Chapter 306: Riven's "Creation of Human Beings" Research
"How was it done?" The young Master Yi couldn't help but ask.
They have lived like this in the mountains for generations: born, grown up, farmed, married, had children, raised their children, left the land to their children, and then their children married and had children...
The life of the people in Wuji Village is so simple and plain, they don’t do anything special.
"Is this weird?" Master Yi couldn't understand Riven's surprise.
He believed that the people of Wuji Village were living an ordinary Ionian rural life.
Do we need to meet special conditions to maintain this ordinary life?
"Of course !" Riven looked serious.
Is this kind of life in Wuji Village normal? No, it is not normal at all!
"How many years have you, the Wuji Village, lived in the mountains?" Riven suddenly asked with emphasis.
"About five or six thousand years?" Master Yi thought about it seriously. "I heard from the old people in the village that when there was the Wuji Sword Sect in the mountains, there was also the Wuji Village."
Ionia is the origin of human civilization in Runeterra. It had a mature magical civilization as early as 10,000 years ago, so it is called the Land of the First Birth.
Almost every village and city you see here has a history of at least thousands of years.
"In your Wuji Village, do people often move out of the mountain to live?" Riven asked again.
"Well..." Master Yi shook his head again: "Yes, there are, but very few."
The Wuji Way emphasizes "not seeing the corrupt world", so Wuji masters almost never leave the mountain gate in their entire lives.
Although the villagers of Wuji Village are not members of the sword sect, they are deeply influenced by the sword philosophy of Wuji Sword Sect. They have a strong sense of being rooted to their land and want to live in seclusion. They will never leave the mountain easily, let alone move out of the mountain to live.
"Then..." Riven asked one last question: "Do people in your village often open up wasteland?"
"Opening up new land?" Master Yi shook his head again.
“The resources that nature can give to mankind are limited. We cannot demand endlessly from the mountains.”
"And President Orianna, it's not like you haven't seen anything during the days you've been here—"
"The Wuji Mountains are high, densely forested, steep and rugged. Even if the spirits of nature allow us to open up wasteland and cultivate land, we simply cannot develop more land suitable for farming."
“……” Riven was silent.
"Yi, haven't you discovered it yet?" Soon, she shouted excitedly: "Your Wuji Village is simply the most incredible place in the world!"
A small village isolated from the world, with no immigration to the outside world and limited land resources of its own, has thrived for thousands of years without any conflict between people and land.
Everyone seemed to have land to plant and food to eat.
This is very unscientific.
Riven also comes from a rural background. Although the rural areas of Noxus and Ionia are very different in culture and system, many principles are the same.
Moreover, after escaping from the Ipu River Port, she also took the time to interview some Ionian untouchables from the countryside and conducted some social surveys on the Ionian countryside.
So Riven knew very well how keen the farmers, especially the self-employed farmers in the countryside, were to reproduce. And if resources were abundant enough and humans were allowed to reproduce freely, the speed of population growth would be amazing.
Take, for example, one Ionian pariah she interviewed:
The family tree of this pariah can be traced back to an extraordinary warrior 300 years ago.
This poor warrior, who was also born as a pariah 300 years ago, completed a social class leap through his own extraordinary power, and then bought a large amount of land in his hometown, married and had children, and multiplied the family bloodline...
Just this one man, in just 300 years, had produced nearly 4,000 descendants in the local area.
And these 4,000 descendants are only qualified to be recorded in the family genealogy as the main branch and the closely related side branches, and they are the ones who have the right to inherit land and a certain amount of property.
In addition, there are many more descendants from poor families who were labeled as untouchables from birth, deprived of the right to inherit land and family property, and even their names are not recorded in the family tree.
If the large number of untouchables who were in fact expelled from the clan are taken into account, the number of descendants of this young family, which has only a 300-year history, would be even greater.
However……
"And what about Wuji Village?" Riven seemed to realize the key point of the problem. She asked: "How many people are there in Wuji Village now?"
"Probably..." Master Yi replied, "More than 1,000 people?"
Riven's eyes lit up when she heard this:
That’s the problem indeed!
Wuji Village has thrived in the mountains for thousands of years, and they never drove the extra population out of the village as pariahs, and they rarely moved outside the mountains...
