"Sir, is it really you?" Rand closed the door and sat down, and if Lady Sarah saw him at this time, she would have thought it strange, he sat solemnly, looking ahead, but there was nothing in front of him.

In fact, Rand felt that the other party had found him through the arcane Skynet, and from this point of view, the other party's authority was quite high.

"It's me, I'm really sorry, I only contacted you now, how about it, through the investigation, have you found the answer?" said the mysterious gentleman gently.

"I know what the contradiction and confusion in my heart is, but why is this happening, I still don't understand?" Rand said with a wry smile.

"Oh, can you tell me?"

"Well, when I was studying magic, my teachers proudly told me that this world is a world dominated by magic, and the development of magic, especially the drastic changes in the past hundred years, is no longer high, but has become the driving force for the development of the world, and it will definitely change everything. In fact, I can also feel the changes in our country, so I was very much in favor of this view of the Sainz Party at one point. I firmly believe that with the further development of the study of magic guidance, there will be a happy land in the future. But these days I have investigated the situation of the lower classes of society, and I have come to the opposite conclusion: the life of the workers does not seem to improve much with the development of the magic, and on the contrary it is becoming more and more difficult. Rand said a little excitedly, "I once considered not wanting to accept the family's arrangement to inherit the business, but to become an archmage like my maternal grandfather, and participate in some magic research that can change the times, that is, to meet my ideal pursuit, and to bring good news to more people." I'm going to be proud of that. My children and grandchildren will be proud of me, too. More than my grandfather did in business. ”

Rand's words have lost their logical connection a bit, presumably because his ideals are being shattered, but Mr. Mystery can clearly sense his confusion and struggle.

"I've been thinking about some questions, but given the environment I'm in contact with, and I don't need to know something, why don't you let me read the records you got from this investigation?" said Mr. Mystery.

"Absolutely. Rand breathed a sigh of relief, he was eager to discuss it with Mr. Mystery.

He is now like a man locked up in a small dark room, and he learns a lot of shocking facts while investigating the condition of the workers. Unveiled to him the real side of this world, he saw darkness, cruelty, and oppression, which made him feel hesitant, depressed, and confused, and inevitably cast a shadow on his soul, always eroded by negative energy, but in order to unravel this emotion, the first step is to clearly know what the root cause of all this is, which is the standard logical thinking of magicians.

He had compiled the records of this investigation, and a copy of it had been formed in the private space of the Arcane Celestial, which needed to be rented for a fee. But for him, of course, it is not a problem.

He told Mr. Mystery the location of the Skynet to enter the space and the password that he would be questioned when entering, and the other party disappeared again.

Rand walked out the door. When he forced a smile to talk to Lady Sarah, the other party inevitably cared about his strange state and demeanor just now.

However, he was disguised by the fact that he had recently had to learn magic and learn more about the family business at the same time.

He knew that this would make Lady Sarah worry that the poor woman would depend on him for her life after she became his mistress, and that if he turned away from it, they would return to the miserable life they had lived in the mansion, so she was always careful to please him and serve him.

In the past, he would have been soothed, but today he was really in no mood, and he waited for the mysterious gentleman to uncover the root cause for him after reading his investigation records, so that he would no longer be confused.

It wasn't until the next night, when Rand put his arms around Lady Sarah, and the two of them had only exercised vigorously, as well as the sweat stains left by the intense exercise just now, the woman fell asleep tiredly, but Rand still couldn't sleep with his eyes open, and he had a premonition that the mysterious Mr. Mage would come to him.

Sure enough, after a while, he found Rand again.

"I've seen your investigative notes, and I've gotten into deep thought, and I've come to some conclusions, and something that might need to be re-verified. ”

Rand carefully pulled his arm from under Lady Sarah's neck, fearing that he would wake up Mr. Mystery's excitement and dance during his mental exchange, and affect their discussion.

"Can you tell me why, then, why hasn't the great achievements in magic research not benefited more people as my teachers predicted?"

