177: Chapter 177: Jiang Zhe's New Year's Eve Q&A Program

Gusu District, inside the Jing'an Villa.

At eight o'clock in the evening, Jiang Zhe was lazily leaning on the sofa. The television in front of him was broadcasting a promo for a certain satellite channel's New Year's special program, which was a quiz show.

In the fruit platter on the coffee table, the strawberries and apples had already been mostly wiped out.

Jiang Xiaoyu, sitting to the side, felt something was off; something was missing. She quietly activated the pinhole camera on her person, then stealthily took out her phone and opened the live stream channel.

Many fans who were accustomed to coming in to watch prepared to leave after discovering there was no remedial class today.

Suddenly!

The dark screen quietly lit up, and more specific images followed.

"Holy crap, I just came in to take a look, and it actually started streaming!"

"That's not right, didn't they say there was no remedial class tonight?"

"Wait, this perspective... is Xiaoyu watching a TV show with our Brother?"

Xiaoyu glanced at Jiang Zhe. He hadn't even looked over here, so she typed lightly: "Family, I'm not used to not filming Brother at night. Let me show you Brother's daily life. A secret tip—there will be a special program in a bit!"

A special program?

The fans were stunned, their anticipation immediately piqued.

The chat screen was instantly flooded with comments like "Ok, that works, very strong, love to watch."

What kind of special program could compare to Brother's evening remedial class?

Quietly, the commercials on the TV screen ended, and the program officially began.

The title "Peak Intelligence Competition: You Ask, I Answer" appeared.

On TV, the male host introduced the rules with a beaming smile.

"We have delegations of top students from universities like Huaqing University and Dabei University here, and we have also opened three off-site connections to randomly select viewers to participate in a comprehensive knowledge quiz."

"The questions include history, biology, chemistry, science, the universe, microscopic studies, and unlimited other topics."

Hearing this, the hundreds of thousands of fans in the live stream suddenly felt their eyes light up. Could this be the special program?

Who wanted to watch these trash quiz questions? They couldn't even compare to a single hair on Brother.

However, the number of people in the live stream was steadily rising.

Even Wang Shulin, the operator who was on his way to the Kyoto Hotel, saw the live stream while drinking: "Huh? Xiaoyu started a stream."

Even the four old guys in the History Staff Quarters opened their phones during their dinner and inadvertently saw this scene.

Old Chen said with a look of surprise: "Stop eating for a moment, Xiaoyu is streaming again, but it doesn't look like a remedial class."

After he spoke, Old Qian, Old Wang, and Old Liu all took out their phones to watch.

On their phone screens was the image from the television in Jiang Zhe's home.

"First question," the man in the suit looked at the question board behind him, "Zhang Qian traveled to the Western Regions; why did he choose that route—please explain from geographical, historical, economic, and other perspectives."

There was a slight commotion on the TV set.

First, a male student from the history department of Dabei University raised his hand. After being given the floor, he stood up and said with an arrogant look: "Geographically, that route connected the Guanzhong Plain with Central Asia. Although it passed through deserts and snow-capped mountains, it was the most feasible passage under the technical conditions of the time. Historically, Emperor Wu of Han wanted to unite with the Da Yuezhi to fight the Xiongnu..."

In less than two minutes, a perfect, beautiful, and well-known answer was thrown out by him.

There was continuous applause on the scene. It was clear—the answer was by the book, a textbook standard answer.

Professor Chen Runzhi shook his head with disdain, "Talent from the textbooks. I don't even teach history like that; it's a waste."

Old Qian from history also nodded, "Such a perfect answer, out of 100 points, I can only give him 60. A top student without a shred of insight."

"Any others?" the male host asked.

Next was a bespectacled female top student from Huaqing University: "I want to look at it from an economic perspective—that route later became the main artery of the Silk Road, which was no accident. The oases along the way served as supply points, and it connected the major centers of civilization in the East and West at the time..."

This answer was equally rigorous but completely lacked originality.

Hearing this, Old Chen nodded and then shook his head. It was better than the top history student from Dabei University, at least.