Then how come they have survived till now and there are only about 1,000 of them? !
The area of this village is so small that it should be filled up by the rapidly expanding population in less than 200 years!
Once the population reaches its upper limit, the contradiction between population and land will become prominent, a class of untouchables will be born, and more cruel and ruthless class oppression will arise.
But why didn’t all this happen in Wuji Village?
"Don't people in your village have children?" Riven muttered to herself in confusion.
"Um, wait..." She asked again: "Yi, do you have any brothers or sisters at home?"
"No." Yi still had a question mark on his face: "It's just me."
"Your parents don't plan to have more children? Or did you have other brothers and sisters, but you are the only one left?"
Yi's expression was a little subtle. He didn't know why Riven suddenly started checking the household registration, but looking at the other party's focused expression, he still replied: "No, it has always been just me."
"What about the rest of the people in the village? Are they all like this too?"
"That's about right..." Yi thought for a moment, "The elders I know all have only one child in their families, or at most two."
Riven: “This…”
This is so wrong.
Apart from anything else, as far as she knew:
The question of whether to have children, and how many children to have, has never been something that villagers in the villages of Runeterra can choose for themselves.
Because the villages in Runeterra are basically very backward and primitive, there is not even electric lights at night, and there are no other entertainment activities to release energy.
The villagers have nothing better to do except playing "online games" with their teammates at home.
Once this kind of "online game" is played, it will often lead to uncontrollable deaths.
But in the backward villages, people have no means of escape, and once something happens, they have to pay one more death. There is no other choice.
Riven is one of them. If her parents hadn't died early, she would have had several brothers and sisters.
How did Wuji Village manage to have only one or two children in every household ?
"Don't you have a sex life?!" Riven asked impatiently.
easy:"……"
This question made the young Master Yi's face turn red instantly.
He looked at Riven with sparkling eyes, just like an innocent boy meeting a female hooligan:
"President Orianna, how can you say such vulgar words!"
"Ahem... sorry." Riven reacted in time.
She changed the question to a more precise one: "Do you have any means to avoid Huai Yun?"
easy:"……"
As a conservative Ionian country boy, the Master's heat bar was almost reaching red temperature.
"Hurry up and tell me!" Riven didn't want to waste time with him.
The issue she wanted to study was very important, but she had no time for such unimportant things.
Then, Master Yi, who was usually elegant and graceful, said shyly, "Yes... there is a magical herb in the mountains that can have the effect you described."
"Is this what you usually use?" Riven asked again.
"Um... no, but I haven't used it. I just heard about it from others."
"I see." While Master Yi was still being shy, Riven had already started thinking about the next step.
Yes, this is Ionia.
In this nascent land soaked in magic, there are all kinds of strange magical herbs that can help humans solve problems.
In other words, the secret of Wuji Village's balanced population can be found technically.
But this is just a technical reason.
Even if such technology exists, why would the people of Wuji Village take the initiative to use it?
"Why don't you want to create more humans?" Riven asked quickly.
"I..." Master Yi blushed and answered reluctantly, "Just... one or two will be enough."
"And if there are too many people, the spirits of nature will be unhappy. This will destroy the balance between humans and nature."
Riven: “…”
So that’s it, this is the way to balance!
The way of balance is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in Ionia. The villagers naturally have a cultural tradition of protecting nature and maintaining balance, so they will spontaneously limit the generation of excess population.
"No, that's still not right." Cultural traditions alone cannot answer this question.
Elsewhere in Ionia, people also have a cultural tradition of maintaining balance.
But why don't they take the initiative to control the excess population like Wuji Village, but instead try their best to produce more soldiers and humans, and in the name of balance, turn the excess population into pariahs, making the pariahs the sacrifices for maintaining balance ?
"Wuji Village is also a rural village..."
Riven finally realized that the most strange thing about Wuji Village was:
In other areas of Runeterra, including Ionia, poor and backward rural areas have always been the places where human reproduction is most needed.
This is not a cultural tradition of balance at all and cannot be prevented or changed.
A family structure like Master Yi's, with only one child, is actually extremely rare in most villages in Ionia.
"What exactly is the difference between Wuji Village and Wuji Village?"
