story to stand.”

“Because only there can one thing be proven.”

“When, on the most barren land, there are still people willing to use their lives to pass on the spark of exploring the unknown, this civilization proves it still has the right to continue.”

“Whether a civilization can go far ultimately depends on whether the stone at the very bottom is hard enough.”

When the last sentence landed, Xu Changge closed his eyes for a moment.

His fingers loosened on his knees, then clenched again, repeating this three times.

He thought of his own 'heavenly questions'.

He thought of Old Zheng, that third-class space station maintenance technician.

Elder Cui had said he was 'finally willing to let the people under his pen be undignified,' and at the time, he felt that was already a huge breakthrough.

But Teacher Li, under Lin Que's pen, never had any dignity from beginning to end.

He only had half a piece of chalk, a lectern made of two stacks of bricks, and an enamel mug filled with the blood he coughed up.

But he held up the lives of seven billion people.

Xu Changge suddenly understood that in the past, when he wrote about people,

He would always first look at where that person stood, what rules they followed, and how much dignity they had left.

When Lin Que looked at people, his gaze first fell to their feet.

To see if there was mud there.

To see if half a piece of chalk remained in their hand.

To see if, when that person was pressed to the lowest point by life, they were still willing to pass a bit of light to those who came after.

Dan Yi sat by the window, leaning against the back of his chair as if all his strength had been drained.

His Adam's apple bobbed twice, and his eyes grew hot, but he didn't let anything fall.

“The true color of a civilization is determined by its lowermost foundation stones.”

This sentence was like a needle, piercing a very deep place in his heart.

Mo City.

Winter at forty degrees below zero.

He walked alone on the way home from school, with those harsh nicknames trailing behind him.

Those voices chased him like ice shards, stabbing into the back of his neck, into his ears, and into the long silence that followed.

He too had been pushed to the edge of the crowd, like an extra stone, casually tossed into a corner by the world.

But at this moment,

He suddenly felt that those days were not entirely ruins.

Elder Cui stood before the blackboard, silent for a long time.

So long that Chen Jiahao thought the equipment had malfunctioned and secretly glanced down at his brain-computer interface panel.

No data was flickering on the panel because Elder Cui had already taken off his glasses, clutching them in his right hand, his thumb rubbing the temples back and forth.

"Good."

Elder Cui spoke again, his voice half a pitch lower than before.

"The conception can be considered established."

Several students in the front row exhaled simultaneously.

Chen Jiahao finally let go of his deformed mineral water bottle; the plastic slowly popped back into shape with a faint 'click'.

But Elder Cui did not sit down.

He put his glasses back on, the lenses reflecting the cold white light of the fluorescent lamps.

“One last question.”

Elder Cui's voice suddenly changed.

It was no longer the cold hardness of dissecting a specimen in a lab, but had gained a layer of...

Lin Que couldn't quite name it; it was like someone who had walked through cold data for many years suddenly hearing another echo on the same frequency.

“The laws of the universe have always been cruel.”

Elder Cui moved half a step forward, his voice very low.

"The weak will be crushed, and the slow will be eliminated.

This coldness exists not only in human society but is hidden in the underlying laws of the universe's operation.

Stars swallow planets, black holes tear through light, and entropy increases all the way forward, never looking back."

He tapped his finger in the air.

"The fleet under your pen is on an extermination mission.

Three thousand star systems, swept through one by one; if they don't meet the standard, they are wiped out.

This shows that in their rules, destroying a low-level civilization is no different from deleting a piece of invalid data."

Elder Cui's voice rose.

“Then on what basis?”

“On what basis could Newtons Laws, recited by a few kids, make an extermination fleet voluntarily retreat?”

“In the face of absolute strength, awe is the cheapest thing.”

Elder Cui leaned forward with both hands on the lectern, his gaze like two beams of cold light, pinning Lin Que under a shadowless lamp.

“On what basis does your civilization model close its loop here?”

This question was heavier than the first two.

The first two questions dissected technique and conception.

This one pointed directly at the worldview.

It was asking: What are the underlying laws of the universe you have constructed?

Chen Jiahao understood the weight of this question.

If Lin Que couldn't answer, all the previous shock would be diminished.

Xu Changge's fingers were interlaced, resting on his knees.

