Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness

Bi Fang rode the camel at a gallop through the desert, kicking up a storm of sand.

The Pyramids shrank behind him, eventually vanishing over the horizon.

Delayed by the mummy for two days, Bi Fang hadn't forgotten the real task at hand; the system prompt for completing the crossing of the Sahara had yet to appear.

The scenery gradually changed all around, from sand dunes to sandy plains, then to grasslands, where colors grew increasingly vivid and bright, as if distancing from the irritable world of endless yellow sand.

Finally, the ever-filming drone in the sky captured a river flowing above the earth.

Clumps of plants, resembling reeds, grew on one side of the riverbank, swaying in the wind, lush and vibrant.

Summer, though scorching, was also a season brimming with vitality.

Arching over a hill, Bi Fang gained a bird's eye view of the profound and vast river from the summit—the longest river in the world.

On seeing this incredibly wide river, the name reverberated in everyone's mind simultaneously—Nile River!

[Nile River! Nile River! Nile River!]

[Go, go, go, success, truly crossed the Sahara!]

[Number one in the world!!!]

[This is what a world-class explorer is!!!]

[Lord Mu gifts the host Spaceship *66—Number one in the world!!!]

[Soar Above gifts the host Spaceship *6—Number one in the world!!!]

[Fifteen Centimeters gifts the host Spaceship *1—Number one in the world!!!]

Bi Fang dismounted from Alpha, slid down through the hill's sand, stumbled a few steps, and then stopped at the riverbank.

Two months, a full two months, he could distinctly feel the changes in his body, like a sponge constantly absorbing water, then being wrung out over and over again.

Exhaustion, drowsiness, hunger, thirst, heat.

Excitement, eagerness, satiety, moistness, shade.

A complex web of emotions and physical sensations intertwined, creating a vast network of memories, trapping a ripe fruit within the forest of recollection, eventually hanging precariously until it fell from the branches into the soil below.

Taking root, sprouting, branching out, unfurling leaves, it eventually grew into a towering tree, thoroughly becoming part of the forest.

Bi Fang's eyes grew increasingly bright and profound, his fatigue swept away in an instant.

[Congratulations, host, for completing the task: A journey of thousands of miles, crossing death, abandoned tombs, reward calculation in progress...]

[The final reward is: High-Order Skill Enhancement Coupon *2, Muscle Control Authority *1, Mitochondria Enhancement Coupon *1, Enhancement Points *3, Wilderness Points *5047.]

Bi Fang revealed a joyful smile, basking in the rich harvest.

But he momentarily suppressed the system prompt and refocused his attention on the river before him, a heroic spirit seeming to rise in his chest.

"The northeastern part of Africa where Egypt is located is predominantly desert and gobi, with a dry climate and little rainfall, and even with today's advanced technology, its development value is not significant."

"It was the Nile River that forged the civilization of Ancient Egypt."

"Sustained by the nurturing Nile River, the ancient Egyptians thrived and created a civilization unparalleled at the time."

"The Nile is the longest river, but it provides limited freshwater resources, with an annual runoff of only 84 billion cubic meters, which is dwarfed by the 950 billion cubic meters annual runoff of our Yangtze River."

"The amount of runoff determines the amount of basic resources—freshwater resources—available for human production and life, while the size of the river basin directly determines the living space of human civilization."

"Yet, it has a serendipitous flooding period."

"The Nile regularly floods, with water levels in northern Sudan usually rising in May, reaching their peak in August, then gradually decreasing until May when the low water level period begins."

"Although the floods occur regularly, the amount of water and the timing of the tide vary greatly."

"The cause of this phenomenon is the seasonal torrential rains on the Ethiopian Highlands, which feed the Blue Nile and the Atbara River."

The audience listened patiently.

They knew that this three-month-long live broadcast was coming to an end.

This might be the last live broadcast image.

More than 80% of the Nile's water is provided by the Ethiopian Highlands, with the rest coming from the lakes on the East African Plateau.

When the floods arrived, they would inundate the farmlands on both banks; when the waters receded, they left behind a thick layer of silt, forming fertile soil.

Four or five thousand years ago, Egyptians knew how to master the regularity of the floods and utilize the fertile land on both banks.

For a long time, the Nile Valley was filled with contiguous cotton fields and fragrant rice flowers. Winding through the Sahara Desert and the Arabian Desert, the meandering Nile was like a green corridor, brimming with endless vitality.

