Nurturing Humanity

Chapter 14

The Final Three Questions

As he looked at this remarkable hero, Xu Zhi felt somewhat emotional.

Gilgamesh had lost, but he had never once shown any fear, even in the face of an invincible opponent.

Gilgamesh was a complex and powerful man. He had a very charismatic personality, like that of a king, but he was also egoistic, arrogant, and tyrannical. The impending end of this aging hero left Xu Zhi with inexplicable emotions. He felt a sense of pity and a sense of regret.

However, Gilgamesh’s imminent death was something that Xu Zhi could not change.

He had not been able to break through and incorporate a third set of genes, so naturally, he had to die of old age. Xu Zhi had come to bid him farewell and see him off, but he had not expected Gilgamesh to attack him.

Poof!

Ishtar was also coughing up blood, one mouthful after the other.

Her chest rose and fell violently, but as she looked at the giant in the sky, she too showed no fear at all.

She had been aware from the very beginning that she might die, but Sumerian warriors never feared death.

Ishtar laughed miserably and said, “So, it turns out the difference between us is so great. What have we just waged war against?”

“Do you regret it now?”

Xu Zhi sighed. Shrouded in a golden glow, his body was vast and towering as if he were a giant that traversed time. Enveloped within a layer of golden divine brilliance, he looked mysterious yet majestic.

“Regret? I merely made my choice.”

Gilgamesh was spitting out mouthfuls of blood, but he simply laughed and did not say anything else.

The Sumerian civilization had been defeated.

It had been completely defeated by the Great Beast of Wisdom.

They knew what it meant to fail in the challenge against such a vast giant. A catastrophe of the end of the world that marked their extinction was about to befall them.

Xu Zhi turned his head to look at the army that was fleeing helter-skelter while screaming in a berserk manner. They were continually howling and wailing three words: destruction, extinction, extermination. They were in fear; they were laughing madly out of desperation; they were simply on the verge of going insane.

“I’ve never wanted to dictate the fate of so many people, as well as the rise and fall of a civilization.”

Xu Zhi looked down at the waning Hero King. He looked like he was thinking back to the first bugapes who had only known how to cheer by screaming “balding, balding” and who had dared to mock their creator the moment they were born.

At that time, he had scoffed at them, saying that they were certain to become a barbaric, tyrannical, and selfish race.

Who would have thought that his words would actually come true?

“Are we meeting our end soon?”

Gilgamesh’s body was reduced to shattered bones, but he suddenly and spontaneously sat up. He was still slumped over. He looked up at the giant up in the sky, laughed miserably, and asked, “We have destroyed countless races of beasts. Are you going to destroy us to avenge them?”

It was as though he had never known fear in his life.

Back when he was still a young bugape, he had dared to raise his head and loudly question this ten-thousand-foot giant, whom countless fellow bugapes feared and fled from. And the Hero King of today was still just as fearless as before.

Even if he was on the verge of death, pride and arrogance would never allow him to beg for mercy.

Xu Zhi thought about it and said, “Since you are not going to heed my advice, I will destroy you all. After all, you have wreaked havoc on the ecology of the entire world and exterminated too many species. I can’t possibly leave you alone and allow you to reproduce endlessly.”

The disaster caused by their unplanned reproduction was too great.

Gilgamesh laughed miserably and suddenly asked, “Back then, you answered my question on what civilization was. Can you, once again, answer the few final questions that I have?”

A king wanted the Great Beast of Wisdom to answer his questions?

The crowd held their breath and looked up at the ten-thousand-foot giant. Silence prevailed in the air for a few seconds.

This huge beast was silent as well.

A ray of light covered his face. And a white, holy light seemed to vaguely pierce through the clouds, preventing a clear view of this majestic being. Suddenly, his deep voice penetrated the vast layer of clouds. It could be heard all across the Uruk Kingdom which, by now, had been reduced to fragments and ruins.

“You may ask.”

Wow!

The world seemed to have fallen into dead silence.

Throughout the blood-soaked earth, there was not a single sound to be heard.

