Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Five: The Closing Chapter of Creation — The First Intelligence of the Myriad Things

Volume Six: Spirit-Life in Dahuang — Dao Grace Everlasting

The apes' range was expanding. Their numbers were growing, too — from a few dozen at first to several hundred.

Each morning they emerged from the caves and scattered to forage. Each evening they returned and piled the food they had gathered together, sharing it among themselves.

Through the long course of their shared life, an order of tacit convention began to take shape. The strongest, most experienced males walked at the front, guarding the whole troop. The young were in the middle, responsible for gathering and tending to the infants. The old and the ailing followed at the rear. No one had assigned these roles — they had simply, naturally, settled into this order.

It was the earliest seed of society.

At the same time, the sounds their throats produced were growing ever more complex. Single calls had begun to combine into sequences. A drawn-out, rising-and-falling sequence of sounds was being used in different contexts — when danger threatened, when food was found, when calling to a companion.

It was not language — but it was the embryo of language.

That year, the late autumn was unusually bitter. The cold between Heaven and Earth had come earlier and more fiercely than in any year before. The caves where the apes sheltered could not fully block the invading chill. At night, the old and the very young pressed together, shivering.

One young female, stepping out of the cave at dawn, saw the ground covered in dead leaves. She picked up a broad leaf and, on impulse, draped it over her shoulder. The leaf blocked the wind. She picked up a few more, threaded them together with a thin vine, and spread them across her back.

The other apes in the troop looked at her with expressions of bewilderment. They did not understand why anyone would hang leaves all over their body. But when a gust of cold wind blew through and the apes with bare fur hunched and shivered, the female wrapped in leaves stood straight.

That evening, more leaf-draped figures returned to the cave. It was simple — just a few broad dead leaves threaded together and laid across the shoulders. But it was the first time any living being on this land had used an external object to shield its own body. Not fur grown by nature, not a cave dug from the earth — shelter that had been created.

At the same time, another thing was happening.

After a wildfire had swept through, a few smoldering branches remained in the ash. A curious young ape approached the blackened ground and picked up a branch whose tip was still glowing red. The heat burned its fingers; it yelped and flung the branch to the ground.

An older ape walked over and looked down at the smoking branch. It reached out a hand, tentatively approaching the source of the heat, then pulled back at the sensation. It circled the patch of ash a few times, then picked up a dry dead branch from nearby and touched one end to the branch that was still burning. The dry bark caught; a tiny flame licked at the wood, giving off a faint crackle.

It carried that burning branch back to the cave.

The other apes, seeing the flame in its hand, drew back. They had all seen fire before — wildfires, blazes kindled by lightning — but none had ever brought fire close. The older ape set the burning branch carefully onto a bare patch of ground by the cave entrance and added dry grass and dead twigs. The flame spread and rose a little higher.

That moment was the first time any living being on this land had preserved a seed of fire.

The firelight lit the stone walls of the cave. The troop, slowly shedding their fear, drew closer to the flame. Warmth radiated from the fire and drove the chill from the cave. The shivering old apes stretched their bodies; the young ones no longer pressed together in tight clusters. All of them sat around the fire, watching the dancing flame in silence.

That night, no ape froze.

The third thing happened on an afternoon after the rain had cleared.

A young male ape had been struck by a falling rock while foraging. Its left leg, from the knee down, was a crushed mess of blood and torn flesh. It could not stand; it could only drag the wounded limb as it crawled. It cried out in pain, and the sound echoed through the dense forest.

The other members of the troop, hearing the sound, gathered around. They looked down at their wounded companion and made low, uneasy sounds. By the instinct of the wild, a wounded individual was a burden. In the wilderness, injured animals were often abandoned by their group. The wounded ape seemed to understand this as well; its eyes were full of terror.

But the oldest female — the most revered member of the troop — walked to the wounded young ape, crouched down, and licked its wound with her tongue. Then she turned and walked away.

A moment later, she returned. She had brought back strips of soft bark, broad leaves, and a small clump of damp moss. She pressed the moss onto the wound and wrapped the injured leg with the bark and leaves. Her movements were clumsy and slow, yet carried out with the utmost care.

Then she placed several tubers she had gathered that day before the wounded ape.

It was the first time one living being had placed food it had labored to obtain before a companion that could no longer forage for itself.

The other apes watched. After a moment of silence, another female set down a single berry. Then a third, a fourth. A small mountain of food piled up before the wounded young ape. It looked at the food, then at the silent faces around it, and liquid welled in its eyes. Those were the first tears on this land shed from being moved.

That night, the wounded ape did not sleep at the edge of the group, where it would be most vulnerable to predators, as was the custom. Several strong adult apes, unbidden, placed it at the center, shielding it with their own bodies against the night wind and the threat of danger. No one had arranged this — they simply felt it was the right thing to do.

In that late-autumn cave, three small flames had been kindled.

The first was leaves. A living being had clothed itself in something not its own fur — the seed of modesty, the garment of civilization.

The second was fire. A living being had carried the flame of the wild into its own den — the beginning of fear tamed, the starting point of nights no longer endless.

The third was sharing. A living being had given its own food to a companion that could no longer feed itself — the first blossoming of compassion, the first crack through which the group transcended instinct.

Each of these firsts was, on its own, trifling. But together, they formed the earliest outline of civilization. Like the first rain of spring: each drop alone could change nothing, but after ten thousand drops, the earth turned green.

The wounded young ape healed that winter. Its leg bore a deep scar, but it lived. From that day forward, it became the bravest hunter in the troop. Every time it made a kill, it would carry the prey first before that old female before eating any itself. It did not know this was called repaying kindness — it only felt it was the right thing to do.

In those last days of the closing chapter of Creation, these subtle changes spread outward like ripples across a stream. More and more figures draped in leaves appeared; the fire in the cave never went out again; the sharing of food gradually became custom. The face of the troop changed, imperceptibly. They were still a troop of apes — but they were no longer like any other animal in the forest. The difference was so small that even they themselves had not noticed it. But they had already begun to become another kind of being.