"The river carries the black earth from the East African Plateau down, only slowing down in the middle and lower reaches, forming a moist, fertile soil region."

"Therefore, the ancient Egyptians needed only to scatter seeds in October, and nature itself would grant them a favor, resulting in a bountiful harvest in the following spring, and due to the hot climate, crops could yield an astonishing three harvests per year."

"As recorded by the Greek Herodotus, the farmers there only needed to wait for the river to flood on its own, allowing the water to irrigate the fields before retreating back to the riverbed, then everyone would scatter seeds on their own land, letting pigs tread in the seeds; afterwards, it was just a matter of waiting for the harvest."

[This is too funny.]

[That Herodotus again, he has too much screen time.]

[Maybe he's being paid for appearances (dog's head).]

Bi Fang whistled, beckoning Alpha down from the hillside.

The enormous Alpha looked at the steep slope, made multiple attempts, and finally, carefully stepping on the slope, slid down bit by bit to the riverbank.

There, Bi Fang walked alongside the camel by the Nile, feeling the moisture hit his face, with each deep breath feeling like it moistened his lungs filled with sand.

"This agricultural method, which relied on nature, was most suitable for the development level of early humans; the Egyptians in the Nile River Basin enjoyed the bounties of agriculture with ease during the primitive times, despite extremely low production technology."

"With sufficient material foundation, ancient Egypt became the first to break away from the primitive tribal form on a global scale, establishing a slave-based state."

"However, there are many rivers in the world, and it's not just the Nile that floods; basically, each of the world's four great rivers does so. But the Nile River Basin is in a typical tropical desert climate, which, although hot all year round, as long as there is water plus fertile soil, any time seeds are sown, crops naturally flourish."

"Take our Yellow River as an example, although it floods regularly every summer and autumn, by the time the flood season ends, the weather has cooled and winter is so cold it even freezes."

"As we all know, low temperatures are not suitable for the natural growth of crops."

"By next spring and summer, when temperatures rise, the seedlings in the fields haven't fully grown before the flood season comes again; at that time, dry land becomes rice fields, and the Loess Plateau, not being the Jiangnan Water Towns, can't grow rice and only suffers."

"Therefore, people in these areas could only find residence in the higher terrains of mountains and forests at that time, resulting in much reduced agricultural yields, lacking enough material assurance to construct relatively large and advanced state civilizations."

"The tropical deserts that cover nearly all of Egypt's territory outside the Nile River Basin also became an important factor in Egypt leading the world," he said.

"Many might wonder whether tropical deserts are suitable for human habitation, which, of course, has its rationale, but exceptions arise in specific historical periods, under special environmental conditions."

[Is it really that complicated?]

[In the end, human development still depends on Earth being accommodating.]

"It gets more complex," he continued.

Bi Fang casually plucked off what looked like a reed of papyrus.

"Tropical deserts have two characteristics; first, the mobility of sand ensures that it can fill in gullies but cannot build mountains, so desert regions are invariably flat. Don't be fooled by the dunes; they may seem tall, but thirty or a hundred meters is just a small mound."

"Second, the extremely arid climate means deserts see astonishing levels of water evaporation, and sandy soils have good water-intake capacity and strong absorbance of surface water."

"These two points might not seem crucial, but they're extremely important for the formation and development of early civilization in Egypt."

"With flat terrain, the Nile's flooding could cover a larger area."

"Furthermore, when the surrounding desert's soil, enriched by the floodwaters during the flood season, gets washed by the Nile's overflowing waters, fertile plains could potentially form."

"After the Nile floods, due to the massive amounts of evaporation and the strong surface water absorption capabilities, combined with the natural characteristic of sand to erode mountains and fill in valleys, the areas around the Nile do not form large lakes or swamps post-flood."

"To say the least, this might now seem a significant disadvantage due to the severe lack of natural water storage, but five to six thousand years ago, this very aspect hugely benefited the development of Egyptian civilization."

Lakes and swamps have natural water storage capabilities, but are more challenging to utilize.

To use them for agriculture requires humans to build dikes and dams and to dig channels for water diversion.

As for swamps, they are even more difficult to convert into farmland.

The Egyptians, thousands of years ago, depended heavily on the heavens for sustenance, with extremely backward technology and resource reserves, and were incapable of effectively utilizing lakes and swamps.

Not to mention building dikes, they hardly knew how to use irrigation channels.

They simply lacked the capability.

The special geographical environment downstream of the Nile did not lend itself to forming large lakes or swamps.