"No, no, I think, first of all, your division commanders are not entirely wrong. Surprisingly, Mr. Mystery said, "I have compared the various periods of history with the present, and on the whole, it is indeed a kind of progress compared to the past, so that the lives of more people have improved to a certain extent." Well, if you look at the history of the human race alone, it was originally the slave era, enslaved and oppressed by the High Elves, and then the resistance was successful, and then the Terrans fought against the orcs externally, and there was also competition internally, so a more organized and productive social form was developed, this period from the successful rebellion against the High Elves, the Terrans established large and small kingdoms to Queen Stevenie of Asturia, I call it the feudal era, and now, it is completely different from the past, this difference does not refer to the various magical achievements that your master is proud of, or the countries defeated the Elven Empire and became the overlord of the new era。 In my opinion, there is a root cause for this, and it is because there is a completely different root cause that causes the qualitative change, and everything I just said is the result of this qualitative change. ”

"So what is this qualitative change, which is different from the past?"

Mr. Mystery was silent for a moment, and then his voice resounded in Rand's spirit: "I think before we discuss this issue and the things related to it, we should first know how to conduct a discussion, or what methods to use to conduct research and discussion, such as how to analyze your investigation record. I think it's a big difference, for example, I just mentioned the changes in the history of the human race, and from here I think the world is moving, developing, changing. It is even full of antagonisms and contradictions. And so in the process of this eternal development. The old antagonism and contradiction will die out with development, and new antagonism and contradiction will arise, so we need to look at a thing in general connection, and even with the whole world to observe, because they may influence each other, interact with each other, and restrict each other, so they can develop at the same time as opposition and contradiction. ”

"Eternal development, universal connection. Rand read these two sentences. Nodding silently, "I think I can understand these two sentences." If these two sentences are applied to the most common magic experiments of our magicians, a magic experiment requires a variety of materials to work together, isn't this a universal connection, as long as one of the materials fails or does not work as expected, it will affect the outcome of the experiment, not to mention the eternal development, the purpose of our experiment is to get something new, as long as we do not give up the development of magic, the study of magic. Of course, it is eternal and unchanging, as for opposites and contradictions. When we choose a material, we will encounter a material that can meet a certain requirement of the experiment, but will destroy the role that other materials can play, which makes people contradict to the extreme, whether to give up this material to join the experiment and find something else to replace it, or to keep this material, but need to add other elements that affect the experiment to rebalance. ”

Rand used what he could think of to understand what Mr. Mystery said, although it was a little pale, but it was basically recognized by Mr. Mystery, after all, this was the first time they had made such a systematic summary.

"But your cognition of eternity is too much on yourself, and your understanding of eternal development in your cognition just now is based on the perspective of the magician's exploration of the world, but the movement, development, and change of the world are births for individual creatures. Development and disappearance, you will perish, maybe I will too, but after the disappearance there will be new creatures, if they develop to a certain height, they will also explore, to study, maybe in the current form of magic, but also in other different forms, so what will never change is the development of the world itself. ”

"Well, I agree with what you said. Rand said.

"If you agree, then the next question is, do you think that matter is the subject of the movement, development, and change of this world, or is spirit the subject?"

Rand wanted to say that it was spirit, because the mage's spell casting was closely related to spiritual power, but remembering the discussion between the two just now, he suddenly felt that it was wrong, the two discussed the root cause, and the mage's spell casting is related to the spirit, but first of all, the mage must exist, if the mage does not exist, there will be no spell casting;

Rand only felt that he was confused just thinking about it, so he had to say: "What does Sir think? I originally wanted to say that spirit is the subject, but after thinking about it, I felt that matter is the subject, but then I thought of the existence of ghosts, and creatures will have different soul states at different times after death." ”

"I don't think of undead creatures as immaterial, just as water can be liquid, frozen into ice and solid, and heated into gaseous. But that's not the point, let's think of them as a form of mental state for now, but there's a better example, like your attitude towards the gods, do you think they're omnipotent?" Mr. Mystery said.

"Of course not, some of us mages believe in gods, but more often than not, from my own and the mages who have taught me, most of us think that gods are just stronger, but we just need to be polite to the gods and not reverent. Rand replied.

