Global Evolution

“Yeah.” Chang nodded. He fully understood the dullness of the human senses from the experience of him killing those thugs.

Human vision wasn’t bad in the animal kingdom, but smell and hearing were much worse than other animals. In the dense fog, having relatively good vision wasn’t as useful as in normal conditions. Chang still remembered how he used the fog as cover to kill those poor thugs on the street. They didn’t hear or smell Chang at all, and without having any vision on him, they were as helpless as old men.

“Did you have a mutation?” Qing shui changed the topic all of a sudden. “A mutation like Jing has; she developed a new ability, so did you perhaps enhance your body?”

“I think so.” Chang answered, “But how do you know? I don’t recall ever talking about the changes in my body.”

“I don’t know what’s happening either; these days my mind has become clearer, and somehow I’m remembering memories from a long time ago – even things that happened when I was a baby. I can analyze everything better and faster than before.” Qing shui talked slowly, “For example, when we were walking together, you moved a step to the left and after 4 meters, I saw that on the track you were on originally, a tree was going to get in your way. It is so strange to me that I have come to the conclusion that your vision is at least two times better than me.”

“If it was before, I won’t be able to notice these small details. But now, even a slight change is apparent as if you have taken a big step out of sudden. I also noticed that every time you stepped forward, you were faster than me and you didn’t seem out of breath even though we had been walking for quite some distance. From all of my observations, I realized that your strength was greater than mine, and all these pointed to one answer – you had undergone a mutation and evolved.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys about it before.”

“Its fine; after all, our relationship was merely teacher and student a few days ago. It was totally normal that you didn’t say anything about it.” Qing shui didn’t stop his footsteps for even a second, and the fog flowed by him as he walked. “Now that we share life and death, let’s face this world together. Our ancestors only survived because they united as a single group.”

Chang gave Qing shui a smile and continued to ask, “Three of us have mutated in different degrees and aspects. Does this mean that humans are entering a period of evolution?”

“Maybe; human have always considered themselves as one of the most complex organisms, so reasonably we should be the last to mutate or evolve. In more than 5 billions years, humans as a species have gotten lucky and evolved. As a result, we became able to think and imagine, which are probably unique types of intelligence as far as I know. But actually, on the genetic scale, we share a lot of common genes with the rest of the animal kingdom. I mean, we aren’t that different from the other animals, so it might be time for humans to evolve or mutate too.”

“Do you think everyone of us will mutate?” Chang asked.

“I would say that is possible, but we would evolve to different degrees. That is to say, that might be another validation of the Darwinian theory,” Qing shui sighed. He suddenly looked down on the ground as if he knew something was there before he saw it. “Wait, here is some fresh excrement from some kind of animal, let me check.”

Qing shui squatted as he spoke and carefully distinguished the hair and footprints around the feces. A moment after, he raised his head confidently and said, “We should go southwest. A dog just left from here and we can handle its size.”

“Another dog?” Chang exclaimed gently.

“What else can you think of? Cats, dogs and rats are the most common animals you would see in a city.” Qing shui picked up the pace. “Jing, let us know immediately if you notice something turn up within 100 meters.”

“I will,” She responded.

Five minutes later.

“Three living organisms have stepped in my range, and their danger indexes are 1, 1 and 8 respectively.” Jing whispered in a quick manner, causing Chang and Qing shui to stop spontaneously.

“What?!”

“Holy...”

They expressed their shock at the same time when they heard the number 8.

“Shhhh... wait, that level 8 seemed to have walked away.” Jing closed her eyes and carefully sensed the atmosphere, “It left my perception range.”

“Did it go far?” Chang was delighted as Jing said so.

“I don’t know, I can’t feel it at all.”

“Let’s go closer.”

“Sure.” Jing and Qing shui nodded, and then they moved forward about 20 meters.

“It seems to have gone away.” Jing shook her head, indicating that she still didn’t detect the level 8 organism.

“Maybe we should wait for a minute or two. Perhaps it is wandering around and will come back very soon,” Qing shui started to walk around Jing in a big circle.

“It isn’t here.” Chang and Qing shui walked around for more than 10 minutes, but there was still no sign of the horrifying organism.

“We shouldn’t wait for it any longer.” Chang slowly raised his and casually grabbed a handful of sand from the ground. “I’m going to check out those two level 1 organisms. Stay about 90 meters away from them and don’t move, or they might become alerted.”

As Chang spoke gently, he put his hands up in the air and opened his palms. The wind carried the fine sand away and Chang found the direction against the wind.

He then removed his shoes and gently stepped on the ground. The small rocks and cement blocks caused him to feel pain on the bottom of his feet, but once he got used to the pain, he ran toward his prey swiftly and silently.

Chang was going in the direction that against the wind, and once he got closer, his footsteps slowed down.

Thirty meters, twenty meters, ten meters.... every step he took was full of consideration and caution as he gingerly snuck through the gap between the grass and bypassed the rubble. In a moment, he finally found where they were.

There was an open space in the grass; two dogs were lying there quietly. Although they were quite bulky and looked stronger than normal, their size wasn’t as big as the cat that Chang saw the other day. They were pretty small compared to the white cat. Chang wasn’t afraid of them as he had his spear in his hand.

But he still refrained from getting too close to his prey – after learning about their extremely sensitive sense of hearing and smell, he didn’t think they were easy to approach.

Crouching in the bush, Chang took a few deep breaths and started to imagine the scene of the sky and ocean that cooled him down. He took quite the effort to suppress his racing heartbeat from his anxiety.

One... two...

After the third long and silent breath, Chang finally restrained his emotions, and his heartbeat gradually slowed down and his body no longer trembled after the surge of epinephrine wore off in his bloodstream. He entered a relatively calm state.