Chapter 388: A War Caused by Aesthetics

The more Wizard Starfall spoke, the brighter the light in her eyes became, almost enough to set the silver-white room ablaze.

She whirled toward Jie Ming, staring at him as though he were a walking vein of rare elemental ore.

“Wizard Jie Ming! Your timing could not be better! I was just agonizing over my dwindling stock of Imaginary Element and how I couldn’t push the experiment any further.

As long as you can provide a steady supply of Imaginary Element, I can perfect the ‘Wisdom Ignition’ model, and even use it as the core to fully construct and expand my Law of Spirituality, taking that crucial step!”

That scorching gaze made Jie Ming’s scalp tingle. He felt that if he didn’t change the subject immediately, the next second he would be dragged off to the lab and turned into a humanoid, self-propelled element generator.

He cleared his throat and forcibly steered the conversation back to reality. “Lord Starfall, we can discuss the supply of Imaginary Element in detail later. What matters more right now is the current state of the two newly awakened races in your plane.”

Viola instantly chimed in, pointing at the brutal battlefield on the screens with furrowed brows. “Exactly, Starfall. It’s been less than a month since I was last here! Even if war is a catalyst for civilization, this is way too fast and way too intense!”

“And there has to be a trigger for the war between the two races, right? From an ecological standpoint, one absorbs light and elemental energy while the other roots in the earth and draws nutrients. There’s no life-or-death resource competition between them. Why did they start fighting the moment they met?”

Pressed by the two, Wizard Starfall finally calmed down a little from her visions of the future.

She blinked her bloodshot eyes, turned, and rapidly worked the console.

Soon she pulled up a massive amount of real-time battlefield recordings, energy fluctuation spectra, and—most crucially—the translated “language” records derived from the psychic waves and specific electromagnetic signals both sides emitted during combat.

“At first I didn’t understand either,” Wizard Starfall explained while retrieving data. “I only knew that after one large-scale accidental contact, they fell into total hostility with almost no warning, then proliferated and expanded at astonishing speed, spreading conflict across the entire plane.”

She projected the filtered key information onto the main screen.

“Later, through continuous monitoring and analysis of their ‘communication’ during battle, I formed a preliminary hypothesis.”

On the screen, two completely different sets of “language” records appeared side by side.

On the left, next to the data stream representing the light-element beings, the most frequent decoded terms were: [Twisted], [Aberration], [Impure Form], [Purify]!

On the right, beside the psychic fluctuations of the living plants: [Mutated], [Inedible], [Energy Toxin], [Eliminate]!

“Look,” Wizard Starfall pointed at the screen. “The elemental beings seem to regard the plant lifeforms as something ‘twisted’ and ‘impure,’ filled with rejection and a desire to ‘purify.’ The plants, in turn, view the elementals as ‘mutated,’ inedible, and even harmful ‘things’ they intend to ‘eliminate.’”

“I believe this may stem from the most fundamental difference in their forms of existence—pure energy bodies versus solid organic life—creating an opposition at the structural level that planted the seeds of mutual rejection and heresy the moment spirituality awakened.”

Jie Ming stared intently at the scrolling information on the screen, especially the fragments representing insults and derogation.

He blinked. A detail he had previously overlooked suddenly sparked in his mind when combined with their experience upon arrival.

He noticed that in the “language” of both sides—whether the elementals cursing the plants or the plants cursing the elementals—there was an overwhelming number of terms accusing the other of being ugly.

Coupled with how, the instant they appeared, both sides had unanimously denounced them as “ugly flesh monsters”…

An idea that sounded absurd yet not entirely impossible surfaced.

Could it be… that the root cause of these two races fighting to the death was neither resources nor living space nor even structural opposition, but simply… that each found the other unbearably ugly?!

To the point that merely looking at the other made them nauseated and determined to exterminate them?

The others noticed his contemplative expression.

Viola asked curiously, “Jie Ming, what did you think of? You look strange.”

Jie Ming opened his mouth, hesitating.

The idea sounded too ridiculous, and the sample size was far too small. He instinctively tried to brush it off. “It’s nothing, just an immature thought…”

“Come on, spit it out!” Viola pressed, now intrigued.

Wizard Starfall also looked at him encouragingly.

