The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 109: Fate

"Last message." The middle-aged man repeated the last words to Li Cu, looking very tired as he sat there exuding a strong aura. His eyes were filled with a mixture of despair and hope.

Li Cu felt that Wu Xie had the same look when he had appeared before the heavy rain on that first night in the desert.

"First of all, I hope you can forgive your Uncle Three." The middle-aged man was silent for a moment before saying, "Everything you've experienced was my fault. But I don't regret it, because it was to prevent you from entering another, more difficult situation." The middle-aged man paused: "You can't criticize me, either. If you can read these messages, then it proves that I'm no longer in this world."

"I can't say whether you were lucky or unlucky to be born into this family. If you had been born after 2000, then all you would've had to worry about is food and warm shelter. If the world's peaceful, then everything's good. You'll believe in the existence of gods, so you won't fear death. You know this is foolish, but ignorance itself isn't necessarily a bad thing for humans. Compared with the pain of wanting to find out the answers to everything around you right now, we also thought about choosing to give you the kind of life that left you drifting along aimlessly."

"Of course, if it was such a choice, your father may not have chosen to give birth to you at first. When we were at our most desperate, we thought that if our generation died together in the prime of our lives, then the fear that followed at least wouldn't appear in our lifetime again. Of course, we didn't do that in the end, because we still have the most basic human weakness."

"In this last message I'm giving you, I won't tell you the whole truth about what you've experienced before, because you'll eventually know not only the meaning of what you've experienced, but also what we've experienced. This is the fate of those surnamed Wu, and the reason why three generations of our family couldn't escape from this nightmare. It's also because of this that no matter how whitewashed it is, only the secular oppression can be washed away, and we can't wash away the final outcome."

"First of all, I want to tell you about the kind of fear we're up against. It's not some kind of terrible monster like what you've seen before. This kind of fear is very gentle, but can't be resisted. The fear lies in the fact that it can't be changed. Ordinary people call this power—fate."

"Can you see fate? No. But can you feel its existence? It's around you all the time, irresistible, appearing as a torrent of countless incidents in almost any decision you make."

"When we were at a loss before, we just thought our enemies were well hidden. Their attacks and defenses were just that, and no one ever gave it a second thought. Maybe these things weren't important in themselves, but what was important was that all of our counter-measures against the other party were being controlled by another, more terrible force."

When the middle-aged man said that, there was an indescribable expression on his face. He looked up and said, "Nephew, I only want to ask you one question. Did you ever feel that all this pain and failure was because God didn't want to help you? After going through so many things, the feeling that God is against you is especially obvious?"

Li Cu frowned. He couldn't keep up with the other party's rhythm, and wanted him to explain further, but the other party ignored him and continued, "You didn't understand wrong. I mean, our fate's been manipulated."

Fuck, Li Cu said to himself. Amazing, this old man is even crazier than Wu Xie.

The middle-aged man continued, "There are a lot of very subtle things that we don't even notice, but the impact of that on our decision-making was fatal." As he said that, the middle-aged man pulled something out of his pocket. It was a bottle of western-looking medicine. "This is a water purification tablet that can purify toxic water to a certain extent, and make it drinkable. We're about to enter a cave, and the water inside has to be purified by this tablet before we can drink it. In other words, the number of tablets in this bottle determines how long I can stay inside this cave. But when I bought this bottle, was it possible to count every bottle, and determine how many tablets were in each one?"

Li Cu could no longer understand where this was going, but he roughly guessed that the middle-aged man wanted to give an example to prove that their fate was indeed controlled by others.

"Ordinary people wouldn't, nor would I, but when I counted this bottle of tablets, I found that there were forty more than the amount indicated on the bottle. Based on normal consumption, I could stay in the cave for another month. According to the records, it would take that long to reach the bottom of this cave. Do you know what this means?" The middle-aged man continued: "Someone is hoping I can reach the bottom of this cave. Since I bought this bottle of medicine, that means someone in the pharmacy knew there was such a valley in this desert, and that there was such a cave in this valley. But how did they know how long it would take to enter the cave?"

"If I go to this cave and turn back, I won't get the result I want, but maybe I'll survive. But if I reach the bottom of the cave, I may die there. We often feel that the choice lies with us, but we've never really thought about it. Maybe God doesn't want me to reach the bottom, and it's another God who wants me to go to the deepest part of this hole and die unnoticed, resigned to my fate."

Li Cu touched his chin in thought as the middle-aged man said, "This isn't the most terrible thing. Fate works inadvertently, and all those who plan and do things logically can't escape it. For example, I'll definitely bring this bottle of tablets along, because in my experience, there are countless things that need to be done. This is my weakness. I'll have to examine everything carefully, but even if I realize that there's a kind of fate conspiring against me, this examination will never reach all of its levels. Even so, I can't just sit back and do nothing."

"This is just one example of why I'm bound to fail. In fact, you'll never find an extra forty tablets in your medicine bottle, because their real methods are more concealed than that. You can only feel that something's strange, but won't be able to find any real clues. Therefore, we're doomed to failure. Anything dominated by logic will fail, and the experience and knowledge we have is our greatest weakness. Maybe you don't believe it now, but once you realize it, you'll one day feel this kind of difference, along with the pervasive strangeness everywhere around you."

Li Cu muttered to himself that the old man was really crazy.

The middle-aged man paused, and then said: "Give up your experience, your knowledge, and your logic. I won't tell you my plan, because if you follow it, then that means everything has fallen under the other party's control. Everything Uncle Three has done is only valuable if you don't understand it."