After the floodwaters had receded, the periphery was left with abundant water and fertile soil, making it an ideal place for rudimentary agriculture and allowing Egyptian farmers to sow and harvest to their hearts' content.

This was an advantage not possessed by many other regions.

"In the middle and lower courses of the Yellow River, up until the time of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, humans were engaged in a desperate struggle against floods," he explained.

"It was not until Yu the Great successfully managed the waters that we finally had sizable farmlands, able to gather enough resources to support the evolution from primitive tribes into a national civilization."

"After Yu's death, his son Qi established the Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty in Chinese history."

[Yu the Great is awesome!!]

[Society needs heroes like Yu!]

[That's how we do it!]

Bi Fang smiled.

"Huaxia faced greater survival pressures, so they had to quickly develop dike and canal technologies. Being able to use lakes turned out to be an advantage that allowed them to catch up and even surpass others later on."

"The present tropical desert environment and the Nile River, where there's hardly a good chance for humans to thrive, but times change, and a few thousand years ago, the ingenious combination of the two nurtured what was then the leading civilization of Ancient Egypt."

"Expanding our view, we will find that the fundamental conditions of advanced civilizations in ancient times are strikingly similar to those of the Nile River."

"Among the four great ancient civilizations, apart from Egypt, the areas of the lower reaches of the river basins of both the Tigris and Euphrates in Babylonia, and the lower reaches of the Indus River basin in India, are all combinations of large rivers and the tropical desert environment, with Huaxia being the exception."

Those susceptible to great floods fled.

Those that did not experience great floods did not develop higher technology.

Only Huaxia was unique like a scorpion's dung, not only did they not flee, but they also managed the floods.

"Overall, due to the extreme limitations of early humans in transforming nature, the emergence and development of civilizations were highly dependent on the innate natural environment, rendering human subjective initiative incredibly small."

"Under such circumstances, only where the innate environment was very suitable and humans needed only to master a few low-level farming skills to produce enough food, could a civilization emerge first."

"So everything is not static, always changing."

"In the early development of civilizations, this combination of tropical deserts with large rivers had obvious advantages, but as human civilization progressed, its drawbacks gradually became apparent."

"The potential for development in desertified land is ultimately limited. Once human technology developed to the point where it could fully exploit more challenging areas such as marshlands, Egypt would be overtaken by the newcomers."

"Among the four great ancient civilizations, Huaxia's emergence was relatively late, but it soon surpassed the others to become the leader."

"Indian civilization rose in the Indus River basin, but its center of civilization moved as the Ganges River basin was developed."

"The region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Babylonia maintained a first-rate geopolitical position in the Middle East, but this preservation largely depended on its geographic location. However, based on its own productive potential, it was left far behind by China and India."

"Although Egypt was a forerunner among the four great ancient civilizations, it also experienced the most thorough decline."

"As other regions were successively developed, surpassing Egypt in overall strength, and when these regions developed the geopolitical strength to expand outward, Egypt became the target of foreign conquest."

"Persia, Macedon, Rome, Byzantine, Arab powers, the Ottoman Empire, all forcefully incorporated Egypt into their territories."

[Sigh, the wheel of fortune turns.]

[There is no empire that lasts forever.]

[Is it coming to an end?]

Bi Fang peeled off the outer skin of a piece of papyrus stem he had casually plucked, then used a knife to cut it into strips along its growth direction, and placed them crisscrossed.

"See this 'reed' in my hand? It's not actually a reed, but papyrus, a plant that greatly resembles reeds and is abundantly found in the Nile Delta."

"Like I'm cutting and then interleaving it, followed by beating it with a mallet to let the sap seep out, after drying, these strips will stick together permanently, and finally, using pumice to polish, it can be used as paper."

"This is papyrus, the most advanced writing material in the world at that time, becoming an important document for scholars to study Ancient Egyptian civilization in later generations."

"However, because papyrus is not suitable for folding into books, many papyrus sheets had to be glued together into long strips, and after being written on, rolled into a scroll."

"So we often see that some of the ancient Western documents are scrolls, if it was in ancient times, perhaps my adventure this time would be recorded on such a scroll and passed down through the ages, right?"

Bi Fang concluded with a small piece of knowledge and without further delay, saluted the drone rising higher and flying across the Nile with a two-finger gesture.

"This story ends here for now, but it's not really the end. I am Bi Fang, and I'll see you next time."

Accompanied by the drone flying over the Nile, passing through a small oasis, Bi Fang eventually became a speck.

And disappeared from view.