Urged by both, Jie Ming could only steel himself and recount in detail how, the moment they arrived, both sides had attacked them simultaneously and unanimously called them “ugly flesh monsters.”

After hearing it, Wizard Starfall looked puzzled. “There was something like that? My monitoring system mainly focuses on macro-level warfare and energy/spirituality data. Individual-level ‘aesthetic’ feedback… I really did overlook that.”

Viola looked at Starfall with a hint of apology. “Starfall, our earlier actions—will they interfere with your experimental data? Do we need to take any remedial measures?”

Wizard Starfall waved it off, indicating it was fine. Her attention was now completely captured by Jie Ming. “Wizard Jie Ming, the idea you were about to voice earlier—is it related to this? You must tell me!”

Seeing no escape, Jie Ming took a deep breath and laid out his hypothesis that “ugliness” might be the wave triggering the war. He even added,

“From our limited encounter and the insults we’ve seen so far, keywords like ‘ugly’ and ‘aberrant’ that involve disgust toward appearance and form appear with abnormally high frequency—possibly even higher than simple descriptions of the other being ‘harmful’ or ‘competing for resources.’ Of course, this is just an intuition based on a small sample and may not be reliable…”

Far from finding it laughable, both Viola and Starfall frowned and fell into serious contemplation.

As seasoned high-ring wizards, they had seen far too many bizarre societal forms and origins of conflict among intelligent species.

All too often, the spark of war could be absurd beyond belief: a slightly crooked nose on a statue of a god, an impolite sneeze from the opposing leader, or simply finding the other side’s skin color or body structure “unpleasant to look at.”

By comparison, “they think each other are too ugly” as a cause of war sounded outrageous, but it was not logically impossible.

Especially between two races whose intelligence had only just awakened and whose social structures and values were still in primordial chaos.

Moreover, Jie Ming’s hypothesis was not wild speculation; it was a testable theory grounded in observed phenomena and existing data.

The only flaw was the lack of sufficient direct evidence—namely, a large sample explicitly stating they fought because the other was ugly.

The flame of research reignited in Wizard Starfall’s eyes. She spoke rapidly, “There’s no need for special handling of the specimens you influenced! On the contrary… the presence of wizards might serve as an excellent ‘external stimulus variable’ to introduce into this experimental environment!”

“Observing how they react when faced with a third party that is completely different from either of them yet equally deemed ‘ugly’ by both is in itself a priceless opportunity to study the evolution of cognition and social interaction!”

The proposal instantly piqued Jie Ming and Viola’s interest. They quickly dove into discussion around this new possibility.

“We can design a controlled experiment,” Viola said, thinking fast. “Select several regions of comparable size and battle intensity. In some, we reveal our presence moderately or even make non-hostile contact; in others, we send different creatures to interact and see if their reactions change—whether the appearance of an ‘even uglier’ third party eases their conflict or produces other unexpected interaction patterns.”

“Excellent idea!” Wizard Starfall excitedly worked the console, dividing experimental zones and setting observation parameters. “We need precise control of variables and record all energy interactions, psychic fluctuations, and population behavior changes… This may reveal deeper connections between aesthetic preference and social conflict in the earliest stages of spiritual awakening!”

“But that will require more samples for the experiments—that is, creating more organisms…” Jie Ming casually produced a crystal tube filled with ultra-compressed Spiritual Qi. “We can also use Imaginary Element to create additional intelligent races and modified ones to probe the two main races. As for the consumption of Imaginary Element, I can cover it…”

In the blink of an eye, the three wizards were fully immersed in intense and efficient experimental design and deployment.

They bustled around the screens and console—sometimes debating heatedly, sometimes operating at lightning speed.

Only Anya was left standing there, watching her grandmother and the two guests instantly enter a state of research rapture. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, her face filled with stunned disbelief.

This… the way the topic jumped and the direction of research shifted—wasn’t it a bit too fast?

One moment they were talking about quelling a plane-wide rebellion and element supply, the next they were running a controlled experiment on “wars caused by ugliness”?

Silently retreating to a corner, she decided not to disturb the three frenzied researchers who had clearly found a shiny new toy.

Only, gazing at her grandmother’s revitalized profile, Anya quietly lit a candle in her heart for the two races still fighting to the death outside.