84: Chapter 84: Earth's Construction Manual

As Xiao Yu started her broadcast, countless viewers flooded into the livestream.

"Front row, front row! What is our brother talking about today?"

"I heard the xia nation consciousness appeared here, so I came to see for myself."

"..."

Xiao Yu glanced at her phone and saw the viewer count climbing, feeling very satisfied!

"Brother!"

She rested her chin on her hand, looking curious,

"Before we start, let me ask you a question. How do you think humans came to be? Evolution, right?"

Jiang Zhe glanced at her, feeling a bit bewildered.

This wasn't the topic for tonight, but he responded anyway.

"Generally speaking, yes, we came from mammals, ancient apes, step by step—the theory of evolution."

He paused for a moment, his voice lowering slightly.

"If we aren't speaking generally..."

His voice stopped abruptly. "Next time. That's not the topic for today."

Thousands of comments flooded the chat instantly.

"Don't do that, tell us now!"

"People who stop mid-sentence don't have balls."

"..."

"Then!"

Xiao Yu rolled her beautiful eyes and suddenly changed her line of questioning—

This was the livestream pacing Operator Wang had taught her when she went to see him during the day.

"Brother, I read about human evolutionary history today."

"I found that many parts don't quite make sense; they're all a bit 'just right,' like everything is 'just right.'"

"We appeared just after the dinosaurs went extinct, and our brain capacity just happened to skyrocket during that ice age..."

"There are so many 'just rights.' Could it really all be a coincidence?"

Xiao Yu didn't like reading; all of this was the script Operator Wang had researched overnight, written in Jiang Zhe's style, to teach Xiao Yu how to maintain viewer engagement in the livestream.

Inside the operations department.

Operator Wang looked at the backend data and gave a thumbs up with a smile. "Well done!"

"Jiang Zhe's conversational style is still the best!"

Xiao Yu paused for a moment and threw out another question:

"Or could it be that there is some intelligence behind these coincidences, orchestrating them?"

As soon as this question was asked, the viewers in the livestream were stunned.

Everyone held their breath, listening with rapt attention.

Jiang Zhe squinted his eyes, looking a bit scrutinizing.

Xiao Yu wasn't acting like herself; these were words he would say, not Xiao Yu!

He didn't think too much about it and said decisively:

"The book you read is indeed good. The appearance of humans is not a coincidence."

"We humans were arranged to be here by Earth."

At this moment, the viewers instantly lost their composure.

They thought Jiang Zhe was joking when he mentioned this conclusion before.

They didn't expect he was serious?

Xiao Yu showed a surprised expression:

"Brother, isn't that a bit too mystical?"

"My geography teacher said that Earth's mass extinctions and various disasters are natural adjustments, just accidents!"

Natural adjustments, accidents?

If Jiang Zhe were just an ordinary college student, he might have believed it.

But he wasn't just a college student.

In his past life, he and his colleague Su Cheng had traveled through mountains, searching for lost ancient texts.

He had also sat in the humble abode of a hundred-year-old Taoist master, listening to the old man murmur about the order of the Heavenly Dao.

Those experiences taught him one thing—there is only destiny and inevitability in this world, not a series of coincidences!

Jiang Zhe smiled, his face wearing a meaningful expression.

"Once you've heard it all, you will understand everything."

Xiao Yu held her breath, and the number of viewers in the livestream continued to increase rapidly.

"Earth arranging for humans to make their entrance,"

His voice was calm and powerful.

"Was far from a whim."

"It was a preparation that lasted over four billion years, with every step linked to the next."

"The five mass extinctions in Earth's history,"

He held up one finger, emphasizing each word,

"Were the five most critical, absolutely unavoidable construction nodes!"

"If even one was missing, or if the scale of just one small disaster in a river or lake had been slightly off, or if the timing had been slightly different, then the ones sitting here today discussing the topic of origins would definitely not be us humans, but perhaps another intelligent civilization!"

As he finished speaking, the viewers in the livestream were immediately in an uproar.

"Construction nodes, damn!"

"Earth Engineer is officially online!"

