OBS Chapter 2271
Chapter 2271
Chapter 2271
After Heimdall left, the Rainbow Bridge became even quieter.
However, given Heimdall's diligence, no one would bother to check up on him.
So when the Rainbow Bridge was activated again, nobody cared.
Sif and Gel appeared at the control center of the Rainbow Bridge without any hindrance.
"Is nobody here?"
When Gell finally appeared on the rainbow bridge he had been longing for, he could hardly believe it.
Sif put down the Bult steel in her hand and looked at the Rainbow Bridge with a touch of emotion.
She grew up with Thor, and for her, Asgard held virtually no secrets. She'd been to every place Thor had been. The Rainbow Bridge, of course, was a place Sif knew intimately. But this time, her experience here was completely different. After all, she was doing something bad!
Honestly, this is exciting!
That's just how people are. Doing things morally doesn't actually bring much pleasure, because societal expectations are normal and necessary. Just like breathing and drinking water, these are imposed by societal rules. Therefore, few people experience pleasure when doing morally correct things.
But doing bad things is different.
Regarding this issue, we exclude physiological and genetic groups, such as innate antisocial personality disorder, perversions that derive pleasure from abusing others, and mentally ill patients who have lost their minds; we only address the general public in extreme cases.
If there are bad things, what are good things? From an ethical perspective, the relationship and definition of good and bad, right and wrong, have always been debated. One school of thought believes in absolute good, while the other believes these are value judgments, possessing only relativity. Both schools of thought are valid. For example, Nobel laureate Alexievich said, "From an artistic point of view, there is no such thing as evil, because evil can be made beautiful through the artist. The only evil is murder." Alexievich's statement reflects the relativity and absoluteness of good and bad, right and wrong, and also addresses the very question being discussed today. We call everything we do "doing," but doing "bad" things is a moral judgment, unrelated to the action itself, but determined by one's moral compass. The former is simply about doing or not doing, while the latter is about judging the action on its own merits and giving it a moral evaluation. Morally correct actions don't necessarily bring us happiness, or what we call "satisfaction." Sometimes we stubbornly adhere to what is right because our reason tells us it is right, even if it requires asceticism or sacrifice, we remain steadfast. But doing such a "good deed" might be bad for your family, because your sacrifice could leave them destitute. For example, in the movie *Blue Jasmine*, Jasmine's husband made a living through fraud, and she was part of the criminal network. She turned a blind eye to his lavish lifestyle, allowing her to live off his ill-gotten gains. Until she discovered his infidelity, she angrily reported him to the FBI, leading to the destruction of her family. Her decision satisfied her in the moment, but it resulted in her husband's imprisonment, her losing her breadwinner, and her son's lifelong resentment.
In daily life, small acts of wrongdoing can bring a certain pleasure, such as littering cigarette butts for convenience, skipping the subway line to avoid being late for work, or engaging in slightly deviant behavior to satisfy oneself. The reason these bad things feel good is that we gain greater satisfaction through these seemingly "insignificant" little things.
However, as Daniel Kahneman stated, humans tend to overreact to low probabilities and underreact to high probabilities. For example, even though the death rate from air travel is far lower than from traffic accidents, people are more afraid of flying. The odds of winning the lottery jackpot are lower than being struck by lightning, yet people have high expectations before the draw. Doing bad things gives us more of an imagination about life; this imagination allows us to break free from routine and feel unrestrained. In short, those small bad deeds make us feel free again. Conversely, the fact that doing bad things today is a form of freedom reflects a society's confinement of us and its deprivation of freedom. This is why doing "good" things isn't truly satisfying—because the value of "good" hasn't been truly internalized; it may even be a source of stress in our lives, and escaping stress is human nature.
Therefore, we need to ponder the question, "Why is doing good deeds unpleasant?" This seems to reflect a lack of understanding of freedom. If a child grows up constantly told by elders, "Good grades lead to a good job, a good job earns a lot of money, and a lot of money leads to a good family and a good life; only with these can you succeed," then such a child never has the opportunity to understand what freedom is, because the good or bad of life is defined by these values. Grades, career, and titles become the standards for measuring a person's worth. The more we conform to external values, the less free we become. This is because we become increasingly unclear about our own identity, as if we lack a self and are merely robots created by others. Thus, we commit evil deeds, imagining a low-probability heaven descending upon us; without these hopes, life is no different from death.
At the same time, it takes courage to do bad things.
Small transgressions can grant us a sliver of freedom within a pre-arranged life. I'm reminded of a friend who loves driving. She says that nothing in life is truly her own decision; only by holding the steering wheel can she go wherever she wants. The common human tendency to derive pleasure from doing bad things is a cry for freedom, a conscious or unconscious question: what price am I willing to pay for freedom? Every transgression is an exploration of freedom, a way to assert self-worth and gain a sense of existence. This is also why some teenagers rebel; they crave recognition, even if it involves causing harm. The more outrageous our transgressions become, the more dissatisfied we are with life, and the more we yearn for our true selves to emerge. These transgressions make us feel different from other robots, that we still possess control over our lives.
Sif is probably just like that!
She felt great.
“This is how it is here. Heimdall doesn’t like other people loitering around here.”
The Rainbow Bridge itself is a miracle, incredibly dreamlike. In the early days after its construction, it was the most popular tourist attraction in all of Asgard, a place where many young Asgardians enjoyed doing romantic things.
The management at the time was quite rough, with no restrictions whatsoever.
