Mythology: Ragnarok

Chapter 356 Gene Lock

"What do you mean? How did my hometown lose its future?"

"Because your hometown made two mistakes it should never have made: relying on urbanization and an unhealthy business structure."

"I don't understand, what's wrong with urbanization and business structure?"

"An unhealthy business structure can lead to the irrational allocation of resources, which will be tilted toward unnecessary development directions, causing drawbacks to the development of civilization. The overdevelopment of the food processing industry is the best example."

However, what's even more terrifying is the reliance on urban structures. The advantage of urban structures lies in their ability to concentrate superior resources for rapid breakthroughs. While this might be a temporary solution, long-term development based on this approach will lead to major problems. Consider this: a massive influx of resources into urban areas, resulting in extreme resource concentration, will inevitably lead to extreme population concentration. The cost of expansion and development on this basis will become increasingly exorbitant. A vast amount of resources will be poured into this bottomless pit, with resources being scrambled from other regions. The resulting wealth disparity and resource waste are secondary; the truly frightening aspect is the extreme population density.

So what if the population is dense?

Tagmira frowned, then probed, "It's obvious that your homeland... hasn't discovered the existence of the Gene Lock, right?"

"Gene lock?"

"Let me put it in terms you can understand. You can think of gene lock as a protective mechanism that maintains the stability of a population from within. It is triggered when the population density reaches a certain level. Specifically, it manifests as females and males becoming unwilling to participate in mating and their sexual orientation gradually shifting towards the same sex; moral values ​​gradually collapsing and most falling into extreme egoism; individuals becoming mostly depressed and irritable and having suicidal tendencies; and eventually, the age structure of the population collapses, with no newborns appearing, reproduction stagnating, and the species losing its future. The triggering mechanism of gene lock is similar. In mammals, gene lock is mostly triggered by signals from excessive social interaction and narrow personal space. In other words, an overly dense social environment can easily cause mental health problems in individuals. Typical individual manifestations include depression, dislike of communicating with others, mania and extreme difficulty in controlling one's emotions, abnormal sexual orientation, near collapse of the gene chain, and even the large-scale emergence of hermaphroditism."

This is why the Kingdom of Ten Thousand Races has always paid close attention to the emergence of homosexuality among the common people, because it is a signal that the population density and livelihood pressure in that area have reached a red line, and if it is not managed, it will cause great chaos sooner or later.

This is just one of the drawbacks of urbanization. The population red line is not a big deal, since its impact is still controllable and social contradictions can be quickly resolved by rationally utilizing land resources. The truly frightening aspect of urbanization is the isolation from nature.

Because after urbanization, intelligent life will try its best to create a habitable environment. In this environment that you have transformed, you will inevitably evolve automatically. However, the changes brought about by passive evolution in an ideal environment are mostly just degeneration. True genetic evolution can make life ignore extreme changes in the natural environment and remain calm even in the most dangerous places, and build civilizations and become life forms that gradually approach perfection, just like our current astral beings. Our stable internal environment and protective measures allow us to build civilizations on any planet.

But what's frightening is that urbanization will isolate you from nature, yet your food needs cannot be separated from nature. This will cause the great guardian of nature, the 'virus', which is responsible for maintaining the balance, to become your mortal enemy.

Viruses are among the first to appear on planets that gave rise to life. In nature, their purpose is to kill those with weak immune systems, unable to adapt to environmental changes, the old, weak, sick, and disabled, who must be eliminated. They bring new life to passively evolving lower life forms through death. It can be said that they are the last barrier of a planet and the greatest enemy when civilization tries to conquer its home.

If you had built your cities and adopted similar dietary methods as us, you could have avoided contact with nature and thus escaped the threat of viruses. However, you lack the ability to evolve independently and your eating habits are quite primitive. This means that once you have even the slightest contact with animals in nature, the viruses will suddenly discover a group of creatures that live in groups, have low immunity, are physically weak, and are extremely easy to invade. Viruses have no independent thinking ability; they only ever follow one principle: 'pick the softest persimmons.'

Let me give you an example. Imagine you are a virus, and you have two kinds of food to choose from. On your left are wild animals from nature. Their immune systems have evolved to be very comprehensive through generations of selection, making it difficult for you to devour them; you can only coexist with them. On your right are urbanized intelligent life forms. Due to unreasonable medical habits and genetic defects, their immune systems are extremely low, and they are also aging rapidly. However, their bodies are rich in nutrients, allowing you, as a virus, to easily kill them and reproduce countless offspring. So, would you eat the one on your left or the one on your right?

I think even a virus can make a choice based on instinct, so I don't need to say anything more, right? I'm sure you already have the answer in your heart, don't you?

Furthermore, I advise you not to believe that so-called medical technology can affect microscopic organisms, and not to think that a civilization that cannot even colonize interstellar space can go against the representatives of the natural laws of a planet. They just don't want to wipe you out completely. You have already lost this war at the microscopic level from the moment someone on your planet died from the virus. Your only option is to make your immune system not the worst in nature, so that the virus will not target you but will target other races instead. The only way to fight the virus, 'genetic evolution', has been completely locked down by you. As a result, you are endlessly targeted by the virus, and the development speed of your civilization is extremely slow.

We too have suffered greatly from urbanization; this development structure, even more terrifying than raising poisonous insects, nearly killed us. Fortunately, His Majesty the Dragon God quickly understood its advantages and disadvantages after the first plague and began to seek a more balanced development model.

But what truly makes me despair is what you said: your hometown is actually researching artificial intelligence.

Xuanyuan Muze asked doubtfully, "What's wrong with artificial intelligence?"

"A problem? This is a huge problem. Do you know about the Machine Race?"

"Yes, I understand. Commander Forman introduced me to them. What does that have to do with our topic?"

"The Machine Race is actually a man-made race. No matter how the basic elements in nature change, it is impossible for a technologically advanced, collectively thinking race like the Machine Race to appear. And the civilizations that created the Machine Race were very interested in researching artificial intelligence before that."

Only then did Xuanyuan Muze realize and say, "You mean..."

Tagmira nodded in confirmation: "The Machine Race is man-made. Many inferior races pursue comfort and enjoyment, neglecting their own evolution. They then try to take crooked paths, clinging to the foolish idea of ​​'the flesh and blood are weak, but the machines can ascend,' thinking that they can achieve sublimation by using external means. But there are no shortcuts to the development of civilization in this world, my friend. Although the Machine Race lacks creativity, they can inherit all the wisdom and technology of a race in a very short time and use their mechanical bodies, which are no less adaptable to the environment than the Protoss, to eliminate their creators. So rather than calling the Machine Race pests, it is more accurate to call them parasites. And after these parasites replace their hosts, they will continue to harm other races in the universe, becoming a complete cosmic disease."

Therefore, the Kingdom of Myriad Races has an unwritten rule: developing mechanical technology is permissible, but creating mechanical life is strictly prohibited. Any planet that violates this rule will be punished for endangering cosmic security, and the entire planet and all life on it must be destroyed! Fortunately, in recent years, the planets under the Kingdom of Myriad Races have generally abided by the law, and few have dared to cross its legal red line.