The host smiled and said: "Thank you to both students; are there any others... It seems the other top students aren't very interested in this question; alright, now let us connect with the first off-site viewer."

Following the "beep-beep-beep" sound, the connection prompt on the TV screen rang.

Soon, a female voice that had been voice-modulated, yet felt inexplicably familiar to Jiang Zhe, came from the TV: "Hello host, hello teachers and students. This question... can I let my brother answer it for me? He is right next to me."

The host, the on-site audience, and the expert judging panel for history, biology, and physics were all stunned.

They snatched the opportunity, didn't answer it themselves, and could let someone else answer?

"Of course, you can," the host pinched his earpiece and reacted quickly, "However, we don't have many lucky people in our live stream, you are one, and each connected guest only has two minutes to answer!"

"That's enough, that's enough, it's a small problem!" There was some cunning in the female voice.

In the living room, just as Jiang Zhe was reaching for the last strawberry, he suddenly heard this sentence on TV and his movement froze.

Then he turned his head suspiciously, not knowing that Xiaoyu had already slipped outside the floor-to-ceiling window, wearing a black blanket, covering her mouth and giggling at him.

Xiaoyu quickly opened a crack in the floor-to-ceiling window, "Don't worry, Brother, the voice has been processed, it won't be exposed; we are all anonymous; it's New Year's, there should be some entertainment, right?"

Jiang Zhe was speechless. Before he could speak, the host on TV had already spoken ahead: "Then please have the brother of this lucky viewer answer!"

The living room was quiet for a moment.

Immediately after, the fans in the live stream went crazy.

"Holy shit, our Brother is going to be on TV?"

"Even though it's voice-modulated, this move is slick, hahaha!"

"Record the screen, record the screen, historic moment!"

"Brother, speak up quickly, and give those top students from Dabei University and Huaqing University, as well as those expert professors who steal students' papers, a taste of reality!"

"Upstairs, it's New Year's, don't cause trouble..."

"A taste of reality!"

"..."

Jiang Zhe looked at Xiaoyu's expectant expression, then glanced at the slightly formulaic expressions of the top students his own age on the TV screen, and suddenly smiled.

He was indeed a homebody, and since it was New Year's Eve, playing a game with his sister was fine.

He beckoned, and Xiaoyu, with a tacit understanding, threw the phone over from more than ten meters away outside the floor-to-ceiling window.

Jiang Zhe looked at the phone; it was the TV station's live stream, and Xiaoyu was in the [Lucky Viewer] column.

He spoke softly: "The answers from the students from Huaqing University and Dabei University just now were all quite good, but they were all too textbook-oriented."

After he spoke, the four, including Professor Chen Runzhi, nodded repeatedly, their eyes glowing, "Not bad, not bad, this is the special program, I like it!"

The scene on TV was quiet.

The expressions of the seven or eight top students clearly changed. This was publicly questioning them; where did he get the nerve?

Hearing this, the host's eyes lit up. This kind of tension would make the ratings explode.

Jiang Zhe's voice came through, "Zhang Qian traveling to the Western Regions is indeed history, but it is more of a combination of Earth's geography, climate, and ecosystem."

"I will answer from another perspective: The road that Zhang Qian took was not chosen by humans; on the contrary, that road was waiting for human civilization to develop to a certain node, allowing itself to be traveled."

A topographic map of Eurasia was opportunely cut out by the director on the TV screen.

"This so-called choice actually strictly followed a hidden rule—it perfectly avoided all absolute death zones."

Then, a red line meandered on the map, bypassing the extreme cold zone of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and passing through the mountain passes between the Tianshan Mountains and the Kunlun Mountains that were just high enough for camel caravans to pass through.

"And then, even more uncanny are these oasis chains on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert."

The director was very professional. As Jiang Zhe spoke, the red dots on the map on the TV lit up one by one.

"Loulan, Dunhuang, Samarkand... Archaeological discoveries show that these oases had traces of sporadic trade as early as a thousand years before Zhang Qian. But why did they suddenly string together into a continental artery only until the 2nd century BC?"