"It was clearly just a chronicle of Earth, but it scared me directly."

"Isn't that too far-fetched? It feels a bit like forced association!"

Jiang Zhe's gaze gradually became sharp.

"Xiao Yu, change your perspective."

"Don't look at the causes of the mass extinctions; volcanoes, ice ages, impacts—those were just tools Earth used."

"Let's just look at the results: after every catastrophe, what was Earth transformed into?"

"And what legacy did it leave for future life?"

"Then, you will see a shocking fact!"

Speaking up to this point, Jiang Zhe's tone became gradually serious.

"When you connect these results, they point precisely to the only geographical environment capable of nurturing a technological civilization!"

"First!"

"Turn back time, back to where it all began."

"The first mass extinction, late Ordovician period, about 440 million years ago."

"The direct cause: global cooling, sudden expansion of glaciers; the result was that 85% of marine species disappeared."

"Especially the rulers of the ocean at the time—the simple trilobites and graptolites—all disappeared."

He looked at Xiao Yu and asked:

"Xiao Yu, if you only look at the destruction, this was an ecological tragedy."

"But what if we only look at the 'results' it left behind?"

"Results?" Xiao Yu looked puzzled.

"Yes, results."

Jiang Zhe's expression was profound,

"This extinction, Earth wiped out the simple versions of organisms at the top of the early marine ecological chain."

"At the same time, countless marine skeletons—those skeletons and shells rich in phosphorus and calcium—settled on the seabed."

"They later formed the important phosphate and limestone layers of future generations."

"Phosphorus is the core of life's energy conversion, the backbone of genetic material; it is also the foundation of modern agricultural fertilizers."

"If there hadn't been this mass extinction—those global phosphorus and calcium deposits—no subsequent complex life could have been born."

"For example, fish that require hard skeletons for support, and vertebrates that came onto land, would have lacked the building materials for a large-scale explosion."

Xiao Yu's beautiful eyes gradually widened,

"So, the first mass extinction was actually clearing the field; at the same time, it saved up the raw materials for the skeletons of all future land animals in advance?"

"Exactly!" Jiang Zhe nodded affirmatively. "Earth eliminated the old version, simultaneously upgraded for complex life, and prepared the key materials."

"You think it's a sequence from simple to complex?"

Jiang Zhe squinted his eyes and shook his head gently. "Actually, it's not that simple."

"Without this clearing and preparation of raw materials, the more active and complex fish that followed would not have been able to rise."

"And land vertebrates would be out of the question."

"Even, the human agricultural revolution hundreds of millions of years after the first mass extinction..."

"Would have stagnated due to a lack of phosphate fertilizer."

Having explained this far, he paused for a moment and threw back a question:

"Xiao Yu, imagine if some kind of intelligent life, even a humanoid creature—had evolved before the first mass extinction."

"They might have developed some kind of marine civilization, just like the legendary Atlantis."

"But their technology would have been completely locked in the marine environment of that time."

"The land was barren at that time, with no ready-made phosphate resources; they would have never been able to land on a large scale, and they would never have been able to unlock... those technology trees that require high-intensity agriculture and mineral utilization."

"They would have been a pseudo-intelligent civilization locked by resources."

As this series of words fell, the viewers were no longer calm.

"So mass extinction is unlocking a new map and releasing memory?"

"Clearing the field and preparing materials, this is too much like a game update, isn't it?"

"It's terrifying to think about; if humans had appeared hundreds of millions of years earlier, would we also have been locked?"

"Is the birth of humanity really just a coincidence?"

In Beijing, at Huaqing University, in a rest conference room.

They participated in the xia country brain experiment yesterday, and today they were watching together with Professor Guan and the other graduate students.

Ostensibly, they came to learn!

Dr. Li Mo was integrating data on his laptop, his expression very serious:

"Jiang Zhe stripped away the causes and focused on the results."

"He is listing a checklist of necessary conditions for the birth of civilization, and then checking if each extinction happened to provide one of them!"

"The first mass extinction provided phosphorus and calcium resources for subsequent life and civilization: the cornerstone of skeletons and agriculture."

