Chapter 317 - 161: Going Far Away

Chapter 317: Chapter 161: Going Far Away

In the SUV, Xu Mo watched Luochuan City fade away in the rearview mirror and let out a long sigh.

The Barrett lay at his feet. Ultimately, he hadn’t chosen to kill Void.

Void—the name Xu Mo had given the two-headed being during their conversation.

This wasn’t a case of being a bleeding heart; rather, during their talk, Xu Mo felt he had stumbled into a gray area fraught with moral complexity.

’In a post-apocalyptic world, survivors operated on a doctrine of survival: anything that threatened humanity’s existence could be killed. This was a classic anthropocentric viewpoint, one that strictly confined the scope of moral concern to the human species.’

’However, this two-headed, four-armed being presented Xu Mo with a fundamental challenge. It possessed self-awareness, memory, emotion, and social traits. Most importantly, it could communicate.’

’In their confrontation, Void hadn’t been a beast acting on pure instinct. Instead, it had effectively said, "You killed my progeny. I am heartbroken. Therefore, I must have revenge."’

’From the perspective of reciprocal altruism, Xu Mo had killed its progeny, and it was retaliating. Logically, it formed a complete, closed loop.’

’In a non-human society—one that nevertheless followed its own set of rules—revenge might be the core mechanism for maintaining order and dignity. Therefore, in its own value system, its retaliation was "just."’

Xu Mo felt he was in the wrong precisely because he had grasped this. He was no longer facing an unthinking, natural threat, but a flesh-and-blood individual with social ties. This presented a profound ethical problem.

’Then Xu Mo thought about why Luo Li had attacked first.’

’Because in her cognitive framework, and that of most survivors, anything that approached with zombies in tow was an enemy.’

’Before it had spoken, before it could prove its rationality, the two-headed, four-armed being had already been labeled a threat. Such labeling was an inevitable byproduct of the collapse of social order and the disintegration of trust between groups in the apocalypse.’

’The most disturbing thing about Void was that it blurred the line between human and zombie. It had a human head and memories, yet possessed a zombie’s strength and followers.’

’Void had said it didn’t know what it was, and Luo Li, too, had once been unsure if she was still human. This revealed a cruel reality of the apocalypse: evolution was not linear, but divergent. The conflict between them was, in essence, a "clash of civilizations" between different social groups, sparked by misunderstanding in their fight for living space and resources.’

’The Western philosophical tradition holds that man is a rational animal. If this being could think logically, use language, and express emotion, then by definition, it was already approaching the boundary of what it meant to be human.’

’Philosophically, killing a person carries a completely different weight than hunting a wild beast. The former involves the taboo of murder; the latter is merely a means of survival.’

’The dilemma he faced was this: if he killed this being as if it were a beast, he would be denying its dignity as a rational entity. But if he let it go, he would be risking his own life and the lives of his companions, who could be consumed by its "revenge" or future conflicts.’

This was why Xu Mo’s head ached. Void’s appearance had shattered the psychological armor that allowed him, as a human survivor, to practice "justifiable killing." With its rationality and its grievances, this being had forcibly dragged Xu Mo from his role as a pure Hunter and into an interpersonal dynamic—one that demanded dialogue, empathy, and moral responsibility.

Xu Mo couldn’t brandish his Triangular Spike or raise his Barrett with a clear conscience, not like he could with the zombies that had lunged at him before.

’And Xu Mo was also questioning himself: after civilization collapses, what do we use to define an enemy? Is it their appearance? Their actions? Or whether they possess a soul worthy of our respect?’

This was the source of Xu Mo’s helplessness. He found that the survival instincts and combat skills he prided himself on were useless when facing a different kind of being—one that could communicate, reason, and feel.

’If I kill Void as if it were just another zombie,’ Xu Mo thought, ’I’ll become nothing more than a killing machine, living only to survive. But if I let it go so easily, I could be facing unknown betrayal and risk down the line.’

’Perhaps this was the ultimate test the apocalypse presented to its survivors: on the ruins of the old world, could a new social contract be built—one that transcended species and was founded on reason and empathy?’

’Of course, Xu Mo could have also taken the moral high ground and passed judgment on Void. After all, its evolution was certainly fueled by a great deal of consumption, and the scope of what it had consumed was terrifyingly vast.’

’But if Void couldn’t remember consuming its own kind, then from the perspective of subjective consciousness, it was innocent.’

’It awoke in its two-headed, four-armed form, surrounded by zombies. It didn’t know how it had become this way; it didn’t remember the bloody process of consumption. All it knew was that it was lonely, confused, and wanted to find others like itself.’

’And yet, from an objective standpoint, Void’s very existence was built upon the deaths of countless members of its own kind, and of humans.’

’This formed a classic ethical paradox: If a person commits murder but has no memory of it, are they still a murderer? If a being’s very nature is forged through sin, but its consciousness is clear, how should we treat it?’

’Memory is a core component of personal identity. If you have absolutely no memory of doing something, then in the strictest sense, you are no longer the person who did that thing.’

’Void’s situation was even more extreme. Not only did it lack the memory on a conscious level, but its physical form had undergone a fundamental transformation. It had completed a qualitative leap from a zombie to an intelligent being.’

’This led to an even deeper question: Was the "it" that had once devoured its own kind the same being as the "he" that now stood before Xu Mo, speaking?’

’Viewed from the perspective of continuity of consciousness, the answer was no. That devourer was already dead, replaced by a new consciousness during the process of consumption.’

’But from a material perspective, the flesh and blood of countless devoured beings still flowed through its body.’

’It was very much like the theological concept of original sin. A person is born into sin, not because of anything they have done, but because of what their ancestors did.’

’But Void’s original sin was more complex; it wasn’t inherited, but directly inscribed into its physical composition.’

’If this problem were magnified to a societal level, it became even more interesting.’

’Suppose a group of these intelligent zombies appeared in the future and formed a civilization. They wouldn’t remember their origins, wouldn’t know they had reached this point by devouring their own kind.’

’They would only say, "We were like this when we woke up."’

’Their civilization, then, would be built upon institutional amnesia—and examples of that are rife throughout human history.’

’Colonists don’t remember how many indigenous people they slaughtered, only that they built a great nation. The descendants of slave owners don’t remember their ancestors’ atrocities, only that they inherited the family estate.’

’This amnesia isn’t a deliberate cover-up, but a genuine, structural ignorance. And that kind of forgetting is more terrifying than a deliberate concealment, because it makes it impossible to hold the guilty accountable for their sins.’

Faced with this cascade of questions, Xu Mo ultimately couldn’t bring himself to raise his gun and eliminate the being. And it was precisely because he hadn’t that he had sighed so heavily.

The only thing Xu Mo could do in response was to erect a few signs on the outskirts of Luochuan City. They explained that there was an intelligent zombie within that could communicate, warned against attacking it, and advised lone survivors to find another route.

He would leave these problems for someone wiser in the future to solve. Xu Mo felt he didn’t have the capacity.

After doing all this, Xu Mo found his SUV and drove through Luochuan City, leaving without much of a pause. He still had his own mission. Since Luo Li was willing to communicate with the being, Xu Mo had nothing more to say.

But a question now circled in Xu Mo’s mind: ’How should humanity treat a civilization born from human corpses? Here in Luochuan City, there was only one Void. But what about in other megacities? If such beings were malicious, then a fight would be inevitable. But what if they weren’t?’