I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 276

Wasn’t this going in circles?

“Trust me, this is how you walk. We’ll be there soon,” the figurine answered.

Hearing the figurine’s words, Mo Ling half-believingly walked forward for another stretch.

Sure enough, the fog around him became very thick, and the surroundings became much dimmer.

However, there seemed to be a faint glowing light in the distance, constantly flickering.

“Do you see that light? It’s over there.”

Mo Ling walked over following the figurine’s directions.

But although that light was clearly right in front of him, Mo Ling still walked for a long time.

“Where exactly is this?” Mo Ling finally couldn’t help asking. He guessed this was no longer the library.

“This is a tunnel.”

“Tunnel?”

“Yes, a tunnel built by the Chali Tribe,” the figurine explained.

While walking, Mo Ling also learned from the figurine about what the Chali Tribe had been doing all these years.

When the Chali Tribe first awakened, they realized this was the fish swarm’s doing, they wanted to use them to attract the fog.

The Chali Tribe certainly wouldn’t let the fish swarm succeed.

However, they couldn’t do anything about the fish swarm, so they could only target those newly born mermen.

But the Chali Tribe didn’t know the fish swarm’s true purpose, nor did they know why the fish swarm wanted to fall into slumber.

After spending some time, the Chali Tribe understood the fish swarm’s goal, they wanted to use skill replacement to replace immortality.

The fish swarm had turned around and used the principle of immortality, making souls die while bodies remained eternal.

But the bodies of these mermen were immortal.

Only when they awakened each time would those immortal bodies age slightly.

So they decided to make other plans while the fish swarm was sleeping.

“Every time they awakened, most Chali Tribe members would immediately go back to sleep, but some would stay behind to monitor the mermen. Because their numbers were small, they wouldn’t attract attention, so they hid in the tunnels.”

This small portion of tribespeople would attract the fog, but wouldn’t make the fog completely shift targets.

This small amount of time wasn’t enough for the Chali Tribe to act, and since the fish swarm was always watching the newly born mermen, the Chali Tribe had no way to interfere.

This small portion of Chali Tribe members just kept waiting in the tunnels until the fish swarm fell back into slumber.

The fish swarm had been focused on implementing their own plan and never discovered these Chali Tribe members hiding in the shadows.

They also weren’t like the fish swarm, needing to use various component tools—the fog had little effect on them.

The Chali Tribe had lived on this island for so long that they were already familiar with the terrain. They had expanded those tunnels formed by intersecting tree holes as passages for their covert operations.

They quickly thought of a solution.

The fish swarm wanted to learn new skills, so they would prevent the fish swarm from learning them.

So they began secretly interfering with the newly born mermen’s technological development.

At every crucial development node, various strange things would appear to interrupt the newly born mermen’s development:

When they first tried to make fire, it would suddenly rain.

When they first tried to make tools, they would find they couldn’t locate materials no matter what.

When they first tried to go to sea, the boats they painstakingly built would suddenly break…

Although these incidents could only slightly slow the newly born mermen’s development, when accumulated, they forcibly suppressed their civilization to a very backward level.

The mermen had tried farming, but found there were no suitable places on the island—this was also the Chali Tribe’s handiwork.

The mermen had also tried raising some animals on the island, but these animals would die mysteriously.

Although the merman ancient texts taught them these skills, after trying a few times without results, they wouldn’t attempt them again.

This led to extremely slow development for the newly born mermen.

They couldn’t succeed at anything and could only remain stagnant on the island. A conservative atmosphere gradually formed within the tribe.

This was what the Chali Tribe wanted.

Although innovative talents would often appear among the newly born mermen, under constant setbacks, these talents would all end up depressed.

Although the bodies were immortal, the souls of these newly born mermen weren’t eternal. After some time, these souls would be replaced with a new batch.

Thus, civilization would return to a primitive stage again.

This new batch of souls would experience the same process.

After continuous effort still showed no hope for development, they would fall into the quagmire again and stop struggling.

This was compromise with the environment. The mermen just repeated their backward lives year after year.

They couldn’t develop, not because they weren’t progressive or lacked intelligence, but because they were always shrouded in the shadow of the Chali Tribe.

Under such conditions, the mermen became increasingly isolated and gloomy, until one batch of souls died and another batch appeared, repeating the same mistakes.

The fish swarm naturally also realized the problems with these newly born souls, slow development and backward civilization, so they could only continue increasing the intensity of heritage dissemination, wanting to forcibly help these newly born souls skip a civilization stage.

But under the Chali Tribe’s covert influence, the mermen were still trapped on the island, conservative and gradually declining.

After awakening one time, the fish swarm found that the newly born souls still hadn’t developed, so they thought of a solution, using pseudo-mermen.

These pseudo-mermen were all other races whose cognition had been altered by components, originally used as invasion tools, but now they had another purpose.

When awakening, the fish swarm controlled these pseudo-mermen, who were also trapped in immortality, through components, making them leave the small island and return to their homelands.

They spread them out as much as possible throughout the Abyss.

After some time, when souls were replaced, the newly born souls would passively accept the components’ identity distortion, triggering fabricated memories, thinking they were mermen, then returning to Merman Island with knowledge from other races.

The fish swarm wanted to use this method to break the technical blockade, using other races’ cultures to impact Merman Island.

However, toward the pseudo-mermen, the mermen felt more fear than acceptance. They isolated these pseudo-mermen and ostracized them.

Culture had no time to clash before the sparks were extinguished by the newly born mermen themselves.

Not until the recent two hundred years, when a human exploration ship came to the island, was the mermen’s blockade broken, and this batch of newly born mermen began to understand the world.

At the same time, people like Jeff appeared among the mermen—those who didn’t harbor prejudice against pseudo-mermen but were willing to learn those cultures and knowledge from foreign races.

Under the combined effect of these two factors, immortality was unknowingly replaced.

Meanwhile, after humans came to this island, the Chali Tribe realized they could no longer interfere with the newly born mermen’s development.

They could only secretly disturb the newly born mermen’s development process and couldn’t come into the open to expose their existence.

Facing the impact of human culture, the Chali Tribe waited quietly, hoping immortality wouldn’t be replaced.

However, what they feared most still happened.

Under the impact of various external cultures and knowledge, the newly born mermen learned many new skills, many of which the fish swarm itself didn’t know.

Just like that, immortality was quietly replaced.

“But looking at it now, this is already the best outcome. Fortunately, there’s you.”

The figurine patted Mo Ling’s shoulder in praise.