He rapidly deduced in his mind how he would find a logically consistent way out if he were in that position.

But he couldn't deduce one.

Because Elder Cui was right.

In the face of an absolute power gap, the word 'awe' is too light.

Humans don't feel awe toward an ant colony just because a single ant picks up a grain of sand.

So why would the fleet?

Dan Yi's fingers gripped the edge of the desk tightly, Yuan Ningning bit her pen cap, and Tang He's breathing was so shallow it was almost inaudible.

Everyone was waiting.

Lin Que stood there without hesitation.

In his mind, countless deductions about cosmic civilizations unfolded simultaneously.

The silence brought by distance, the misjudgments caused by information lag, the fear formed by technological leaps,

And the suspicion between rational civilizations that could never be completely eliminated.

He had, of course, thought of grander war backgrounds.

Singularity bombs, interstellar expeditions, the strangulation between two super-civilizations spanning the galaxy.

Those settings were spectacular enough, and eye-catching enough.

But Lin Que had to temporarily suppress them when he began writing.

Because what this story truly wanted to uphold was never the victory or defeat of an interstellar war.

But the spark left behind when a dying teacher in a drafty, mud-walled classroom handed half a piece of chalk to a child.

If the starry sky were too bright, that bit of light on the yellow earth would instead be obscured.

So he chose to let the fleet recede into the depths of the background, leaving only the coldest judgment pressing down on the most barren classroom.

“Elder Cui.”

Lin Que's voice was steady.

It was as if someone had placed the classroom, the Loess Plateau, and the fifty-thousand-light-year starry sky onto a single, massive blueprint.

“Your question is based on an assumption.”

Elder Cui looked at him and didn't speak.

“You assume that the motivation for the extermination fleet's behavior is the law of the jungle.”

“A civilization capable of crossing star systems to execute purging missions no longer needs to rely on plundering low-level planets to maintain its own existence.”

Elder Cui's eyebrow twitched.

Seeing that Elder Cui was interested, Lin Que continued:

"The premise of the law of the jungle is limited resources and insufficient living space.

Two wolves fight over a piece of meat, so they must determine who is stronger."

“But when a civilization's method of energy acquisition has already surpassed the stellar level, when they can treat an entire galactic arm as a backyard to patrol.”

Lin Que's speaking speed slowed down, each word carrying weight.

“Conventional resources are already unlikely to constitute a true temptation for them.”

“Low-level survival competition is also unlikely to remain the sole driving force for a civilization's progress.”

“Then what is the driving force that sustains their continued existence?”

Lin Que looked at Elder Cui, his gaze calm.

“It is the search for the ultimate meaning of the universe, and the confirmation of other sparks of reason.”

Someone in the classroom took a soft breath.

"Once material needs are infinitely satisfied, the only thing that can drive a civilization to continue moving forward is a single question."

Lin Que's voice was gentle as the entire room held its breath, waiting for the final answer.

“Why the universe exists, why consciousness was born, and whether, in this boundless dead silence, there is another civilization also asking the same questions.”

Elder Cui's fingers stopped moving.

“The Carbon-based Federation's 3C test is, on the surface, an extermination screening.”

Lin Que's tone was devoid of any ripple, as if he were stating a law of physics.

“But its core is the search for peers capable of understanding the universe within the vast, dead silence.”

“The cruelty of this test lies in the fact that civilizations that lose the germ of reason will be purged.”

“Its only warmth lies in the fact that any single spark is enough to make the fleet stop."

As these words landed, Elder Cui's fingers gripping the lectern loosened.

“The struggle of rural teacher and those children on the Loess Plateau demonstrated one thing to the fleet.”

Lin Que's voice echoed in the classroom, not loud, but possessing a power that could penetrate walls.

“A civilization, in the most extreme poverty, at the final moment when individual lives are about to perish, is still attempting to pass on its understanding of the universe.”

"In that moment, knowledge transcended food, pain, and death, becoming a transmission that was almost instinctive.

Because they believed these things were worth leaving behind and must be given to those who come after."

Lin Que paused for a beat.

“This quality, in the Carbon-based Federation's civilization model, is the threshold for terminating the purge program.”

“Because what it sees is not a few formulas, but a reason for another civilization to continue questioning the universe.”

...