The countless elite soldiers who had been defeated and were now fleeing had crowded together. Discarding their helmets and armor, they stopped in their tracks to look back, casting their eyes up at the giant in the sky.

Ishtar was also coughing up blood. With a miserable smile on her face, she looked at the giant in the sky.

“You will answer my questions again?”

Gilgamesh was silent. He also smiled miserably and slowly posed his first question. “How will you destroy us?”

Xu Zhi thought about it for a while. They were everywhere, and it was indeed difficult to get rid of them all. But he had no choice but to eliminate all of them.

Because of overbreeding, they wreaked havoc on the entire ecosystem by eating up and exterminating countless species. They were like locusts in the passing, leaving nothing behind wherever they were. And this had led to the destruction of the entire sandbox.

“I will use water.” Xu Zhi thought about it and then calmly added, “I will use a massive flood to wash away everything and drown your entire civilization. I will destroy all the traces of your existence.”

Everything on earth was still. There was only dead silence.

The ground was too filthy, too full of sinful people.

The Great Beast of Wisdom would cleanse this land of the sinful world with a massive flood?

But, even if the Great Beast of Wisdom was considered to be very powerful, how could he possibly initiate a massive flood that could cover the entire world?

This was no longer the power of a beast, this was…

The crowd’s breathing began to quicken, and the expressions on their faces gradually turned to looks of horror.

“The second question. In this world where the sky is round and the earth is square, not a single trace of your footprints can be found.”

Gilgamesh’s hoarse voice went on, “Where did you come from? What kind of an existence is a Great Beast of Wisdom? Why did you give us the Torch of Civilization? Why are you stopping us from slaughtering other species? You said that all are equal before you, be it barbaric species, intelligent species, or plants. This piece of land, what does it really mean to you?”

Xu Zhi lowered his head slightly and looked at the dying Hero King before him.

The giant was moving his hands through the sky above Uruk City.

“This land is the world I have created with my own hands. All of you are my subjects, regardless of whether you are animal, man, or plant. To me, all species are my subjects, therefore, you are all equal before me.”

Dead silence.

The air was deathly still.

The people on the ground were all breathing rapidly.

The scale of rapid breathing gradually expanded, and then became increasingly intense. Towards the end, it turned into an extreme wheezing that continuously alternated between rising and falling sounds.

Even Gilgamesh was shocked into silence, and he lost his voice for a moment. His face was full of incredulity because he found this all so unbelievable.

Suddenly, he started laughing. What started out as low laughter gradually increased in volume and finally turned into a wild and arrogant laugh. “Hahahaha! Interesting, this is so interesting! We, what the hell are we doing? What is this thing that we are fighting against!”

“It turns out that the legendary Great Beast of Wisdom, the one that we know as a great beast, is not truly a beast. He is an almighty lord, the creator of all things. He is the creator who brought us into existence. Such an existence should be called… God!”

In this land, the tribal people had never known about the concept of God. But now it had come into play.

“I was once arrogant enough to create our history for myself and named it ‘The Genesis’, believing that I created the civilized world. But in fact, the real creator was the Great Beast of Wisdom and all living beings are his subjects. What a great power this is, and to think I was actually so presumptuous to…”

The more Gilgamesh laughed, the louder he became, and his laughter eventually got so loud that the sound of it rose high and spread in all directions.

Hahahaha!

The more he laughed, the wilder and more unrestrained he became.

Xu Zhi’s heart was calm and tranquil. He towered over the borders of the royal city as he quietly watched the dying Hero King laughing his heart out. He had always been good-tempered and did not have the urge to pursue anything.

So now he was able to tolerate Gilgamesh’s insolence, as well as the rampant behavior he was showing as his death drew near.

“The final question. How many days did it take you to create our world?” Gilgamesh suddenly asked.

Xu Zhi thought for a moment.

He had been weak then, having just completed chemotherapy. Even though he had hired people to clear the weeds and make a pond, and he was only responsible for picking up a hoe and tools to tidy up a piece of land where he could create mountains and rivers, a 100-mu area of land had taken him one whole week.

Therefore, he chose to answer the third question truthfully.

“It took me seven full days to create this land.”