Professor Guan, standing to the side, frowned deeply. "If life's evolution is purely random, why does the large-scale reserve of key resources always happen to appear before the evolutionary stage that needs it?"

"This order seems too reasonable; it's so reasonable that it doesn't look like natural selection, but rather..."

"A meticulously arranged construction schedule!"

The other graduate students had very grave expressions.

They originally thought this was just normal Earth history, but they didn't expect there to be such a strange theory!

On the other side, at the Beijing Normal University faculty residential compound.

Retired ecology Professor Liu Guangyi was dragged over to watch by Old Chen.

At this moment, his expression was very serious:

"Xiaoyu's brother's perspective is very tricky!"

"He is saying that extinction is not driving evolution, but rather clearing obstacles and preparing materials in advance for the next stage of evolution!"

"This idea is very radical, but!"

"But what?" Old Chen couldn't help but ask.

"But, it's hard to refute immediately." Professor Liu Guangyi narrowed his eyes. "Reversing from the results, it is indeed seamless!"

"Because chemical reactions are themselves coincidences upon coincidences, which equals not a coincidence."

"Earth's series of chain reactions, the butterfly effect, interlocking steps—if one mistake happens, humanity will cease to exist."

"The miracle of nature is the birth of humanity."

Old Liu suddenly hesitated to speak.

"What's wrong?" Old Wang looked at the grave-faced Old Liu.

At this moment, Professor Liu had a grave expression and did not respond, instead thinking about the words Xiao Yu had said.

Because...

According to the evidence currently obtained from the universe, the starry sky, the Milky Way, and the Solar System, the birth of humanity...

It's unnatural, so unnatural that it seems like it was arranged by a more miraculous existence.

The right arm of the Milky Way, the right Solar System, the right star, the right Kuiper Belt to block meteorites for the Solar System, the right Jupiter to block disasters for Earth, the right Moon to block disasters for Earth and provide tidal effects, the right atmosphere to protect living things on the surface, the right oxygen content...

You must know, this kind of "God-favored land," or the barren land on the edge of the universe, cannot be found in many places in the entire universe.

Therefore, he, as a professional professor, did not overly deny Jiang Zhe's words.

Because he also believed that humans are not the product of natural evolution!

In the suburbs, inside Qingfeng Temple.

Zheng Ming couldn't help but sneer:

"Simply nonsense!"

"Life evolution is random; Earth uses whatever materials it has. Where would there be so much deliberate arrangement?"

Celestial Master Zhang, who had been listening with his eyes closed, slowly opened his eyes.

"You are wrong again, Junior Brother Zheng."

"What he is saying is not that Earth has consciousness. It is that—this series of coincidences is so coincidental that it doesn't seem like a coincidence."

He raised his hand and pointed at Jiang Zhe on the screen:

"Look, the first mass extinction happened just before complex vertebrates were about to land on a large scale."

"It prepared the most critical skeletal raw materials for the landing."

Celestial Master Zhang paused for a moment and switched to a more straightforward explanation:

"It's like the night before a major construction project starts; all the types of rebar, cement, and prefabricated parts on the construction site, even the cranes and safety nets, have been sorted and neatly stacked in place."

"As long as you wait for dawn, when the engineer arrives and lays out the blueprints, the workers can start construction immediately."

He looked at Zheng Ming and Xu Mu, whose expressions were gradually changing:

"Once! Is a coincidence. Twice, is luck."

"What if all five extinctions, every single time, 'just happened' to prepare the key conditions for the next evolutionary stage?"

Celestial Master Zhang's expression was profound,

"Then, what he is talking about is not a history of Earth's evolution."

"This is essentially a 'Project Construction Schedule' that was written long ago."

Zheng Ming opened his mouth, unable to refute, and a chill rushed to the back of his head.

At this moment, on the screen.

Jiang Zhe's voice came again:

"The first construction was for clearing the field and preparing materials; it is complete."

"Now, Earth's project has entered the next critical node."

His gaze was very focused:

"The second mass extinction: late Devonian period, 360 million years ago."

"This time, the problem to be solved is even more fatal!"