Jiang Zhe's voice paused for a second.

"Because of three seemingly unrelated factors—around 200 BC, three factors reached a critical point simultaneously."

"First: The Milankovitch cycles of Earth's orbit caused the westerlies to shift southward by about 1.5 degrees of latitude—to prevent these kids from not knowing what this is, Milankovitch refers to the influence of Earth's orbital changes on climate change; it mainly includes three cycles—Small 1: Eccentricity cycle, Small 2: Tilt cycle, Small 3: Precession cycle."

"The three small factors within this first major factor made the area north of the Tianshan Mountains dry and cold, while the edge of the Tarim Basin—exactly this oasis chain—instead gained a weak, continuous supply of water vapor."

As soon as this was said, the host and those top students whose expressions had just changed were stunned...

They realized a problem: the person who came this time was not simple!

"Second: The Bactrian camel was fully domesticated during this period, and the load-bearing capacity of the Bactrian camel reached a historical peak; and at the same time, saddle technology broke through, and the high-bridge saddle appeared!"

"Third, according to spore and pollen analysis, within the three hundred years after 200 BC, the vegetation coverage of this oasis chain suddenly increased and became lush; you have to know, this was not a large increase, it was an increase to the level of [just enough to maintain a camel caravan]—it was as if the Earth knew something, and the Earth deliberately placed that road there, waiting for people to pass!"

As the last two sentences fell, the scene was silent.

The pride on the faces of those top students gradually turned into confusion, and then, completely into focus!

This scope of knowledge was a bit too diversified, right?

Indeed, some things cannot be interpreted by history, but can only be attributed to [the uncanny workmanship of nature].

As top students, they understood the uncanny workmanship of nature better than the general public!!!

The host was stunned, scanned the crowd on the scene, and the top students were clearly facing a formidable enemy. He tapped his earpiece repeatedly, "Please continue!"

"Um, the most incredible thing is actually: Earth's time window." Jiang Zhe continued to speak into the phone, "When this passage [became passable] due to the coincidence of natural conditions, the two ends of the passage—our civilization was in the prosperous Central Plains during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, and the expanding Roman Empire—these two civilizations just happened to have developed to a stage where they urgently needed external stimulation to break through the bottlenecks of civilization."

"Thus, silk went west, and glass came east. Then Buddhism was introduced to the Central Plains, papermaking flowed to the West—even the bubonic plague followed this path pre-set by nature to complete the opening and upgrading of the entire Eurasian continent."

"So the question of [Zhang Qian traveling to the Western Regions] itself is very misleading—it was not Zhang Qian who chose this road, but when the Earth prepared the first continental-level information exchange channel for human civilization, Zhang Qian just happened to be the lucky one [selected] by the Earth's channel."

"It's like because of a series of natural trivia, for example, my family suffered a natural disaster this year, resulting in a shortage of rice, but my family has a lot of fruit—and because you have had drought, floods, or even winter snow, you are short of fruit, but have plenty of rice..."

"In this way, [what I have you don't, and what you have I don't] is completed. All of this is the direct impact of [Earth's atmosphere] on human civilization."

"And today, this passage existed in the Han Dynasty, and it still exists today."

"It's just that the carrier has changed from the camels of the Han Dynasty to today's high-speed rail and optical fibers—it has always been there, waiting for the next time civilization needs to upgrade, for the channel to be activated again."

"Because some roads were never pioneered by humans."

"They were paved by the Earth in advance, waiting for human civilization to advance!"

As his series of words fell.

On the TV screen, the host had his mouth open, forgetting to speak.

The top students from the Huaqing University, Dabei University, and Shanghai delegations, some frowned in thought, some widened their eyes, and some subconsciously shook their heads but were stunned. They had never heard such a historical interpretation.

The caller did not start from politics, not from economics, and certainly not from the hero narrative of Zhang Qian!!!

He actually described a road as infrastructure prepared by the Earth for civilization in advance?