This has led to the area becoming a moral vacuum, almost like a small grove of trees on campus, where many young men and women have grown up.
That was until Heimdall took office.
The rules here have changed.
Heimdall felt that this was the most important place in Asgard and that so many irrelevant people shouldn't be allowed to wander around here.
So he suggested to Odin that those hormone-fueled young people stay away from the Rainbow Bridge... Behind every outrageous rule lies an outrageous story.
Back then, many young people took advantage of the relaxed management of Rainbow Bridge, using it to run around and causing a lot of trouble.
So after Heimdall took office, he immediately banned those people from approaching the Rainbow Bridge... Even so, it still didn't stop Thor and his group of young people from courting death.
While Heimdall wasn't looking, they ran off to Jotunheim to cause trouble for the frost giants, and almost met their end there. If Odin hadn't arrived in time, Jotunheim would have been able to capture the Asgardian crown prince... and wipe them all out in one fell swoop.
“This place is so beautiful…” Geer looked at the dreamlike scenery of the Rainbow Bridge, somewhat mesmerized.
The pinnacle of Asgardian technology is undoubtedly the Bifrost. Its primary function is teleportation. It boasts diverse teleportation capabilities and methods. It can instantly transport an entire army, or remain operational for extended periods to continuously deploy troops. Furthermore, the Bifrost can perform multiple teleportations within a short timeframe. (Officially, the Bifrost's teleportation range covers the entire universe.)
While the primary function of the Rainbow Bridge is teleportation, it can also be used as a weapon with considerable power. Continuous energy release is enough to destroy a planet. It can inflict devastating damage on the vast majority of enemies and targets in the universe. Although the Rainbow Bridge's energy release is relatively slow as a teleportation attack, requiring a considerable amount of time to destroy a planet, in actual combat, most enemy fortifications are built on the surface or in shallow underground locations. This means that the Rainbow Bridge can destroy them with a simple crossing. Conquering other planets wouldn't require destroying continents or even entire planets; a single sweep of attacks would be enough to wipe out most of the enemy forces.
Let's talk about the fighting style of the Asgardian army.
Asgardian warfare differs significantly from human combat. When discussing Asgardian battles, it seems common to imagine Asgardian armies charging from a great distance and engaging the enemy in direct combat. Firstly, this is because the Asgardian army is equipped with melee weapons. If the enemy also uses melee weapons, that's one thing, but if the enemy possesses ranged weapons, especially highly lethal ones like the Dark Elf firearms, a ranged charge would only increase losses. Even if the enemy's ranged weapons are weaker and can't inflict much damage on the Asgardian soldiers, they would still hinder the advance. One might still wonder: Asgards are well-equipped, and their generals are incredibly powerful, which could largely compensate for being outmatched by ranged attacks. So why not engage in direct, head-on confrontation?
That leads to the second reason—the Asgardian population is too small. The total number of soldiers is only tens of thousands. Even if they win every battle without pressure, with only tens of thousands of people, how long would it take to conquer an entire planet? Even without enemies, it would take these tens of thousands of people a very long time to traverse a single planet. This is another waste of time and resources.
So what is the correct way to fight in Asgard?
The key to effective combat lies in utilizing the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Banner and Heimdall's All-Seeing Eye work together perfectly, allowing for pinpoint accuracy and annihilation. Asgardian soldiers can use the Rainbow Bridge to descend upon enemy fortifications and armies, fully leveraging their superior melee capabilities and the bridge's convenience and surprise. Under such an offensive, the enemy army is virtually powerless to retaliate, and capturing the enemy leader is a simple matter. Even when at a disadvantage, Asgard can quickly retreat via the Rainbow Bridge, regroup, and launch another attack. With this fighting style, Asgard is virtually invincible.
So while this place is beautiful, it is also a real weapon of war!
It's not that there aren't civilizations in the universe with teleportation capabilities, but generally speaking, their teleportation technology is much cruder. The first problem is that they can't pinpoint locations accurately... The teleportation technology of many civilizations is often extremely inaccurate.
For example, using the teleportation technology of other civilizations, the Asgardian army could be sent to Earth.
It's highly likely that Asgardian forces will appear directly on Mars, or somewhere else even worse.
But the Rainbow Bridge in Asgard can be controlled with incredible precision... an astonishing level of precision!
Secondly, even if some races have very advanced teleportation technology that allows for point-to-point teleportation, there is a drawback.
Their transmission technology is more like a signal transceiver.
It must have two ports.
A port is the beginning, the starting point.
The other port is the end port, which is for receiving.
To achieve precise teleportation, you must build a teleportation receiver at the location where you wish to teleport.
This kind of transmission also has unparalleled significance.
After all, this can skip many steps, meaning that while others are still traveling on foot, you've already boarded a high-speed train.
The resulting efficiency gap is enormous.
However, this also has a drawback: it makes it impossible to use teleportation for precision strikes during wartime, and it is even more impossible to directly penetrate enemy strongholds from the rear.
Of course, this doesn't mean that there isn't a teleportation technology in the universe that can be compared to the Rainbow Bridge.
However, these technologies are all in the hands of top-tier figures who transcend the three realms and are not bound by the five elements.
For example, the Observer, and the Celestials.
In short, there's nothing special about the Rainbow Bridge in Asgard; every Asgardian sees it every day.
But for those outside Asgard, the Rainbow Bridge is a mystery.
At least until he saw the actual Rainbow Bridge, Geer had no way of imagining what it would look like.