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Chapter 26: The Interview
Though its voice was somewhat peculiar, its tone was almost casual—yet it had no mouth. When it spoke, the sound didn’t come from its insect-like mandibles but rather from the constant vibrations of its translucent, film-like, pale-purple wings.
“We meet again.”
It extended its mantis-like scythe arms, poking at the rolling heads of the Tibetans on the ground. Li Xingyuan noticed the cuts on the severed heads—impossibly smooth, with blood vessels sealed shut, bordering on miraculous.
“It’s you…” Li Xingyuan’s tone was bitter. “Ferry.”
“I’m glad you remember me,” the mantis said as it prodded the heads one by one. Each head it touched vanished without a trace. It seemed entirely unfazed by how bizarre or unsettling the scene might appear—perhaps to its kind, none of this mattered. “You look a bit disheveled. Don’t worry; you’ll get used to it.”
Li Xingyuan closed his mouth, unable to comprehend how this being could communicate so naturally.
He could feel Old Liu and Lin Song staring at him with bewildered expressions, but he had no way to explain any of it—not even to himself. He didn’t fully understand what was happening.
“I thought about it after we last met,” the mantis continued, still collecting heads. “About your request for an interview. Why not? Telling you a few things doesn’t violate our work protocols—work protocols, is that the right term?”
It turned its head, its smooth compound eyes locking onto Li Xingyuan as if peering through his flesh to see something deeper. “Ah, yes, that’s the word.”
“Generally, we avoid excessive communication with primitive life forms. Many can’t comprehend why we collect their peers’ thought units. But you—you’ve made progress, albeit incomplete, in understanding some simple universal laws. So I thought, why not? It’s been ages since I’ve interacted with any sentient beings. I’m a bit lonely, and this stop happens to be along my route.”
It was talkative—perhaps due to its prolonged isolation from intelligent life. It seemed excited, rambling on endlessly.
“Come now, ask away. What do you want to know?”
Li Xingyuan stared at the mantis-like creature. Closing his eyes briefly, he exhaled and began: “What are you?”
“Aliens,” the mantis replied bluntly—let’s call it the alien mantis for simplicity. “Please, don’t ask such boring questions.”
“Why did you kill those people?”
“What? Kill? I didn’t kill anyone,” the alien mantis said, tossing the last Tibetan head somewhere unseen before turning back to Li Xingyuan. Its slender body knelt before him, its scythe-like arms folded across its chest, resembling a human sitting cross-legged—only far taller, nearly three meters high. “I was just doing my job.”
“So your job is killing people? I mean, if not killing, then what exactly is your job?”
“I’m a Ferry. Is that hard to grasp?” The alien mantis’s body trembled slightly, emitting a clicking sound—perhaps laughter? “Those people aren’t dead. I preserved their thought units—their brains will believe they’ve reached a better place—Shambhala, Eden, Heaven, the Celestial Realm, whatever you want to call it. And I’ll transport their consciousness to a location hundreds of thousands of light-years away.”
Ferry.
Li Xingyuan finally understood the weight of that word.
“So why did you cut off their heads?”
“To conserve mass. The greater the mass, the more energy required to project it across vast distances. And it’s not their heads we’re after—just their brains. Their skulls will be processed further, and useless organs will be discarded. If you’d like, I can give you some.”
Li Xingyuan fell silent for a moment, then shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“Really? What a pity. I noticed your civilization seems to have a habit of collecting skulls. A fascinating custom, isn’t it?” The alien mantis rubbed its scythe joint against its head.
“How many brains have you collected?”
“I’m responsible for gathering brains from this continent. For each genetically distinct group, we collect a hundred individuals. My task is nearly complete—I’ve gathered around seven thousand four hundred people. Luckily, I arrived today in time; otherwise, I’d have had to venture deep into the plateau, which I’d rather avoid.”
“Why do you do this?” Li Xingyuan asked. “Preserving these people’s brains and taking them to another planet—what’s the point?”
“Biological significance, sociological significance,” the alien mantis replied. “Whenever the Black Tide engulfs a star system, we contact the local beachhead civilizations. For races with advanced faster-than-light travel capabilities, we provide them with safe coordinates. For primitive civilizations like yours, we preserve the thought units of a portion of their members and carry them away, preserving as much of the civilization as possible.”
Li Xingyuan fell silent again, overwhelmed by the flood of questions in his mind. Sensing his unspoken queries, the alien mantis offered a brief explanation.
“Didn’t your friend tell you? You’ve been caught up in the tides of changing universal physical laws—we call it the Black Tide. Civilizations that arise during the intervals between these tides are what we call beachhead civilizations.” The alien mantis paused. “Our race is also a beachhead civilization, but one strong enough to follow the shifting tides of physics across the cosmos—like the nomadic tribes in your history.
“When the Black Tide arrives, we retreat to other corners of the universe. When it recedes, we return. It’s as simple as that.”
Li Xingyuan felt a growing bitterness in his throat. “And what happens to the civilizations left behind in the Black Tide?”
The alien mantis tilted its head, staring at Li Xingyuan. “You already know, don’t you?”
Destruction.
Not just humanity—countless races and civilizations across the cosmos, built during the intermittent lulls of the Black Tide, faced the same fate. Even powerful species like the alien mantis would meet destruction if caught in the Black Tide.
Li Xingyuan understood the answer but felt an even deeper, more terrifying despair.
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