After answering this question, Rand suddenly understood, "I understand what you mean, you are trying to tell me that my previous thoughts ignored the word subject." You are not denying the existence of spirit, but you are asking what is the subject of world movement, development, and change, whether matter depends on spirit, or spirit depends on matter. So even if the gods have separated from the main material realm and exist in the kingdom of God after becoming gods, even if the source of the power of these gods is the so-called spiritual beliefs, don't forget that spiritual beliefs come from believers, and believers are material beings. But if there are no believers, faith will be extinguished, and gods will fall asleep or fall, and even the most powerful gods will not be omnipotent. ”

The more Rand spoke, the more excited he became, of course, this was referring to Mr. Mystery's communication with him through Arcane Skynet, which was reflected in each other's consciousness. But he still let him lie on the bed and waved his hand loudly, almost waking up the woman next to him.

"I think so too. There is also Arcane Skynet. Carries many mages or arcanists. Even in the future, there are not ordinary people who don't even have any mage qualifications who can connect to the arcane skynet with the help of some kind of alchemy product, and in the skynet it is the exchange of consciousness and spirit, but the maintenance of the arcane skynet depends on the active injection of source power from the outside, and the source of the source power is black rock and magic crystal, so I think that in the final analysis, the main body of world movement, development, and change is matter. ”

"Please go on, is it okay, sir, I don't want to wait any more night. Rand was in a mood of excitement right now. He felt that his confusion was decreasing little by little, although the other party still didn't seem to directly say what he wanted to know in the first place, but based on what the two of them had just discussed, Rand felt that he had made himself different from before, as if he was about to touch what he was looking for.

"Okay. Since the main body of world movement, development, and change is matter, and the existence of spirit is also largely dependent on matter, we should study the problem from the perspective of taking things as the main body, following the premise that the world is the eternal development, and then looking at the universal connection between things. Let's look at the changes in history from the perspective of materialist dialectics. Well, since a large part of the recorded history of the Terrans began in the days of slaves. So perhaps we should add the original age of the elves as a more initial stage, so that there is the primitive age, the slave age, the feudal age, and the present. ”

Mr. Mystery continued in one breath, and Rand continued to listen.

"In these eras, no matter how they change and develop, they can still find a connection, that is, the change of who owns the material ownership that can exist as wealth is connected through it, most creatures need certain survival materials to continue to exist, and the gods and creatures in the kingdom of God have also left unbelievers, so in the final analysis, they need to accumulate material wealth. How to obtain wealth, most of the dimensional creatures are created through production, with the exception of Purgatory and the Celestial Realm, which we know less. But Purgatory is constantly invading other planes, so it can be judged that their survival needs are not out of thin air, I think this is also the reason why Purgatory is constantly invading other planes, as for the heavenly realm, there is a strict religious rule, their gods are the highest, and the gods need believers, and believers need materials to survive, reproduce, and expand, just like someone raising a pig, of course he will not eat pig food, on the surface, the pig's food has nothing to do with him, but he must think about food for the pig, otherwise his pig will starve to death. ”

So let's take a look at how wealth was distributed over these different periods. In the initial primitive tribal period of the elves, the ownership of property belonged to all the elves, and it was a primitive public ownership; when the elves began to conquer other tribes and entered the slave age, the slaves also became a kind of property, and the slaves cultivated, The materials produced are also subordinate to the master, for the first time there is a difference between your property and my property, but in the distribution of wealth, slaves occupy a dominant position, slaves create the vast majority of wealth, but are only allowed to keep only enough materials for survival, and the rest of the wealth is taken away by slaves, so there are so many races that rise up against the rule of the High Elves, and then there is the feudal era, this period when ordinary people have gained more freedom than in the slave era, but they are bound by the land. Land became the dominant factor, and those who possessed more land could obtain more goods by leasing it to others, and in the distribution of wealth, the lords, the large number of landholders, accumulated wealth by leasing land to others to produce and taking most of the fruits of it, while the real laborers received only a small amount, although this was an improvement compared to the slave era. Of these three epochs, the more advanced epochs have always been accompanied by a further unleashing of the enthusiasm of the producers to increase the capacity of production, but I think there has been exploitation since the beginning of the slave society. ”

"Exploitation?" said Rand, who thought for a moment, "the exploitation you mean in the slave era that all the fruits of labor were taken away by the slave owners, and in the feudal era the lords legally appropriated most of the fruits in the form of land lease use?

"Yes, I think so. In this new era, there are still many people who are struggling to survive, and you wonder that the fruits of those new eras, which have made society prosperous, have not brought more changes to the majority of people, because exploitation still exists. Mr. Mystery replied in the affirmative. (To be continued.) )